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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · July 24, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 29

Sunday Saloons.

We have noticed from time to time the opposition on the part of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics to Sunday dram-selling, and the Catholic Home is quoted as follows:—

There is not a parish in Chicago where the Sunday saloon has not been the ruin of hundreds of the most promising and the brightest boys that made their first communion in the parish church. There is not a parish priest in this city but can furnish a long catalogue of young men and married men whose loss of character, of self-respect, of faith and virtue, whose downfall and probable damnation can be laid at the door of the open Sunday saloon. Is there any Catholic father or mother who mourns the perversion of a son, any Catholic wife whose husband abandons his home for the Sunday saloon, but would rejoice to see these places of temptation closed? Who are they who clamor for the open Sunday saloon? Hard drinkers, inebriates, debauchees, and those who minister to their vices, and grow rich on the misery of wrecked lives.

We very much fear that the only way to make a final riddance of the Sunday saloon is to clear out the Monday saloon, the Tuesday saloon, the Wednesday saloon, and all other saloons. A rattlesnake which is allowed to bite six days in the week, will need considerable watching to keep him quiet on the seventh day. The great Catholic Congress in Baltimore has decided to favor the licensing of the saloon. The particular form of license which they favor is “high license,” but it is license all the same, and sets the seal of the State’s permission upon the business by making drunkards, and provides every drunkard with all the strong drink he can pay for. So long as the saloon runs six days in a week, men will love strong drink, and when they have drank for six days it will be hard to choke them off on the seventh. It might be a mercy to muzzle a mad dog one day in a week, but it would be far wiser to cut off that dog’s tail just behind his ears.—The Safeguard.