Arizona republican., 1899-02-04
BISHOP POTTER ON SALOONS.

Bishop Potter of New York has aroused excited discussion by an un- conventional declaration regarding the saloon, made at a meeting of the Church Temperance society. Briefly, he declares that saloons are a social necessity" that they provide place of relaxation for the poor; that they are in fact the "poor mans club, and that the opponents of the institution are only wasting their breath so long as they offer no reasonable substitute to supply the craving of the poor man for social relaxation. The ground taken is that the saloon evils root IS mainly in the gregarious instinct ol man, a trait not of itself necessarily bad. The mere practical opposition 10 the saloon. as we interpret Bishop Pot ter's meaning, is not that which con tents itself with seeking to outlaw the institution without supplying anything to replace it, but that which aims to e1atify the social instinct in man and thereby expel from his affection those places where intoxicants are served.
 All this sounds very pretty as the- ory. but there is another and very practical side to the question, which the bishop is now having dinned very vigorously into his ears. It is not chiefly the "gIegarious instinct" or the desire for social relaxation that takes men into saloons. The plain English of the matter is that they go there to satisfy a craving for intoXi- eating liquors. The real curse is all cohol--an active narcotic poison, occa- sionally beneficial in small quantities, but, as modern science is coming more and more to agree, in the proportion in which it enters into distilled liquor, harmful agent to body, brain and mor- als. The notion that alcohol is food" has long ago been exploded. It has been shown to waste tissue, not to build it up. It is time to brush aside hypocritical or mistaken platitudes about the drink question, and to face the truth of the situation. The way to drive the saloon out of business is to educate humanity to the fact that strong drink is shortening mems lives, keeping them poor, and impairing their moral sense and mental power. Most Of the would-be reformers begin at the wrong end Men can drink liquor without saloons, as the experience of prohibition in many states has proved, but saloons could not exist if men would not drink liquor. To at tempt cure of the drink evil by either abolishing or reforming drinking places is like treating a skin disease by external applications and paying TO attention to the disordered condition Of the blood that causes the eruption. The saloon, of course, aggravates the drink habit; but the habit is the cause Of the saloon, not it's effect. It is not by providing comfortable and elegant non-aIcoholic drinking places, as Bishop Potter suggests; Or by trying to legislate against "the rum traffic, that religion and morality are going to re- Iieve mankind from it's heaviest handi- cap in it's progress toward the millen- nium; it is by teaching mankind that alcohol is a harmful drug which, like other toxic agencies, should be used sparingly, and then under medical di- rection as a tonic or a remedy in spe- cial cases AS for the pet nOtiCn of that cratic priest Dr. Rainsford, that church people should gc into the busi- ness of selling good" liquor in com petition with the low saloon, the time has not yet come when men of or dinary sense and respectable opinions will waste time discussing it.