The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1913-06-06
JOHN RARLEYcoRN

iCHeSLy urlnKor can Say-that all that
leaves me alive today on the planet is
my unmerited luck-the luck of chest
and shoulders and constitution |
dare to say that a not large percent
age of youths, in the formative stage
OF fifteen to seventeen, could have sur
vived the stress of heavy drinking
that | survived between my fifteenth
and seventeenth years; that a not
large percentage of men could have
punished the alcohol l have punished
IN my manhood years and lived to
tell the tale. | survived through no
personal virtue, but because l did not
have the chemistry of a dipsomaniac,
and because | possessed an organism
unusually resistant to the ravages of
John Barleycorn And, surviving,
have watched the others die, not so
lucky down all the long, said road
And like such a survivor of old red
war, who cries out, Let there be no
more war;" so l cry out, Let there
be no more poison-fghting by our
youths!" The way to stop war is to
stop 1.-THE way to stop drinking is
to stop it, The way China stopped the
general use of opium was by stopping
the cultivation and importation of
opium. The philosophers, priests and
doctors of China could have preached
themselves breathless against opium
for thousand years, and the use of
opium, so long as opium was ever ac-
cessible and obtainable, would have
continued undated. We are so made
that is ALL
We have with great success made
a practice of not leaving arsenic and
strychnine, and typhoid and tuberculo-
sis germs. lying around to destroy our
children. Treat John Barleycorn the
same way. Stop him. Don't let him
lie around licensed and legal, to-
pounce upon your youth. Not of alco-
holics or for alcoholics do l write, but
for your youths, for those who pos
sess no more than the adventure
stings and the genial pre-dispOsitions,
the social man-impulses, which are
twisted all awry by our barbarian civ
ilization that feeds them poison on all
the corners. 1t is the healthy normal
boys now born or being born for
whom l write.
1t was for this reason more than
any other, and more ardently than
an yother that l rode down into the
Valley of the Moon, all ajingle, and
voted for equal suffrage. l voted that
women might vote. because l knew
that they, the wives and mothers of
the race, would vote John Barleycorn
out of existence and back into the
historical limbo of our vanished GUS
toms of savagery. If l thus seem to
cry out as one hurt, please remember
that | have been sorely bruised and
that | do dislike the thought that any
son or daughter of mine or yours
should be similarly bruised.
The women are the true conserva-
tors of the race The men are the
wastrels, the adventure lovers and
gamblers; and in the end it is by their
women they are saved About mans
| first experiment in chemistry was the
making of alcohol. and down all the
generations to this day man has con-
tinued to manufacture and drink it.
And there has never been day when
| the women have not resented mans
use of alcohol though they have new
er had the power to give weight to
their resentment. The moment wO-
men get the vote in any community,
| the first thing they proceed to do is to
close the saloons. In thousand gen.
erations to come men of themselves
will not close the saloons. AS we'll
expect victims of morphine to legis-
late it out of existence.
The women know. They have paid
an 10CdlCuldDle pl lCS VI o"C"I OAA>N
tears for mans use of alcohol Ever
Jealous for the race, they will legis-
late for the babes of boys yet to be
born; and for the babes of girls. too
for they must be the mothers, wives
and sisters OF these boys.
And it will be easy. The only ones
that will be hurt will be the topers
and seasoned drinkers of a single gen
Grafton. | am one of these; and |
make solemn assurance, based upon
long traffic with John Barleycorn, that
it won't hurt me very much to stop
drinking when no one else drinks and
when no drink is obtainable. On the
other hand. the overwhelming proper
ton of young men are so normally
non-alcoholic that, never having had
access to alcohol, they will never miss
/ Of tho saloon only