Outlawing the Traffic

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 5, 1907

Outlawing the Traffic

We clip the following editorial from the Home Herald, of Chicago, and rejoice that so much has been accomplished in outlawing a destructive and terrible business. While we could wish that all had been already accomplished that the writer of the editorial expects to see accomplished, we can hardly set our hopes so high, knowing of a verity that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” We quote:—

“No arraignment of the liquor traffic in recent times has had more telling effect than the recent decision of Judge Artman, of Indiana. To-day the liquor business has letters of marque, and sails as a privateer. Piracy is legalized and chartered. Murderous wrong is made a right. The public has sold a franchise for a trifle of revenue, in the independent use of which, by unprincipled men, and in the results, it must jointly share the responsibility.

“At last, we thank God, the conscience of America has begun to shirk the odium of such a partnership. The courts are facing the issue squarely, where hitherto there has been compromise and evasion. The rural communities in every part of the Union are declaring for local option. The Southern States are, by outstanding majorities, favorable to prohibition. Georgia is enlisted as a prohibition State. Alabama is on the point of making a like decision. It is prophesied that in ten years there will be no saloons south of the Mason and Dixon line. The liquor business is not to be improved or reformed, for the effort to make better saloons has never yet been tried successfully. It is the will of the American people, that it should be utterly dispossessed.”