KING ALCOHOL 
 DETHRONED 
 
 f ERDINAND C.IOLEHARTjm 
 
GIFT OF 
 Intercollegiate 
 
 Pr nVi 1 h> 1 -hi rvn A a n r>. i Q + . - 
 
KING ALCOHOL 
 DETHRONED 
 
 BY 
 
 FERDINAND COWLE IGLEHART, D.D., 
 
 Author " The Speaking Oak " 
 
 Lecturer on Sociology and Temperance, 
 
 Syracuse University. 
 
 THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 WESTERVILLE, OHIO 
 
e4t 
 
 \v 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917 
 BY THE CHRISTIAN HERALD 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919 
 BY FERDINAND COWLE IGLEHART 
 

 PREFACE 
 
 THE dethronement of King Alcohol which is 
 being accomplished in our time is perhaps 
 the most important moral event in the his- 
 tory of mankind. Alcohol is the most ancient king 
 in the world. An Arabian story tells of his pres- 
 ence as far back as the beginning of the race, as 
 the conqueror of Satan who mastered our first 
 parents. This is the story: Satan with the help 
 of sin and death made a bridge from hell to earth. 
 On his first trip across it he visited the Garden of 
 Eden. Among other things he found growing a 
 grape vine bearing luscious innocent fruit. He 
 immediately began its cultivation to see if he could 
 get a product from it that would hurt and destroy 
 the race just started. He first poured the blood 
 of a peacock down on the roots; when the leaves 
 came out, he watered the vine with the blood of an 
 ape, then he soaked the roots with the blood of a 
 lion. He drank to his fill of the fruit of this in- 
 nocent plant thus brutalized, and lay down among 
 its leaves like a hog. The Arab imagination thus 
 made King Alcohol the conqueror of Satan in the 
 very garden where he himself was the master. 
 
 Moses only begins to write the Pentateuch 
 when he thus mentions the mastery of the head of 
 
 iii 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 the new race by King Alcohol: "And Noah began 
 to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard; 
 and he drank of the wine and was drunken." As 
 the ancient nations grew King Alcohol's empire 
 extended over them, destroying some of them, 
 notably Babylon. 
 
 In classical antiquity this demon king is named 
 Bacchus, the god of wine. He was the unlawful 
 son of Jupiter brought into the world by the anger 
 of Juno in a fierce thunderstorm to incarnate every 
 evil, and inflict every earthly suffering. Seated in 
 his chariot drawn by panthers he drove from 
 nation to nation promising it joy and prosperity 
 but bringing to it misery and ruin. 
 
 When the Anglo-Saxon race became the domi- 
 nant one of the earth, King Alcohol conquered it, 
 loading ships that had Bibles and missionaries for 
 the heathen with barrels of liquor and giving the 
 most Christian and civilized nations of the world 
 the distinction of being the most drunken. This 
 present revolution that is shaking Bacchus from 
 his throne is the revolt of the Anglo-Saxon con- 
 science against his baleful rule, which was weaken- 
 ing and destroying the race. From its birth alco- 
 hol ruled our nation. Ten years ago there were 
 only three dry States, now there are twenty-six, 
 seven within the past twelve months, and two- 
 thirds of the area and sixty per cent of the popula- 
 tion is under Prohibition. The Rum King is de- 
 throned in the United States. 
 
PREFACE v 
 
 This book records in detail the agencies em- 
 ployed in deposing this rum despot from his au- 
 thority, including those of science, big business, 
 politics, the ballot, the home, womanhood and the 
 church. 
 
 Facts, facts, facts are killing the liquor traffic, 
 and hence I have packed this book as full of them 
 as I knew how. I have taken a few facts from the 
 books but almost all of them from living men in 
 our own land, and taken them first off from their 
 lips or pens. I have not hesitated to go hundreds 
 of miles to find a man who had a fact that I 
 needed for record here. The facts revealed by 
 these pages contradict things the liquor people 
 say are facts and claim as such in their literature. 
 For instance, they say that beer is liquid bread; 
 the facts we have show conclusively that* it and 
 the other intoxicants are not liquid food but liquid 
 poison to kill the body and mind 
 
 Much space has been given to proving the fact 
 that Prohibition prohibits. The last ditch into 
 which the liquor forces have retired is the argu- 
 ment that Prohibition does not prohibit. Desert- 
 ing the old argument of personal liberty and oppo- 
 sition to sumptuary laws, driven from the field of 
 high license, they have made this last stand on the 
 claim that prohibition is a failure. And the claim 
 is made with such shrewdness that many of our 
 best people are deceived by it. This book con- 
 tains the positive testimony of the Governors and 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 United States Senators of a majority of the dry- 
 States that Prohibition does prohibit, and that that 
 is the reason why no dry State is thinking for a 
 moment of going back to license and why other 
 States follow their example. If time and space 
 had been allowed other Governors and Senators 
 of Prohibition States would have given their testi- 
 mony. 
 
 We regret that there was only space enough to 
 make a record of the fight on alcohol in the States 
 made dry. The temperance workers in the near- 
 dry States and wettest ones have been as able, con- 
 secrated and successful in proportion as the heroic 
 ones in the Prohibition States. 
 
 This book is radical from start to finish. In 
 questions of policy there are two sides. In a ques- 
 tion of principle there is but one side, and that is 
 the right side. This we believe is a question of 
 principle and that the right thing to do is to ex- 
 terminate the saloon. This book is radical but it 
 does not contain one harsh word against the in- 
 dividual liquor dealer; it is only his business that 
 is condemned. If I had been born in the country 
 and under the circumstances that surrounded him 
 I would likely have shared his views and maybe 
 have followed his business. I have made clear 
 that I consider the people who license the busi- 
 ness as responsible as the dealers themselves for 
 its miseries and crimes. 
 
 The book is a militant one. Those who are in 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 the campaign, the preachers, editors of secular and 
 religious papers, speakers, workers in the temper- 
 ance and church organizations, in Young Men's 
 Christian Associations, Sunday Schools and re- 
 form service of all kinds, and the millions of 
 voters who have now entered into this war on 
 alcohol, will find ammunition and inspiration for 
 the conflict. 
 
 It is the intention that this book should em- 
 phasize the moral and spiritual instrumentalities 
 in the dethronement of Alcohol, should regard 
 religion as the dominant element in overthrowing 
 this evil, recognizing God as a personal factor in 
 leading the Church against this vice for its destruc- 
 tion, and thus become a real Gospel message. 
 The Galilean peasant who rode into the city over 
 the palm branches is the real King today. With 
 truth, righteousness, love and life, he is not only 
 dethroning but destroying King Alcohol. 
 
 This book goes out with the hope that it may 
 reclaim some drunkard; draw away from danger 
 some moderate drinker who can drink or leave it 
 alone, as he pleases, who can quit any time, but 
 never does; keep some young man or woman from 
 the first glass that has all the rest of evil in it; 
 may inspire the old temperance workers to re- 
 newed diligence; may give encouragement to the 
 millions of voters in the churches to a double quick 
 drive that shall overthrow the demon King, and 
 wake up the cowardly and sleepy ones in and out 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 of the Church who have let God and good people 
 destroy the greatest evil of the centuries in their 
 time and under their very eyes, and they have 
 no part in the contest; and that some soul may be 
 saved for time and eternity. 
 
 The book goes out with a prayer that God, who 
 is destroying the liquor traffic, may take it and use 
 it to honor Him, promote His Kingdom, and bless 
 our fellowmen. 
 
 F. C. I. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY i 
 
 II. ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 33 
 
 III. ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 55 
 
 IV. ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 82 
 
 V. ALCOHOL AND LABOR 97 
 
 VI. THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 121 
 
 VII. THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 148 
 
 VIII. PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 172 
 
 IX. ROOSEVELT AND SUNDAY SALOON... 193 
 
 X. THE SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 214 
 
 XL THE SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 245 
 
 XII. PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 259 
 
 XIII. PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 272 
 
 XIV. BRYAN CHAMPIONS PROHIBITION . . . 289 
 XV. FEDERAL LEGISLATION 293 
 
 XVI. WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL. ... 311 
 
 XVII. FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 339 
 
 XVIII. ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 362 
 
KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 THE drink problem is primarily a psychologi- 
 cal one, having its basis in the deepest in- 
 stincts of the human souL 
 To get at the bottom of the liquor question we 
 have to go down into the renter of the hamin 
 heart. There we find two thirsts, one for drink, 
 one for gold. The thirst of the man for intoxi- 
 cants who consumes, and the thirst for money that 
 prompts the man to manufacture and sell to him, 
 are the two halves or the all of the liquor problem. 
 The appetite for intoxicants is a soul thirst. If 
 it were a body thirst it could be satisfied, and there 
 would be no liquor question to disturb or settle. All 
 the forms of intemperance are only the floggings 
 the poor body gets because it can not drink enough 
 to satisfy the thirst of the soul. The lower ani- 
 mals will not get drunk; they are too wise to take 
 stimulants even in moderation. The reason why 
 they will not touch intoxicants is that they have 
 
2 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 no soul. It is only because man has this immortal 
 nature that he can have a thirst for strong drink, 
 reel with rum or fill a drunkard's grave. 
 
 The thirst of the soul which alcohol pretends 
 to satisfy is that for stimulation, illumination and 
 inspiration. This is a God-given appetite which He 
 intended should be satisfied by truth, righteous- 
 ness, love, by himself, the embodiment of these at- 
 tributes. He gives himself : all truth, all holiness, 
 all love, to be the soul's satisfaction, food, growth, 
 life and destiny. To satisfy this appetite the 
 father of lies, in the person of King Alcohol, offers 
 himself as a substitute instead of God as the in- 
 spiration, the life, the joy of the soul. What a 
 failure, what a fraud, what a tragedy is the sub- 
 stitute* and how long-continued and widespread 
 has been his diabolical deception! God made 
 fruits and grains and vegetables as food for the 
 body, but the evil one set his ingenuity to work 
 to produce something to touch the immortal soul, 
 and has seized upon these products and com- 
 pelled them to yield some "spirits" that will pan- 
 der to it, and by his baleful alchemy has turned 
 grapes and other fruits, wheat, barley, corn and 
 other cereals, potatoes and other vegetables into 
 wine, whiskey, brandy, beer and other intoxicants. 
 He killed the vitality of the fruit and grain by fer- 
 mentation and distillation, and transmuted the 
 food into a poison to destroy soul and body, which 
 product is death as a substitute for life, a demon 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 3 
 
 in the place of God as a food for the soul. This 
 demon alcohol science calls a "spirit"; Shake- 
 speare names this spirit a "devil." In "Othello" 
 he says: "O thou invisible spirit of wine! If thou 
 hast no name to be known by, let us call thee 
 devil!" 
 
 The craving for strong drink, then, is a divine 
 appetite which is perverted by the devil alcohol. 
 One of the most distinguished English authors, in 
 a poem, "The Drinking Pot," tells the story of 
 John and Jane, brother and sister, who had a 
 pewter mug which served as a mutual drinking- 
 cup for both. In the bottom of the mug there was 
 an angel's face etched by some rude carver on the 
 metal. John would pass over the frothing mug to 
 Jane, who, to his intense astonishment, drained it 
 to the bottom. Thereafter he would quench his 
 own thirst first, but still Jane would drain what 
 was left. John stoutly expostulated, but, as the 
 poet tells, 
 
 "She loved to see the angel there, 
 And so she drained the pot." 
 
 John resolved to stop her drinking, so he took 
 the tankard to the pewterer, who hammered the 
 angePs face inside and etched that of a devil 
 instead. To John's disgust Jane's thirst was as 
 insatiable as before. 
 
 The intoxicating cup has etched in it the face of 
 an angel to which the drinker looks for exhilara- 
 
4 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 tion, happiness and peace ; but the angel's face is 
 hammered out and that of the devil takes its place. 
 The soul thirst of the drinker is one-half, the 
 soul hunger for money in the dealer is the second 
 half of the liquor problem. The thirst for gold, 
 like that for stimulation, is perverted into the vice 
 of avarice. The desire for accumulation is proper 
 when it does not become supreme, and when it 
 renders an equivalent. Earth witnesses no more 
 greedy avarice than that of the liquor traffic. It 
 so loves money for the money's sake that it will 
 |not only not render an equivalent, but will inflict 
 damage on those who buy its wares. It is this 
 insatiable greed for money that has built every 
 brewery and distillery, and opened every drinking 
 place in the land, and keeps it going. It is this 
 hunger for money that puts up the fight in every 
 village, city, State, and at Washington against all 
 measures to restrict or abolish the iniquitous traf- 
 fic. If it were not for this base greed for ill- 
 gotten gain the manufacture and sale of intoxi- 
 cants as a beverage would instantly cease, and the 
 liquor problem would be solved. King Alcohol, 
 having all the beastly vices, is impelled by this 
 polite vice of avarice, and by it he has become 
 fabulously rich and proud. He holds a golden 
 scepter and sits upon a throne of solid gold. 
 Shakespeare, who knew the human heart so well 
 and seeing alcohol there called it "devil," saw 
 also there the devil avarice, in whose description 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 5 
 
 in "Macbeth" he gives us this life-sized portrait 
 of Alcohol, the bloated money king: 
 
 "With this there grows, 
 In my most ill-composed affection, such 
 A staunchless avarice, that were I a king, 
 I should cut off the nobles for their lands, 
 Desire his jewels, and this other 's house, 
 And my more-having would be as a sauce 
 To make me hunger more, that I should forge 
 Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, 
 Destroying them for wealth." 
 
 Moloch of old, whose brazen form held out its 
 hand for the money of the people, and whose 
 fires consumed the sons offered as victims, was 
 merciful compared to the Moloch of rum, whose 
 hands demand a billion dollars of the people's 
 money and every year one hundred thousand of 
 their best sons. 
 
