The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1902-11-07

somebody quick at figures says, to
hill lake three and a quarter miles
long, mile wide and six feet deep
-S,5i9 acres OF beer, deep enough
at every point to. drown ninety-nine
people out of every hundred. Fifty
per cent. of the taxes you pay goes
to support the saloons victims in
some torn. Two-thirds of the
crimes committed have their genesis
in liquor. We have, it is estimated,
an army of l,250,000 inebriates in
this country, with as many others
coming up to reinforce them. What
a waste is here of manhood, happ1-
ness, usefulness and money making
capacity p
In very plain terms the speaker
denounced saloon keepers and their
patrons, all of whom, he thought,
should be socially discounted. He
appealed, too, to self-respecting
young women not to receive the
social attentions of young men who
drink liquor even moderately, such
rule being essentially an effective
prohibitory measure.
"Only thus can the whole bust
ness of the saloonist and the habit
of the t1ppler be brought under the
pan of public sentiment. So-called
respectable saloon keepers are at
once the most dangerous and despi-
cable of all saloon keepers. Danger
Gus because such men attract others
to their dens of death, and despica-
BILE because such men could quit
their dirty traffic if they would and
could make an honorable living"
He was particularly vigorous in
his arraignment of. the tipping
church member and the young men
who try to hide the habit. Hypoc-
risy and stealth are the saloons
only seml-respectable patrons, and
without the help of the hypocrite
and the aid of the coward, who
drink in secret, the saloon would
soon assume it's proper guise as
public nuisance, to be at once and
permanently abated.
He showed that whereas all the
national, state, county and munich
pal revenues from the saloon are
$141, 900, 487 year, the annual cost
of the business in courts, jails, re-
formatories, police supervision, poor
houses, loss of labor-to say moth
ing of shortened lives, poor work,
i'll health and other wreckage-is
50, 678, 504,804, the cost of the traffic
being nearly twenty times what it
brings to us.
But" he exclaimed hopefully,
1.-The saloon Is going twenty-five
years hence there will lbe no such
an institution as the present-day
grogshop. God is against it. The
corporations are it's natural foes,
since they are unitedly refusing en-
ployment to drinking men, and it is
but one step from making a rule
against the drinker to the hurting
of corporate and commercial infu-
ence against the saloon itself.
Common intelligence has decreed |
the death of the saloon business.
We are acquiring too much sense
to keep this evil under govern
mental protection and with national
endorsement.
True, there are acknowledgements.
Men continue to sell their votes for
the price of days labor by staying
away from the ballot box because
they are too busy. But decency is
becoming aroused, and individual
Christian citizens are generally
the sentiment:
when l see thing is true,
I'll 60 to work and putt through"
The address, which consumed
about seventy minutes, and was
freely punctuated with illustrations
and apt anecdotes, closed with
review of the work of the Anti
Saloon League, of which Mr.. Land
nth is the state secretary. He ex-
planned the work done by Super1n-
Lendents John Royal Harris, Tin
He'll, Powell and Dressan, and at
ridiculously small expense. Mr..
Harris salary for thirteen months
ending July l, 1902, being only
$3.50. Is. Mr.. Harris and his CO.
workers made during the quarter