Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1915-02-17


type: to set before our boys and girls
ideals lofty and pure; to inculcate in
the rising generations habits of indus
try and thrift; to lift the burdens
from the shoulders of the helpless and
the weak to cure sickness and disease;
to stamp out vice and crime; to heal
the open sores of pauperiSm and row.
dyism on our body polite; while we
have gone on putting up bars here and
gates there, building battlement on
this roof and on that. trying to con
serve manhood and womanood, is it not
painfully evident that we have blum
dered fearfully at some point? Despite
all that we have done, the very things
we have tried to remedy in not few
cases, have grown worse instead of
better. The selfsame evils that we
have sought to overthrow have -four
ished like a green bay tree. Theft,
immortality drunkenness, anarchy. muir
der, with all their attendant woes,
have sprung up on every side. Ungod-
Illness has stalked through our land,
laughing in the face of righteousness,
of equity, of judgment. of God and
truth.
Clearly something is wrong. What
is it? Listen! We have been trying
to DO the impossible-heal a cancerous
sore by local applications; correct
effects without destroying the cause
We have expended time, energy
and colossal fortunes caring for
MANNED, dying humanity, trying to
restore health to the broken, hearing
to the deaf and sight to the blind,
while at the same time thousands of
too, have been plunging off the roof to
despair, ruin and eternal death. We
have stood on the ground with oil,
bandages and lint and have sought
to minister to the unfortunate, forget
ting that an ounce of prevention is
worth a ton of cure, and that we would
better be on the housetop building
battlement.
| think [ may safely say that the
cause of nine-tenths of the suffering,
sorrow, misery, immortality, pauperism,
vice and crime that fills our land with
weeping, our jails, prisons and work.
houses with law-breakers and GRIMM
ais. our hospitals and asylums with
inebriates and insane that feeds lust
and passion; that makes necessary
detectives and police officers; that
gives victims to the hangman from
time to time, and floods the lowest
hell with earth's most promising lives,
is the damnable liquor traffic. And
yet for a long time it has fourshed
under the protection of the laws of our
state and nation. Yes. business ac-
cursed of God and condemned by
every right minded person on the face
Of the earth; a business as black as
slavery has actually been fostered
under the stars and stripes simply
because it puts few dollars into the
/ 1htJo nd mood 4bo
money. Sell immortal souls into hell
aud use the proceeds to build electric
railways and to pave streets.
A man said to me one day that he
considered it legitimate business to
run saloon. because the saloon-keeper
had license bearing the seal of the
state.
Now. l contend that all the legis,
lation in Christendom cannot make
thing which is morally wrong politi-
cally right. and the saloon is wrong
from start to fnish-a thief and a
robber, liar and a murderer. What
do | mean by the saloon? l mean the
whole organized traffic in rum. whole
sale, retail and cocktail; brewer and
Beeizebub. distiller and devil.
What is this traffic in rum? "The
devil in solution" said Sir Wilfred
Lawson. and he was right "DistiIled
damnation," said Robert Hall. and he
was right. more destructive than
war, pestilence and famine" said Will
liam E.. Gladstone. and he was right
"a cancer in human society. eating
out its vitals and threatening it's de-
struction," said Abraham Lincoln, and
he was right. 1.-THE most ruinous and
degrading of all human pursuits" said
William Mckinley, and he was right.
''The most prolific hot-beds of anarchy,
vile politics. profane ribaldry and un-
speakable sensuality," said Chas. H.
Parkhurst, and he was right" ga
public. permanent and ubiquitous
agency of degradation, said Cardinal
Manning, and he was right. "a bust
part of the one who conducts it and on
the part of those who patronize it,"
said Theodore Roosevelt. and he was
right. IA business that tends to pro-
duce idleness, disease, pauperism. and
crime. said the U. S. Supreme court,
and it is right.
This is the Indictment. the saloon is
the criminal, the people are the victims,
God is the judge, science, reason, reli-
gion, experience and motherhood are
the jury, the church, the school, the
home, the scientific world, the indus
trial world. the civic world, the mill
tary world. and every worldwide in
terest on the face of the earth, except
the underworld, the immoral world
and the world of sin and crime are the
witnesses, and the verdict is "Guilty"
| in every unprecedented, unpurchasable,
just court
The saloon stands condemned to
death by the American people. All
that is now required to lay the licensed
liquor traffic in a grave that knows no
awakening-a grave so deep that it's
noisome remains shall nevermore
offend decency and order-as eternally
dead as is human bondage under the
flag of liberty. is that its enemies shall
become united and agree upon its
method of execution
The stand which Germany, Russia.
or o will