Prohibition and Cardinal Gibbons

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 23, 1916

Prohibition and Cardinal Gibbons

MANY large business firms and corporations throughout the country recognize that total abstinence from intoxicating drink is a prime requisite of business efficiency. Some of them have already reached the decision that they will not regularly employ any man who is not a total abstainer. Now comes the director of public safety in the city of Philadelphia, who, according to the United Presbyterian, has issued an order in which he expresses in decisive and definite terms this same conviction. He says: “I will dismiss with all possible haste from the city employ any one attached to this department who insists on using liquor while on duty, or who comes to work partially under its influence.” This affects about seven thousand employees, and follows the action of the chief of the bureau of water, requesting that the fifteen hundred employees in his department refrain from the use of intoxicants while on duty, under pain of dismissal.

Commenting upon these orders, the North American of Philadelphia says:— “As a sign of the times, the orders are epoch-making. Sentimentality, long the only ground on which serious opposition to rum was based, has been swept aside. In its place stands the irrefutable fact that rum is uneconomic, a demoralizer, a wrecker of efficiency. On this ground, backed by science, the city officials, in common with the heads of various industrial and business firms, are taking their stand.”

In contrast with these statements are the sentiments expressed by Cardinal Gibbons in an address to a delegation of Baltimore business men regarding the present movement to obtain State-wide prohibition in Maryland. According to report, he declared himself “strongly opposed to any State-wide prohibition law, because such a law is impossible of enforcement in a city the size of Baltimore.” He felt that “a law of this kind would interfere with personal liberty, and create hypocrisy in the people.” He also felt that “the people always have indulged and always will indulge in the use of intoxicating liquors.” And finally he opposed the passage of the measure on the ground that “it would deprive the State of large revenues without accomplishing results, and that, too, in a time when both the city and the State are very much in need of the revenue produced.”

Of course these are old-time arguments, put forth by the advocates of the saloon from time immemorial. We may expect that the human race will go on sinning as long as the world stands. But that is all the more reason why the gospel evangel should put forth every effort in his power to stem the tide of iniquity, and to save men from the dire consequences of following in the ways of sin.

So far as personal liberty is concerned, the State justly accords to every citizen the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It recognizes the right of every man to carry on a legitimate business. But when one undertakes systematically to debauch the bodies and souls of his fellows, and tempts them to form habits of life which make of them paupers and criminals, a charge to the State, and a menace to the community, it is then proper that the law should interpose. License must not be confounded with liberty.

It is true that the State needs revenues to carry forward its work, but the souls of men are worth more than dollars and cents. It is better to increase the tax rate to provide directly for necessary governmental expenses, than to allow the citizens of the State to become debauched through strong drink for the sake of securing a little revenue from a nefarious business, and then tax the State in the end to support jails and prisons, infirmaries and insane asylums, for the care of criminals and imbeciles which the liquor business has created. The saloon increases State expenditure a thousand-fold more than it pays in taxes. It is a vampire, feeding on the very life blood of the nation.

Cardinal Gibbons can hardly escape the classification of being an abettor of saloon interests by his statement that when he confirms a class of young men, he requires of them “a pledge of abstinence from use of intoxicants until they become of age.” If liquor is good for a young man after he reaches his majority it is good for him during the years of adolescence.

That strong drink is one of the greatest enemies of mankind, a menace to the church of God, an enemy of society and the State, the awakened conscience of millions of people in the United States is recognizing today. With this awakening, and with the wave of reform which is sweeping over the country, it is sad to see the head of a great professed Christian church take issue against the cause of prohibition.