The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1913-08-16

FORMER PROHIBITION CANDT.
DATE DELIVERS INTEREST.
ING ADDRESS.
Will Speak Again Saturday on Court
House Green I'm Rear of Court
HOuse-Small Audience Heard
Speaker Discuss Liquor From a
Sanitary Viewpoint.

Those who vote for the dispensary
in the election on next Tuesday. cast
their ballots for death and disease in
Sumter County" said the Hon. E. w.
Chain, former candidate for the Of
flee of President of the United States
on the prohibition platform, in his
interesting address before a small,
but mixed, audience of the citizens of
Sumter I'm the Academy of Music
Thursday morning.
Mr.. Chain further gave facts and
figures to prove this statement. He
did not discuss the liquor question a
rabid, dogmatic or even an argumen-
tative way. He simply spoke in an
interesting style of the harm that
liquor does the people who drink it
and the children and descendants of
the people who drink it, and allowed
his hearers to derive their own con-
clusions. Mr.. Chain proved himself
pleasing talker, for his address was
full of humor and wit and he gave
many illustrations and told number
of anecdotes and cited instances to
explain and amplify his points to his
audience. ....
The meeting was opened by prayer
by Rev. Walter 1. Herbert, presiding
elder of the Sumter District of the
Methodist Church, who asked the Di-
Vine tblessing on the work which this
meeting was seeking to accomplisfISv
81 MTIat. o. Purdy. the chairman, then
irp a Few words stated the object of-thA
meeting. He said that the dispeh-
sary advocates were saying that the
prohibitionists were fighting liquor,
but such was not the case. The H.
quor advocates had started the: fight,
not the prohibitionlsts, and the pro-
hibitionists were simply fighting back,
defending and standing for what they
already had. They did not wish to
have the legal sale of liquor establish
ed In this county, and wanted to put
their stamp of disapprOval upon, all
movements to establish the legal
sale of li1uor. ...,4 D.
He might be mistaken in his .tieN,
OF the sale Of liquor, but he ,and the
prohibitiOnists were working for what
they considered the best interests of
the city and county and state, and if
they were mistaken, he thought that
they would die with this mistaken
idea. .'.- ,.
Mr.. Chafin stated at the outset Of
his talk that he would discuss the li-
quor question purely from the stand
point Of sanitary science. The health
OF a coinmunity was valued more
than any other feature this was why
he would discuss this feature, The
United States government had spent
$5.0O0,OOO to make the Panama dis
trict healthy and were spending ST.
100000 year to keep the dead mos
quito dead. showing at what cost they
valued health. He defied any mem.
Der OF the liquor interests or any agent
to answer him on this platform on the
point of health, alone
The speaker then went on to show
that successful quarantine laws had
been applied to emigrants and to dis
eases and he advocates the applica-
ton Of quarantine laws to the whis-
key trsfic. A point of interest and
one which few people probably know
was that alcohol il not q stimulant, it
Is merely an irritant. Alcohol is not
absorbed by the human system, but
gradually comes out for the period
OF thirty days, and when it escapes
from the body it Is the same alcohol
In the same form 1t went in. The
body does not absorb it. which shows
that 1t therefore is neither a food, a
drink or a medicine In injuries the
human body and causes disease.
In Kansas, Mr.. Chain said. the pro-
hibition laws have been carried fur
ther and been in effect longer than
in any other state in the union. In
this state the death rate had been
decreased from II per cent, the ave-
rage in other States. to 1-2 per cent.
Drunkenness was a disease caused by
alcohol which should therefore be
quarantined. He referred to Hobson's
great lecture THE Great Destroyer"
In which Mr.. HObson had shown by
facts arrived at through six years
work that more people were killed in
one year in the world now by liquor
or because of alcohol. than were kill
cd during "a hundred years in all of
the wars Of the world. five hundred
years before the Christian era.
Hobson's figures showed 10000 per-
sons killed annually by alcohol and