WHAT DOES THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC CONCERN?
[From an address by John G. Woolley, in N. Y. Voice.] It concerns society at large; for, like the fox beneath the Spartan soldier’s doublet, it tears her very heart out, bravely as she carries it. It concerns government; for it feeds the wells from which it draws its very breath of life, denies its title to itself, violates the dead, plunders the living, and breeds prenatal paupers and criminals to perplex and defeat it. It concerns capital; for it is the mainspring of arson, embezzlement, mobs, riot, and murder. It concerns labor; for it saps its strength, its honor, and its hope, until industry becomes a galley slave, willing to take its pay in blows and sweaty rags and squalor. It concerns the church; for by so much as it enjoys she suffers loss. It concerns the school; for by so much as it outruns it in the race for power, it converts culture into crime, and makes the educated “the dangerous classes” to the common weal. It concerns every home; for it is a denial of its every sanctity and an insult to its best ideals. It concerns love—and how many a love-story is going through its first chapter in this convention; it leeches its very blood, and leaves behind the ashes of inexpressible desolations. It concerns the land not only, but the sea as well; for every stately “ocean liner” that clears our ports and sails down over the edge of the world with the “Union” at her flagstaff, carries on board a “bar” of uncharted shoals and sunken reefs for some of the voyagers; and many a gallant life goes down at sea inside the ship, and while the watch is calling at every bell, “All’s well! All’s well!”4 (644) London fog was never denser than the popular misapprehension of the drink question. Not long ago I was in conversation with a lady, who evidently thought to show me a politeness by asking about the progress of what she called “temperance.” She spoke as one might mention a new orchid she had heard of, but never seen; and by her knee her little boy was clinging, rosy, and lusty, and fine. “It must be dreadful work,” she said, “but I have no personal interest in it, and so I do not keep informed about it. There has never been a drunkard in our family on either side.” She was a moral somnambulist, wide-eyed but stone blind, walking along the eaves of Tophet with her child. I woke her, as in duty bound, by saying: “Madam, how do you know that this boy will not be a drunkard? My mother was as good and as beautiful as you are, and our home was far more beautiful than this of yours. My father’s blood ran as pure as any in your husband’s family or your own, and they were as loving, and as tender and as careful as you can be. But when the natural and honorable griefs and losses of the world had beaten them with many stripes, but left them family pride and an untarnished name and an only son whom their united love clothed upon as with a garment of immunity against defilement, the saloon came and took all. And the only bit of land I own to-day at a mid-life of ceaseless labor is a little square of cemetery hillside, where they lie, with their broken hearts, waiting for whatever possible joy may be requited to them at the last.” Before I had finished, her bosom was heaving with tumultuous breathing, and her eyes were pitiful with unshed tears; and, snatching the boy to her heart, she cried: “Forgive me! Forgive me! I had not thought!” I do not speak of this to lay a railing accusation against the careless-seeming, happy people; I know perfectly that the ignoble servitude of Christian people to the saloon parties is due to the lack of thought; but your church has thought, and spoken so that all earth and heaven have heard, and you are thinking now, and must think. Bear with me this once. I do not expect you to feel as I do; you could not without suffering what I have suffered, and I have no enemy and never had one whom I would not spare that if I could. I am pleading with you for the merest humanity, such as you would show a wounded dog. There is not a cradle rocking, rocking in an American home to-night, but close beside, the drink wolf crouches and grins and waits. There is not a baby man swinging into the lists of life in the royal chariot of his mother’s arms, pressed hard and safe against the snowy pillows, but the saloon vulture, with bloody beak and claws, and sick of old carrion, flaps its hideous wings above that holiest pageant of the universe, and soars and waits.