Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1897-05-07
y. %. 8. Q. Column.
!. o. G. T. DIRECTORY OF ADD.
SON COUNTY.
THE SALOON:WHAT GOES IN AND
WHAT COMES OUT.

/
There are said to be about one HIM.
dred and eighty thousand liquor saloons
In this land of Christian America. Form
ing a street with double line, allowing
twenty-five feet frontage to each saloon.
this death street would stretch four hun
dred and twenty-six miles
Is 1t fully realized what a saloon is?
In the botanical garden at Washington
is a curious plant that eats. 1t attracts.
captures and feeds on insects. 1t is call
ed the Venus Fly Trap. At the extrem-
tiles of its long leaves are two blades or
claspers, so constructed as to hold anv
insect unfortunate enough to come be.
tween them.
In the same garden is another plant
called the Vegetable Whiskey shop, for
the reason that 1t exudes and distills an
Intoxicating liquid which causes any in
sect drinker to die drunk.
What type is each of these plants of
the modern liquor saloon, 1t Is a fatal
trap indeed.
Think a moment what goes in. 1t is
estimated that seven million persons en-
ter the saloons of America for intoXcat-
ing drinks every day. These include
men, women and children. A large
number of these seven millions are new
recruits, young, pure and full of prom
Use, carrying in with them hard-earned
money that ought to go for bread
clothes, education aud religion, and car
rying with them, too, nature made in
the Image of God and capable of happi.
ness and heaven.
That is what goes in. Now what comes
out? Probably five hundred thousand
drunkards every single year, poor
wretches who are slaves to tyrant APP
petite and who have sunk lower than the
brute beasts; one hundred and twenty
five thousand criminals, some of them,
and not few with hands imbrued with
human blood; one hundred thousand
corpses on their way to a drunkard' 5
grave; while outside the fruits of the sa-
loon are found in thousands foully muir
dered through the drink, innocent ones
Impoverished through it, and broken
hearts of parents and wives and friends,
and untold woe and misery that figures
cannot tabulate.
That Is what comes out. | charge the
open saloon with all this and more 1t
is worse than a highwayman; the high
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS your money or your
life. The saloon demands your money
and your life.
Then, why not close it? Is the sa-
loonists' lust of gain stronger than the
public sense of self-preservation together
with The Christian sentiment of the coun-
try? TheIsaloon system is mighty &C.
topus that has fastened its tentacles upon
social and4political America, and only a
national rising lof indignant, protest
and determined effort can break its fatal
hold. The plague is among US, compar-
ed to which event the famine of India is
as nothing. Why not stay it? Why not
wipe out this death street? 1t can be
done if we will. The Christians of
America could do it if they would. Why
not placard the upper end of this long
street Iwith mo Thoroughfare." Fa-
theirs AMothers Are you willing that
your darling's little feet, or anybody ell
SEES darlings little feet should one day
walk this street: Let the father-love
and the mOther-love of the land awake
and arise. Humanity demands a closed
saloon. One needs but to consider, if
only for Ia moment, what goes in and
what comes out to feel that the saloon
must go.