A CAUSE OF ANARCHY by S. H. Taft

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 50.

A CAUSE OF ANARCHY.

By S. H. Taft

[From an address by Rev. S. H. Taft.]

THE 250,000 saloons of our land are so many deadly cancers on the body politic, so many destroyers of virtue, and are the headquarters of anarchists, obstructing the administration of justice, debauching both the drinker and the seller and filling our alms-houses, lunatic asylums, and prisons with imbeciles and criminals. That the voters and legislators of the nation are responsible for this state of things is well known to all familiar with present social and political conditions. In a late issue of the Baltimore Sun an eminent Episcopal clergyman says: “What an issue is the liquor question! Can it ever be settled except by converting the public conscience to a recognition that every man is his brother’s keeper? Slavery has never been so prolific of crime and want and death as the liquor traffic.” Another clergyman says in the Philadelphia Christian Standard, “I affirm the drink traffic as tolerated by the church and legalized by the State is a greater and more far-reaching evil in the United States to-day than was slavery.”

A judge in the city of Des Moines, Iowa, in opening court a few days since, said: “Ninety per cent. of the crimes committed in this city are caused by the liquor traffic.” At a recent convention of the Minneapolis Liquor Dealers’ Association, Mayor Ames made a congratulatory speech in which he spoke of their business as legitimate. The Minneapolis Journal challenged his statement, whereupon the Mayor in a speech to the assembled saloonists the next evening declared: “Every member of Congress, every member of the City Council of Minneapolis, and every voter who helped make that Congress or Council has made your business legitimate, and are sponsors for it. Your business has been legitimized by legislators.”

By this criminal alliance of the municipalities,

states, and the nation with the saloon, the officers of the law, who should be “a terror to evil-doers” and a praise to them who do well, are discrowned of all moral power, and at their best represent only brute force, and are, therefore, helpless to protect the public health and the public morals, which the United States Supreme Court has declared to be the primal duty of government.

The rum power by its imperious control of municipal, state, and national politics casts a baneful shadow over the pathway of the young men of our country, who, finding the places of honor and power in its keeping, are tempted to do violence to the high and just ideals of youth and become scheming politicians instead of true statesmen.

Not until the officers of the government shall represent the majesty of justice and deliver the spoiled out of the hands of the spoiler, can the tide of anarchy that threatens the destruction of our nation be turned back.