The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1899-08-29
TIE DEN1soN REVIEW
ESTABLISHED 1852
I. MEYERS & TUCKER. P%ublishers.
EDITORIAL COLUMN.


There has been much drunkenness in
Denison this summer. The good peo-
pie of u town have held up their
hands in horror at it; our city govern
ment has appointed extra police, the
Jail has been filed to OVERLOOKING and
the saloons have contributed their
hundred dollars per month to the well
fare of our town and county. The ex-
cess of drunkenness is laid to the door
of the numerous men employed by the
railroad construction contractors. 1t
is undoubtedly true, every day sees a
hundred idle men on our streets throng-
ing the saloons and billiard halls or
slouching half asleep in the sur.
Whose fault is it? Where else in the
entire city do these men receive a well
come and a glad hand save in the sa-
looms and billiard rooms? What other
door is open to them? Who else in-
vites? What has Denison, proud Den
ison, with all it's churches, its wealth
and its enlightenment done for these
strangers who are within our gates?
We will warrant that within this year
our churches have spent enough for
self adornment and foreign missions to
have established an amusement hall
where christian influences might have
been exerted, to have operated it free Of
cost. to have looked after these men
personally and to have made them feel
at home in a christian town. There is
1.-THE McKim hall, do you say? Yes,
there is the McKim hall and while it
fills its place we'll, it is about as applic-
able to the situation as the advice of
the French princess who when the pop
ulace cried "Bread, give US bread, we
have no bread" replied from the depth
Of her innocent ignorance, mo bread,
no bread; then why don't you eat
cake?"
Along the Boyer Valley throughout
its beautiful length is one continuous
settlement of workmen. Their camps
dot the valley wherever the eye can
see. There are men aud women and
little children, all the joys and sorrows
and temptations and pitfalls of life are
there. There are men working as many
of us have never worked to earn our
daily bread, there are women foregoing
the comforts of home, enduring many
h%ardships, there r children running
wild, without school, without church,
without suitable companionship. We do
not say these people are bad, they are
not, but they are the worth Gazing for;
does the duty of our people end with
self-complacent donations to foreign
missions?
We are not accusing ourchurch mem.
bers more than others. What have
others done? Show US the moral man,
the man sufficient unto himself without
religion, who has lifted a hand to help
these people with sympathy and kind.
ness. Lodges and societies are all
right, are useful, if the man in his
fidelity to the brotherhood of the lodge
does not forget that grander thing, the
eternal universal brotherhood of man.
The beam is in own eye, We are
just as guilty, probably more so than
the rest of the community. but we are
going to try to do something, we do not
know what, but we may ask you to
help us do 1t.
Think for a moment about these
men. some of them have spent their
idle time in drunkenness, they have
fought among themselves, they have
manned each other, but we have yet to
learn of any burglarious entrance, of
any trouble with self-respecting citi.
zens or of any insult offered to ou1
maids or matrons. Our community
has left them to themselves and they
have gone by themselves. gone to the
only doors open to receive them, to the
only places where they have been
treated as friends. OF what use are
Ginning bells. or deep toned organ
notes, Of what benefit are handsome
ediices and well trained choirs. OF
what good is the heavy morality of the
press, to what purpose are the pledges
and paraphenalia of the lodge room il
all these influences-yes all Of them
combined-cannot hold out a single
welcoming fraternal christian hand to
these strangers who are within our
gates. For inasmuch as ye have done il
unto the least OF these, even SO have ye
done it unto me.n
Railroad Building.
There has been a vast deal of railroad
building this wear. maxine in ono nj