 INJURY TO THE BRAIN 
 
 God put brains in a cup at the top of a man s 
 head to give him his place in the scale of being, 
 and to dominate himself and the world. Alcohol 
 attacks the brain and disturbs its mental processes, 
 reduces man in the scale of being to that of 
 bestiality, makes him the slave of every circum- 
 stance and of every evil habit. There are certain 
 fat-like substances called lipoids, which are a part 
 of every body cell and are found in largest pro- 
 
6 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 portion in the brain and other parts of the ner- 
 vous system. When either chloroform or similar 
 drugs are used to produce unconsciousness they do 
 so by combining with these lipoids. Alcohol, a 
 narcotic drug, with an especial affinity for them, 
 goes straight for these substances, injuring them, 
 and, if allowed to do its finished work, destroying 
 the tissue and rational mental processes proceed- 
 ing from it. 
 
 Doctor Henry Smith Williams, the noted psy- 
 chologist, in speaking of the influence of alcohol 
 on the brain cells, says: "It is a fact familiar to 
 every student of evolution that, generally speak- 
 ing, the. most unstable tissues of an organism are 
 the ones most recently evolved, that is to say, the 
 most highly developed and complex tissues. The 
 most delicate and unstable of all organic tissues 
 are the complex central nerve cells of the gray 
 cortex of the brain the cells directly associated 
 with the exhibition of mental processes. These 
 are the most delicately poised, the most easily dis- 
 turbed in function, of all organic tissues. It fol- 
 lows that these are the tissues that come earliest 
 and most persistently under the influence of the 
 alcoholic poison. A given individual may have a 
 highly susceptible liver or kidney or heart, through 
 hereditary influences, or through some peculiarity 
 of his environment; but in general the brain, the 
 organ of the mind, is the organ whose tissues are 
 the most susceptible. So when the dissecting- 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 7 
 
 knife reveals, post mortem, a hobnailed liver, or 
 an alcohol kidney, stomach or heart, it will almost 
 invariably reveal also a shrunken and watery 
 alcohol brain." 
 
 Doctor Adolph Meyer, psychiatrist-in-chief of 
 the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Mary- 
 land, whose knowledge and experience make him 
 an authority on the subject, dictated to his steno- 
 grapher for me a statement from which I quote 
 the following: 
 
 The nervous system is remarkably resistive to most 
 narcotics and capable of far-reaching recoverability from 
 the effects of the majority of acute intoxications. Pro- 
 found intoxication, and especially repeated occurrence of 
 profound intoxication, does, however, give evidence of 
 deterioration of certain types of nerve cells and nerve 
 fibers (the commissure fibers in the cerebellum and in the 
 corpus callosum), and especially the peripheral nerves, 
 which are apt to be affected in the form of multiple 
 neuritis. Of greater importance is the change in the cir- 
 culation, as shown in the tendency to "wet brain" and 
 the thickening and water-logged condition of the mem- 
 branes, involving the general circulation of the brain. 
 
 As in all intoxications, the functional disorders in al- 
 coholic intoxication are seen before the tissue changes. 
 Excessive relaxation of inhibition and animation along un- 
 critical lines constitute the supposed gain from alcoholic 
 stimulation. The reduction of fears or doubts, of nervous- 
 ness, might appear as a beneficial result, but the effect is 
 temporary and apt to leave the person paralyzed for all 
 efforts of a more lasting character. The "desire for more," 
 
8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 which is the necessary consequence of this sham help, and 
 the great tolerance of the stomach for these beverages con- 
 stitute the most serious points in the vicious circle pro- 
 duced by alcohol consumption. 
 
 CONFUSION OF MENTAL PROCESSES 
 
 There is ample testimony to the ill effects of al- 
 cohol on mental processes. Hermann von Helm- 
 holtz, who won a world fame in the realm of 
 science in his professorship of Physics at Koenigs- 
 burg, Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin, successively 
 declared that the very smallest quantity of alcohol 
 served effectively, while its influence lasted, to 
 banish from his mhid all possibility of creative 
 effort, all capacity to solve an abstruse problem. 
 Professor James said, "The reason for craving 
 alcohol is that it is an anaesthetic even in moderate 
 quantities. It obliterates a part of the field of 
 consciousness and abolishes collateral trains of 
 thought. " 
 
 At a time when about everybody drank and it 
 was universally believed that spirituous liquors 
 braced the body and brightened the intellect, 
 Goethe, that splendid specimen of physical and 
 mental manhood in youth and old age, whose writ- 
 ings have influenced for good every civilized na- 
 tion, and whose influence increases with the years, 
 sounded the note of alarm at the damage of drink 
 to the intellect. In his conversation with Ecker- 
 mannof January 18, 1827, he says: "Schiller neveF 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 9 
 
 drank much; he was very temperate. But at such 
 moments of physical weakness he sought to in- 
 crease his strength by taking some brandy or other 
 spirituous liquor. This preyed upon his health, 
 and was also detrimental to the productions them- 
 selves. For what judicious critics find fault with 
 in his writings, I refer to this source. All those 
 passages which they say are not quite right, I 
 should like to call pathological passages, since he 
 wrote them on days when he had not strength to 
 find the proper and true motives." In his conver- 
 sation with Eckermann of March n, 1828, 
 Goethe said, "Should he (the dramatic poet) then 
 try to force this productivity that he lacks by 
 means of spirituous liquors, and to supplement 
 what is insufficient, this would probably be feas- 
 ible, but all the scenes that he had forced, as it 
 were, in this way would show it to their great 
 disadvantage." Schiller himself came to that 
 conclusion and said, u Wine invents nothing, it 
 only blabs it out." 
 
 Doctor John Jacob Abel, professor of pharma- 
 cology, Johns Hopkins Medical College, and 
 editor of the Journal of Pharmacology and Ex- 
 perimental Therapeutics, has written: "One-half 
 to one bottle of wine, or two to four glasses of 
 beer a day, not only counteract the beneficial ef- 
 fects of 'practice' in any given occupation, but 
 also depress every form of intellectual activity; 
 therefore every man who, according to his own 
 
io KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 notions, is only a moderate drinker, places him- 
 self by this indulgence on a lower intellectual level 
 and opposes the full and complete utilization of 
 his intellectual powers." 
 
 Professor Emil Kraepelin, formerly of Heidel- 
 berg, now director of the clinic of psychiatry at 
 the University of Munich, in an address to the 
 students said: "From the recommendation of a 
 wine-dealer I learn that wine enlivens the imagina- 
 tion, facilitates thought-connection, quickens the 
 memory, is favorable to the clear and rapid re- 
 ception of impressions and to the formation of 
 judgments. Every word a lie! Careful investi- 
 gation, continued for decades and conducted with 
 the finest apparatus, to determine the physical ef- 
 fects of alcohol, has shown beyond a doubt that 
 exactly the opposite of all those assertions is 
 actually the case. Alcohol paralyzes the imagina- 
 tion, renders the connection of ideas more difficult, 
 weakens and falsifies the memory, and produces 
 a very marked derangement of the power of ap- 
 prehension and of judgment." 
 
 Science has learned to measure the damage of 
 alcohol to the mind. Purer, Rudin, Kraepelin, 
 Smith and others took individuals and groups and 
 after administering to them moderate doses of 
 beer or wine tested their ability to memorize, add 
 figures, read paragraphs or associate ideas, and it 
 was found that there was marked deterioration 
 in the ability to remember, to cast up figures or 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY n 
 
 to do any serious kind of thinking, and that the 
 deterioration in the test was marked by the sound- 
 ing of gongs, the lifting of the fingers from elec- 
 trical keys, and by closing the periods every half- 
 hour or so and minutely recording the hits and 
 misses. It was also found that this reduced capac- 
 ity for the exercise of the mental functions per- 
 sisted one or two days or even more after the al- 
 cohol had been taken. In other tests alcohol was 
 given on one day or group of days and none al- 
 lowed for the next period of similar duration. 
 A test was made with a squad of quick-firing sol- 
 diers who on days when they drank nothing could 
 hit the target twenty times in thirty shots, and 
 when they had taken from three to four pints of 
 beer could only hit it three times. 
 
 Aschaffenburg, a former pupil of Kraepelin, 
 made a test in a printing office. The experiment 
 extended over four days. The first and third days 
 were abstinence days; on the second and fourth 
 the men were allowed to have a little less than a 
 tumblerful of Greek wine. The printed copy was 
 identical. The result of the experiment was that 
 on the drinking days, and those of most moderate 
 drinking, too, the men set up ten per cent less type 
 than .on the days they took no liquor. 
 
 Wundt, the father of physiological experi- 
 mental psychology, measured the discharge of sin- 
 gle reactions from single stimulus. Kraepelin 
 introduced the chronometer for measuring pro- 
 
12 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 longed mental work, and Dr. A. Smith of Schloss 
 Marback made still further experiments and dis- 
 coveries in the important field of measuring the 
 deteriorating influence of drink on mental pro- 
 cesses. 
 
 These discoveries of the ill effects of alcohol on 
 the mind were a great surprise to science. For 
 from time immemorial alcohol in moderation was 
 considered not only beneficial but indispensable to 
 the highest mental and physical effort. This opin- 
 ion was held because subjective psychology de- 
 clared it to be true. Through all the centuries 
 men had declared that use of alcohol had made 
 them feel better and enabled them to do more 
 work, and science accepted that verdict as admit- 
 ting of no debate. And when the scientists who 
 have discovered the damage of drink to the in- 
 tellect began their investigation only compara- 
 tively recently they did so with the full belief that 
 alcohol was a blessing and started in to measure 
 the beneficial effect on intellectual processes. Lo 
 and behold, to their astonishment, they found that 
 the opposite was true, that alcohol was a positive 
 injury to the mind; and they measured that injury 
 so accurately and conclusively that science has 
 been compelled to change its mind and reverse its 
 verdict of the ages; and psychology, which has 
 been one of the strongest friends and supporters 
 of alcohol, has become one of its most irrecon- 
 cilable enemies. 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 13 
 
 Professor Emil Kraepelin, than whom there is 
 no greater authority on this subject, in an ad- 
 dress to the students of the University of Munich, 
 confesses that he began the measurement of men- 
 tal processes with the firm belief that alcohol was 
 a benefit to the mind, but that positive scientific 
 facts under his own eye had compelled a change 
 in his opinion. These are his words : 
 
 I myself have been greatly surprised at the results of 
 accurate experiments, for I was looking for such favor- 
 able effects of alcohol upon our mental life as should 
 compensate for the mischief wrought thereby. But now 
 we see clearly what is the nature of the condition into 
 which we put ourselves by the use of alcohol; a paralyz- 
 ing of the power of apprehension and the highest mental 
 functions, which finally leads to the well-defined clouding 
 of consciousness, and an excitation in the realm of the im- 
 pulses, which lets the control of our wills slip away from 
 us more and more. And this is the condition that we light- 
 heartedly make the center of our good times, for the sake 
 of which we fondly form those drinking-customs which 
 devastate our nation. Even if alcoholic intoxication pro- 
 duced all those desired effects upon our mental life which 
 are ascribed to it by liquor-dealers and drinkers in their 
 enthusiasm, we should have to turn from it in horror as 
 soon as we beheld its terrible footprints on our national 
 life. 
 
 The friendliness of science to alcohol and its 
 championship of it is mentioned in an address by 
 Professor Smith of Schloss Marbach in a lecture 
 
i 4 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 before the Munich section of the German Society 
 for Ethical Culture, in which he says: 
 
 It was to be expected that with the animosity prevail- 
 ing among all classes toward all experiments that dis- 
 credit the use of alcohol, strictly scientific circles being no 
 exception, voices would be raised charging the experi- 
 ments with at least an auto-suggestive influence, if not 
 directly accusing them of intentional misrepresentation. 
 The necessity for forestalling such objection was so im- 
 pressed upon me from the start that I had a second per- 
 son repeat some of my experiments and obtained in a 
 friendly way for this purpose a schoolmaster who lived 
 near me, whom I knew to be a thoroughly reliable man, 
 but who on the other hand, I must admit, would have 
 been glad to have his tests produce results opposite from 
 mine, for he was of the opinion that alcohol in moderate 
 doses was practically indispensable for promoting physical 
 and mental work. This man practiced total abstinence 
 for four days before beginning the experiment. Then for 
 eight successive days he worked without alcohol, then for 
 six days under the influence of eighty-gram doses of alco- 
 hol so arranged that the work was done twenty hours 
 after the alcohol was taken. Then there were six days 
 without alcohol and then again two days with it at the 
 close. His working ability for both memorizing and add- 
 ing fell for the first time directly, after the first alcohol 
 was taken; then it arose again as suddenly in the follow- 
 ing non-alcoholic periods, and with the second alcoholic 
 period it again suddenly dropped. 
 
 Aschaffenburg makes this record of a test show- 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 15 
 
 ing the mental effect of beer- and wine-drinking 
 on the school children of Vienna : 
 
 Observations were made by Bayer, who investigated the 
 habits of 591 children in a public school in Vienna. These 
 pupils were ranked by their teachers into three groups, de- 
 noting progress as "good," "fair" or "poor" respectively. 
 Bayer found on investigation that 134 of these pupils 
 took no alcoholic drink; that 164 drank alcoholics very 
 seldom; but that 219 drank beer or wine once a day; 
 71 drank it twice daily, and 3 drank it with every meal. 
 Of the total abstainers 42 per .cent, ranked in the school 
 as "good," 49 per cent, as "fair," and 9 per cent, as "poor." 
 Of the occasional drinkers 34 per cent, ranked as "good," 
 57 per cent, as "fair," and 9 per cent, as "poor." Of the 
 daily drinkers 28 per cent, ranked as "good," 58 per cent, 
 as "fair" and 14 per cent, as "poor." Those who drank 
 twice daily ranked 25 per cent, "good," 58 per cent, 
 "fair" and 18 per cent, "poor." Of the three who drank 
 thrice daily, one ranked as "fair," the other two as 
 "poor." 
 
