p. 10 | PRICE OF MY BOY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 13, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 33.

PRICE OF MY BOY.

BEFORE giving you my price, perhaps a brief description of the boy may not be out of place. He is now just entering upon his teens, the same dear little boy whom we have nursed and dandled upon our knees, who has been the object of our love and devotion from his boyhood up to the present, and is now the pride of his father and the hope of his mother. He is in good physical health, with mental faculties all alert, quick to discern between right and wrong, easily imbibing correct moral principles. In short, he is a fair specimen physically, mentally, and morally of the youth of this community, which, in its organized capacity, treats him and all others as proper subjects for barter and sale.

Perhaps you may ask by whom are they put in the market? Who are the buyers? When, where and how is this infernal traffic carried on against the laws of God and man? Well, they are put on the market by the lawmaking power of this country, this State, and this municipality, by fixing a price, a valuable consideration—a license fee—upon the payment of which a man is permitted to do that which he had no right to do until he bought the privilege.

The permission to set up bar and sell liquors in this way means the enticing, ensnaring, enslaving, the moral degradation, the mental wreck, the physical ruin, and death of somebody's boy in the vicinity where it exists. It means a chance at a hundred boys, with a certainty that more than one will be ensnared and degraded. When the license is granted the grantors know this fact, and yet for the consideration the permission is granted—the license is given. Is not this clearly a sale of somebody's boy, together with his health, his integrity, his intelligence, his moral sensibilities, his very life, and all there is of him or in him? And while it is a sale of somebody's boy—who is to be sacrificed to fill the capacious maw of the monster which thrives upon misery, degradation and woe—it is the establishment of a

shooting-alley in my neighborhood, and my boy (being human, and no better than the thousands who have fallen) is set up as a target, at whom this skillful, fiendish archer is permitted to shoot his poisoned arrows, with an absolute certainty of bringing some one down.

I am asked by the lawmakers of what is called a Christian people, how much I want for my consent to this bargain, this compact with Satan and agreement with hell? How high shall the license be? What shall be the fee? O, shame! that in an enlightened age such a question can be asked! I answer, O ye rumsellers, go gather in your ill-gotten gains for a thousand years, pile up your gold until it is so high that it casts dark and dismal shadows over the highest mountain-peak, and lay it at my feet, and you have not tempted me. Go, bring from among your kindred as many victims as you have made in ours, as many desolate homes, as many bitter tears, as many heart sobs—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for blood, soul for soul—and you have only strengthened my resolution not to sell.

You don't want to buy at such a price? But wait; I have not told you all. Before you get my signature to this hellish compact, you must sever my right arm from my body, disconnect it from my heart and brain, before these fingers will sign your league with death. This is my price, Mr. Rumseller, and these are my terms. No sale, you say? Very good. No sale, no saloon—that is, no license—that is prohibition.—Anon.