Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1918-12-20

n. Y, to Mr.. Pickett at Washington,
as follows:
My dear Pickett:
November 30th, 1918, at twelve
o'clock at night and I am still awake.
l have just gotten up, raised the
blinds and looked out the window at
q. big brewery in plain sight of this
hotel, and the smoke has died down
| forever. The fires will go out before
| morning; and the brewery business is
done for in the United States.
They have had fifty years of warn
! ing. Every man engaged in it knew
the business was wrong. useless,
! harmful, unpatriotic. extremely self
lsh; that it could only thrive upon the
| ruin of home, heart. fortune, soul The
whole liquor traffic is as doomed as
Judas 1scariot. 1t will go with all
the poison drugs of the nations,
opium, vodka. absinthe, hasheesh,
whiskey, wine, beer. They are on the
run: they cannot stand the twentieth
| century light.
We are going to have a dry United
State and then a dry world. Some
doubt it? Well, they inherited that
doubt from their grandfathers That
| is just what the old man thought
about piracy on the high seas, wrong
but couldn't be stopped; dueling, bar
barous but couldn't be stopped. slave
trading, slave holding, cannibalism.
polygamy, lotteries. public gambling,
red light districts, white slave traffic,
| habit-forming drug trade; all wrong
but couldn't be stopped. They have
! been wiped off this earth. This dying
fire in Buffalo brewery is a SYM
Dol to me that all brewery fires arc
going out and we are to have Il world
free from this destroyer.
Oh, / would like to preach the Cos
pei Of Jesus Christ to the world with
out saloon undoing our work; with
no brewery smoke darkening the
heavens. no brewery money corrupt
ing modern statesmen; no brewery
advertisements debauching daily
newspapers, no brewery owned sa-
looms debasing the communities of the
poor; no brewery bossism browbeat-
ing Presidents, or threatening Con-
gressmen; no brewery beer, drowning
our better natures and brutalibing
mankind: no beer-fed infants grow
ing up, heavy, brainless, nerveless
brutes for society to carrw: no more
prenatal damnation of the innocent
by drink filled parents.
1 would like to see a world where
there were no saloon doors swinging
in ward to entrap our boys, no back
door entrances to engulf our girls;
no saloon doors swinging outward to
vomit forth drunkards staggering
home to wives more than widowed
and to children worse than orphaned;
no family entrances to teach girls to
drink and women to curse the genera
ton yet to be--the white slaver's op-
portunity and the deathtrap of limo
cence and virtue; no rum made low
proved thugs, and crooked politi-
clans; no legalized pitfalls set for our
new converts: no organized assassin
OF church. school and home; no cor
ruption of the freeman's ballot or
falsifier of it's honest count; no in
herited tendency to drink; no abnor-
NAL craving for booze: a race re-
deemed from its drug poisons; no
more dope fiends, no dreary drunk
ards. no opium smokers, no vodka
victims, no absinthe drinkers, no
hasheesh addicts no Christian nation
insulting Heaven, stultifying itself
and mocking mankind by raising
revenue through debauching its citi-
zens. 1t is not lawful to put it into
the Treasury, for it is the price of
blood.
1t will be wonderful to offer saliva
ton to world with no liquor traffic
or victim in it; to minds never mud
died; to souls not debauChed, in bod
les uncontaminated by alcohol poi
son; to men. women and children
never degraded by a saloon environ
ment. or morally polluted by the
stencil Of rum rule. Sometimes l
seem to see afar that bright day.
when from all lands our greatest
competitor is gone, where our Lord
will build His church, for the gate of
he'll shall not prevail against it.