Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1908-01-09
DRINK AND RAILROAOIAG.
The Northwestern Railroad "Goes Dry
by Twenty Thousand Majority.

W lOOuS10u M1lorltN.
When, in a single day, $4,000 able
bodied American citizens, working for |
single employer, pledge themselves to
total abstinence from intoxicants, and |
do this thing from no moral, religious |
nor sentimental reason, it is a sign of |
the times that demands comment.
The Northwestern railroad went |
dry on the New Years day through
out every division and section and shop
and roundhouse of the big system. And
this was the result of neither crusade
nor agitation, nor sudden sanctifcation.
The churches and the women had moth
ing to do with those 25, 900 men quitting
drink, not only while on duty, but at all
times.
1t was business deal. 1t was the
sum of an arithmetical calculation of
incomes and expenses, of earnings and
dividends, of dollar and cent efficiencsy.
1t was simply a new proof that the use
of liquor and the traffic in it have
become purely economic question.
Every man who draws q wage from
another does so on condition that the
product of his work has value sufficient
ly above his pay to provide a profit for
the employer. Long ago it was recog-
nized that the man who came to the
loom, or the forge, or the desk, or the
counter, drunk, faced instant discharge.
But only of late has there come an ex-
tension of that obvious doctrine.
The new business law is that the man
who, in his hours of leisure, away from
employment, skaters his nerves and
clouds his brain by intoxication, cannot
repair that physical waste sufficiently
to appear for work, when sobered, as
the productive equal of the competitor
who has not so weakened himself.
Where the railroads are concerned
the elements of risk and possible loss of
life and property emphasize the problem
of enefficiency caused by drink There
fore the railroads are the leaders among
the commercial apostles of temperance.
But the truth applies to every class of
business. And the same merchant or
manufacturer who takes his "appe-
tier" and his glass of wine at dinner.
and processes no moral nor religious
scruples, is insistence upon soberiety in
his employees to an extent that would
delight the souls of Father Matthew
and Neal Dow.
We do not cite such men as shining
lights of consistency and devout altru-
ism. They are not hypocrites. They
are simply business men, and they take
no other pose.
They are the economic brothers of
the southern planters who enjoy their
juleps, and their clarets, and their bur
gundies in moderation as much as ever
they did, but, for the sake Of peace and
order and prosperity in their communi-
ties, have led in making the South the
field of greatest victory for temperance
that the world has ever seen.
Our view of the question may not be
fiattering to the good women and the
preachers, who, for half a century,
strove for prohibition and sorrowed al
the wicked world which refused to see
the sin of drink. But, if the truth
hurts, it is not the fault of The North
American.
Those devotees of what many a time
seemed a lost cause, did some gooc
work, even along impractical lines. But
the sooner they awaken to the fact thai
the question of drink is not an emotion.
al, but a material, business question, to
be settled by each community for itself,
and not by seeking votes to be wasted
at a national election for a third party
without hope of success, the better aid
they will give to a speedy solution of
one of the most important economic
problems of our time.
We have commented upon this action
of the Northwestern railroad, because
it is a great western railway system
that pledged rs, 900 men in a day.
1t seems of much significance to US.
We know the West, we know that there
is no narrowness there. The horizon is
too far; the atmosphere too clear; the
natural expanses to imperial for the
westerner's mentality to be cramped.
He may be wrong headed at times. But
always he is a hberty-loving freeman,
who will tolerate no tyranny. The
shackle never has been made which
would hold the men who have made the
wilderness blossom into cities. There
fore it seems to us a happening preg-
nant with meaning when the men of
the West accept restriction upon their
personal habits not as slavery, but as
liberation. Philadelphia North Amer
Jean.