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THE WHISKY TRAFFIC

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 6, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 6.

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THE WHISKY TRAFFIC.

By Henry W. Grady

To-NIGHT it enters a humble home, to strike the roses from a woman's cheeks, and to-morrow it challenges this republic in the halls of Congress.
To-day it strikes a crust from the lips of a starving child, and to-morrow levies tribute from the government itself.
There is no cottage humble enough to escape it, no palace strong enough to shut it out.
It defies the law when it can not coerce suffrage.
It is flexible to cajole, but merciless in victory.
It is the mortal enemy of peace and order; the despoiler of men, and terror of women; the cloud that shadows the face of children; the demon that has dug more graves and sent more souls unshrived to judgment than all the pestilences that have wasted life since God sent the plague to Egypt, and all the wars since Joshua stood before Jericho.
It comes to ruin, and it shall profit mainly by the ruin of your sons and mine.
It comes to mislead human souls and to crush human hearts under its rumbling wheels.
It comes to bring gray-haired mothers down in shame and sorrow to their graves.
It comes to change the wife's love into despair and her pride into shame.
It comes to still the laughter on the lips of little children.
It comes to stifle all the music of the home and fill it with silence and desolation.
It comes to ruin your body and mind, to wreck your home.—Henry W. Grady.