p. 11 | Look Out for the Boys

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 5, 1906

Look Out for the Boys.

GET the boys to sign the total abstinence pledge. The saloon can no more run without boys and girls than a sawmill can run without logs. Its life depends upon the boys. It may be your boys, if you have any. How are you going to secure your boys against its allurements? Many boys just as good and just as well reared as yours, have fallen victims to its enticements. There is but one sure means of protecting the boy, and that is to abolish the saloon. Will you help to do it? The saloon-keepers says:—

“We must have more boys, at least twelve each hour, We must win by cunning devices. To gather the brightest of youth’s flower From the garden of home, its peaceful bower, We must use every art that entices.”

Two hundred and fifty thousand saloon-keepers are after your boy, and their wine rooms are open to your girl. For every drunkard that drops down, a boy starts in to fill the gap. Whose boy will come next?

Saloon kindergartens have been discovered in some of our large cities. They are rooms back of the saloons, fitted up with small furniture, toys, and picture-books, such as would delight children. Here wine is served in tiny glasses at the hands of some little boy or girl who receives a small recompense for services.

In one year nearly four thousand children under ten years of age were picked up on the streets of New York as common drunkards, and their acts made a matter of police record. In one hour in New York, recently, one hundred and twenty children entered one saloon.— Selected.