Whisky and the Indians
By Editor
THE Hon. Cato Sells, commissioner of Indian affairs, in a circular dated March 28, to the five thousand employees in the Indian service, says: "I believe that the greatest present menace to the American Indian is whisky. It does more to destroy his constitution and invite the ravages of disease than anything else. It does more to demoralize him as a man and frequently as a woman. It does more to make him an easy prey to the unscrupulous than everything else combined. . . . Let us save the American Indian from the curse of whisky. . . . There is nothing that could induce me, since I have taken the oath of office as commissioner of Indian affairs, to touch a single drop of any sort of intoxicating liquor, and this regardless of my attitude on the prohibition question." And referring to the fact that Congress appropriates $100,000 a year for the suppression of the liquor traffic among the Indians, every employee in that department of the government is exhorted to do his best and to use his influence most strongly for "the protection of the Indian from this, his worst enemy." There are thousands upon thousands of men in every walk of life and in every part of the country who can tell us the evil things that liquor is doing among all classes of people. But where is there an individual who can honestly say one single good thing for this business that is ruining both the souls and the bodies of men?