The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1913-06-05

wrecks of its victims, that closes every
inlet of tehir moral and spiritual natures
against all good influences, and that de-
stroys their manhood, prevents i'm
provement and interiors with the
spread of the gospel. Yet multitudes
who profess allegiance to Christ, who
claim to be governed by the principles
of the Word of God, encourage and de-
fend the traffic. When all is said and
done the question resolves itself in this:
The Liquor Traffic VS.. The Home.
Shall the home. that God given institu-
ton that was established for the happi-
ness of his creatures Home! Earth's
emblem of Heaven Home! One of the
dearest spots of earth around which
cluster so many sacred memories. Must
this go down beneath the blighting
curse of this moral miasma; be contain
ihated with the touch of pollution and
inhale the rotten breath of the Black
Death? 1t looks like it when in the
United States something like one and
quarter million are engaged in the
traffic; when the Black Death turks in
more than l00 900 places, pouring out
poisoned stream to blight this fair
land, and is turning out its hundreds of
thousands of subjects that it has been
educating for crime and vice; when all
the ministers and teachers laboring for
the promotion of education and religion
will only reach about 100000.
o, bitter curse of society! fruitful
source of unhappiness and misery; the
cause of more broken hearts and blasted
lives; the occasion of more crime than
any other one thing in the world.
Wives are compelled to see husbands
drifting down the rapids of intemper-
ance. Weeping mothers must stand
with hands stretched out toward sons.
Sisters behold brothers go down amid
the seething waters with none to rescue,
for the law countenances and protects
or gives tone and responsibility and
legal encouragement to the dens that
convert fathers into tiends and are the
training schools for prisons
The tears, anguish and pleadings of
impoverished children and heart broken
wives find no response.
Men, husbands and brothers make
and execute the laws set up or put
down whom they will, and they are
afraid of King Alcohol and his band of
mean subalterns, one of whom could
chase a thousand and two put ten
thousand of flight. Mothers with
breaking hearts under the shadow of
our churches ARE toiling to save their
families from starvation and at the
same time are enduring the cruelties
and degradations which husbands, mad
dened by rum; are pleased to intiict
upon them.
If the traffic is right, then it is proper
to throw down all legal barriers and
give CNGI Y OllC all Stiudl CIlduCG. IOl6Cl
the poor widow in it as well as the cor
pulent son Of Germany or the fastidious
son of France. The majority of saloon
keepers in our land are foreigners. If
it is right and tends to make better
citizens and kinder husbands, to elevate
society and refine manners, to secure
better morals, purity of ballot box,
justice in administration of law, a
better government, then it is our duty,
as good citizens, to uphold it, to work
for it; to pray for its success, and If we
do not do this, in every legitimate and
possible way, we are not true to prlncI-
pie.
If on the other hand 1t debases morals,
makes worse husbands, destroys home,
beggars the family, wastes money, ruins
character, laughs at ballot box stuffing,
connives at perjury, incltes riot, leads to
crime and everything that is infamous,
then it is great evil and OF course is
wrong. Then who that is true to self,
home, or right can encourage it.
1t is the gigantic curse of the day.
T M FRANCE.