 The present Department of Health of New 
 York City issued a bulletin on the deleterious ef- 
 fect of alcohol on the brain and thought growing 
 out of it. The following quotations from it are 
 peculiarly appropriate here: 
 
 The chief difference between man and the lower ani- 
 mals is the brain development. The brain is man's dear- 
 est possession, and nature's best gift. Now, because of the 
 fact that the brain is such a wonderful piece of machinery, 
 and such a complicated machine, it is the most delicate 
 
1 6 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 and most sensitive part of the body. Moreover, the parts 
 of the brain that distinguish it most are its most sensitive 
 parts. These parts are the ones that have to do with 
 thinking, judging and controlling our actions. A thing 
 that is very sensitive is a thing that is very easily bruised, 
 hurt and damaged. Alcohol is a poison to all parts of the 
 body, but it is easy to understand that the part which 
 alcohol can damage most quickly and to the greatest ex- 
 tent is the delicate and sensitive brain. And that is a 
 fact. The first effect of taking alcohol into the system is 
 felt by the brain; the worst damage is done to the most 
 delicate parts of the brain; and so it follows that when a 
 man takes a couple of drinks of strong liquor it promptly 
 muddles his thinking, weakens his judgment, and loosens 
 his control over his actions. In other words, it quickly 
 steals from him what is best in him; it reduces the force 
 of highest brain control which nature has given him, 
 which he has developed through ages, and which marks 
 him out as different from brute animals. Civilized man 
 equals brute animal plus high brain development. Alcohol 
 blots out the "high brain development" and leaves behind 
 the brute animal. 
 
 Now, of course, we don't mean to say that when a per- 
 son takes a drink of anything containing alcohol he is 
 reduced at once to a brute animal ; but very few will dis- 
 pute that a drunken person is not much better than a 
 brute animal. And the reason he has been reduced to such 
 a state by the alcohol is that before he can take enough of 
 it to kill his body he has had enough to paralyze his brain, 
 especially the highest parts of his brain. It has paralyzed 
 his power to think, it has paralyzed his power to judge, 
 it has paralyzed his power to control his actions. The 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 17 
 
 amount of alcohol which makes a person drunken varies 
 with different people. Some can stand very little, others 
 a great deal. However, even a very little, though it 
 does not show itself in drunkenness, has a damaging effect 
 on the brain. This is what we want to point out particu- 
 larly. Too many people think that if they drink alcohol 
 in moderation, such, for example, as three or four glasses 
 of beer a day, or one or two drinks of whiskey a day, 
 they are not doing themselves any harm at all. Very 
 many think that they may safely drink as long as they 
 stop before getting drunk. These are very dangerous and 
 mistaken ideas to have. Drinking, even in moderation, 
 has dangers for the brains and nerves, and steady drink- 
 ing is vary bad. 
 
 Women and young persons sooner become victims to the 
 brain-weakening effects of alcohol than men and older 
 persons. That is because women and young persons have 
 more sensitive nervous systems and brains. So it is clear 
 that women and young persons should be particularly 
 careful to steer clear of liquor. 
 
 The effect of moderate drinking on the powers of the 
 brain were carefully studied. For example, a number 
 of bookkeepers who have to deal with figures, which is the 
 kind of work which requires a clear brain and also the 
 kind whose quality can be easily compared from time to 
 time, were given alcohol daily for two weeks in amounts 
 that would equal what is contained in about four glasses 
 of beer. At the end of two weeks their ability to add 
 simple figures was reduced by 15 per cent. 
 
 There are psychologists of great ability and re- 
 nown who hold to the old opinion of science that 
 
1 8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 alcohol does not harm, but helps the mental pro- 
 cesses. The late Doctor Hugo Miinsterberg, for 
 twenty-five years the head of the psychological 
 department of Harvard University, the highest 
 authority in America on German ideas and ideals, 
 in McClure's Magazine for August, 1908, makes 
 the most specious plea for that side of the ques- 
 tion we have seen. That plea the editor of the 
 magazine in the same issue declines to be respon- 
 sible for. But the same article has confessions 
 that largely counteract the effect of the professor's 
 scientific contentions. Here is one of them : 
 
 Of course, alcohol before serious intellectual work dis- 
 turbs me. I live most comfortably in a pleasant tem- 
 perance town which will, I hope, vote no-license year 
 by year as long as freshmen stroll over the old Harvard 
 yard. 
 
 The pleasant temperance town to which Doctor 
 Miinsterberg refers is the city of Cambridge, 
 Massachusetts, the seat of Harvard University, 
 small as compared with Boston, of which it is a 
 suburb, but itself a city of ever 100,000 inhab- 
 itants; and it is likely that this brilliant scientific 
 champion of alcohol and other distinguished 
 members of the faculty at Harvard voted no- 
 license in the wet and dry campaigns carried on in 
 that college town for the past twenty years. 
 
 Professor Miinsterberg then continues his ad- 
 missions : 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 19 
 
 The problem of Prohibition does not affect my thirst, 
 but it greatly interests my scientific conscience; not as a 
 German, but as a psychologist, I feel impelled to add a 
 word to the discussion which is suddenly reverberating 
 over the whole country. But is it really a discussion 
 which we hear? Is it not rather a one-sided denuncia- 
 tion of alcohol, repeated a million times with louder and 
 louder voice, an outcry ever swelling in its vehemence? 
 On the other side there may be the protests of the dis- 
 tillers and brewers and wine-growers and bottle-makers 
 and saloonkeepers and perhaps some timid declarations 
 of thirsty societies, but such protests do not count, since 
 they have all the ear-marks of selfishness; they are ruled 
 out and no one listens, just as no one would consult the 
 thieves if a new statute against pickpockets was planned. 
 So far as the disinterested public is concerned, the dis- 
 cussion is essentially one-sided. 
 
 The professor makes another confession in the 
 article which might be used to advantage as a 
 leaflet by the Prohibitionists in wet and dry cam- 
 paigns anywhere. It is this: 
 
 Exaggerated denunciation of the Prohibition movement 
 is, of course, ineffective. Whoever simply takes sides with 
 the saloonkeeper and his clientele yes, whoever is blind to 
 the colossal harm which alcohol has brought and is now 
 bringing to the whole country is unfit to be heard by 
 those who have the healthy and sound development of the 
 nation at heart. The evils which are connected with the 
 drinking habit are gigantic; thousands of lives and many 
 more thousands of households are the victims every year; 
 
20 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 disease and poverty and crime grow up where alcohol 
 drenches the soul. To deny it means to ignore the teach- 
 ings of medicine and economics and criminology. 
 
 In the Ladies' Home Journal Professor Miins- 
 terberg wrote. 
 
 There is nothing more degrading and no more atro- 
 cious insult to civilized life than the American saloon. It 
 has poisoned the social atmosphere for the masses; in 
 it the workingman squanders his savings, and the healthy 
 man devastates his energies and becomes a wreck. Po- 
 litical corruption radiates from the saloon into the whole 
 public life, and a thousand ways lead from the saloon to 
 the penitentiary. It is a blessed movement which now 
 turns with overwhelming energy against the horrors of 
 this evil and unites the clean minds of the whole nation 
 in an untiring fight against this source of infection. There 
 may be disagreements as to the best ways and means, dis- 
 agreement whether strict Prohibition or education toward 
 temperance is the more reliable method; but there is no 
 disagreement as to the fact that the saloon has to be wiped 
 out; and the day seems near indeed when thanks to 
 women the fight against the saloon will be taken up 
 in almost every state. 
 
 While the laboratory of the chemist, the experi- 
 ments of the psychologist, the accurate measure- 
 ments of the specialist reveal the damage of drink 
 to the brain cells and mental processes, the school 
 of practical life is teaching the same truth in the 
 every-day illustrations. It is seen in communities 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 21 
 
 where intoxicating liquors are allowed in the gig- 
 gle and gabble of the girl in the street car, who, 
 usually reserved, inflamed with wine, makes a 
 fool of herself; in the man who, not usually bold, 
 without voice or invitation, befuddled with rum, 
 insists on singing a solo in a crowded railway car; 
 or in the man stupefied with beer who has sunk 
 down in a stupor in the corner of the seat and has 
 to be shaken by the conductor till his teeth rattle 
 to be made to understand that it is his ticket that 
 is wanted; in the poor fellow who walks out of the 
 corner groggery and incoherently undertakes to 
 enter into conversation with every stranger he 
 meets to tell him how much he loves him; in the 
 smartest boy in the school who learned the way to 
 the saloon, and as a man walks the streets a 
 driveling idiot; in the cool, level-headed, honest, 
 industrious man who was made crazy with rum, 
 and as a maniac slew his best friend. 
 
 A SOURCE OF INSANITY 
 
 Rum is a demon dominating the mind, knowing 
 that, having that, it possesses all the rest there is 
 in man. It dulls the perceptions, beclouds the 
 memory, unsteadies the judgment, crazes the im- 
 I agination, unbalances the reason, freezes the af- 
 fections, sears the conscience, and paralyzes the 
 will- 
 Alcohol not only deteriorates the brain cells, be- 
 fuddles the intellect, and furnishes the tottering 
 
22 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 drunkard and wretch with the delirium tremens, 
 but it becomes the devil incarnate in its assassina- 
 tion of the intellect, making the victim unwittingly 
 a mental suicide, and society, by its license, his tor- 
 turer and mental murderer. 
 
 Doctor Frederick Peterson in New York City 
 is an acknowledged authority on mental diseases; 
 for twenty years he has been connected with Co- 
 lumbia University, the past fourteen years as 
 clinic professor of psychiatry. I called upon Dr. 
 Peterson to ask him to give me some facts as to 
 the ill effects of alcohol on the brain, nervous sys- 
 tem and mental processes. His knowledge and 
 experience in this field of medical science make 
 his opinion of untold value to the cause of truth. 
 He said, "I have read a paper before the New 
 York State Conference of Charities and Correc- 
 tion, which is printed in the New York Medical 
 Journal, which I think contains what you want." 
 It was exactly what I wanted. Among other 
 things in the paper Doctor Peterson said : 
 
 Insanity and epilepsy are among the diseases that taint 
 our progeny. Alcohol is the chief poison that has this 
 baneful power. As an example of what one individual 
 may do I might cite the oft-quoted Jukes family in the 
 State of New York. One hard drinker was the origina- 
 tor of this family which, over a generation ago, when 
 Dugdale wrote his book, had become already 1,200 in 
 number. In his summary of the study of the Jukes family 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 23 
 
 of degenerates the author says: "Over a million and a 
 quarter dollars of loss in seventy-five years, caused by a 
 single family, 1,200 strong, without reckoning the cash 
 paid for whisky or taking into account the entailment of 
 pauperism and crime on the survivors in succeeding gener- 
 ations, and the incurable disease, idiocy, and insanity 
 growing out of this debauchery, and reaching further than 
 we can calculate." This is one family. 
 
 In the State of New York there are now some 30,000 
 insane in the public and private hospitals, and it is esti- 
 mated that twenty per cent, of these, or 6,000 patients, 
 owe their insanity to alcohol. In all the asylums of the 
 United States there are 150,000 insane, and assuming the 
 same percentage there are 30,000 individuals in this 
 country in whom alcohol has brought about insanity. 
 Doctor MacDonald calculates that one insane person is 
 an approximate loss to the State of $400 a year. Hence 
 the actual loss in money to the State of New York through 
 alcoholic insanity is $2,400,000, and to the United States 
 $12,000,000 every year. There is not time here to take 
 up the subject of the relation of alcohol to pauperism and 
 crime. But what I want to point out is that the asylums 
 for the insane, the institutions for epileptics, idiots and 
 feeble-minded, the prisons and the county poorhouses, are 
 representative, as far as their alcoholic population is con- 
 cerned, of the extremes of alcoholic indulgence and de- 
 bauchery. Here alcohol has done its worst to the living 
 individual. Below this topmost wave of ruin and deso- 
 lation are innumerable gradations of alcoholism down to 
 the moderate drinkers and the temperate or occasional 
 drinkers. 
 
 The race is reasonably safe from further contamination 
 
24 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 of those victims of alcohol who are locked away in the 
 retreats that our charitable world provides for them. 
 It is otherwise with the vaster number of excessive 
 drinkers, who are free to work any havoc in the social 
 organism and who are direct and indirect feeders of the 
 institutions named. What these may do to themselves, 
 their wives and their children and their children's chil- 
 dren we have come to learn, and it is because of this 
 awakening to a common danger to the human race that 
 the nations of the earth are combined in a common 
 campaign. It is not a single Jukes family that society has 
 ranged itself against, but against the legions of Jukes 
 families that menace the human stock. My views on this 
 subject briefly expressed are printed on my own prescrip- 
 tion blanks as follows: 
 
 Alcohol is a poison. It is claimed by some that alcohol 
 is a food. If so it is a poisoned food. The daily regular 
 use of alcohol, even in moderation, often leads to chronic 
 alcoholism. 
 
 One is poisoned less rapidly by the use of beer than by 
 drinking wines, gin, whisky and brandy. 
 
 Alcohol is one of the most common causes of insanity, 
 epilepsy, paralysis, diseases of the liver and stomach, dropsy 
 and tuberculosis. 
 
