Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1909-02-11
UNION TEMPERANCE
SERVICES SUNDAY
The Different Religious Demon
nations of the City to Unite
in Temperance Services at
Opera House Sunday.

j. l. Seder of Eau Claire, distric
superintendent of the anti-saloon lea
que, has been engaged to deliver
temperance lecture at the DAILY Oper;
House next Sunday Feb. IA, in which
all the churches in the city are cor
daily requested to unite.
The temperance cause is gainin,
ground slowly but surely, even here
in beer-ridden Wisconsin. We believ,
judging from all present indications
that we are fully justified in saying
that the day is not far distant wher
there will be no more saloons il
Gra nd Rapids.
The Governor of illinois recently
made speech which we believe
will thrill the hearts of all patriotic
Americans everywhere. He said il
part
Personally, l have seen so much
of the evils of the liquor traffic il
the last four years, so much of its
economic waste, so much of its
physical ruin, so much of it's menta
blight, so much of it's tears and heart
ache, that 1 have come to regard
the business as one that must be
held and controlled by strong anG
effective laws. 1 bear no malice
against those engaged in the bust
ness, but l hate the traffic. l hate
its every phase. 1 hate it for its
intolerance. l hate it for it's AFRO
gance. l hate it for its hypocrisy
Ihate it for its cant and craft and
false pretenses. l hate it for its
commercialism. l hate it for its
greed and avarice. l hate it for its
sordid love of gain at any price.
hate it for it's domination in politics
hate it for its corrupting influence
in civic affairs. / hate it for it's in
cessant effort to debauch the suf
frage of the country; for the COW
ards it makes of public men. l hate
it for its utter dis regard of law
hate it for its ruthless trampling
of the solemn compacts of state con.
situations. I hate it for the load
it straps to labor's back; for the pal
sled hand it gives to toll; for its
wounds to genius; for the tragedies
of it's might-have-beens. I hate ii
for the human wrecks it has caused.
hate it for the almshouses it peo-
pies; for the prisons it fills; for the
insanity it begets; for it's countless
graves in the potter's fields. I hate
it for the mental ruin it imposes up
on it's victims; for it's spiritual blight
for it's moral degradation. I hate it
for the crimes it has committed.
hate it for the homes it has de-
stroyed. l hate it for the hearts
it has broken. I hate it for the NAL
ice it has planted in the hearts of
men; for it's poison, its bitterness,
for the dead sea fruit with which it
starves their souls.
| hate it for the grief it causes
womanhood-the scalding tears, the
hopes deferred, the strangled aspira-
tons, it's burden of want and care.
| hate it for its heartless cruelty to
the aged, the infirm, and the help
less; for the shadow it throws upon
the lives of children for it's mons
trous injustice to blameless little
ones. 1 hate it as virtue hates vice,
as truth hates error, as Righteousness
hates sin, as justice hates wrong,
as liberty hates tyranny, as freedom
hates oppression.
l hate it as Abraham Lincoln hated
slavery. And as he sometime saw
in prophetic vision the end Of slavery
and the coming of the time when the
sun should shine and the rain should
fall upon no slave in all the repub-
lie, so / sometime seem to see the
end of this unholy traffic; the coming
of the time when, if it does not
wholly cease to be, it shall find no
safe habitation anywhere beneath
Old Glory's stainless stars"
Since the saloons of Kansas City
were closed in June, 1906 that city
has made an increase of $1,000,O0O
in bank deposits. 1900 people in
population, a decrease in the public
deDt and a falling off in the number
of homicides.