The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1915-04-16
The Curse Of the Saloon.

make no claim that all the thought
in this essay are new. On the othe
hand, / wish to state, that many o
them have been repeatedly used will
telling effect against the saloon bust
ness by lecturers and writer's all over th
land.
The saloon business is one thing you
can hurt worse by telling the truth OF
| it than you can by telling lies about it
and, the Lord willing, expect to tel
some truth about it in this article.
AS starter I want to say the saloor
gang is on the run. One OF their higt
salaried representatives told me not Ions
ago that they were fighting with theil
backs to the wall. They have read the
handwriting on the wall and know theil
days are numbered; but, they propose
to do all the harm they can before they
fall.
The saloon is the enemy OF the indi-
vidual home, the church and the nation.
The man who regularly frequents its
unhoIy precincts is banished from a
home in heaven, from the church OF
God, from respectable society, from
many lodges, from the engineers cab,
from the service of the railroad COM
panies, and from most all places of trust
in the business world.
Even nature declares against him.
She paints his nose red as danger sig
nal to others, she taints his breath until
his presence is repulsive to those about
him. And, as though that was not
enough, she compels him to go stag
gering and yelling and vomiting along
the streets.
Why will men defend that which not
only wrecks their bodies and damns
their souls but which will cause them
to strut like peacock, act silly like an
ape, want to fight like bear, and finally
get down in the mire like hog.
Surely the church cannot do its duty
it declares open war on this in
famous business. Also let us remem-
Der, the church could kill the saloon if
it would, and the saloon would kill the
church if it could.
We will now notice some of the OBJ
jections given by the saloon defenders
against driving the curse from the land.
He says it would hurt business. Hurt
whose business? Ask the eight hundred
and fifty thousand weeping orphans who
are made every year by the saloon, who
hurt their business, wrecked their homes
and cut off their support. The Amer
lean people pay two billion dollars
year for booze, they pay one billion
more for court expenses caused by this
booze. They pay four billion, five hum
dred million more to care for the Grim
inal, paupers, insane and orphans pro-
duced by the same cause; or in other
words, it costs us seven and one-half
billion dollars per year to carry this
load. And in return we receive less
than one-half billion dollars in license
So you can see how it hurts
business.
New York City pays million per day
for strong drink, Chicago pays six hun
bred thousand dollars per day for the
same purpose. Also, we might refer
you to number of large cities where,
and all with one accord, their mayors,
bank presidents and citizens declare that
business is far better without the saloon
than with it.
But, says one, it will hurt the farmer,
what will he do with his grain. An
old German said, we had better raise
more hogs and less hell" Says an
other, I'VE can best control the saloons
by high license" Suppose we try the
license theory on rattlesnakes, snake oil
is useful as medicine; SO we must not
kill off the snakes, but will control
them by high license. Let us also Ii
cense our thieves, murderers and adul-
terers. We can get lots of money with
which to keep up our schools, sidewalks,
etc. Talk about high license. What
difference does it make to the victim of
deIerium tremens how much money
the State received from the man who