 A father or mother who drinks poisons the children 
 born to them, so that many die in infancy, while others 
 grow up as idiots and epileptics. 
 
 Mr. Filmore Condit, a merchant of New York, 
 a modest potential factor of moral reform, gave 
 me a copy of his pamphlet on " Alcohol and Insan- 
 ity," quotations from which follow: 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 25 
 
 "August Arrivey, thirty years old, a printer by trade, is 
 under arrest here, the confessed murderer of his mother, 
 Mrs. Mary Arrivey, fifty-eight years old. 'The man in 
 the airship told me to do it/ Arrivey continually mutters 
 as the only reason for his crime. Because of his actions 
 the police believe him insane. Liquor is believed, however, 
 to be at the root of the man's crime, as he had for the 
 last few years obtained one position after another, only to 
 lose them in rapid succession on account of sprees. Mrs. 
 Arrivey was found lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen, 
 with her skull crushed and her face gashed as if from 
 blows from a hatchet. Search of the premises disclosed the 
 son, muttering like a child, hiding behind some bushes in 
 the yard. Confronted with the dead body of his mother, 
 he confessed his crime." This paragraph, which appeared 
 in a Stockton, California, paper, a few days ago, is one 
 which shocks us for a moment as we read it, and is then 
 forgotten as a commonplace incident of life. 
 
 The causes of insanity in our nation are so interwoven 
 with the warp and woof of violated moral law that no 
 single explanation is sufficient, but from hospitals and 
 authorities upon the subject comes abundant and con- 
 clusive evidence that alcoholism overshadows all other 
 causes in the destruction of human minds. It produces 
 insanity in three ways: First, directly, to drinkers as a 
 result of their overindulgence in intoxicants; second, in- 
 directly, through heredity, drinkers transmit to their 
 descendants a predisposition to insanity and neurotic weak- 
 ness; third, indirectly, as a cause of family, social and 
 business trouble, it often is a contributory cause of 
 insanity. 
 
 Doctor T. S. Clouston, of Edinburgh, who is 
 
26 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 one of the highest living authorities upon unsound- 
 ness of mind, says: "Alcohol is by far the most 
 common and the most characteristic of the poisons 
 introduced from without, that have a markedly 
 hurtful influence on the brain cells. If Socrates or 
 Marcus Aurelius or Job had continuously poisoned 
 their brains with London gin they would inevit- 
 ably have become unsound in mind." 
 
 Recent annual reports from forty hospitals in 
 Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Delaware, 
 Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Massachusetts, 
 Ohio, Washington, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, 
 Maryland, Iowa and Connecticut show that in 
 15,363 cases of insanity where the causes were 
 known, in 3,383, or 22 per cent., alcohol was 
 stated as the single direct cause. 
 
 Albert Warren Ferris, M.D., Sheldon T. Viele 
 and William T. Parkhurst, Lunacy Commissioners 
 of New York, having charge of thirteen great 
 hospitals containing over thirty thousand insane 
 people, stated that 27.5 per cent, of admissions 
 from cities, and 14.2 per cent, from rural dis- 
 tricts are due to alcohol, and that it is an etiologi- 
 cal factor in almost 40 per cent, of all admissions. 
 
 The leading authorities of the entire world are 
 in close accord in tracing insanity to alcoholism. 
 Berkeley, Spitzka and others say: "Of all the 
 varied causes of mental infirmities, heredity and 
 alcohol are the most important." Kraepelin 
 says: "We are fully acquainted with some im- 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 27 
 
 portant and widespread causes of insanity. Among 
 these stands first and foremost the abuse of al- 
 cohol" 
 
 Mr. Condit, by a comparison of wet and dry 
 States, .and groups of States, shows that the heavy 
 drinking States furnish by far the largest percent- 
 age of insanity. "From January I, 1910, to July, 
 1914, the insanity of New York, Pennsylvania, 
 New Jersey and Massachusetts increased from 
 64,000 to over 88,000, or an annual increase of 
 6.12 per cent., while that of Kansas and Maine 
 increased from 4,170 to 4,583, or an annual in- 
 crease of 1.52 per cent. New York had 31,000 
 insane in 1910 and over 40,000 July i, 1916, 
 while the sixteen States which were without 
 saloons in July, 1916, had only 32,000, or eight 
 thousand fewer insane people than the State of 
 New York alone. In tracing to alcohol the de- 
 struction of the intellect we remember that New 
 York State has 31,000 dealers in intoxicating 
 liquors, more than all the fifteen States of the 
 South and Southwest. Not only have New York 
 and New Jersey heavy burdens for their own 
 taxpayers, but their alcoholic insane and neurotics 
 are taxing the people of other commonwealths. 
 Thus the latest report of the Ohio hospitals for 
 the insane showed that in 1914 they contained 
 874 patients who were natives of New York, 193 
 of New Jersey, 321 of Massachusetts, and only 
 32 of Maine and 28 of Kansas." 
 
28 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 THE SEWER GANG 
 
 I here call to the witness stand a young man 
 plucked as a brand from the burning. 
 
 At the close of a meeting of the Men and For- 
 ward Religious Movement, held in Carnegie 
 Music Hall in New York, I was coming down the 
 steps of the speakers' platform when a tall, hand- 
 some young man standing near me asked: "Were 
 you ever at Bloomington, Illinois?" 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "I was pastor of the First 
 Methodist Church of that city thirty years ago." 
 
 "I remember you," he said. "I am Jim Good- 
 heart, Jr." 
 
 "Jim Goodheart, Jr.! God bless you, my boy!" 
 I cried, "I could hug you for the love I have for 
 your father, the simple, modest man, and yet the 
 great and good heart his name indicates, veteran 
 of the Union Army, Sheriff of McLean County, 
 Illinois, my trusted class leader and strong help 
 in our revival." 
 
 "I remember that revival well," he said. "It 
 lasted two months and resulted in five hundred 
 conversions. I was a member of the 'Sewer 
 Gang,' the 'Dirty Dozen,' which often attended 
 the meetings in a body to criticize, make fun, and 
 scoff. Some of us felt a strange divine influence, 
 but the pull of the devil on us through the saloon 
 was too much for us, and we were kept away from 
 God and the good. Did you ever hear of the 
 tragical fate of that gang?" 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 29 
 
 I replied, "I never heard till just now that 
 there was such a gang." 
 
 "The story of their fate is almost too horrible 
 to tell or believe/' he said. "Every one of the 
 twelve went to the dogs through strong drink, I 
 among them. I came back. I was picked up 
 drunk out of the gutter and saved, and am now 
 the superintendent of the Sunshine Rescue Mis- 
 sion of Denver, Colorado, and a delegate to this 
 laymen's convention. The rest never reformed, 
 and all the eleven came to a bad end." 
 
 By this time the surging crowd had pushed us 
 to the door. Having an immediate appointment 
 elsewhere, I said, "Their tragical story shocks me. 
 When you get back home write me briefly some of 
 the particulars of that 'Sewer Gang' and the ter- 
 rible fate of which you speak." 
 
 I got a letter from Jim Goodheart, Jr., written 
 from the Sunshine Rescue Mission of Denver, 
 from which I quote verbatim: 
 
 "The group of persons of whom I spoke to you 
 was known in Bloomington as the 'Dirty Dozen' 
 or 'Sewer Gang.' It had a president, vice-presi- 
 dent and secretary, and was composed of boys 
 from fourteen to nineteen years of age, desperate 
 in character. Four of that gang of twelve are 
 murderers, and are serving life sentences in vari- 
 ous penitentiaries. One is in an insane asylum, a 
 hopeless wreck. Five are dead, either having been 
 killed in saloon brawls or in railroad accidents 
 
30 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 while under the influence of liquor. The eleventh 
 is a confirmed drunkard in Bloomington, and I am 
 the twelfth. Ten of our 'Dirty Dozen' are in the 
 ground and behind bars." 
 
 Recently I was asked by the National Anti- 
 Saloon League to spend a week speaking in the 
 wet and dry campaign in Bloomington and vicin- 
 ity, and the wreck of the "Sewer Gang" aroused 
 my conscience and stirred my zeal in the fight 
 against the saloon. If Bloomington had been dry 
 thirty years ago, as it is today, it is likely there 
 would have been no "Sewer Gang," and that those 
 composing it would have been in the church, lead- 
 ing useful, honored and happy lives. The four 
 who were murderers and the five who were killed 
 had their minds bereft of reason and bodies 
 poisoned with alcohol. With the record of this 
 wreck, the statement of the liquor editors and ora- 
 tors that alcohol is not a poison but a food, that 
 it does not shorten life, that it does not pollute 
 character or damage the community, that it is not 
 the parent of lawlessness, seems an impertinence 
 and a mockery. The damage it does is destroy- 
 ing the saloon as much as anything else. The ruin 
 of precious boys' lives like those in Bloomington 
 is doing as much as the preachers or women or 
 professors or doctors or big business men or legis- 
 latures to dethrone King Alcohol. 
 
 The fate of the Bloomington boys calls to mind 
 the Greek fable of the twelve young men and 
 
ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOLOGY 31 
 
 twelve young maidens who were eaten every year 
 by the serpent king. The story is that a king in 
 his travels came on an island of surpassing beauty. 
 He lingered at a lake surrounded with flowers of 
 exquisite hue and delicious perfume. Looking 
 out, he saw fierce lions ready to devour him. The 
 lake spoke to him and told him that the king of 
 the island was a serpent with seven heads and that 
 he killed all that set foot on his shores. The ser- 
 pent came from his palace and told the visitor that 
 he would spare his life on the condition that he 
 would send twelve of the finest young men and 
 maidens each year to be eaten by him, threaten- 
 ing that if the toll of young life were not sent 
 he would take his beasts and destroy the whole 
 nation. Twelve of the most beautiful young men 
 and women volunteered each year to save the 
 nation. And in a ship painted black, with jet 
 black sails, amidst universal lamentation, went the 
 precious lives to their terrible fate. The horse of 
 the prince told him the sacrifice made for so many 
 years was unnecessary and sent him to a woman in 
 a cave in the mountain, who told him how to kill 
 the serpent king. And he muffled the alarm bells 
 of the bed chamber with cotton and took the 
 sword which hung above him, with which he killed 
 others, and with it cut off the seven serpent heads, 
 and the toll of precious life was ended. Alcohol 
 is the seven-headed serpent king who demands a 
 toll for death of not only twelve young men and 
 
32 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 maidens but of one hundred thousand each year. 
 There is a deep conviction in the land that the toll 
 is unnecessary and that the thing to do is to kill 
 the serpent king. This is being done. The 
 "Sewer Gangs/' the "Dirty Dozens" of the nation 
 are doing their part in dethroning and destroying 
 King Alcohol. They have turned on the serpent 
 to torture him. They are decapitating him with 
 the same sword with which he slew others. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGV 
 
 ALCOHOL breaks down the body as com- 
 pletely as it shatter the mind. Every 
 organ of the body, the lungs, the heart, 
 the liver, the stomach and kidneys, is affected by 
 this drug. Science has discovered that alcohol is 
 a poison. Over three hundred years ago a Swiss 
 physician and chemist of ability and renown, who 
 called himself Paracelsus, devoted much of his 
 time in his laboratory searching for the elixir of 
 life, that should turn the baser metals into gold 
 and prolong human life. He loudly proclaimed 
 to the world he had found it; it was our alcohol. 
 He partook of it freely to demonstrate its immor- 
 tal influence on the body and in the prime of life 
 died drunk on the floor of a tavern, murdered by 
 what he thought was the u elixir of life." Ever 
 since then the world has been making the mistake 
 of this alchemist and suffering the consequences. 
 Doctor Haven Emerson, Commissioner of 
 Health of New York City, deserves the gratitude 
 of the whole nation for his courage in proclaiming 
 alcohol a poison which breaks down all the organs 
 of the body, and calling upon the people of the 
 
 33 
 
34 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 city and nation to put their faces against it. The 
 scientific and medical journals, and the secular 
 press generally, have given wide publicity to his 
 bulletins, especially those warning against the 
 damage of intoxicating liquors. I take the privi- 
 lege of making extensive quotations from those 
 bulletins. 
 
 In one of the bulletins I found a slip about three 
 inches long and an inch and a half wide, in black 
 and yellow, with yellow letters at the top, "Health 
 Book-Mark." In the center of the card is a bottle 
 of whisky representing the body of a man on legs 
 which is being broken. Underneath the picture 
 and at the bottom of the book-mark there is 
 printed: 
 
 "Whisky is poison. Save your body. Save your brain, 
 whisky brings you death and pain." 
 
 Under this in small gilt letters is : "This is one 
 of a series. Collect the rest. Department of 
 Health of the City of New York." 
 
 In one of these bulletins Doctor Emerson says : 
 
 If a flagon of alcohol were offered to a student of 
 pharmacology to test as a curiosity, and he applied the 
 standard methods of physiological experiment to it, he 
 could but come to the conclusion that he was dealing with 
 a more dangerous chemical than any now available in the 
 whole range of materia medica, not second to opium or 
 its derivatives as a destroyer of character, a disturber of 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 35 
 
 function and a degenerator of tissue; and he would be 
 quite justified in advising the prohibition of its manufac- 
 ture and use as a beverage. 
 
 Alcohol, a consistently depressing, habit-forming drug, 
 causes characteristic, easily recognized diseases of the 
 brain, nerves and special senses. Alcohol causes definite 
 damage to the heart, kidneys, blood vessels and organs of 
 digestion, especially the stomach and liver. When alcohol 
 is used so moderately as to cause none of the special dis- 
 eases due solely to its effects, it is known to damage the 
 unborn babe, the nursing child and the grown man and 
 woman in such ways as to render them peculiarly suscep- 
 tible to the infectious and communicable diseases to which 
 all people are exposed. 
 
