Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-11-06
WHAT BILLY THINKS
ABOUT DEMON RUM

Hear me! Last year we spent in this
| country two billion five hundred and
ninety million dollars for drink; We
wasted grain enough in America last
year to make the whisky that sent six
hundred thousand men staggering and
Keeling and screaming into drunkard' $
graves and drunkard's hell; if made into
/ loaves of bread it would pave a street
| two hundred thousand miles long, one
hundred feet wide. with every loaf
| weighing two pounds. We wasted grain
enough in the breweries and distflleries,
| my friends, to have fed this country
as much grain as we used for bread.
We wasted grain enough, my friends,
to make whisky, to have fed. England
or France in the war.
This government is formed by states,
to insure the domestic tranquility and
to provide for the public safety, and the
security of blessings to individuals, and
today the saloon stands with its foot
upon the neck of the American people
and says to the government:
wait, don't disturb me. The wage
Garner has two billion five hundred and
ninety million dollars in his pocket.
You wait until l get the swag and III
divide it with you. will give you ten
per cent
And this government of ours, my
friends, receives about one-third of it's
revenue from a system that barters and
sells away the Wellbeing and the hap
piness of the, american people-the grog
shops. ''''''
In my opinion it's against the con-
stitution Of the United States, and they
have no right to let it exist and damn
, and curse this old land in which we
live. But the liquor traffic is law-de-
flying. rebelfious anarchistic, and in it's
schoolhouses of infamy, it is educating
the people in disrespect of law, and it
gathers around it as it's allies in crime
the gambling dens, the brothels and
wherever men meet to plan crime. Here
the yegg comes to divide his swag after
he has cracked the safe, and the liquor
traffic is a political and it is COM
mercial machine-colossal, sagacious,
rich, powerful beyond any personal en-
treaty or rebuke, or ostracism, and it
has dropped into the federal and in mu-
nicipal and the church plate hundreds
of millions of dollars but the liquor
traffic. thank God! is folding its tents
and preparing to creep into hell out of
which it wriggled it's carcass.
BY the grace of God I'm going to
live long enough to preach it's funeral
sermon.
Oh. hold on old buil-neck! Wait a
mute. some udy you II meet your GUS
toners when there will be no counter
between you, when your damnable, dia-
bolic, dirty work on earth is done, and
yoa enter the just reward of your bust
ness which is eternal damnation, and
then all the souls of men and the wom
en- and the children that you have
damned will crowd around YOU and
they will show you their wounds and
say,
You made them
And they Will point TO their UNI
quenchable thirst and say.
You. Damn you. You kind1ed it,"
They will show their clanking chains
and say,
Damn you. You forged them, sir"
And then with their fiendish groans
shifting your ears. and with the hands
out of which you picked the nickels
and the dimes and the hard-earned
money, they will push you to the verge
of the yawning abyss of hell, while
rolling up from the inferno of eternal
damnation their shrieks and screams
will break among the crags and the
peaks of death and they will cry, Woe
unto him that putteth the bottle to his
knaipbbpr'S lin