Worth More Than Taxes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 14, 1912

“Worth More Than Taxes”

“Daddy, ain’t I worth more to you than your taxes? If you vote ‘wet,’ maybe I’ll be a drunkard some day.”

Returning from a recent local option meeting in Cheboygan County, Michigan, a lad climbed upon his father’s lap and asked:—

“What way will you vote, pa,—‘wet’ or ‘dry’?”

“Wet, of course,” replied the man. “Pa, why will you vote wet?” the child continued.

“Because,” returned the parent, “the saloons help to pay my taxes.”

The little fellow had been deeply impressed by the lecture at the schoolhouse around the corner that evening, and he failed to comprehend how his own father could not understand as he did.

Innocently, he then asked the foregoing question, and made the awful prediction that some day the saloons that “help to pay” the taxes, as that father explained, might drag down that same boy to the grave of a drunkard.

That small son wanted to know which is the more vital, a human life or a mere tax levy. Should a father value a few paltry dollars, paid in just taxes, above the very life of his own flesh and blood? That’s what the Cheboygan lad wanted to know.

It was a sleepless night for that father, for those dreadful words kept ringing in his ears: “If you vote wet, maybe I’ll be a drunkard some day.”

To-day there isn’t a stronger advocate of local option in all Michigan. “That boy is worth more to me than all the property I could ever own,” he declares, emphatically.

Other fathers, how about you?—Michigan Issue.