The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1890-04-18
TllE LOU OR TRAFFIC..
ONgasTHIs QUEsTION THERE "A he
NO MIDDLE GROUND.

SAS ~ VA III WILL uuV HOfG
of measure short Of its total, absolute
national prohibition. 1t is the gigantic
evil of the age, and the issue Of it's
future life or death as q traffic is the ire.
pressible conflict that is nov upon the
nation. The line of division upon this
question is radical and infexible. There
IS no middle territory where the man Of
conscience and patriotism can stand.
protesting a love for God, country and
fellowmen on n side, and practicinp
friendship with the liquor traffic on the
other hand. He that is not against it is
for it. by the unavoidable logic of the
situation, ana no manner of argument or
yehemence of proteststion to the CON
trary can ever change tho fact.
The nature Of liquors and the his tory
of the traffic in all lands convict it as the
most stupendous curse of humanity, the
enemy OF all righteousness. the robber of
all prosperity, the disturber Of all peace,
and the despoiler Of all phases Of indi-
vidual aud national glory. No priest or
publicist, no rite or sacrament, no phi
losphy, and no legislation have ever been
able to transmute it from a curse into a
blessing. Your W common sense repu-
dates any man or argument that seeks 10
teach you that the liquor traffic is q per-
sonal or public good. If 1 we're to say
to you that its tendency and aim is to
produce sober, industrious, and thrifty
citizens, instead of sots. paupers, and
criminals, not q man or woman among
You would leave this hall to- day with an
atom Of respect for my veracity and hon
esty. II l were to say to the wives of
Evansville that the liquor trade is q bless
ing to them, yielding them loving, ten
der, provident, and Christian husbands,
they would repudiate mo with scorn, as they
remember their sorrows, their tears, their
shame, and their ruined hopes. By my
hope in God, by my past experience, by
my loyalty to the truth, I would die a
dog's.death in my place before l would
so outrage and insult you!
THE ENEMY OF CHRISTIANITY AND MO.
RALITY.
This liquor traffic is the great enemy
and obstructionist of the work of Christ.
1t is the brutal and bloody foe of his
cross and his church. Every great heart
and brain that is to-day preaching tho
gospel of Christ, stands tip-toe upon the
mountain tops of truth and proclaims to
men everywhere that the liquor traffic is
hells best agency to thwart the triumph
of the worlds redeemer. In the great
evangelical alliances the best and tallest
Christian authorities have put on record
the truth that the church must help to
abolish the liquor traffic, or it will con.
tinue to cripple the church on every field
of its labor. What blasphemy is this
then, that breaches to Christian men that
there is a position in which they can
stand, loyal to Christ on the n side,
and protecting the liquor traffic on the
other?
1T is a question that deeply concerns
public morals also. Ifthere were no God,
no Christ, no eternity, no heaven and no
hell. there are principles written in the
very constitution of human nature which
demand a total prohibition of this liquor
evil. How miserable an estimate of our
mortal powers, of our bodies and brains
that we should so freely consent to de-
bauch and destroy them! What q wonder
is the mind of man! How it can travel
out beyond earth and air, can compass the
visible universe, drive with Phnbus the
circuit of the sun, sit in silent medita-
tion with the moon, queen of the night,
bathing the earth and sheathing her shafts
of silver in outer darkness! How it can
weigh and measure the stars, unwrap the
eyolutions of mother earth and count the
centuries of her growth; can sift the
mountains and unseal the treasures of the
deepsl Yet is the end of it all to be for
ever drunkenness, misery and the bloody
grave?
No! we are responsible to one another,
If you choose to say we are not SO to God!
I have no right to dispel the moral at
mosphere Of our mutual existence with
build up n brothel under the caves of the
home in which your daughters are grow
ing in grace and purity. No more have
you the moral right to raise o saloon in
the pathway of my sons, who are growing
up III sobriety and industry! The one is
as evil as the other. They are both
crimes against life, morality and destiny.
THIS IS A WAR FOR H LIFE OF THE
LAW.
This liquor traffic is Oh enemy to the
public peace and the public veal. In our
country our loyal appeal must always be
to the Justice of the people, crystallized
law, and the law has, in q majority Of our
communities, m partially to our help.
We only ask it to come all the way-to do
fully that which it has done in part, and
therefore insuficiently for its own pro-
lection.
I'VE have laws which say that this traf-
tc shall cease on Sunday. But that rea-
sonable and wholesome law is trampled
under the feet Of lawless men in this
very city. But the day of reckoning is
coming the more speedily for their sins.
"A historical parallel is in sight. In
the recently published Life of James d.
Birney,' the first Presidential candidate
of the Abolitionists, it is said truly that
the day Of deliverance to the slaves
dawned when the day of the enslave-
ment Of the freemen of the country
cast it's herald signs again. When the
Abolition literature; when Southern leg
islatures set a price upon the heads of
Greeley and Garrison, the country awoke
to the fact that slavery was no longer an
issue Of color or sections. Slavery had
either to die, or the Constitution and the
laws had to fall before the aggressions OF
the shareholders. The result was war,
blood, tears, a holocaust of lives; but out
of it the hand of God wrought, not only
the freedom of four millions of blacks,
but the larger liberty of all the millions
of the whites. You and l have been
freer men since the day Abraham Lin.
coin, the typical American of all history,
signed his name to the Emancipation
Proclamation.
$50 it is with the liquor traffic. It il
rapidly reaching that time when the ques.
tion will no longer be upon the interpre.
kation Of the day as the Sabbath Of God
or a holy day to the church; but the issue
will be the supremacy of the lawl And
when the conflict shall come, when it ii
the life Of the law, as against the law
lessness of the liquor traffic, I know
enough of the valor, the patriotism anc
purpose of the Americans to know thai
the end of that battle will be the certain
death of the liquor traffic.
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE TRAFFIC
Again, the liquor traffic is the foe o:
public economy. There can be no en-
during prosperity to the people who afi'
to the body politic, as you do in this city
2s5 gigantic leeches to draw off the blood.
money on which they live and thrive
They tax the sweat and muscle of tn,
poorer people, who are least able to stand
che drain. They keep the poor poore
from year to year. They sap the pursel
Of the rich until they join the ranks o:
the impoverished. Think Of a trade whicl
produces no tangible, valuable thing TO
the public good; that marshals to iti
haunts every day 600. 900 men in America
too drunk to earn their daily wage, spend
ing the wages of other days in riot ant
debauchery; that takes $940, 000, 900 ever.