Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 15, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 15.

Health and Temperance.

The Curse of the Home.

A GROCERY pass-book was picked up in Toledo, Ohio, without its cover, and as the owner was unknown, it was carried to the Blade. That paper prints four pages of it, supposed to be two weeks' purchases. It evidently belonged to a working man, and had 69 entries, amounting to $10.69, of which 62 items are whisky, beer, and drinks, amounting to $4.35, and 7 for tobacco, 35 cents. Five dollars out of $10.69 was wasted by this man for drinks and tobacco. The other 30 items are 2 for flour, at $1.63 each, and the others are jelly, syrup, butter, lard, herring, etc., in sums of 5 to 22 cents, and for the child or children a doll, 7 cents, and raisins, 6 cents.

"Is there any argument for the damnable rum traffic that can stand for a moment in the sight of such a showing—one which is simply representative of uncounted others in all the cities and towns of our land? What is there so sacred in rum that it must be allowed to continue its hellish work of making men insensible to the needs of wife and children, deliberately brutalizing and ruining themselves day by day, steadily sinking deeper into the horrid pit which shall sooner or later engulf them? What is there in this damnable business that men should be allowed to follow it? The rum seller is the first lieutenant of the devil. He daily and hourly tempts men to barter their souls for rum. He tempts them to exchange their manhood for the direst and most hopeless form of slavery. He casts over them a spell more terrible than that of Circe; for she only turned men into beasts, but rum turns them into demons. Under its malign influence, a man's duty, a husband's love, a father's care, are all swallowed up in a scorching, burning, God-accursed thirst. To satisfy that red-hot blast from hell, when he feels it, a man will leave his wife to starve and his children to perish. And the rum seller cares not, so long as his victim has money to buy the brewery slop and distillery poison which he sells. He has already mortgaged his soul to the devil a thousand-fold, and the misery, want, and suffering that his accursed trade causes, affect him not, if only he can acquire wealth.

There is one remedy, and only one. There is one way to save the spell-bound victims of the drink demon, and but one. It is not by license, it is not by restriction, but it is by prohibition. Prohibit the manufacture and sale, and wipe out these plague-spots, the rum holes, from the fair face of the earth. Stop the tide of misery, and suffering, and degradation by drying up the fountain whence it flows. Stop the manufacture, destroy the product, close the saloons, punish to the uttermost the men who dare to violate the law in the slightest. This is the remedy. It is the only practical, effective way in which to pulverize the rum power.