River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1902-05-08

to the knowledge of all men, con-
stantly and increasingly creates.
We call to your attention further,
gentlemen, that no other agency
known to men creates such places.
Not poverty alone, not ignorance
alone, not wickedness alone, make a
place SO forsaken of God and man,
SO remote from heaven and the pos
sibility of good, so circled by the
devils and hell, as a drunkard's
home. But the poverty, the igno-
rance and the wickedness of the sa-
loon make such places by the un-
counted thousands.
When Michael Kilroy reeled home
in the early hours of the holy Sab
bath of Sunday, January 26, in the
Christian city of Boston, his pockets
empty of the money that he had
promised to his wife to buy the cloth
ing, for lack of which his children
were freezing; when he answered
her appeal for the fulfillment of his
promise with a blow that knocked
her to the floor; when he choked,
with his fingers upon her throat, her
prayer for mercy; when he kicked
her with his heavy boots, and she
about to become the mother of an
other child; when he sat for hours,
>unmoved, listening to her means
and watching her sufferings;
when he brutally mistreated the
children who would have brought
her help; when he struck away the
water that her little daughter was
lifting to her bloody, thirsting lips
it was drink, conference.-the
drink that Professor Atwater tells
US is food-that you gentlemen
recommend in moderation, that
made him do it; and neither in
earth nor hell has any other agency
been found, in the history of the
whole human race, that inspired
men to such deeds.
But drink, gentlemen, alcoholic
drink, not only made Michael Kilroy
do that brutal, devilish deed, but has
transformed uncounted thousands OF
men into fiends of the same harac-
ter and has driven them to deeds
equally brutal. Drink, gentlemen,
has inspired such tragedies so com
monty and in such multitude, that
the public scarcely pauses to notice
their occurrence. Drink, gentlemen
is to-day preparing more men fol-
just such deeds as that; and you
know, and we know, and the world
knows, that it will take boys from
your churches, boys from your
schools, aye, God pity you, perhaps
boys from your homes, and will make
them into such brutes to work such
fiendish crimes in future years on
women who to-day are lovely and
loving girls.
1t was only twelve days before the
butchery in that Boston tenement
that Vincent Vincelsk came home
drunk in Pittsburg and chopped his
wife and little children to death with
a rail-cutter. 1t was only thirteen
days before that John Blissett of
Detroit, drunk, emptied his revolver
into his wife's body and poured
kerosene over her and stood with
lighted match to make her burnt
offering to drink when the police
broke in upon him. 1t was just one
month and day before that ia
Their in Indiana came home drunk,
sought to kill his wife with a hat
-chet and was shot dead by his son.
But why go on with such a list?
The cases are innumerable; and be-
fore Michael Kilroy came home to
kill Bridget, you and we and every
body in the whole land knew that
some man, because of the drink
traffic, would come home and kill
his wife, and that the terrible pro-
cession of such crimes would keep
right on.
Gentlemen, we bring no accusa-
ton against you; we question the
motives of none of you; but, as if in
the presence of the dead, before the
intelligent people of the land, and
before God in high heaven, we sub
nit that amid the crying of the blood
of Bridget Kilroy, as its voice rolls
like thunder to the judgment seat of
a just God, the naming of your
names is heard.
(First publication April d. 1922