Omaha daily bee., 1889-05-26
TEMPERANCE AND INTEmPER-
ANCE

Excessive indulgence In liquor is by
no means the only form OF intemper-
ance against which the battering rams
Of moral reformers should be directed.
lntemperance in eating claims thou
sands OF victims every year. Nobody
has yet proposed q law to abolish the
viands that impede digestion and cause
rheumatism, dyspepsia and hypochon-
dria. Nobody has even suggested that
we shall punish the butcher, the baker,
and the confectioner.
Licentiousness is distemper that
has afflicted humanity for fifty centuries.
The misery, brutality and crime that
have resulted from too much drink pale
into iusigpi1icance in comparison with
the unutterable wretchedness, shocking
depravity and heinous crimes that have
as their prime factor illicit intercourse
between the sexes. Embczzlements,
defalcatiops, deadly diseases, suicides,
infanticides, seductions and cruel mur-
ders are for the most part traceable
to the Incorporate love and lust.
From Samsou's Delilah down to Miss
Beechler-King beautiful bad women
have exercised the most baneful influ-
ence and filed our calendars with rec
ords of pollution, degradation and crime
that make humanity stand aghast.
But no social-evil reformer has been
bold enough to suggest that we abolish
woman. Nobody has yet declaiined
from pulpit or the forum against this
snecias of intar N n ro N oa md advo,oted
an amendment to the constitution that
would stop women from selling them
selves either with or without q mar
riage license. No radical social re-
former has yet devised any scheme or
framed any law by which the constitu-
tion OF man and woman would be so
amended as to make them proof against
the social vice.
There is intemperance even in re-
ligion. Our insane asylums count hun
dreds OF persons bereft Of reason by re-
ligious excitement. Some Of the worst
maniacs have gone crazy over highly
colored descriptions Of the terrors Of
hades. And yet nobody, not even Bob
IngersOll, proposes to abolish religion
and religious worship. No one has yet
suggested Law that would prohibit re-
ligious zealots, whether they be priests,
rabbis or dervishes, from trying to make
converts to their belief by the most it,
temperate exhibitions Of religious fer
vor.
dangerous as Incorporate eating and
drinking. And we know of no form of
Incorporate talk more hurtful to public
morals than that indulged in by the
professional agitators Of sobriety made
compulsory by cast iron laws. These
intemperate temperance reformers i'm
pose upon the credulous by reckless
misstatements and illuminate accusations
that have scarcely q shadow Of warrant
in truth. They want to fire the popu
lar heart and make regulations for
themselves as the John A. Sullivans of
the prohibition arena. Above all things
they want to make their lectures pay.
A fair specimen OF this class, the Rev.
Sam Small has just favored Omaha with
series of Incorporate eXhortations.
He was not content with poip ting out
degradation, woe and vice that spring
from drunkenness.
He did not take the trouble to cite
facts and figures to exhibit the enor-
nous waste entailed upon the industrial
classes by the liquor drinking habit.
But he imposed on popular credulity by
glaring misstatements and stirred up
emotional fanatlcism by distorting
facts.
No one will deny that the liquor
traffic is responsible for large share
of human misery. 1t is an admitted
evil, and the great question with
right-thinking men is how to regulate
and restrict the evil.
If these Incorporate agitators of COM
pulsory sobriety could be induced to
tell the truth they would be forced to
admit that intemperance in drink can
no more be abolished by law than can
the social evil. 1t has cursed mankind
since the days Of Noah and will survive
with the infirmities of the human race.
Temperance in all things is virtue
for which the highest tpye of man has
ever striven.
But that is not the ideal of Rev. Sam
Small or any other professional agita-
tor OF compulsory temperance. This
class Of moral swashbucklers must SUBJ
sist on intemperance. They are pull
verizing the rum power for dollars and
do not scruple about palming off fiction
for fact to keep the pot boiling.
,nIIIn IaI Iantnr, Anua