ANOTHER UNSATISFACTORY “REFORM” MOVEMENT.
By G.
And so it is with all the so-called reforms of these “perilous times.” A few weeks ago there was general rejoicing among “reform” people all over the land because of the overthrow of Tammany in New York City. Now the new set of officers are hardly seated until the same class is bewailing the disappointment in general expectation. The executive committee of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, of which Dr. Parkhurst is president, has addressed a letter to the new mayor, stating that so far the present regime has made it “entirely indefinite as to what civic righteousness in this city is and what it is not, and to that extent has operated to put the reform administration in the same criminal attitude toward law as was that occupied by the administrations of ’92, ’94, ’97, and 1901.” Of this letter the Observer says:— It deplores the fact that “while chartered by the state to labor for the prevention of crime,” the society is “not quite certain any longer what is crime,” and says that “the atmosphere is clouded by ambiguity, emanating from administrative incertitude,” and that “the situation is morally intolerable.” The letter further says that “there is not very much to choose between a Tammany administration that has bad principles and a reform administration that has good principles, but is afraid to use them.” There was also great rejoicing by reformers over the Raines Excise Law in New York, but it soon proved to be in the interest of the very traffic it was designed to curb. So the Sunday-closing law in New York City proved such a failure that the “reform” officials have decided that it would be a reformation, or a lessening of the saloon evil, to legalize their opening on part of the day. But reforming the saloon is uphill work. It is like every other evil,—tolerate it at all, and you give it the advantage. To close it one day in the week is to recognize it as legitimate the rest of the week; and it is a victory for the traffic when reformers set a standard that recognizes it at all. Splitting hairs over a few hours when it shall be prohibited on this day or that day, or the particular days on which it shall be prohibited, is as futile as trying to frighten an enemy with war paint. Prohibition in toto is the only remedy for the saloon evil. Temperance people—those who profess that virtue—claim to be in the majority; but they will not vote the saloon down and out. It would not take any more votes to close the saloon all the time than it would take to close it one hour in the week; so the saloon to-day is a creature of the sufferance of professed temperance people, who try to compromise with it by asking it to be good and close on Sunday. Some of the reformers, it seems, think it would be better if it would close only part of the day. So the saloon can laugh at this quibble among the “reformers.” But this is only a sample of the greater disappointment that will follow the success of the much-boosted National Reform movement. All the modern religio-political reforms are exceedingly rich in promises; but the greater the promises, the more disappointing the performance. And the National Reform movement is the greatest promiser of them all. “In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, . . . having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” They ignore the only power of true reform—the Spirit and Word of God, and seek the political power of the government in the furtherance of their schemes. The cry of “reform” is the fad of the politicians, and any reform carried on by political means, whatever the pretense, is political in character, and subject to like vicissitudes. G.