The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1889-04-26
what Prohibition Does.

ClItIlC W bsb ~ $3.50
means territory 200 miles wide and 4OO
miles long without an open temptation to
the drunkard or the drinker.
| live in a town of 1000 population,
Olathe. We nave not had a saloon for
ten years, and never will have again, thank
the Lordl Under the old system we had
no macadamized streets, no iiagstone pave
ments. We have tlagstonc pavements to-
day, and our main streets are all nicely
macadamized. We have built, since We
closed tho saloons, water-works costing
forty or fifty thousand dollars; NC built
an additional school building costing for
ty thousand dollars. The tow las
doubled its population. We have, in that
town Of 1000 population, ten churches.
Right here l want to compare the town of
Olathe, my home, with the capital of Cal
i~fornia, under high license. Sacramento
City has thirty thousand population.
While there one year ago a couple of mini
| isterial brethren called upon mi at the
hotel in the evening that | stopped there
and | asked them how many churches they
had in Sacramento, and they said eight;
GLOW many saloons?" -Four hundred"
One of the preachers spoke up, desiring
that | should not labor under a wrong i'm
preston and said, "We told you eight
| churches, that is true, but only four of
them are in active operation
A city of thirty thousand population,
| four hundred saloons, with eight churches
and only four of them in operation, q
license city! In the town in which | live
with only four thousand population, we
hayc ten churches and every one of them
in active work, and each one has a minis
ter. By the way, my good people, | live
just seventy feet from the Reformed Pres
byterian church in my town, and it has a
wonderfully good influence on me. Now,
then, in that tow with ten churches-l
want to beg your indulgence for a few
moments to show you what prohibition
has donc for the church; what it has done
for morality-under our old system We, on
Sabbath did not have our churches half
full, Since we have closed the saloOns the
Presbyterian brethren have moved out of
their church and built a new one, a church
that seats about GOO. The Congregational
brethrcns' church, of which have been a
member for twenty years., has been COM
PEELED to increase the seating capacity
about one-half. The Baptist brethren cut
their church in two, elongated it, like n
telescope, and increased it onc-third. The
Christian church had to tear their old
church down, and have just completed a
new one, and to-day when Sabbath comes
around, our ten churches are all filled.
We have an excellent organization of the
Y. NJ. c. A, something we did not have
before under the old system, and to-day in
that county of 5000 population | don't
know of a common drunkardi | used to
know twenty or thirty OF them. They
would spend their days frequently in the
calaboose, placed there on Saturday night
for drinking and be locked up Sunday, and
brought out on Monday morning and fined
heavily, requiring the payment of money
that ought to have been used to support
wife and child. These men had mortgages
on their farms ten years ago, but they are
sober men, thank God, to-day, the tempta-
ton having been taken from them, and
their sobriety and industrious habits have
enabled them to remove the mortgage from
the farm and make home free.
Under the old system not more than two
| Of our business men out of ten belonged to
the church. To-day not more than two
out of ten do not belong to the church. My
friends, that is what you get by keeping
Eyour people sober. We have not had a
man in our calaboose for upwards Of three
years, and We have not had 4 street fight
a common street ~brawl-for ten years; and
We get upjust as big Fourth ofJuly celebra-
tons as anybody, and donot have anydrunk-
en- men there. We celebrate our Christmas
and New Year festivities, and have no
drunkenness there. We very rarely see a
drunken man in that county, and when we
do, as a rule, he comes from the licensed
State of Missouri, only ten miles away.
| was speaking in q Sabbath. school in
one of our churches one year ago, and
asked the children how many of them had
ever seen a drunken man, and not a little
hand went up. | put the same question to
the little boys in the own OF Dillingham;,
Illinois, and every little hand went right up,
and one little seven-year-old fellow piped
right out, 81 seen two of them this after
noon!'' and | learned that that poor little
boys papa was a common street drunkard,
Oh, may God pity the man who has so far
become a slave to his appetite as to become
a common drunkard loafer. Oh, may God
pity the government that lacks the moral
courage to protect the man who struggles
to DO better John r. 50. John.
Prohibition In IOWA.
As the question Of Constitutions Pro-
hibition of the liquor traffic is soon to be
submitted to the voters Ofthe State OF Penn.
sylvania, | ave felt like writing a few
lines in regard to the workings Of the pro
hibitory laws in Iowa, that might there
by do my feeble part in helping to carry
forward this great work of moral reform,