 From the records of the Department of Health of the 
 City of New York it appears that there are annually at 
 least two thousand deaths admittedly due to the excessive 
 use of alcohol. It is a matter of record that eight thou- 
 sand cases of acute alcoholism are treated annually at 
 Bellevue Hospital, New York. Anybody familiar with 
 general medical practice or the service in the general medi- 
 cal wards in any hospital in the large cities of this country, 
 where the use of alcohol is common, will be willing to 
 testify to the very considerable, if not determining role 
 that alcoholic habit plays in the course and termination of 
 a large proportion of the diseases which come under ob- 
 servation. 
 
 Is this not sufficient to justify the use of such powers as 
 the Board of Health has to prevent the use of alcohol in 
 the community? 
 
 Almost all lung specialists of any ability or note 
 record the manifest damage alcohol does to the 
 
36 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 lungs. Doctor Emerson's bulletin, "T. B. and His 
 Friend, Mr. Alcohol," shows how intimate the re- 
 lationship is between tuberculosis and strong 
 drink. The bulletin follows : 
 
 MR. T. B. AND HIS FRIEND, MR. ALCOHOL 
 
 Two of the worst enemies you and I have are tubercu- 
 losis and alcohol. We have become pretty well acquainted 
 with Mr. T. B., and are fighting him tooth and nail ; but 
 many of us seem not to realize that Mr. Alcohol is an 
 even worse enemy than tuberculosis. So we go on drink- 
 ing alcoholic beverages, and because we don't die of what 
 the doctor calls alcohol poisoning, we think they have done 
 us no harm. 
 
 The trouble is that most of us need to have a skull 
 and crossbones staring us in the face before we think that 
 there is any danger. Tuberculosis is an honest enemy who 
 lets us know when he has arrived. We hear a dry, hard 
 cough and see a thin, tired-looking person with some flush 
 on his cheeks. At once we turn away in horror and say 
 "Look out! that's T. B." But with alcohol it is different. 
 Disguised by the good taste of beer or by the bracing feel- 
 ing which whisky gives, Mr. Alcohol easily makes friends, 
 and in our ignorance we believe that he is a jolly good 
 sport who will never do us any harm. 
 
 But this foxy old poison, alcohol, is a friend of Mr. 
 Tuberculosis, a sort of scout who goes about getting things 
 ready for the germs to settle. He works slowly, doing a 
 little damage here and there, and then when the victim 
 catches a cold, in walks Mr. Tuberculosis and settles 
 down to do his deadly work, and nobody ever thinks of 
 blaming Mr. Alcohol, who is really behind all the trouble. 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 37 
 
 This is the way it works: Jim drinks a little beer, not 
 much, say four glasses in the course of the day. That's 
 a quart of beer. In the quart of beer are two ounces of 
 alcohol. Jim's body can stand it for a few days, but after 
 a while his blood begins to wear out, the blood vessels in 
 the skin and in the lungs become weak, and the tiny cells 
 that make up the body get less nourishment because the 
 circulation of the blood is sluggish. When this happens 
 and any disease germs come along, there is less power to 
 resist them, and Mr. Tuberculosis, or some other disease 
 germ, gets in his work. 
 
 At the Otisville tuberculosis sanatorium, conducted by 
 the New York City Health Department, the doctors found 
 that the patients who use alcohol have much less chance 
 of getting well. Almost all of those who do not drink 
 improve greatly in health, but only about a quarter of 
 those who drink improve. Twice as many drinkers die 
 as those who leave Mr. Alcohol alone. This shows how 
 close friends Mr. Alcohol and Mr. Tuberculosis are; they 
 are hard enough to beat one at a time, but when they get 
 together they are a deadly pair. 
 
 You can not be absolutely sure of escaping Mr. Tu- 
 berculosis, no matter how hard you try, but you can make 
 his chance of getting you very slim by leaving all alcohol 
 alone. 
 
 Doctor Emerson, at a meeting at the Hotel 
 Savoy in New York a few months ago, said: "The 
 death rate during an epidemic is always higher 
 among alcoholics than among temperate men. 
 The user of alcohol cannot fight off an infectious 
 disease because his power of resistance has been 
 
3 8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 broken down by the alcohol. This is especially 
 true of pneumonia. What a man did for himself 
 before he got pneumonia is vastly more important 
 than what the doctor does for him after he gets 
 it. If he has been a steady user of liquor his sys- 
 tem cannot withstand pneumonia. Years ago it 
 was the custom to give pneumonia patients two 
 ounces of alcohol every two hours; many of them 
 died under this treatment who would have been 
 saved today. Today no alcohol is used, and the 
 percentage of deaths has decreased greatly." 
 
 This close relationship between alcohol and 
 pneumonia was made the cause of a bulletin of 
 warning issued by the United States Public Health 
 Service on March 5, 1917: "The United States 
 Public Health Service brands strong drink as the 
 most efficient ally of pneumonia. The liberal and 
 continuous user of alcoholic drinks will do well to 
 heed this warning, especially at this season. In- 
 dulgence in alcoholic liquors lowers the individual 
 vitality, and the man who drinks is peculiarly sus- 
 ceptible to pneumonia. " The United States Pub- 
 lic Health Service is a conservative body. It does 
 not engage in alarmist propaganda, and it insists 
 that this warning is a fact that will bear endless 
 repetition. 
 
 Strong drink leaves a patient in poor condition 
 for an attack of typhoid fever, Bright's or any 
 other disease. In reference to the intimacy between 
 alcohol and Bright's disease, Doctor Emerson 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 39 
 
 makes this reflection: "You don't need alcohol 
 for health; you don't need it for strength; you 
 don't need it for food; you don't need it for drink; 
 it never does you any good. Then why drink?" 
 
 ALCOHOL AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
 
 Scarcely anything has been more marked than 
 the change of attitude toward alcohol on the part 
 of the medical profession. Not very many years 
 back almost all doctors prescribed liquors of one 
 kind or another for nearly every ailment that flesh 
 is heir to. But now, since science has proven al- 
 cohol, even in small quantities, to be a poison, 
 very many physicians will not prescribe it at all, 
 and almost all of them do so with extreme caution. 
 
 Some time ago, at a convention in London, at 
 which 10,000 physicians gathered from all nations 
 of the world, alcohol as a medicine was con- 
 demned, and the president of the convention made 
 a most powerful address, calling upon the physi- 
 cians of the world to take a place in the forefront 
 of the battle against intoxicants, the deadly enemy 
 of body and mind. 
 
 The complete revolution of the medical profes- 
 sion of the United States on the use of alcohol as 
 a beverage or medicine is seen at the annual meet- 
 ing of the American Medical Association recently 
 held in New York City. Doctor Frank Billings of 
 Chicago, the chairman of the Council on Health 
 
40 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 and Public Instruction, introduced a resolution, 
 unanimously passed by the Council, in which was 
 expressed the opinion that alcohol had no drug 
 value, either as a tonic or a stimulant ; that it had 
 no value in the treatment of disease, and that its 
 only legitimate use in medicine was as a preserva- 
 tive and in the preparation of certain pharmaceu- 
 tical products. 
 
 Dr. Charles H. Mayo of Rochester, Minne- 
 sota, the world-famous surgeon, in his address on 
 taking the chair as the president of the American 
 Medical Association strongly advocated Prohibi- 
 tion for the nation, not only for the war, but for 
 peace as well. The 1,500 delegates to the Na- 
 tional Convention of the Association in the Wal- 
 dorf-Astoria ballroom cheered their approval of 
 his demand that the doctors form a fighting 
 phalanx for Prohibition. Doctor Mayo urged 
 that the doctor's prescription of intoxicating liquor 
 be thrown into the wastebasket. Medicine, he 
 said, no longer needed alcohol, for it had some- 
 thing better. 
 
 If alcohol is the poison that science says it is 
 and the medical profession believes it is, then we 
 have a perfect right to expect the shortening of 
 life on the part of those who use intoxicating 
 drink. In searching for information upon the sub- 
 ject, I visited the actuaries of several of the lead- 
 ing life insurance companies of America, and 
 while they differed somewhat in their figures as 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 41 
 
 to the number of years less that the drinker has, 
 all agreed that his life is shortened. 
 
 Dr. Arthur Hunter, the Actuary of the New 
 York Life Insurance Company, himself the best 
 authority in the nation on the subject of the rela- 
 tion of drink to mortality, communicated with 
 forty-three other life insurance companies, on the 
 subject, and asserts that seven American com- 
 panies have proved that abstainers have from 10 
 to 30 per cent, lower mortality than non-ab- 
 stainers. 
 
 ALCOHOL POISONS LIFE AT ITS FOUNTAIN 
 
 One of the most tragical features of rum's 
 ravages is its deadly attack on the origins of life. 
 It hunts life at its very foundation and kills the 
 babe before it opens its eyes on this world or so 
 disables it physically and mentally as to leave it a 
 poor weakling, with pain, disappointment, failure 
 and early death as the result. 
 
 It is only within the last few years that science 
 has discovered this most enormously important 
 fact which gives falsehood to the statement that 
 alcohol is a food and proves it to be a poison of 
 the most insidious and deadly form. 
 
 DR. STOCKARD'S EXPERIMENTS 
 
 Experiments with the lower animals have 
 proven conclusively that alcohol is transmitted as 
 
42 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 a virulent poison to their offspring. Perhaps no 
 one in the two hemispheres is higher authority on 
 the poisonous effect of alcohol upon animal off- 
 spring than Professor C. R. Stockard of Cornell 
 University Medical College, in New York City. 
 He has been studying for a number of years the 
 effects of alcohol on the growth and development 
 of different animals, as well as the influence of 
 alcohol on the descendants, that is, the children, 
 grandchildren, etc., of alcoholized animals. The 
 results of Doctor Stockard's experiments have 
 been published in different medical and scientific 
 journals of this country and Europe, and I shall 
 give here the main result as gathered from these 
 various scientific articles. 
 
 His first work showed that when the eggs of 
 a fish were developing normally in salt water, a 
 little alcohol added to the water would cause the 
 young fish to be deformed and usually unable to 
 live. When chicken eggs were put in a dish filled 
 with alcoholic fumes the vapors would soak 
 through the shell, and the chickens that developed 
 in these eggs were often deformed or died in the 
 shell before hatching. Thus, the effect of alcohol 
 on the early developing body poisoned it in such 
 a way as to spoil its regular development. 
 
 The most important studies by Doctor Stock- 
 ard have shown the effect of alcohol on the chil- 
 dren and grandchildren of animals that were given 
 regular doses of alcohol for long periods of time. 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 43 
 
 Guinea pigs are used in this experiment, and have 
 taken enough alcohol to make them almost drunk 
 six days a week during several years. Inhaling 
 alcoholic fumes until intoxicated does not seem to 
 injure the body of the guinea pig. The animals 
 remain in good health and live long, yet if the 
 same alcohol is given the guinea pig in its stomach, 
 the results are very injurious, and the animal does 
 not survive the treatment very long. Unfor- 
 tunately, man takes his alcohol through the 
 stomach, and gets more injurious effects on diges- 
 tion than the guinea pigs get by inhaling alcoholic 
 fumes. But even inhaling the fumes does injure 
 the guinea pigs, as may be seen by studying the 
 records of the young born from alcoholic parents. 
 
 After studying these animals for six years, Doc- 
 tor Stockard has published facts to warrant the 
 following conclusions from the records of six 
 hundred and eighty-two offspring produced by 
 five hundred and seventy-one matings : 
 
 One hundred and sixty-four matings of alcohol- 
 ized mammals, in which either the father, mother 
 or both were alcoholic, gave 64, or almost 40 per 
 cent., negative results or early abortions, while 
 only 25 per cent, of the control matings failed to 
 give full-term litters. Of the 100 full-term litters 
 from alcoholic parents 18 per cent, contained 
 stillborn young, and only 50 per cent, of all the 
 matings resulted in living litters. Forty-six per 
 cent, of the individuals in the litters of living 
 
44 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 young died very soon after birth. In contrast to 
 this record 73 per cent, of the 90 control matings 
 gave living litters, and 84 per cent, of the young 
 in these litters survived as normal, healthy 
 animals. 
 
 The mating records of the descendants of the 
 alcoholized guinea pigs, although they themselves 
 were not treated with alcohol, compare in some 
 respects even more unfavorably with the control 
 records than the above figures from the directly 
 alcoholized animals. 
 
 Of 194 matings of the children from alcoholics 
 in various combinations 55 have resulted in nega- 
 tive results or early abortions; 18 stillborn litters 
 of 41 young occurred, and 17 per cent, of these 
 stillborn young were deformed. One hundred 
 and twenty-one living litters contained 199 young, 
 but 94 of these died within a few days, and al- 
 most 15 per cent, of them were deformed, while 
 105 survived and 7 of these showed eye deformi- 
 ties. Among 126 full-term control young of the 
 same stock not one has been deformed. 
 
 The records of the matings of the grandchil- 
 dren of alcoholic grandparents are still worse, 
 higher mortality and more pronounced deformi- 
 ties, while even the few great-grandchildren 
 which have survived are generally weak and in 
 many instances appear to be quite sterile, even 
 though paired with vigorous, prolific, normal 
 mates. 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 45 
 
 The structural defects shown by the descendants 
 of alcoholized animals seem to be confined chiefly 
 to the central nervous system and special sense 
 organs. Many of the young animals show 
 tremors or paralysis in the hind legs, fore legs or 
 both legs of one side. Eye defects are very com- 
 mon; some have only one good eye, and finally 
 several cases of complete absence of eyes have oc- 
 curred, the entire eyeballs and optic nerves being 
 absent. 
 
