The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1914-11-13

criminal is run?
If you look into commercaized vice, the saloon is head
quarters for the vice lords and the meeting place for their
victims.
If you suspect the police are corrupt and you trail them,
they will lead you into a saloon; there their traitorous plans
are laid and there the dirty money is paid.
If you get after the p~ickpockets and other sneaking thieves
OF the city, they will lead you to the saloon. In the seclusion
of the saloon, back of its unlawful shades, in the gloom of its
back rooms, these vampires share their blood money with each
other and the disgustngly crooked, wicked policeman.
If you follow the tricky lawyer, he will also lead you to
the saloon. There he finds material, both male and female,
out of whom he builds the cases for blackmail and oppression,
If you are alarmed by the surprising strength shown in
majority for some cheap politician that lands him in an i'm
portant and vital office, you will discover by slight investigation
that he has spent much time in the saloons, and in them he
found the sorry stuff which he used to make that costly ma
jority. He herded them, he treated them, he bribed them, he
repeated them; he used a hundred homeless, hopeless buns to
match and override the votes of a thousand honest taxpayers.
The saloon made possible this exploiting of human waste which
the saloon itself had first created. The liquor saloon is the
source, the channel and the flood of most of our fouled and
poisonous political streams.
If an auto starts out loaded with reckless youth and an I'M
offending woman is killed, you will find that those young bandits
were harbored and fostered by the saloon. They met in a s-
loon, there they filled UP with whisky and from there they went
forth to murder. We then lock them up in the states prison
and deny them the opportunity to even protest against the sa-
loon by petition to the lawmakers who have already created the
saloon a lawful business. Didn't that saoonkeeper pay Chi
cago $1,000 to sell that whisky, hasn't he paid the Republic an
other SIS to do that same thing? Why, then, let the young
murderers made in his saloon trouble the seller of the poison?
N'NO'1Nt RS va bol o"o k(
gambler are the logical products of the saloon and most well
coined patrons thereof. Often the saloonkeeper is an ex-convict,
or one who ought to be a full Aedged convict now.
If there is a street battle in which policemen, crooks and
bystanders are shot down, the background reveals, not far away,
a saloon or a liquor cafe.
If you help some straining heart to trace a lost daughter,
liquor is nearly always a part of the plot and the saloon was
the convenient means by which the liquor was procured and
administered. The liquor hotel the liquor restaurant, the liquor
steamer, the liquor flat, the liquor dance hall, are always found
to figure in the loss of the poor girl.
Yes if n corner crin1e vou rSua11v 6d IL +o ba n e,1or
corner.
Why, then, do we tolerate the liquor saloon?
Here are some of the reasons:
The zI52 saloons of Chicago pay into our city treasury each
year some $7,I52ooo. The special bar-permits yield another large
sum-. Even the pensions of widows and orphans and retired
public officials share in this saloon fund.
THIS is THE OPIATE that has put to sleep thousands
of our citizens. This million dollar pill, in seven or eight doses
per year, has produced a profound sumber in Chicago. You
will find these sleepers in the skyscrapers down town, in the big
factories and shops about town, in the banks and on the COM
merce boards, in the city hall and in the courts, ah, even in
some OF the churches as far up as the pastors study. They say,
what shall we do to provide funds with which to run the
fOVn If we FOR the revanua from, III 1oo,e ~bo- 1890