most people have heard of the man who in a difficulty with a vicious bull finally got the animal by the tail. he could not hurt the brute, yet he did not dare to let go, so he was slung about most unmercifully, and at last accounts he was still being slung. the bull was in the wrong, the man in the right; still he had the animal only by the tail: instead of quieting or frightening the brute, he merely made him angry and was severely punished for his well-meant efforts.
the people of the united states in their contest with the rum power are in the position of the man with the bull. the rum power is in the wrong; the people are in the right, yet they have the monster only by the tail, so they only worry him and make misery for themselves.
it is not necessary to recount the harm done individuals and families by the liquor traffic. almost every charge that the most rabid prohibitionist makes can be substantiated by a thousand men who sell liquor, aside from what total abstainers may know or believe or imagine.{289}
image not available: residence hon. potter palmer.
residence hon. potter palmer.
bishop warren, of the methodist episcopal church, is not an excitable man, but he does not overstate the truth at all when he says: “innumerable are the crimes of dolorous and accursed ages, and a fruitful source of them all is intemperance. it robs the body of its strength, the senses of their delicacy, the mind of its acuteness, the spirit of its life. it fires every passion, makes every base appetite the master of mind and will, leaves man an utter wreck. of its work there are frightful statistics of robberies, arsons, murders, insanities, and curses to the third and fourth generations; but there are no statistics that can measure the heartbreaks of wives, hungers of children, disappointments of fond parents, and physical inheritance of deterioration and unconquerable appetite. it is the one great, stark, crying curse of our race and age. it is the personal foe of every parent, sunday-school teacher, and preacher of righteousness.”
miss frances willard, who is doing more successful temperance work than any man who is in the same field at present, states the case as earnestly as bishop warren, and with the extra force which figures always give—figures which no one contradicts because no one can. she says: “no man of the smallest intelligence can be ignorant of the fact that the saloon is to-day the chief destructive force in society; that the cumulative{290} testimony of judge, jury, and executive officers of the law declares that fifty per cent. of the idiocy and lunacy, eighty per cent. of the crimes, and ninety per cent. of the pauperism come from strong drink; that the saloon holds the balance of power in almost every city of ten thousand inhabitants; that it is the curse of workingmen and the sworn foe of home.”
it isn’t necessary, either, to call attention to the harm done free institutions at election times by the influence of rum. the late “petroleum” nasby, whom all of us knew for a lovable fellow and an able editor, once consumed a gallon of whiskey a day on the average. when he stopped drinking he wrote a series of temperance editorials, concluding with the words “paralyze the rum power.” “pete” had been in politics himself: he knew what the “power” of rum was, and how it was used.
the demoralizing effect of plenty of liquor is so well known that the first duty of a local campaign manager, no matter of which party, is to make proper arrangements with rum-shops for supplying free drinks for the purpose of changing voters’ views. the man who has opinions, no matter what they may be, is quite likely to modify them if asked when he is under the influence of a few drinks; and if his liquid consolation is to be supplied at the expense of some other man, the opinions of the two are likely to{291} be in entire accord before the transaction is concluded. votes are easier purchased with rum than with money, no matter how large the sum that may be at the disposal of any political boss or ward committee. the public heard, a few years ago, to its horror, that an important state had been carried for the victorious party by a general distribution of new two-dollar bills. the truth is, as any one can learn by visiting the districts which then were close in the state alluded to, that a great deal more money than the entire number of two-dollar bills amounted to had previously been expended in rum-shops to which men who were willing to listen to what was called “a fair presentation of conflicting views” could be persuaded to come. liquor is cheaper in the western states than in large cities. it is worse, too. a little of it goes a long way, and the man who will spend an evening in a rum-shop in a rural locality, is equal to any enormity, compared with which an apparent change of sentiment on political subjects is a mere trifle. as channing used to say, “rum outwits alike the teacher, the man of business, the patriot, and the legislator.”
stepping aside from sentiment, and coming down to practical facts, rev. theodore cuyler says that the liquor question “enters more immediately into the enrichment or the impoverishment of the national resources than any question{292} of tariff or currency. more money is touched by the drink traffic and the effects of the traffic than by any other trade known among men. the tax upon national resources levied by the bottle is far heavier than the combined taxes for every object of public well-being.”
statistics of drink are undoubtedly more appalling than those of the most bloody and senseless war that the world ever knew. some that are published are entirely untrustworthy; a head for reform does not always mean a head for figures; so figures are often made to lie, like tombstones. but the truth is bad enough. it is plain to any man who knows anything about current values that the price of a glass of poor beer will buy a pound of good bread, and the price of a glass of best whiskey will buy a pound of the best meat. yet a great deal more money goes for beer and whiskey than for bread and meat.
why?
