An Apology for the Saloons Ably Answered.
By McGregor News
The apologists for the American saloon system maintain that the saloon furnishes a warm fireside for many a man who would otherwise be compelled to stand on the street; that many a man gets a meal at the saloon who would be too poor to get one at the hotel or restaurant. We will admit this for the sake of argument. But for every straggler who is made happy at the saloon stove, how many firesides are desolated by the saloon and its influences? How many hearths and homes are made unhappy for the sake of warmth to an occasional toper, who, but for the saloon, might have a home fireside of his own to sit by? For the occasional individual who gets a ten-cent lunch at a saloon (and he might get a better one at any grocery store), how many innocent ones go without any meal at all on account of the saloon and its influences? No, this argument of making the saloon a necessary portion of our social system is a poor one. It cannot fill any portion of the home. On the other hand, it destroys all that is beautiful of any home over whose inmates it casts its chilling shadows. Be it father, son, or employee, its blight affects equally all who must live within the circle of its baneful influence. The home and the saloon can never become co-workers in society. They cannot live side by side. American home life and American saloon life must ever be at enmity. They cannot dwell beneath the same national roof-tree. The one must be destroyed or it will destroy the other.—McGregor News.