The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-12-04
THE DUTIES OF CITIZENS
WHICH ARE OF SPECIAL IMP0R-
 TINCE TO-DAY.

Rev. Mir. Mason on the Saloon Question In New Haven-An Earnest Address-The American Voter.
 An interesting and able address was made by Rev. Mir. Mason of the First Baptist church at the union service of the First Baptist and Davenport churches Sunday evening. of which the following is summary:
 Rev. J. II. Mason said in part: Every man who calls himself Christian on Sunday ought to be a Christian seven days in the week. As a Christian man Ee has a special duty on election day. The Christian citizen has not made himself felt in the affairs of the city as he might have done. But there Is reason to hope that a better day Is coming. On Tuesday next you have chance to say what kind of men shall be our rulers during the coming year. But the most important question 10 be settled next Tuesday is the question which multitudes of voters will entirely overlook. The question is this: "ls the saloon stronger than New Haven or Is New Haven stronger than the saloon?" For many years the question has been decided against New Haven. Shall tomorrow be as black as yester- day has been? It depends upon New Haven's Christian men. There are few cities on this continent which do not cringe and fawn to the saloon. In Puritan New England at least such things ought not to be.
 Let us see what the saloon is and what 1t does. It is essentially de- stroyer. War, pestilence and famine are the scourges of humanity. but William E. Gladstone says that the liquor traffic is more destructive than all combined. It destroys health; 1t undcrmines character; 1t benumbs con- science; it takes the life We are hor- rified at a disaster like that at South bridge, where two young men are in stantly killed and dozen others are fatally injured or cruelty maimed for life: we are appalled, at an event like the Johnstown flood, in which 2,2SO lives were lost, but we take 1t very calmly when we are told that S0ooO men are slain every year by the liquor traffic. Again the liquor traffic IS es- sentially a law breaker. Our present excise laws give the liquor seller almost everything to. begin with. The re- strictions placed upon him are very slight. But he has no smallest lnten- ton of respecting those restrictions. Last September Superintendent Byrnes reported that he had had men out for three months watching the saloons in New York city, and that they had ob- served 63, ,460 violations of law. That IS more than 700 a day.
 But the business is not only a law breaker of itself; it is the most stu pendous manufactory of law breakers which the world knows anything about. Sir Matthew Hale, chief justice Of England, said after twenty years Of closest observation that 80 per cent. of all high crimes were due to liquor. Dr. Elisha Harris of New York after simi- lar investigation reached almost pre- cisely the same figures. Carroll D. Wright found that out of 16S97 com mitments in Suffolk county, Mass, 14,- 3S6 or 84 per cent. of all were due to drink.
 Such facts as these must mean that the liuuor traffic is a gigantic robber of the community. The machinery of justice is expensive; and jails and penl- tentiaries and prisons are expensive and insane asylums and poorhouses and all other similar institutions which are needed because we are willing tc tolerate the crime and poverty breed CTS such as are found in our own city to the number of 400. The Chicago fire destroyed property to the value oi s97,OO0,0OO and we have not yet forgot ten 1t. But that was more thar twenty years ago and during all these twenty-three years, the liquor traffic