depraved appetite, answers the professional moralist. this is the veriest nonsense, although it is the commonest of the reasons that are given for inordinate indulgence in stimulants. an appetite, properly speaking, must be of a fixed nature. there is no drunkard alive who has a fixed appetite for liquor. the depraved appetite, so-called, is an occasional manifestation of the influence of long indulgence in alcoholic stimulants,{293} but it is no more possible to prolong it and make it a fixed condition of a man’s life than it is for a human being to make a voyage to the moon.
the first purpose of drink, to any one who is beginning to use liquor, is to “feel good,” and there is no denying that this is a general longing in every grade of humanity, from the highest to the lowest. most human beings of the lower order are full of physical defects, all the way from those of the muscles and joints to those of the vital organs and nerves. if you ask the southern field-hand how he feels, you may safely bet that he will answer, “pooty porely,” and to get relief from his aches and pains he resorts to liquor, whenever he can get it. the indian is another specimen of the man who wants to “feel good.” he is supposed to be physically a splendid child of nature, but he seldom is without some serious functional disorder or inherited curse of the flesh which makes him the willing slave of any stimulant he can get. a great host of unfortunates who have come to the united states from other lands are practically in the same condition; starved, abused, and underfed for generations and centuries, a glass of rum is to them like the touch of an angel, and a jugful is the equivalent of a heavenly host. there is no sense in talking about “depraved appetites” when you contemplate these people, from whom come the mass of the rumseller’s customers.{294}
the second strong impulse to drink is like unto the first; it is to “brace up.” human nature is either a dreadfully weak machine, or one which the majority persist in overworking. men’s energies, spurred by their necessities, too often outrun their strength; then stimulation will be resorted to if it is at hand. it is quite true to say there is more strength, and stimulus too, in a loaf of bread or pound of meat than in a glass of liquor; but the food works slowly; the liquor works quickly. there are drinkers almost innumerable among the better classes, who use liquor medicinally, as literally as other men use quinine. their liquor habit never is an indulgence; they would as lieve take some other stimulant were it equally convenient and effective, but they do not know of any; neither do their doctors.
when men feel the need of stimulation, yet dread the use of alcohol, they will search for help somewhere else. with the nominal decay of the rum influence in the united states some years ago, began the enormous sale of bitters, anodynes, narcotics, stimulants, nerve foods, brain foods, and other nostrums of similar purpose, with which the advertising columns of a great many newspapers, including most of the religious weeklies, were filled, as some are at the present time. in the city of new york, where there is one rum shop to every thirty families, it is not a common{295} experience to smell opium or chloral in the breath of the man next you in church or street-car or business resort. but in the state of maine, which has had more experience with close prohibition than all the other states of the union combined, it is hard to go into any community of men without being made cognizant of the fact that resort to these stimulants is quite common in that virtuous state. i do not say this in contempt of maine’s effort to get rid of liquor. the prohibition movement in maine has done incalculable good in some directions. there is no other state in the union in which young men have never been invited into bar-rooms, and do not know what public opportunity for drinking is.
do i mean to say that alcoholic stimulants are absolute necessities of life? no; i do not, but—don’t underrate the meaning of that little word—but the majority of our voters do, and majorities rule in this country. there is altogether too much indulgence and drunkenness—too much yielding to the desire to “feel good.” the use of alcohol in large quantities has a bad effect upon the character and conduct of anyone; the temperance men will give you all the dreadful statistics you like as to the part rum plays in filling our jails, poorhouses and insane asylums, and god himself would shudder to tell us how many homes it ruins—how many widows and orphans it makes. on a division of the subject{296} which is out of the province of statisticians, physicians will admit that more sexual immorality comes from rum than all other causes combined. there is no fear of overstating the aggregate bad effects of over-indulgence in liquor—it is beyond the power of words or figures to overstate it.
having admitted that the curse of rum in the united states is quite as great as any moralist or prohibitionist has ever asserted, it follows that some remedy is necessary, and the question naturally occurs, what shall it be?
the almost unanimous reply will be, control the demon by law. the majority of law-abiding citizens are quite willing to admit that this should be done, but the question arises and becomes more urgent year by year, what shall the law be? shall it be in the direction of prohibition? the experience of several states, maine no less than others, is overwhelmingly to the effect that prohibition does not prohibit. perhaps not as much liquor is consumed in maine as if there were open bars in every town. but anyone who is fond of a glass knows by experience that it is quite as easy to gratify his tastes in the state of maine as it is in the city of new york. worse still, the stranger going from another state to maine, if he has any acquaintances at all in the prohibition state, is so importuned by hospitable souls, who wish to make{297} him feel entirely at home, and as comfortable as he might be if he were in his native city or village, and has set before him liquors in such variety, that he generally goes to bed with a heavier head and awakes in the morning with a harder headache than if he had been in the worst rum-cursed portion of the country.
