The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1890-12-05

uals, out of whom all organized society
must be built. Let man undertake
to erect temple, and find when it il
half completed that the materials with
which be is working are unsound and
weak, that the stones are soft and
crumbling, that the bricks are not well
burnt, that the timbers are rotting.
What good will it do for him to sii
down and conclude that his srchitec-
tural design is wrong aud needs revis.
ing2 He might change his Plan every
week, and if his material continued the
same his building would be failure.
Let church be constructed out Of men
and women Of impure minds, Of selfish
hearts, of immoral habits, and it is of
no use to change the creed or change
the scheme Of dogmatic theology. 1t
is SO Of society and Of government. II
the individuals, the material out Of
which the social fabric must be con
struced, be debauched, no schemes Of
government, no new social Utopia, can
save it. The saloon strikes at the very
material out of which any form of SO
ciety, any form of industrial organiza.
ton, any kind Of government must be
constructed. You must get new de
signs from the Socialist architect. from
the Nationalist architect, from the
Single Tax architect, from the Free
Trade architect-from any or all archi-
tects but if you allow the materials
out Of which the bnilding is constructed
to be rotted steadily, the architects can
not save. In this nation to day on a
close estimate, thre are 2 500, 900 hard
drinkers-men and women who drink
themselves frequently drunk-an aver.
age Of one to every FIVE families in the
nation. And the institution which is
thus debauching the units of society is
gaining in strength every day. The
Church cannot regenerate one where
the saloon debauches ten. The need is
not--at least the most urgent need is
not-for new architects, but for the
destruction of that which is rendering
all social architecture more and more
failure.
2. The saloon debauches politics
through which alone any important
changes must come. It not only COR
rupts the material out of which any
State must be built, but it corrupts
those who have charge and oversight Of
the building operations. The saloon is
the3 dominant power-not merely q
dominant power, but the dominant
power-in the municipal government
ofall our large cities, and through them
controlling balance Of power in State
and National politics. Let man or q
group of men go to a State Legislature
such as We have in New York, a major.
ity Of whose members owe their election
to the ssloons and the corrupt methods
worked through the saloons, and what
chance will measure stand which has
nothing Sin it" for the legislator!
Whatever changes for the better are
made in our governmental system must
be made by our lawmakers, and while
the saloon makes and unmakes ths
lawmakers, no reform appealing merely
to patriotism and intelligence is likely
to succeed. Take New York's Board
of Doodle aldermen few years ago.
with majority of its members liquor
dealers or saloon politicians, and wha,
chance would reform measure stand
before them for even hearing unless
the bribe.giver had prepared the way
beforehand? Take this city itself, with
63S out of ,002 primaries held by the
old parties in 1884 in saloons or rooms
adjacent to and connecting with saloons,
and what scheme Of reform in any
direction can be trusted to amount to
anything nurtured, as it must be, under
present conditions, in such an atmos-
phere? The same question applies with
slight variations to all the large cities
of the nation and with fully as much
force to the High License cities as to
others.
Here then the first battle for reform
must be fought in order to stop this
debauchery Of politics. Of municipal
Government, of Legislatures, by the
saloon, and then to stop the Wholesale
debauchery Of the individual citizens
who alone can constitute the State. All
this can be accomplished in but one
way. namely, by massed onslaught Cd
the entire saloon system. To this every
retormer must come, whether from the
ranks of artisan labor or the ranks of