Are people responsible for their deliberate acts? Are they responsible for the natural results of their acts? A "Simple Simon" must answer affirmatively. The laws of God and man hold that what one does through another, he does himself. Saloon keepers are agents of saloon voters. There is no escaping that fact, discreditable though it be to thousands who "stand well." Every saloon, and its output, represent each voter that helped create it. Saloon keepers and saloon voters are partners. No saloon voters means no saloons.
The law of equity — unbiased justice — ought to control human judgment and conduct. Is it just to outlaw and unauthorize saloon keepers, religiously and socially, while maintaining fellowship and comradeship with their partners? By what process of reasoning is the unjust, illogical thing done? The widow knew who helped kill her husband. She knew it just as she knew two and two make four. It is not just to denounce and ostracize saloon keepers, while making boon companions of their partners. Certainly the widow did right to object to murderers of her husband being made companions at his burial. There are others like her needed.—Dr. J. H. Gambrell.
“WE hang the murderer, jail the thief and the drunkard, but license the manufacturer of murderers, the makers of thieves and drunkards, and furnish the raw material from our homes out of which the thief, the drunkard, and the murderer are made.”
