The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1910-02-04

With honest heart and working
hand.
Eyes full of heart-break with US
plead,
And watchers weep and martyrs
bleed.
Work, brothers work, work hand
and brain.
Well win the golden age again,
And Loves millenial morn shah
rise
IN happy hearts and blessed eyes,
We will, we will brave champions
be
In this, the lordlier chivalry.
And now to sum up. There are
very many grounds on which we can
| meet to support the no-license move
| ment in the coming election. There
ever opinions we may hold about the
legitimacy of the moderate use of
| alchoholic liquors it is certain that
| in this country they are used so i'm
| moderately as to lead to an enor-
| nous waste of national wealth. If
| the nation is to be saved from ruin
we must learn to be more moderate
in our expenditure and though there
is great wastefulness in other direc~
| lions, one of the most obvious ways
of arresting the exhaustion of the
national wealth is to dimish the
amount of drinking. This is accom-
plished when we wipe out the saloon
A c
ing dry at the next election is the
physical suffering which our present
drinking customs entail on vast
masses of the people. There are
thousands of families in Michigan
that would find it hard to live in
comfort If the men never drank al
all. On the wages which they earn
it would be very difficult for them to
pay sufficient rent to live in a reas-
onably good house, very difficult for
them to pay for coal and light, and
to meet MAN. other of the inevitable
expenses Of living. But if when a
man earns nine dollars a week, he
spends three or four dollars in
drink then quite apart from the loss
of time. the loss of health, the loss
of wages resulting from even occa-
sional fits of drinking it is a sheer
impossibility that he and his wife
and children should be able to pro-
cure the barest physical comforts.
If not penny were spent in liquor,
If the man never lost a days work
through drunkenness he and his
family would lead hard life. But
when he drinks he makes their life
one of appalling physical suffering.
And we may ask you to support
this movement on moral grounds.
Drunkenness is a debasing, horrible
vice, and it is the root of other vices
as horrible as itself. 1t turns kindly
good-tempered men into brutes.
When drink is in them men are
guilty of many vices and many cruel
ties from which they would recoil if
they were sober. 1t ruins moral fl
bre, il turns a man into a beast.
In all these grounds the temper
ance movement claims our support.
But we can advance to grounds of
another kind. Intemperance is
gross vice, it is also terrible sin,
sin against which God has set him
self. 1t destroys their rest Of heart
in God, it strips them Of the honors
which belong to the children of God,
and later it will bring upon them the
tortures of terrible moral anguish.
Drunkenness, as | have said, is
waste of our national resources,
but it is also waste of something
infinitely more precious. For the
drunkard the infinite love of
Christ is wasted, His teaching Is
wasted, His example is wasted. For
the drunkard, the promises of eter-
nal life and blessedness are wasted.
The drunkard wastes not merely his
earthly comfort, he sacrifices an i'm.
mortality of glory. And men, we
ought TO think of these things, and
we ought to prevent them as far
as lies in our power. We ought ev-
er to seize any opportunity of strik-
ing a blow at this traffic. And I
have sufficient confidence in the in
telligence, the humanitarianism, the
Christianity of the people of this
county TO believe that when the day
of election comes round, it will see
the end in this country of that insti-
tuition which has cursed it all too
long-the licensed saloon.