p. 7 | A WORD TO SALOON MEN by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 28, 1906

A WORD TO SALOON MEN.

By Editor

No CLASS of people are so much injured by the saloon business as you and your families. Every man who buys a drink over your bar puts a nail in your coffin. You know that your business is not deemed respectable. You know that it is a stigma not only upon yourself but upon your wife and children. Even if you do make money (and many of you do not), there is a blot upon the name and often upon the feelings of your families which they are powerless to erase. Let them conduct themselves never so well, they are often made to feel the implied if not the expressed slur, that they are the wives or the daughters or the sons of saloon-keepers. Then the business builds up a system of caste that is a curse to any community. It establishes not only the saloon-keeper caste, but the gambler caste, and the drunkard caste. And as the drunkards become more and more confirmed and die off, there is produced the beggar caste, the thieving caste, the dependent charity caste. All these and more, too, are the product of your business.

Another thing: nearly all saloon-keepers become poor in old age. They seem to flourish while in the prime of life; but they are generally extravagant, fond of good living, and seldom save anything. They become victims of their surroundings, and sooner or later go downhill. The business utterly takes away the recuperative powers. Sooner or later they find that they are, and have been, simply the servants of the wholesale dealers and brewers. So far as profits go, the saloons are feeders to the coffers of the wholesale dealers and brewers.

Take warning; get out of the business at once. You say you can not, but you can. If all the saloon-keepers would quit the business, the money that is squandered in their iniquitous places would be spent in ways that would open up more legitimate lines of business. Think of it, and make an effort to free yourselves from the degrading lives which you are living and entailing upon your families and others.