 Inbreeding tends to emphasize the alcoholic ef- 
 fects. This is probably due to related animals 
 responding to the treatment in closely similar 
 ways on account of the similarity of their consti- 
 tutions. Inbreeding, as such, may be harmful. 
 But inbreeding added to the alcohol effects pro- 
 duces a much worse condition in the offspring 
 than either inbreeding or alcoholism alone could 
 do. 
 
 Dr. Stockard showed me his collection of 400 
 guinea pigs, and when I asked to see the defectives 
 he said, "Oh, we cannot keep them, they all die.'* 
 
 These experiments of Doctor Stockard cer- 
 tainly prove beyond doubt that alcohol taken by 
 the parents causes a poor quality of offspring, and 
 that the injury is handed on even to the third and 
 fourth generation, in guinea pigs at least. There 
 are many things in the history of human families 
 which give one some justification in believing that 
 the horrible effects which Professor Stockard has 
 
46 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 shown experimentally on guinea pigs may also 
 follow in families of drunkards either man or 
 woman. In fact, the reliable men of science have 
 discovered positively that the children of alcohol- 
 ized parents are fewer than those who do not 
 touch drink, and those few children are liable to 
 be weak and defective in body and in mind. 
 
 A pamphlet printed by the Scientific Temper- 
 ance Federation, edited by E. L. Transeau and 
 C. F. Stoddard, says among other things : " 'Every 
 ten seconds a baby dies' is an estimate for the 
 whole world. In the United States alone not far 
 from 250,000 babies die each year. Among the 
 causes of this enormous loss of child life is the 
 use of alcohol by parents who do not know or 
 realize the possible results to their little children, 
 as it is only within a few years that the facts of 
 drink have been so carefully studied." 
 
 Dr. Sullivan found that 120 drinking mothers 
 of 600 children lost more than half of them be- 
 fore the children were two years of age (55.8 
 per cent.). When he compared 21 drinking 
 mothers with 28 mothers who were their relatives 
 but were sober and had sober husbands, he found 
 that the sober woman lost less than a quarter of 
 their children. 
 
 Dr. Laitinen, in Finland, made inquiries about 
 the deaths of children in 3,61 1 families which had 
 had 17,394 children. Where the parents were 
 abstainers only 13 per cent, of their children had 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 4? 
 
 died. The parents who were "moderate" 
 drinkers lost 23 per cent., and the heavy drinkers 
 lost 32 per cent. 
 
 Aside from the blight of child life by alcohol 
 through heredity, there is an additional peril to 
 babies born into the drinker's home. The parents 
 that drink, often do not have enough money left 
 over after their drink bill has been paid to buy 
 sufficient food to nourish the children properly, 
 or to provide the clothing they need; and the 
 mother who has to go to work to support the 
 family the drunken father neglects, or who stays 
 at home and drinks, does not give the children the 
 proper nursing and adds to the slaughter of the 
 innocents. When parents realize this tremendous 
 fact which science has demonstrated, that if they 
 drink even in moderation their children are liable 
 to be weaklings in body or mind with a shortened 
 life expectancy, they will cut out champagne from 
 the sideboard of wealth and the beer mug from 
 the poor man's cottage. Many are already 
 recognizing this fact and are giving up the per- 
 sonal use of intoxicants in behalf of the genera- 
 tions that are to follow them. Babies have a 
 right to come into this world without such a hand- 
 icap, and to have a fair chance for life after they 
 have entered it. 
 
 Since science has proven the damage drink does 
 to the brain and mental processes, since it has 
 shown what a poison it is to the body, we should 
 
48 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 expect to find inefficiency in the drinker. This is 
 precisely the fact. In all departments of human 
 endeavor, the one who uses intoxicants even in so- 
 called moderate quantities is reduced in his ef- 
 ficiency and is discounted in his service. The 
 athlete has recognized this damage to the body. 
 
 ABSTINENCE IN THE SPORTS 
 
 In the realm of sport, where men play games 
 with each other, abstinence is required for effi- 
 ciency and success. The beer-mug or wine-glass 
 befuddle the mind of the athlete so that he cannot 
 see keenly or act quickly or strongly. American 
 baseball is about as clean a game as there is in 
 the world. The whole nation is deeply interested 
 in it. From Maine to San Francisco the people 
 gather at the bulletin boards and join the fun of 
 the game as each play is recorded over the wire. 
 I know a farmer boy who gets up very early, not 
 to hoe the patch before breakfast, nor even to get 
 his breakfast, but to get the morning paper with 
 the report of the ball game the evening before. 
 I know a missionary in Japan who takes a New 
 York City paper and reads with enthusiasm the 
 baseball news each day, and though nearly a 
 month has elapsed since the time the season has 
 closed and the championship declared, he finishes 
 his perusal of the account with as deep interest 
 as the fans on their benches. One reason why the 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 49 
 
 game is so clean is that it is free from alcohol. 
 The leading baseball clubs of the country are 
 about as good temperance societies as can be 
 found. The greatest baseball players in America 
 in the past as well as the present have been total 
 abstainers from drink. They have been eloquent 
 advocates of temperance by precept as well as 
 by example. 
 
 Ty Cobb does not need to be introduced to the 
 American public. He is known by the professor 
 in the college and by the cowboy in the ranch, by 
 the governors of States and by the newsboys and 
 bootblacks on the street corner. Known to them 
 not because he plays ball, but because he is the 
 champion ball player of the country, if not of the 
 world. It was for this reason that I sought an 
 interview with him to get first-off facts with refer- 
 ence to the rule of abstinence from drink in base- 
 ball. 
 
 TY COBB ON ABSTINENCE 
 
 Mr. Cobb had just come in from a long rail- 
 road ride and was taking breakfast in his hotel 
 room. The table had plenty of good food upon 
 it, but no bottle. 
 
 I said, "Mr. Cobb, your reputation as the 
 champion baseball player in America is not much 
 better known than is your attitude on the drink 
 question. Why do you cut intoxicants out of your 
 bill of fare?" 
 
50 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 "Because they do not go at all with baseball," 
 said Ty Cobb. u No man who expects to succeed 
 at the game should ever think of taking strong 
 drink. We are all interested in the question, for 
 if one man lets down in his efficiency we all suffer 
 a handicap. It is a rule among baseball men to 
 let drink alone. I don't believe one in fifty base- 
 ball players of any clubs of importance in the 
 country attempts to mix drink with his ball- 
 playing." 
 
 "Does your club have a rule on this subject?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "No," he said. "The only rule is one of effi- 
 ciency. The minute a man loses his efficiency even 
 in a small degree, he commences to drop out, and 
 it has been learned unerringly that those who 
 drink do lose their efficiency, drop out of the 
 game, either of their own accord, or are bounced 
 by the management." 
 
 Ty Cobb is the peerless batter. When the 
 pitcher throws him the ball, eight of the nine 
 persons of the opposing club set their whole atten- 
 tion upon stopping that ball. More than any 
 other player in the world, Cobb has managed to 
 send that ball into the field where his enemy did 
 not want it and where it would with greatest dif- 
 ficulty be stopped. It would be impossible for 
 him, with a drink of beer in him, to discriminate 
 thus keenly, and secure the marks to his credit as 
 a batter. Cobb is the champion base-stealer. 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 51 
 
 The deep, downright cunning, with the almost 
 perfect agility and sustaining physical force that 
 gives him his success in the running of bases, 
 would be impossible if he used liquor even in a 
 moderate degree. The hand of sport, that of Ty 
 Cobb and his crowd of baseball players, and that 
 of other athletes is inflicting an incalculable dam- 
 age upon the liquor traffic. 
 
 JESS WILLARD, COLD WATER CHAMPION 
 
 Even prize-fighters find that they are stronger 
 and can fight better when they leave liquor alone. 
 I called on Jess Willard, the champion heavy- 
 weight prize-fighter of the world. He looked 
 least like a pugilist. To be sure, he was very tall 
 and very strong in appearance, but he had a fine 
 and you might say a handsome face, which had no 
 finger-marks of the calling in which he was en- 
 gaged. 
 
 u Mr. Willard," I said, "y u are known 
 throughout America as a temperance man by your 
 open and avowed statements that drink is an in- 
 jury to the pugilist and that intoxicants are en- 
 tirely cut out of your personal program. I noticed 
 in the paper that you said, after your fight with 
 Jack Johnson, that he damaged his chance very 
 greatly in the contest because he used so much 
 liquor, and that you attributed much of your suc- 
 cess in it to the fact that liquor did not dull your 
 
52 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 brain nor weaken your muscle. I consider you a 
 first-class witness as to the damage of alcohol to 
 physical efficiency." 
 
 u What you say about my habits and statement 
 is true," Mr. Willard replied, "but I refer you 
 on the subject to my partner, Tom Jones, who 
 will give you for me whatever information you 
 
 want." 
 
 Tom Jones said: "If Jess Willard had his 
 way, there would not be a drop of liquor made or 
 sold in America. He says it does no good to 
 any one and least of all to the pugilist. He does 
 not condemn or even criticise people who use 
 liquor or sell it, but he is particular himself in 
 his own personal habits. He cares nothing at all 
 for any of the temptations of the Great White 
 Way. You will not find him drinking in carousing 
 places at night. He keeps splendid hours. After 
 the fight next week he will not take a glass of 
 drink nor join in any convivial celebration of any 
 kind with friends, but will simply take the train 
 the very same night and go home to his wife and 
 family in Chicago. He is an ideal family man, as 
 he is an example of temperance." 
 
 Willard paid this tribute to cold water: "The 
 old aqua has a great booster in me, for it has 
 more reviving power, as far as I can figure, than 
 all the other beverages put together. Water in- 
 side and water outside is a combination that stands 
 without an equal." 
 
ALCOHOL AND PHYSIOLOGY 53 
 
 James J. Corbett, a pugilist himself, in a min- 
 ute description of Willard after one of his fights, 
 names his abstinence from drink as one of his 
 strongest points. 
 
 It is claimed that Jess Willard has laid away 
 between four and five hundred thousand dollars 
 in cold cash in the last few years. Does anyone 
 imagine that if he had used liquor, as some pugil- 
 ists have done, he would have four or five hundred 
 cents left over now, even if he could have secured 
 the championship ? 
 
 Herbert Kaufman has thus described a pugil- 
 istic champion who, having mastered others in 
 the ring, was conquered by rum: u He lurched 
 into Jack's at midnight, stumbled along the lane 
 of crowded tables and sprawled into a seat a 
 sodden, glassy-eyed, pulpy parody of the superb 
 creature whose clean fists once held a champion- 
 ship. Then he was without a peer invincible. 
 Man after man, the shrewdest pugilists of Amer- 
 ica vainly contested with him for the title. The 
 pride of England's rings and the best talent of 
 Australia fell before his incomparable science. 
 His was the keen vital strength that surges from 
 uncontaminated sources. In a day of brawling 
 brutes he stood apart, a class unto himself. Then 
 suddenly he rotted at the core. In old John Bar- 
 leycorn he met his master. What no arena ever 
 saw, the pot-house and the sample room soon be- 
 held 'the best of 'em alP reeling and rocking 
 
54 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 in defeat. It's a sure bet when the battler meets 
 the bottler." 
 
 Boxing within limits is a manly sport. I never 
 saw a prize fight. I never failed to condemn it 
 as demoralizing, and yet I could not ask any 
 stronger testimony to the value of abstinence to 
 bodily strength than that of Willard, the pugilist. 
 Jess Willard has knocked John Barleycorn down 
 in the ring and has thrown him over the ropes. 
 
 In the basal realm of temporal support, in call- 
 ings to make a living, liquor is such a disturbance 
 and hindrance and damage that the business world 
 protests against it. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 
 
 FROM the earliest times the literature of all 
 nations has been full of praises of the 
 joy and blessing of wine. The student of 
 ancient classics finds constant references to them in 
 the plays written, the songs sung and the amuse- 
 ments enjoyed. The bacchanalian revels were 
 counted only as an abuse of a custom mentally 
 valuable, and they were often apologized for 
 rather than condemned. 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 English literature took for granted as true the 
 mistaken verdict of science that alcohol is not only 
 friendly, but necessary, to the highest mental ex- 
 ercise. This thought is thus expressed by Oliver 
 Goldsmith in "She Stoops to Conquer": 
 
 "Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains 
 With grammar and nonsense and learning, 
 Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, 
 Gives genius a better discerning." 
 
 Certainly that is the idea he had when, as the 
 son of a poor Irish preacher, he entered Trinity 
 
 55 
 
56 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 College in Dublin at seventeen. His genius won 
 him a prize of six dollars, and to u give it a better 
 discerning" he spent it in buying some "good 
 liquor" and giving a supper and dance in his 
 college room and causing such a hilarious time 
 that his tutor rushed into the room, gave him a 
 good thrashing and kicked his guests out of doors. 
 Disgraced, the student resolved to leave college 
 and had to sell his books and some clothes for 
 money to get out of town. He loafed around 
 Dublin with convivial companions till all of his 
 money was gone except enough to take him to 
 Cork. He managed to get back into college again 
 and gained his degree of Bachelor of Arts a year 
 or so after the regular time. Oliver, the young 
 graduate of twenty-one, the son of an Irish minis- 
 ter and brother of a curate, decided to enter the 
 ministry. He began his two years of probation. 
 He read everything else but theology and made 
 himself conspicuous among the drinking revelers 
 at the "little inn of Ballymahon." When he came 
 up for ordination he was rejected, the good liquor 
 having failed to give his genius the kind of dis- 
 cernment required. 
 
