THE LIQUOR CURSE by Mrs. P. R. Bagley

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 14, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 40.

THE LIQUOR CURSE.

By Mrs. P. R. Bagley

BY MRS. P. R. BAGLEY.

TEMPTATIONS, through easy access to drink places and the skillful display of intoxicants and environments, together with the practice of treating, are among the direct causes of the beginning of the drink habit. It is not the second-class resorts nor the low-down dens of strong drink that do the most mischief; it is the rich sample rooms, with their glittering bewitchments, their gay paintings on the walls, their enticing games, their free lunches, their glowing warmth, their magnificent bars. These are the traps which entice some of our most promising youth; these are the snares that year after year ruin some of the choicest young men in all our land, before whose tender feet the people of our government have placed 200,000 pitfalls.

The responsibility of wrong, and waste, and misery that attaches to the traffic, by no means rests entirely upon the retail vender. The entire traffic, with all its hideousness, should be banished forever. It is a traffic that blockades the highways and byways of honest business men, and reaches out its iron hands all over this world for clients who are at last consigned to the wretched haunts of suffering and despair.

Who does not know that the traffic is a curse to society, a burden to the State, a menace to the nation, a public nuisance, and a private wrong? It debauches citizens, and corrupts official life.

It is a great mistake that the prosperity of any community can in any sense be promoted by a traffic whose sole function is to beat down integrity and self-respect. Whoever helps to introduce an agency whose tendency is to tempt youth to unwise indulgence, is guilty of a great sin, saying nothing about moral consequences that follow in its train.

When we enjoy our pleasant homes, let us remember that the curse of the dramshop has cast gloom into just such bright homes as ours. Fair and accomplished girls sometimes marry men who are thought to be worthy, and are suspected of no evil habits, but who turn out to be drinking men. God grant that no fond daughter of yours, reader, may return to your home with a broken heart.

The life of intoxicating drinks on earth has been one of ruin to the bright hopes of youth and the peace of old age. It has robbed children of their pleasures and delights. It has touched old age like the tip of a poisoned arrow. It is a blight and curse everywhere.