Martinsburg statesman-democrat. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1906-1921, 1911-05-12
w. C. T. u.
COLUMN.
Edited by the Local Chapter Of the
Women's Christian temperance Union.
THr LICENSE SYSTEM.

an d child in the city in direct partner.
ship with the saloon element, when-
ever you so establish the saloon system
that every man, woman and child in
your city receives directly his proper
ton of the profit, you are establishing
system Inherently asd eteraally
wrong. You ere trying to palliate the
evil.
The people Of this great Republic Of
ours, through their Federal govern
ment, have established what they call
the license system, and our states
have followed the example, and our
counties have followed it, and our
cities have followed it.
1t il the old, old effort to take money
from an evil and transform by that
means an evil into thing of good
The people Of this Republic are selling
indulgences to sin just as they were
sold in the black days of the past.
We stand for the total abolition of a
system inherently wrong, not for its
reformation.
You deliberately, for hundreds of
thousands of dollars, plant upon your
street corner saloons, reaching out in
vitations, saloons with open arms, ap-
pealing tn the passion for strong drink
ia your men and women. Saloons
M tf,at FOL ,lo irt I h,
great virtues of manhood. You turn
over your men who are living today,
you turn over the coming generation,
to an institution and system whose
basic principle is the destruction of the
great virtues of manhood. You do 1T
for money.
The man who votes to keep saloon
in any city or any state or any nation,
who votes to keep it there because of
his part Of the profit in the saloon,
stands upon a dead equal with the
man who robes himself in his white
apron and boldly stands behind the
counter and dishes out the drink.
If | bring no other message 10 you
from the South, frem my long expe-
Renee of years in the struggle against
the saloon, l bring you this one at
least, that the thing that is holding
the saloon in this Republic is avarice,
avarice, avarice.
oppose any great railroad corpora
ton should say, 1--WE can make money
by establishing system of saloons in
our railroad shops" Why, my friends,
do you suppose you could get an intel
ligent director of "a railroad company,
All intelligent stakeholder in rail-
road company, to vote to do a thing
like that? Could lou find any great
corporation in this city which would
be willing to do thing like that?
Can you find any business in your
city that would deliberately 90 ahead
aud plant a saloon in it? Well, now,
if the saloon is not a good thing for
the individual business, for the great
private corporations, for any of
these business corporations which
make up your city as whole, if it is
not good for any one Of them, how can
it be good for all of them condensed in
one great whole, your city?
There are 1000 saloons in Chic ago.
These saloons do not belong to the
men that operate them. They are in
the hands of a great interest, COM
posed largely of one class ofmen. Last
year Their income fIon the liquor bus
mess alone was $50 O0J,O0u. Out of
these seven thousand saloons in Chi
cago there are swarning this Sabbath
night not thousand, not tens If
thousands, but hundred thousand
rank sayages, vested with all the great
rights Of citizenship, and yet utterly
dead to its holy and sacred Obligations.
The ssloons of that city have pro-
duced Il race of SaVage-, that the cl.v is
unable Today to cope with. And what
is being dot in Chicago is but an H.
lustration of what Is being done in
every license city.
The saloon Is not only the greatest
living evil Of today, debauchiug and
running yoar citizenship, but it ia this:
1t Is the home, it is the nursery. it is
the breeding place of the great vices
cursing and damning the people today
And that same business interest
in Chicago which last year had
a gross income of over a hundred mil
lion dollars, not only has capitalized
the passion of gambling, and out of
their gambling operations these men
who own and control the saloon inter
ests of Chicago reaped also a gross in
come tax last year of overninteen mill
/ lions of dollars.
Moaey-the lust OF money! used to
think when | was younger and read
that the love of money was the root Of
all evil, that there was some kind of