have i heard the arguments in favor of prohibition? well, can anyone help having heard them? no project ever placed before the public has been more earnestly and persistently advocated. but where is the sense of demanding a law against which you know the majority of the people will be arrayed? suppose during momentary enthusiasm a state carries a prohibition law by a small majority, some drinking men themselves being constrained by their neighbors to vote for the law and against their own inclinations, how is the law to be maintained? by public opinion. who creates public opinion? the majority. but the majority drink, and will continue to do so for some generations to come, unless all signs fail. every state has a law against bribery and corruption of voters. is bribery or corruption less common than before the law passed? no; it becomes worse year by year. why? because public opinion dare not and will not support the law. personal interest, expressed in party feeling, winks at its violation—not all the while, but{298} merely every time there is anything to be gained by it.
both sides of the prohibition question were well put in a recent conversation between a prominent prohibitionist and bishop foss, of the methodist church, who has worked industriously for years to decrease the rum influence, but believes restriction is the only means practical. “bishop,” said the prohibitionist, “if you saw a rattlesnake in the street, biting people and destroying human lives, would you kill it, or try to pen it up?” the bishop replied, “if i had been chasing it up and down the street for thirty years, trying to kill it but never succeeding in doing anything but make it uglier, i would consider myself lucky if i had a chance to pen it up.”
then should law take the form of restriction? yes; but immediately the law-makers discover in the words of some satirist of the past generation, that a great many men can be found in favor of a certain provision in law, who are against its enforcement by any method that is suggested in the form of a bill before any legislature or congress. a restrictive measure immediately affects a great many business interests. moralists would like the sale of liquor restricted. well, so would a great many liquor dealers. if a poll were taken of the wholesale dealers in liquors in the united states, regardless of section{299} or environment, it would be overwhelmingly in favor of limiting the number of rum-shops, and compelling the sale of only the better class of goods. perhaps the wholesale dealers are not philanthropists, but their work is in the direction of philanthrophy in the respect that they make more money on old and well-refined liquors, and consequently would prefer that nothing else should be sold.
restriction can be attained in no other way except through license laws, and upon these at once the entire public agree to disagree. a license law that would regulate the traffic in a large city would be utterly destructive of the entire retail liquor interests of the country districts. consequently the country dealers, through their representatives in legislatures, protest strongly against any such enactment as the famous scott bill, which was of such great service in restricting the liquor trade in the state of ohio. the license exacted from a retailer in a large city would consume the entire profit of a country dealer, even if he were the only one in his town. city prices and country prices are different. it may be also stated upon undoubted authority, for the information of prohibitionists and other gentlemen who have never looked into the practical details of the liquor trade for themselves, that the countryman’s drink compares with that of{300} the city man about as a full bath-tub does to a basin of water.
after restriction, and lowest, though not least important, among the list of reformatory measures, comes the principle of regulation. can the liquor trade be regulated? should it be regulated in the interest of morality and the public safety? yes. we regulate everything else—absolutely everything—that affects the safety of humanity. we stipulate by law or special license where dynamite factories shall be located, how dynamite shall be transported, where it shall be stored, how it shall be sold, and every other stage of the trade in this dangerous yet useful article of commerce. we regulate the trade in gunpowder; there are very few states in which any minor is allowed to purchase any quantity of gunpowder or any other explosive. we regulate the sales of poisonous medicines, no matter how useful they may be, forbidding the chemist to sell them except on a physician’s order, and we make him keep them specially classified, and label every package or bottle or box of them which he sells, and to record the name of the purchaser. we regulate even the speed of horses in large cities; although every man is supposed to be able to take his ease and pleasure with a horse and carriage if he can afford them or hire them, in all large communities it is required that he shall not drive at more than{301} a certain pace. none of these regulations are regarded as abridgements of personal liberty. all of them are admitted to be necessary precautions for the good of the entire community.
unfortunately the principal opposition to regulation, which is the easiest and most practicable method of reducing the dangers of the rum traffic, comes not from rum-drinkers themselves, but from those who never consume any liquor—i mean the prohibitionists. their principle seems to be the old, big-hearted, but utterly impracticable one of “a whole loaf or none.” in a number of recent local and state elections, in which the regulation of the liquor traffic was concerned, the prohibitionists usually voted with the advocates of free rum, not that they love liquor or liquor dealers, but that unless they could have their own way they preferred to leave things as they were before. their purpose, as nearly as it can be discovered, was that the more fearful condition society could be brought to by the free use of rum, the sooner would society protest strongly against it and take “the only true view,” this being the prohibitionist’s modest way of putting his own opinion. the russian nihilists, whom everybody detests, work on the same principle;—things can’t be better until they have first been as bad as they can.
the present influence of rum in the united states upon morals, manners, society, and politics,{302} must be charged upon those who have labored most earnestly to lessen it. again i allude to the prohibitionists. they have discouraged every practical effort to abate the evils of the use of liquor. they have regarded all restrictive or regulative measures about as mr. garrison once regarded the constitution of the united states in its relations to slavery—as a compact with the devil. the time must come when it will be not only unfashionable but indecorous and degrading for any man to use liquor, except in cases of sickness; but when that time comes the people will owe no thanks whatever to those who have talked most against the influence of rum. once more, and for the last time, i allude to the prohibitionists.