OUR SACRIFICE TO THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
By G.
The following extract from an address by Mary G. Tongier, before a teachers’ institute in Fresno, Cal., appeals to the energy of every lover of country and lover of souls:— “The walls of America are its public-school system, with its 19,000,000 boys and girls—citizens in embryo—every one of them a brick. But over against this institution so dear to all our hearts—which we have proudly called the citadel of American liberties—stands another equally American, equally sustained by our laws, and more than equally fostered by our politics. It is the legalized American saloon. The commodity it has on sale in varying degrees of dilution, is this same deadly agent, concerning which science declares that in all her realm none other possesses a like power to degrade human beings. Thru its open door the army of drunkards is being recruited from our public schools. Every year this institution lives, one bright boy out of every five must be sacrificed as the price of its continued existence.” “The liquor dealers are not unmindful of their privileges. At one of their recent State conventions, an official member advised that more saloons be established in the neighborhood of schoolhouses, and urged a more strenuous effort on the part of the trade9to create appetite by means of treats among the boys. I have positive knowledge that this diabolical suggestion is being widely acted upon, and that brandy drops and small sample bottles of beer and wine are being secretly distributed among schoolboys, many of whom are not yet in their teens.” The death-dealing liquor traffic is ever on the alert, ever awake to its opportunity, night and day, seven days in the week. If professed temperance men were half as earnest and active, its doors would be closed in many a rum-cursed community. G.