The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1895-10-01

Ballot Box In Favor Of Prohfbi-
ton and Outlaw the Saloon.
JOSEPH COOK, D. D.. BOSTON,
When the liquor traffic takes the ma
ton by the throat, you will find that al
though Americans often wait until the
ffty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour
before they arouse themselves, they may,
nevertheless, in q momentous crisis, I'M
lock from their throat the grip of the
great evil in the sixtieth minute.
"The day is coming when the liquor
traffic, unless we change our fashions OF
municipal government, will strain the
republic as slavery never did" When
the path to political preferment leads
through the ginmills, free government
is a farce, and its future is likely to be
q tragedy.
Prohibition, it is said, does not pro-
hibit.
But outlawry does outlaw.
There is no legal saloon in Maine or
Iowa nor in several other states.
Children in Maine, many Of them,
never saw drunkard.
No young person there saw legal
dramshop, a specimen of the states soft
solicitation to vice.
Herrick johnson of Chicago deserves
to be remembered thousand years for
single epigram, Low license asks for
your son; high license for your daugh-
ter Also"
God grant that my right arm may
drop from its socket, and my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth, II I
ever use either to organize temptation
in legal form and secure state sanction
of solicitation to vice!
Four Of your great Protestant denomi-
nations now refuse to admit rumsellers
to church membership.
Now, say two things-first, that
when traffic is SO VIGOROUSLY tnjuri-
GUS that a man who practices it is ex-
cluded from church membership by the
common consent Of the great body Of
the Protestant denominations, then
church members in those denominations
ought not to legalize that traffic by their
votes.
1t is q fat contradiction for the church
with one hand to excommunicate rum
sellers and with the other hand to le-
galize rumselling.
The second thing l say is if the
church members would stand together
and vote as they pray the liquor traffic
might be made an outlaw tomorrow.
am a convinced and uncompromis-
ing opponent of license in all its forms.
am most emphatically political
Prohibitionist.
You have 1900, 900 Of church mem
bers in the Protestant denominations Of
this republic who vote.
There are as many more outside the
church that help to support divine serv-
ices
They are a majority of the voters in
the land.
If you would stand together, there is
no party you could not bring to terms.
If those who believe in the principles
Of Christianity would vote as they pray,
the liquor traffic might be made within
one month an outlaw.
That appears to be the plain fact con-
corning American politics.
The educational movement in the
temperance reform has been carried SO
far that the public schools have risen to
q temperance level that the churches
themselves have not attained.
Ny central proposition is simply that
the churches ought in all decency to
rise to the temperance level of the COM
mon schools.
But here in your schools are certain
ly $4,000, 900 Of the future citizens Of
the republic under this instruction.
Now, ask whether it is not fair to
demand that the preacher in his desk
shall be as consistent in his temperance
example as the teacher in his desk is
now expected to be.
If teacher uses the improved and
approved temperance textbooks, he must
emphasize total abstinence and he Is
expected to put his example behind his
precepts.
| Are church members to rise to the
level Of schoolteachers?
Is 1t fair to ask that the church in
general should occupy at least as high a
temperance level as the legislatures of
states like Pennsylvania and New York;
| want the church members to rise to
this new level.
When theschools are doing this shall
the church lag behind or shall we allow
the clubhouses to cling to her holy skirts
and drag them into the mire Of the low
or standards of what calls itself society
Which will the church lock hands
with-the city clubhouse, city fashion
able society or the modern school repre-
sented now by SO states of this republic,
modern scientific circles and modern
commercial standards of life assurance
societies?
The church must clear her skirts of
moderate drinkers.
BY long pull and strong pull and
pull all together I would use the
school and the church in combination