 He tutored a year in a private family and 
 saved one hundred and fifty dollars and a horse 
 on which he rode to Cork. There he sold his horse 
 and booked a passage for America. He squand- 
 ered his money in his debauches, and while he was 
 in a carousal with gay companions at a country 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 57 
 
 inn, the ship on which he had engaged to sail 
 went off without him. With the thirteen dollars 
 he had left he bought a little pony and rode to 
 the home of his mother, where he was welcomed 
 as a returned prodigal. His uncle, who had great 
 faith in his ability, and who loved him, set him 
 on his feet again with a gift of two hundred and 
 fifty dollars and started him off to London to 
 study law. He got as far as Dublin, when drink 
 tempted him to stop off there and have one last 
 farewell "rounder" with his old companions. They 
 drank up every penny of his money and left him 
 stranded again. Some friends put up money and 
 sent him to the Medical Department of the Edin- 
 burgh University, where he studied two years, still 
 clinging to his convivial habits and companions. 
 He went to Paris to perfect his medical studies 
 and was reduced to such a financial strait that he 
 drifted out on the road, a traveling minstrel, with 
 his flute and songs among the peasantry for a sup- 
 port. He found himself in London little better 
 than a tramp, glad at times to lodge among the 
 "beggars of Ax Lane," as he says, "without 
 friends, recommendations, money or influence." 
 And he was now twenty-eight years of age. 
 
 He drifted into the field of literature, for which 
 his genius had so eminently fitted him. He wrote 
 for the magazines. His first important produc- 
 tion, "An Inquiry into the State of Polite Litera- 
 ture," caught the eye of Samuel Johnson, the 
 
58 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 king among men of letters. Goldsmith continued 
 his drinking habits, and was in dire distress of 
 poverty. Knowing Johnson's estimate of him, he 
 wrote a note to him, frankly stating his condition 
 and begging him to hasten to his rescue. Johnson 
 sent him a guinea, and followed it soon with a 
 visit to his cheap quarters. He found Goldsmith 
 quarreling with his landlady because she had had 
 him arrested for the non-payment of rent. He 
 had not given the woman a penny of the guinea 
 sent, but he had spent a part of it for wine, a bot- 
 tle of which was standing on the table. Johnson 
 calmed the woman, told her she would get her 
 money, and talked very plainly to the young 
 author. Goldsmith came to himself, determined 
 to abandon his convivial habits, and get down 
 seriously to the work of life. Johnson's splendid 
 character, strong will and sympathy (for he him- 
 self had a hard scuffle with poverty in his early 
 history) were prevailing influences to better 
 things in the young poet's history. He wrote the 
 "Vicar of Wakefield," for which he got three 
 hundred dollars, with which he cleaned up his 
 debts. Afterwards he wrote "The Traveler," 
 whose serene beauty, easy grace, sound good 
 sense, magic numbers and occasional elevation 
 captivated critics and publishers and secured for 
 him a place in the permanent literature of the 
 world, for which manuscript he received the piti- 
 ful sum of onq hundred dollars. He wrote other 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 59 
 
 splendid books, died at the early age of forty-six, 
 and a monument was placed for him in Westmin- 
 ster Abbey. 
 
 Goldsmith gave up his convivial habits when 
 he came to responsibility and fame, but he, like 
 the rest in those days, the best of them, continued 
 what would be called the moderate but constant 
 use of intoxicants. 
 
 What did alcohol do for Goldsmith? It did 
 not destroy him, but it grievously injured him. To 
 be sure, he was of a wandering disposition, and 
 was shiftless in his habits. But what else would 
 a young man be but wandering and thriftless who 
 did little else but drink liquor to excess up to the 
 time he was a man thirty years of age? It was 
 a miracle he came to himself, instead of going to 
 the graveyard, whither he was tending. If he 
 had let drink alone he might have come to him- 
 self at twenty-one, splendidly equipped, and taken 
 his rightful place as a prince in the world of 
 letters, instead of staggering from teaching to 
 theology, to law, to medicine, as a drunken man, 
 a mockery to his genius and a parody on a human 
 life, and he would have sung songs as sweet or 
 sweeter, and would probably have sung them 
 twenty or thirty years longer, holding the lyre at 
 sixty or seventy instead of laying it down at forty- 
 six. For the many years of hard drinking had 
 left their scars on the vital organs of the body as 
 distinctly as the marks the smallpox left in his 
 
60 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 face when he was a boy, and cut short a life of 
 glory and usefulness just fairly begun. 
 
 These words are not intended as a harsh criti- 
 cism of Goldsmith's weakness; they are written 
 with the highest appreciation of the admirable 
 qualities he possessed as a man and poet, and of 
 our gratitude to him for the sweet songs that 
 have delighted and benefited our better mental 
 life. They are written as a protest against the 
 universal belief of his time that drink was an 
 aid to the highest mental exercise, an inspiration 
 to genius, and especially to the poet. We do 
 not apologize for Goldsmith. The times were 
 as much to blame as he. They were thoroughly 
 alcoholized, and the literary era to which he be- 
 longed was saturated with wine. These words 
 are meant as a flat denial to the claims of the 
 brewers and distillers in the pamphlets sown 
 broadcast among our people, our young men, that 
 the great thinkers of the world have been so be- 
 cause they have used intoxicants, and that the 
 Anglo-Saxon race is the most brilliant because it 
 consumes the largest amount of alcohol. These 
 great men, these Anglo-Saxons have been and are 
 great in mental ability in spite of alcohol, not 
 on account of it; and the most brilliant men 
 mentally among all civilized nations today are 
 coming to this conclusion and are not only letting 
 drink alone themselves but doing what they can 
 to expel it from their communities and countries. 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 61 
 
 In the light of modern science that reveals the 
 damage of alcohol to the brain cells, in the light 
 of modern psychology which demonstrates the in- 
 jury of drink to mental processes, in the presence 
 of a life so harmed by alcohol, how pitiful do the 
 words of Goldsmith sound: 
 
 "Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, 
 Gives genius a better discerning." 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 
 Burns is another poet to whom the apologists 
 for drink point as an example of the advantage 
 of intoxicating stimulants to genius, of the wings 
 that wine gives to the imagination. They quote 
 words of Burns in their favor, among them these; 
 
 "John Barleycorn was a hero bold, 
 
 Of noble enterprise, 
 For if you do but taste his blood, 
 
 'Twill make your courage rise. 
 'Twill make a man forget his woe, 
 Twill heighten all his joy." 
 
 The liquor dealers of today seem to take pride 
 in holding up Burns as the champion of their 
 cause, as an example of the brilliancy of intel- 
 lectual genius inspired by their wares. But 
 Burns's history refutes their contention and furn- 
 ishes one of the most powerful arguments against 
 their claim. The study of that history, written 
 by the most friendly biographers, furnishes the 
 
62 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 most positive testimony to the damage drink did 
 to the poet at the beginning of his career, and of 
 the complete wreckage it caused at its close. His 
 nation was one of the most intellectual in the 
 world, not on account of alcohol, as the liquor 
 men maintain, but in spite of it. At the time 
 Burns came to his majority everything, from the 
 pastor's study to the disgraceful hovel, smelled of 
 Scotch whisky or some other stimulant, and young 
 Robert drank, of course, as they all did. And 
 when he felt the symptoms of his poetic genius 
 arising in his soul he continued to drink, as all 
 poets were expected to do, to inspire his imagina- 
 tion, warm his affections, and add charms to his 
 conversation in the highest circles of society. One 
 of his earliest poems was written while he was 
 drunk. He did not publish it in the first edition 
 of his poems, but he did in the second. He was 
 so brutally frank with himself and with others, 
 and the times were so whisky-soaked, that he made 
 no concealment of the fact that he composed 
 "Death and Doctor Hornbook" while drunk, and 
 the true story at the bottom of it was verified by 
 his companions at the time. The genius of the 
 man was so great that the poem he wrote while 
 drunk is better than the verses most sober men 
 can make. This is the occasion of the poem: 
 John Wilson, a school teacher at Tarbolton, not 
 far from the farm on which Burns lived with his 
 father, had a smattering knowledge of medicine, 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 63 
 
 got an office, a few bottles and drugs, and entered 
 upon the practice of medicine. He was a member 
 of a literary club to which Burns belonged. One 
 night Doctor Wilson and the young poet got into 
 a spirited debate over a question of medicine, in 
 which Burns became offended. From the club 
 Burns went to the Freemason's lodge which he 
 loved so dearly, and which was so proud of him, 
 and after the meeting was over he started late to 
 his home in the country. He says in the poem he 
 was "not full," but that he "had a plenty," and 
 that on his way home he took more than a plenty, 
 and was only able to get as far as the bridge. 
 Seating himself on the stone abutment with a good 
 support for his back, he dosed in a drunken 
 stupor. On his way to the bridge he had seen a 
 man lying in the road dead drunk, but he was so 
 near that condition himself that he could not help 
 the man. Seated on the stones of the bridge, 
 overcome by booze, the sight of the drunken man 
 in the road reminded him of death, and the deep 
 insult of the evening reminded him of Doctor Wil- 
 son, whom he called Hornbook, and so he com- 
 posed a poem of a number of stanzas on "Death 
 and Doctor Hornbook." He fell fast asleep and 
 did not know anything till the clang of the church 
 bell awoke him, and he found the early morning 
 sun shining on his face. He remembered the 
 stanzas he had composed in his drunken delirium 
 and wrote them down as we have them today. 
 
64 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Death complained bitterly that Doctor Horn- 
 book was encroaching on his territory; that while 
 he had a scythe and dart and slew many, the doc- 
 tor killed more with his medicine; and he gave as 
 instances the case of the weaver's wife who had 
 "ill bred nerves" and called in Doctor Hornbook 
 to quiet her. He did. He gave her something 
 to put her to sleep and she never awoke. And 
 also the case of the innkeeper's daughter who got 
 tipsy on beer and called in the doctor to hide her 
 disgrace, which he did by sending her to her long 
 home, etc. Of the poem Wordsworth says: 
 
 "When Burns wrote his story of ( Death and 
 Doctor Hornbook' he had very rarely been intoxi- 
 cated, or perhaps much exilarated by liquor. Yet 
 how happily does he lead his reader into that 
 track of sensations, and with what lively humor 
 does he describe the disorder of his senses and 
 the confusion of his understanding, put to the 
 test by his deliberate attempt to count the horns 
 of the moon : 
 
 !< 'But whether she had three or four 
 He couldna tell.' 
 
 "Behold a sudden apparition which disperses 
 this disorder, and in a moment chills him into the 
 possession of himself. Coming upon no more im- 
 portant mission than the grisly phantom was 
 charged with, what mode of introduction could 
 have been more efficient or appropriate?" 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 65 
 
 An evidence of the public sentiment of the 
 times on the subject of the drinking habit can be 
 seen in the fact that so serious, so deeply a re- 
 ligious man as Wordsworth has no word of crit- 
 icism of the conviviality of the young genius, only 
 words of commendation at the cleverness with 
 which he performed the intellectual feat when 
 drunk. Though Burns advertised his indiscretion 
 unduly in the poem in the beginning of his literary 
 career, Wordsworth was right in the statement 
 that this drunk at the bridge was an exception, 
 and that he was usually a man of temperate 
 habits. 
 
 The very year he produced "Death and Doc- 
 tor Hornbook" he wrote "The Epistle to Davie," 
 "The Twa Herds," "The Jolly Beggars," "Hal- 
 low E'en," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," "Holy 
 Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair" and "The 
 Address to a Mouse." This year's w r ork, if he 
 had never written another line, would have given 
 him immortality. The next year produced a har- 
 vest for his pen. All his poems were printed in 
 a volume in 1786, which gave the author instant 
 and universal fame in Scotland and throughout 
 the world. The finest drawing-rooms of Edin- 
 burgh and other cities were opened wide to this 
 brilliant plowboy poet. He got one hundred dol- 
 lars out of his first book, but he republished it the 
 next year and realized twenty-five hundred dol- 
 lars from it. The next year appeared in Scott's 
 
66 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Musical Museum, published by Johnson, one hun- 
 dred and forty of the shortest and best things 
 Burns wrote. They were bewitchingly beautiful 
 and tender songs, many of them adapted to old 
 Scotch airs, nothing in any language sweeter than 
 
 they. 
 
 But the heart of the singer grew suddenly sick 
 and his songs became few and feeble. Drink had 
 done its cruel work with him in four short years 
 and dealt him the fatal stab. In four years from 
 the time that he, as a young man of twenty-six, 
 surprised the world with his first stanzas and be- 
 came the acknowledged chief of Scottish poets, 
 he stood, a poor wreck, broken in spirit and 
 health, with no money and few friends, measuring 
 casks of liquor at a few hundred dollars a year. 
 
 Of his position in the excise department he was 
 not proud, and generally referred to it with an 
 apology, and often with bitterness. Of it he 
 writes: "I am a miserable buried devil, and for 
 private reasons am forced, like Milton's Satan, 
 'To do what yet, though damned, I would ab- 
 hor.' " To Mrs. Riddell he says, "Sunday closes 
 a period of our curst revenue business, and may 
 probably keep me employed with my pen till noon 
 fine employment for a poet's pen ! There is a 
 species of the human genus that I call the gin- 
 horse class: what amiable dogs they are! round 
 and round and round they go. MundelPs ox that 
 turns his cotton mill is their exact prototype 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 67 
 
 without an idea or wish beyond their circle, fat, 
 sleek, stupid, patient, quiet and contented; while 
 here I sit, altogether Novemberish, a melange of 
 fretfulness and melancholy, not enough of the one 
 to rouse me to passion, nor of the other to repose 
 me in torpor; my soul floundering and fluttering 
 round her tenement like a wild finch caught amid 
 the horrors of winter and newly thrust into a cage. 
 Well, I am persuaded it was of me the Hebrew 
 sage prophesied when he foretold: 'And behold, 
 on whatsoever this man doth set his heart, it shall 
 not prosper.' ' 
 
 While gauger he tried hard to get the position 
 of a supervisor, so that he might be eligible to 
 the office of collector of revenue at a good salary 
 and abundant leisure for literary work, and made 
 an earnest plea to Patrick Heron, whom he had 
 aided in the election campaign with his pen, but 
 failed in his ambition. To think that the man 
 who only five years before had been the most 
 talked of and best-beloved man in Scotland, with 
 all the help of influential friends he could sum- 
 mon, could not get the supervisorship of the town 
 of Dumfries! Was there ever so great a fall in 
 so short a space of time? The Scotch drink to 
 whose laudation he devotes a whole poem, is 
 directly responsible for his fall. Was Bacchus 
 ever so delighted as when he took the most bril- 
 liant intellect of Scotland and set him as his slave 
 to the task of poking a measurer into a cask to 
 
68 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 find out how much liquor it contained, and held 
 him to it at a starvation wage and would not let 
 him up ? 
 
