The herald-advance. (Milbank, S.D.) 1890-1922, 1908-04-17
RETRIBUTION

NE MIDI lkON
The magazines and the weekly
Illustrated papers are nearly all
treating on the temperance wave
that has been sweeping over the
and particularly the
south during the past year. Col.
is at present showing up
the dispensary system, inaugur-
ated by Tillman in South Caro-
lima. The dispensary system
was the cause of considerable
discussion in this state at one
time, but from the way it
worked in Carolina it was prob.
ably a fortunate thing that South
Dakota didn't get it foisted upon
itself. Some of the papers and
magazines are endeavorlng to
account for the storm that is
marking the passing of the sa-
loon in SO many localities.
Among the principal reasons
produced is the education of the
children, a generation Of whom
has grown up under the infu-
ence of scientific instruction in
the public schools and the con
slant debate of the question in
the public prints and the lecture
platform. And again the thous-
and one cases OF crime and
suffering that are mirrored ev-
cry day in the press of the coun-
try, and back of which is almost
invariably the shadow of the H.
quor curse, has been one of the
chief causes for the present
food which is threatening the
saloon as an institution. One of
the clearest and sanest summing
up of the Indictment against the
saloon as a national evil is a re
cent editorial in the Philadelphia
North American, from which
the following is taken:
The fayorite answer of the liquor
dealer to any critic who puts the truth
of present-day conditions squarely
before the public is to cry ''fanatic.
ISM or refrigeration to serve local,
political or business purposes
The wholesaler and retailer of beer
and whisky, who have kept their deal
ings always within the law, are be-
wildered. They see what is going On
around them. They read in the jour
nails of their trade such acknowledge
ments as this editorial one in Bever-
ages, published in New York: "We
dislike to acknowledge it, but we
really believe the entire business all
over has overstayed its opportunity
to protect itself against the onward
march of prohibition. \ \ X Five
years ago a united industry might
have kept back the situation that now
c%onfronts us, but today it is too late.'
And they wonder why. They seek
some special cause for this great up
heaval of antagonism.
Therein lies their error. No one
thing is responsible. 1t is the gather
ing of many rivulets into a flood. 1t
is the expression of cumulative senti.
ment. 1t is the culmina alton of IDEAS,
observation, experience and practical
teachings that have been accumulat-
ing throughout past generations.
For the enlightenment of the am
azed law-abiding liquor dealers, we
cite for their study certain truths that
are none the less true because they are
builded not upon statistics, but SEN
timent.
And the first of these truths is that
resentment for all the wrongs that
n q yo hoon dnno tn mi11innS hv IN
scrupulous men in the past and the
present is comirg t. a focus and is
being cry stallized into discriminating
opposition to the entire class to which
the wrong doors belonged.
By parental influence and by ad-
monition in babyhood suffering, xom-
it have put an adherence into the
minds of the children who now are
men. ,
Men who draw small wages now
look back to childhood whose oppor-
home that was not happy, recall
times when children who had advan.
tages that they did not, shamed them,
the thing that made their father a him
AA oASO oAu AOo q AClp III VuOlI A1lc
progress.
Too many men have seen old estates
disappear in designations; too many
women, gently born and reared, have
been seer reduced to hard and weary
ing and sometimes mental toll; too
many children have been buried in
unflowered pine collins for those whose
hearts were stung by a personal share
in such happenings to be free from
prejudice against the thing that
caused it all.
Men with no sucr. mental legacy
have seen the brightest and best OF
their schoolmates sloughed of all that
was good in them by one form of
self indulgence. And each time they
look upon a wreck of manhood they
grow bitterer against the vice that
killed what might have been.
People who were manned in acct
dents a dozen years ago, or who still
friends killed because the en-
gineer or pilot, or captain or conduc-