Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1894-07-03
THE BEER BUSINESS.
A WELL KNOWN JOURNAL SPEAKS
AGAINST IT.
Let the Reader Ponder Over the Indict-
ment and Ask IL the Charges Are True,
and, IL So, What Should lie Done.

Let the Reader Ponder Over the Indict-
mcnt and Ask IL the Charges Are True,
and, IL So, What Should lie Done.
From the Toledo Blade.l
The brewers and distillers and their
lieutenants, the saloon keepers, stand
In opposition to every class that makes
any pretension to goodness or even de-
cency. Their business is opposed to
everything in the way of good morals
or Of good order.
1t is the one business which has de-
moralization as its basis, which lives
and thrives only upon vice. 1t kills out
of man every good impulse before that
man is valuable to it, and the customer
becomes valuable exactly in proportion
as he becomes bad.
1t is a business which is opposed by
every true clergyman in the country.
It is a business which the merchant
and business man hates and detests.
1t is business which is the standing
dread of every mother.
1t is business which is the constant
fear of every father.
1t is a business which is the horror
of every wife
1t is a business which makes 90 per
cent of the business of the criminal
courts.
1t is business which makes 90 per
cent of the pauperism for which the tax
payer has to pay.
1t is a business which puts out the
| fire on the hearth and condemns wives
and children to hunger, cold and rags.
1t is the business which fosters vice
for profit and educates in wickedness for
gain.
Drunkenness comprises all other vices.
1t is the dictionary of vice, for it in
cludes every vice. Drunkenness means
peculation, theft, robbery, arson, for
gerry, murder, for it leads to all these
crimes.
1t is business which is at the bot
tom of all the political corruption of the
country, the tool that has always been
used by unscrupulous politicians from
Boss Tweed to the very last bargainer
in politics.
1t is the business that is used for ev-
erything that is bad and demoralizing,
and which has never been associated in
any way with any good object or cause.
1t is business which is the drag upon
progress, the enemy of civilization and
the bar to Improvement
1t is the business that is the right
hand of the gambler, the pugilist, the
prostitute, the thief and the vagrant.
1t is the business that originated that
peripatetic nuisance, the tramp, and is
the father and mother of everything in
the way of vagrancy and small crime.
1t is the business that is answerable
for vast majority Of the peculations
and embezzlements and frauds by men
in positions of trust.
1t is the business that sweeps down
every year thousands of young men,
transforming them from the decent to
the disreputable.
1t is the one business in favor of
which the only thing that can be said is
that, inasmuch as man owns himself, he
has the right to commit suicide, moral,
mental and physical.
1t is business based upon the lowest
instincts in human nature, and the only
one of which no one has ever spoken
except apologetically.
1t is a business which no one dares
assert that it does no harm, the only dis
pute about which is as to the amount of
harm it accomplishes.
And this business, this Pandora's box,
insists that the law shall not touch it.
This aggregation of crime insists that it
shall go ON unchecked, unrestrained and
unregulated. And, more than that, it as
sumes to make the laws and insolently
asserts to control the lawmaking power.
Based upon vast capital and with an
army of voters all in it's interest and
controlling a still greater army Of votes
by the agency of appetite, it has taken
possession of states as it long has of cit
les.
1t is undermining our institutions and
destroying the country. There is but one
way to meet it. There is no use in tenn
porizing OF compromising with it. The
issue is made up. We have either to
submit to its dictation or kill it. If the
people are wise, they will kill it. No
matter what it costs, the rum power
must be destroyed 1t has grown to too
great proportions now, and it is time
that it be killed. Pulverize the rum
power.