The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1901-06-27
Prohibitionists. Attention.

your past efforts in that direction? You
have labored faithfully these many years
and you are no nearer the goal of your
ambition than years ago. While you
may have gained some in numbers the
soul-destroying effects of rum have far
outstripped you in the race and you are
really losing ground. But with a change
in the social conditions of our country
will come success OF your cause and the
answer to your prayer. Listen to the
following, copied from the Appeal to
Reason, a "little paper out in Kansas"
with paid yearly subscription list of
153, 700, and which list is growing at the
rate OF thousand and more per week
through the untiring efforts Of 10000 So
cialist men and women who labor for
the spread of the principles OF socialism
without reward except the hope of the
ultimate benefit to all mankind by the
institution of the cooperative common
wealth. Why not adopt their plan for
the destruction of the drink evil and
OF invincible workers.
"From the West Indies comes an in
quiry by reader asking the relation of
Socialism to prohibition. This has been
many times explained in these columns.
That question is treated as is every other
one by the rule that the public should
- .,,,l
having any private interest served by
its existence. So long as men can make
money, directly or indirectly. by the
traffic, they will follow it and push the
business. And so long as men are I'M
der the strain which competition creates
some men will drink, some will get
drunk, and some will die drunk. 1t is
in the excitement Of unmerited success
in wealth-getting or in the depression Of
failure that most men drink. That ele-
ment OF drinkers that have been devel-
encouraged by every pleasing attraction
that the men in the business can devise,
each trying to Guido the others in these
attractions in order to draw the patron
age, which simply attracts new ones
into it. am not one who believes that
the men in the business are degenerates.
never talked to saloon man but who
admitted that he would rather do some
thing else if he could make as much
money, but that was the best thing to
make living or make money he could
see. So long as we have the mental
and physical strife of competition for a
living, so long as we have to work at
brutal employment under brutal and
killing conditions, you will have men de-
manding stimulants. And if they de-
mand them they will have them If not
! liquor, they will go to morphine, opium,
or other drugs. But the public could
make and furnish pure liquors, not the
adulterated, insane-making stuff now
sold at EIGHTY TIMES WHAT IT
COSTS TO PRODUCE PURE LIQUOR,
and could sell it at cost, surrounded
with such regulations that no one would
have any interest in the sale) in the
plainest and most UNSOCIAL environ
ments, and thus reduce to minimum
its evil effects and prevent, to large
degree, the education OF the rising gem
Grafton to its use. But bear this in
mind, you cannot destroy the demand
for it so long as the struggle for existence
is such as it is today. Nor is it true that
the drink habit is worse enemy to
working people than private monopoly.
know of many VERY poor men
who have never used liquors, tobacco,
profanity, nor lost any time by
reason of laziness. Surely their con-
dition is not chargeable to drink.
DRINKING Is AN EFFECT, NOT A
| CAUSE Find the cause and remove it,
and you have removed drinking. Why
were the Mohammedans teetotalers for
centuries Why are they becoming a
drunken and debauched nation today?
When the British planted capitalism in
India, began the race with crime and
drunkenness. When we began to plant
our mammon-worshiping system in the
Philippines, the saloons increased many
! hundred fold You cannot control liquor
and leave it possible to make money out
of it. Prohibition in Kansas causes peo-
pie to perjure themselves, tramples law
under foot, spit on the constitution, cor
rupts the officials, silences courts.