The Iuka vidette. (Iuka, Miss.) 1894-1912, 1895-04-11
PERILS OF OUR BOYS.
Dangers That Beset Them on Every
Hand to Lead Them to Ruin.
The Billiard Hall. Saloon, Low Dance
Halls and Theaters, Race Track and
Gambling Den the Fruitful Source
of Their Downfall.
lCoPYRIGHT. 1851


the United States there are not less
than 100000 of young men between
the ages of fifteen and twenty-five;
many of them in school; many of them
this year to receive their diplomas from
the colleges and high schools; many of
them merging into manhood without
education; and while we have the prob
lem nj commerce, finance and agri-
culture, and while we are graphing
with the liquor question, there is no
problem of equal weight and impor-
lance with the one involving character
and destiny of young men now growing
up and projecting their lives into the
great currents of society and business
life in America to-day. More than one
half OF these young men are not trained
up in professions and large class of
them are not trained to work at all;
they have been furnished bed and board
and have leaned upon the arm of par
ents or guardians, and very few of them
can stand alone at twenty-one years of
age. Many of them have neither time
nor disposition to solve the problems
before them and adjust themselves to
the duties and conditions essential to
their development and maintenance
along right lines. The billiard rooms
with their midnight revels claim thou
sands of our boys; of course, the bar
rooms attached to the billiard rooms
furnish the essential thing to keep up
their courage and ruin their character.
1t is amazing to pass by popular bill
lard halls in the cities and see from
fifty to one hundred young men
playing pool or billiards with one hun
drcd more young men sitting around
the walls looking on amid fumes of to-
bacco smoke and whisky and the air
made hideous with profanity; the
young man who takes position here is
already ruined; there Is nothing lack
ing to complete his ruin. The the
aters, with their living pictures and
high lSickers, claim large proportion
of our boys every night; there
they feed the passions and lower ele-
ments of their nature until virtuous So
ciety is bore to them and they lose
all desire for pure womanhood. The
race track is another fruitful source of
ruin to our boys. The passion for bet
ting on horse races is as degrading to
character and as hurtful to the morals
of young people as the houses of shame.
The millions of money gathered up by
the professional sports from the pockets
of our young men annually would startle
this nation if the figures We're known;
clerks, young business men, railroad
men, all classes and trades furnish the
money in this way to fill the pockets of
the sports and keep the horses going and
while the horses arc going our young
men are going at a gait towards wreck
and ruin faster than Nancy Hanks, Jay
Eye See or any other thoroughbred ever
made it.
Another fruitful source of wreck and
ruin to our young men is the gilded
gambling bells which every city fur.
nishes The passion for gambling at
faro or keno or poker fastens itself
like leech upon the young man and
he is ruined before he knows he is
hurt. If our boys could realize 1t what
q blessing it would be to them
if they would stop it forever.
Another gource of everlasting ruin
to our young men is the resorts
where shameless women preside; no
young man can long withstand the in
fluence of associations like this; the
poor degraded, drunken, opium-eating
women with stupor from opium and
hilarity which liquor gives-this ghast-
ly picture tells the tale to our young
men which they ought to hear and heed.
AS surely as one is degraded and
wrecked, the other will be by the asso-
citation which makes them congenial.
The great God who made us has
stamped His disapproval in one thou
sand ways upon a life like this.
Another source of ruin to our boys is
idleness. An idle man is vagabond,
and not only curse to society but to
himself. No young man is safe who is
not employed, and the boy who can
give his consent to be idle and yet con-
sumo what others have made, is beg
gar by instinct and worthless dog by
nature.
Another source of ruin to our boys is
prodigality. Many of them are spend
thrifts; many of them resort to ques-
tionablc means, and others resort to
dishonest means to obtain the money
upon which they live and with which
they degrade their manhood. Defalca-
tions and thefts multiply, and many ia
theirs and guardians to-day are at a loss
to know how to check this current
which sweeps their loved ones on to
the gulf of ruin.
& Another source of infinite harm to
our boys is want of ambition in right
directions; to excel in character; to ex-
eel in their professions and trades; to
make themselves known and then to
make themselves necessary. The boy
that lacks the inspiration which wise
ambition gives is minus one of the es-
sential things which propels manhood
and conquers difficulties. s
Perchance this article will fall under
the eyes of many young men; to some
it will be but the obituary of their
ruined lives; to some perchance it will
be an inspiration to lop off the harmful
things and an inspiration to incorpo-
rate into their lives the principles of
right, economy and industry, and