A UNIVERSAL CURSE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 20, 1880

A UNIVERSAL CURSE.

THERE is no civilized nation on the face of the globe that does not surround the liquor traffic with precautions and subject it to conditions peculiar to itself. It is a thing that cannot be allowed to regulate itself. And even where the attempt is made to regulate it best, it makes for itself always a bad name. The liquor traffic will damage the best community in which it can be located. Open a place for the sale of strong drink in the most quiet and orderly neighborhood, even in a quiet country town, and soon you will see the bad results. The establishment will have its customers. These customers will drink to excess. Young men will become dissipated. There will be carousals and disturbances, and the business will become a curse to the community. This ideal traffic, where there shall be no drunken men and no damage, and only where well-behaved people shall ever patronize the bar, is the purest fiction. There is no such thing. There never was and never will be. And, whatever you may say in its defense, the American people do not regard liquor selling as a respectable business.