United labor bulletin. (Denver, Colo.) 19??-1915, 1910-05-12
HAVE OVERLOOKED
THE REAL ISSUE
Should Drink and Eat?-lf "Wets"
Win Should "Drys" Be Made To Drink?
(By Fritz Henning.)

While the Trades and Labor Assembly
is wasting its eloquence, alias hot air,
on the water company fight, thing
which in the nature of events will regu-
late itself, it, or rather its members, are
overlooking the real issue, which is
whether Denver shall continue to prog
ress along the lines of social and COM
mercial independence, or whether it shall
be hampered and driven into corner
from which it can never successfully
emerge because of the narrow and fanat-
ical rule of certain hypocritical people,
who call themselves Christians and cru
city Christ afresh daily and hourly by
denying the large majority of His follow
ers and real worshipers the right to try
to live as they think He wished them to
live.
When these self-appointed deliverers
of what they call the Gospel announce
to the great majority that we must do
the things that they do and eschew the
things. that they deem improper, they
are placing themselves in a position so
assailable that even a child can see how
preposterous is their contention We OF
the many who cannot follow the dictates
of these narrow-minded few have the
same right to insist that all these Bible
managers shall come to the saloons and
drink and be made to dring by force, If
necessary, as they have to insist that we
shall discard certain drinks or certain
foods or whatever other idiotic prohibit
ton they may make, and they must be
brought to realize the absurdity of their
proposal.
No man of honesty or integrity, no
good citizen of this republic, advocates
inordinate drinking, neither does he al
low himself to be dictated to by alleged
wise ones, whose hypocrisy is apparent
in every act and every uttelance of
theirs, with reference to what he shall
not drink or shall not eat.
Coming back to the inaction of the
Trades and Labor Assembly, the purpose
of whose organization is understood to
be the protection of all those engaged in
trades and labor of all kinds, it is singu-
lar that it's members apparently fail to
recognize the few patent facts that upon
the continuance of liberty in thought and
action depends the welfare of tens of
thousands of Denver's earnest, honest,
law-abiding citizens.
IL is needless 10 call attention again
to the various trades and professions
and the followers thereof that will suffer
by reason of the proposed absolutely I'M
just and abominate curtailment of their
rights, not only to work and earn an
honest living but to live at all.
1t is hard to refrain from using strong
language with reference to these would
be autocrats, who attempt in the name
of God and the meak and lowly Jesus to
do the most inhuman, not to say unchris-
tian things. These people know very
well that these words are true. They
know as well as we do that they are pos
ing and pretending and that they are
wolves in sleeps clothing, but they have
made up their minds to win and we, the
unoffending ones, who believe we are
nearer the right line, as things human
go, than they can possiblye be, are in
duty bound to ourselves and to our fami-
lies and to our friends and to all with
whom we have the proper relations, to
use out utmost efforts to defend the
home, and the workingman who makes
the home, against the heretofore unheard
of injustice of these would be demi-gods,
who purpose to rule us, without thinking
once of ruling themselves.
In conclusion, and even these most ar
bitrary and unreasonable prosecutors of
the poor under the banner of Christ,
must admit the fairness of this, it is pro-
posed right here and now that If the
''Drys" should win, we of the lost ones"
according to their pharisaicai theory,
will agree to abstain from liquor of all
kinds, drink whatever these alleged
Christians may dictate as the proper
drink, eat whatever they shall say we
shall eat, conform to their menu abso-
lutely, it, they will agree, in case of their
defeat to come to us for the bill of fare
and drink what we drink and eat what
we eat and be bound by our dictum in
that regard.