 The drinking habit and the social irregularities 
 that so often go with it and grow out of it put 
 Burns into the gauger's office as the last ditch. 
 His drinking while in the excise department was 
 so excessive that some of his best friends remon- 
 strated with him, among them Mrs. Dunlop. The 
 reply of the poet was "occasional hard drinking 
 is the devil to me. Against this I have again and 
 again bent my resolution, and have greatly suc- 
 ceeded. Taverns I have totally abandoned. It 
 is the private parties in the family way, among the 
 hard-drinking gentlemen of this country 7 , that do 
 me the mischief, but even this I have more than 
 half given over." 
 
 Burns makes this apology to Mrs. Riddell after 
 a social bout at a dinner she gave at her house. 
 "I write you from the regions of hell, amid the 
 horrors of the damned. Here am I laid on a 
 bed of pitiless furze, while an infernal tormentor, 
 wrinkled and cruel, called 'Recollection,' with a 
 whip of scorpions, forbids peace or rest to ap- 
 proach me, and keeps anguish eternally awake. I 
 wish I could be reinstated in the good opinion of 
 the fair circle whom my conduct last night so 
 much offended. To the men of the company I 
 will make no apology. Your husband, who in- 
 sisted on my drinking more than I chose, has 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 69 
 
 no right to blame me, and the other gentlemen 
 were partakers of my guilt." 
 
 To his gentlemen friends who undertook to 
 admonish him on the rapidity with which he was 
 wrecking himself by his convivial habits, the poet 
 was not so polite or patient as he was to the 
 women who had spoken to him. When William 
 Xichol undertook to give him advice as to the 
 damage that drink was doing him, Burns answered 
 him with one of the most cutting satires in any 
 language, showing up the weakness of his accuser. 
 And when John Syme was entertaining him one 
 afternoon at his home at Ryedale, and the wine 
 flowed freely and the poet got singularly gracious 
 and confidential, the host criticised the conduct of 
 his guest. The criticism was resented instantly. 
 Syme said: "I might have spoken daggers, but I 
 did not mean them. Burns shook to the inmost 
 fibre of his frame, and drew his sword cane, 
 when I exclaimed, 'What, wilt thou thus, and in 
 mine own house?' The poor fellow was so stung 
 with remorse that he dashed himself down on the 
 floor. 5 ' 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in referring to this incident, 
 says, "It is a dreadful truth that when racked and 
 tortured by the well-meant and warm expostula- 
 tions of an intimate friend Burns started up, in a 
 paroxysm of frenzy, and drawing a sword cane 
 which he usually wore, made an attempt to plunge 
 
70 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 it into the body of his adviser; the next instant 
 he was with difficulty withheld from suicide." 
 
 Burns went to a shop and bought a pair of 
 revolvers to avenge some imagined injury done to 
 him, remarking that they were unlike some men 
 whom he knew in that they "reflected the honor of 
 their maker." Thus, perhaps the most brilliant 
 intellectual genius of the world at the time, in 
 those spells of intoxication, was made a madman, 
 a demon, through rum. 
 
 Without money in his pocket and with little 
 food in the house Burns wrote to Thompson: 
 "After all my boasted independence, curst neces- 
 sity compels me to implore you for five pounds. 
 A cruel haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, 
 taking it into his head that I am dying, has com- 
 menced a process and will infallibly put me in 
 jail. Do, for God's sake, send me that sum, and 
 that by return of post. Forgive me this earnest- 
 ness, but the horrors of a jail have made me half 
 distracted." 
 
 "Poor Bobbie," not more to be blamed than 
 the alcoholized times that made him a victim; not 
 more than the science that taught falsely, the lit- 
 erature that was mistaken, and the social customs 
 which were counted proper, yet were so demor- 
 alizing! The lords that wined and dined him, 
 and the ladies that offered him the social glass 
 to sharpen his wit or promote good fellowship, 
 had much to do with his downfall. And after 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 71 
 
 they had thrown him down, many of them closed 
 their drawingrooms and their friendship to him. 
 Alcohol poisoned him, mind and body, depressed 
 his spirit and racked his body with pain, and al- 
 lowed him only four years of melody with his 
 lyre when he should have had ten times as long 
 a period for his song. Alcohol disintegrated his 
 brain cells, dulled his imagination, corrupted his 
 affections, weakened his will, tore down his body 
 and sent him to the grave in poverty and distress 
 at thirty-seven, when, with a temperate life, free 
 from rum and the social irregularities that so of- 
 ten go with it and grow out of it, he might have 
 lived to be seventy and blessed the world thirty- 
 three years longer with his immortal songs. 
 
 I have dwelt upon the dark, the drink side of 
 Burns's life with deep pain, for I have the highest 
 appreciation of and warmest affection for his 
 poems. I have wanted to cry rather than blame 
 all the while, seeing how cruelly wine had deceived 
 and mocked and slain him. My mother sang the 
 songs of Burns to me when I was a little boy in 
 our home on the farm. How sweet! oh, how 
 sweet they sounded to me then ! Sweet, oh, how 
 sweet is their echo in my soul today! I can not 
 get them out of my heart, nor would I for the 
 world. To me his was one of the sweetest lyres 
 ever swept by human fingers. His voice, his 
 song, came by wireless across the sea to charm me 
 when a boy, and to bless me now a man. 
 
72 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 This poor Scotch gardener, with scanty wages, 
 living in a poor man's house, struggling against 
 all kinds of misfortune and weakness, with genius 
 enough to be the poet laureate of the realm, but 
 hired by the government to a menial task at a few 
 pounds a year, was the one who discovered the 
 richest truth in the most unlikely places, the purest 
 gold in the roughest rocks, the costliest pearls in 
 the homeliest shells. He found the splendors of 
 a palace under the roof of straw, the beauties of 
 Paradise amidst the humblest earthly scenes, the 
 divinest instincts in the breast of the lowliest and 
 most forgotten. He had a heart of sympathy for 
 everything God has made, even the little mice in 
 the nest upturned by the plow, and poured the 
 wealth of his affection without stint upon the 
 hearts of his fellow men. What a pity that this 
 sweet singer, this prince of poets, should have 
 had a will so weak and appetites so strong, and 
 that his rising sun which promised such a glorious 
 day should have gone down at noon ! Some of his 
 acts and verses we condemn. The hand of chanty 
 scatters leaves of poppy over them that they may 
 sleep in the grave of oblivion where they belong; 
 but many of his poems are so embalmed with 
 sweet sentiments and principles that they will live 
 as long as the English language is spoken. At 
 times his imperial spirit would soar to the loftiest 
 heights of truth and love and life, as in these 
 lines from his "Cotter's Saturday Night" : 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 73 
 
 "Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King 
 
 The saint, the father, and the husband prays; 
 
 Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing, 
 
 That thus they all shall meet in future days; 
 
 There ever bask in uncreated rays, 
 
 No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, 
 
 Together hymning their Creator's praise 
 
 In such society, yet still more dear, 
 
 While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere." 
 
 THE AMERICAN POETS 
 
 i 
 
 With the rarest exception, American literature 
 has been free from alcohol. Its fumes have not 
 appeared in the lines written or in the personal 
 life of their authors. In the literary history of 
 nations men of genius have often been so reckless 
 in their morals that the world half looked for 
 social weakness where the poetic instinct was dis- 
 covered. The singers who have made American 
 poetry what it is have shown that temperance, 
 social purity and religious vigor are most becom- 
 ing to the poet. 
 
 We have had great poets in this country, of 
 whom we are justly proud, but it seems to us that 
 no one great enough has yet appeared to fittingly 
 express the greatness of our marvelously great 
 nation. In America, where the blood is the best 
 because it is the best blood of the world mixed 
 here; where genius flames out into discoveries of 
 science and practical art such as the world has 
 
74 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 never known, where the desert as by magic has 
 been made to blossom as the rose; where gigantic 
 enterprises have been promoted and wealth ac- 
 cumulated the like of which has never been seen 
 since the world began ; where the schools and col- 
 leges are prospering on so large a scale; where 
 mighty moral reforms have been effected and the 
 church has been so triumphant, it would be 
 thought that some poet would appear large 
 enough to incarnate and fittingly sing of these 
 majestic things. But no poet has appeared high 
 as our Rockies, broad as our prairies, fertile as 
 our fields, rich as our mines, colossal as our in- 
 dustrial enterprise, rugged as our reforms, sweet 
 as the nation's home life, beautiful as its spirit life. 
 About all the American poetry worth consider- 
 ing has been produced in the past hundred years. 
 It was two hundred years after the landing at 
 Plymouth before a single American poet worthy 
 of the name appeared. In this New World, with 
 its beautiful gardens and fruitful fields, its mag- 
 nificent mountains, sequestered vales, and wide- 
 spreading prairies, its majestic rivers and mighty 
 seas, with its sweet home life, the divinest ideal 
 of liberty, and the firm faith in the Everlasting, 
 there was not a son born with enough genius fit- 
 tingly to sing of its beauty and glory. There were 
 statesmen and generals and orators, and one or 
 two prose writers, whose fame belongs to the 
 centuries, but there was not a single poet. Then 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 75 
 
 there came upon the stage a group of men almost 
 simultaneously who created and immortalized 
 American poetry. Among them were Bryant, 
 Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes and 
 Lowell. These men were all singularly clean in 
 their social habits and free from alcohol. 
 
 Longfellow thus voices the anti-alcohol senti- 
 ment of American poetry: 
 
 "Now to rivulets from the mountains 
 
 Point the rods of fortune-tellers: 
 Youth perpetual dwells in fountains, 
 Not in flasks and casks and cellars." 
 
 These bards did not reflect the sentiment of 
 their times, which was almost universally in favor 
 of the use of liquor. The sideboard with its de- 
 canter and glasses was considered a necessary arti- 
 cle of furniture in the home of luxury or even of 
 respectability, and the little brown jug could be 
 found nearly everywhere in the home of the 
 artisan as a promoter of happiness and industrial 
 efficiency; political life and drinking were asso- 
 ciated with each other as a matter of course. 
 Some of the greatest statesmen and orators of the 
 nation drank heavily, sometimes to drunkenness, 
 and little was thought of it except maybe to laugh 
 at the silly things such wise men would say or do, 
 or pity them that they should use to excess a 
 thing which in moderation was so good for them. 
 The capital of the nation itself was a colossal bar, 
 
76 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 where the representatives of the people could the 
 more conveniently drink and get happy and even 
 drunk in their revels, a disgrace to them and to 
 their constituencies. Drink was sold at many of 
 the stores with as little hesitation or compunction 
 as flour, sugar, coffee, or any other article of food. 
 And yet at this time, when about every depart- 
 ment of American life was saturated with alcohol, 
 our poetry, which in the opinion of the centuries 
 should be allowed the largest liberty in the use of 
 stimulants, and would be expected to furnish ex- 
 hibitions of the most excessive revelries, was 
 sober. There were no spells of clownishness, no 
 breaking of social law as the privilege of the high- 
 est genius, no sprees nor wreckages of body or 
 mind, with financial bankruptcy and untimely 
 death. The founders of American poetry men- 
 tioned were prudent, dignified, honored by the 
 whole nation. They were good men, with lovely 
 families, great men, professors at universities, 
 examples to young men, men of sterling character, 
 loyal to God and their fellows; and with cleanli- 
 ness and supreme self-mastery that all lived to 
 be old men, to sing during the many beautiful 
 years their sweetest songs to charm, and whole- 
 some sentiments to bless the hearts of their fel- 
 lows for a long generation or more. Whittier 
 particularly, who exerted a larger temperance in- 
 fluence upon our national life than any other poet, 
 was a total abstainer from strong drink. He 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 77 
 
 never tasted liquor in his life, and in his robust 
 style by precept as well as by example he main- 
 tained and promoted the principle of abstinence. 
 This principle is notably expressed in his poem on 
 the celebration of St. Crispin's Day, in which he 
 has the courage to propose the health of the shoe- 
 makers in a glass of water instead of wine: 
 
 "Then let the toast be freely quaffed 
 In water cool and brimming.' ' 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 We omitted one name from the group whick 
 founded and immortalized American poetry, that 
 of Edgar Allan Poe, who was contemporary witk 
 the poets mentioned. He was in a class by him- 
 self in temperament, life and song. He was, per- 
 haps, the greatest native poetic genius of all the 
 group, and one of the greatest any nation ever 
 had. The imagination, the creative faculty, the 
 one that pictures and rhymes and sings, he pos- 
 sessed in so large a degree that there was no limit 
 to the heights to which he soared when he felt 
 most free. In keen, clear, intense lyrical quality 
 his best songs have seldom been surpassed. His 
 two volumes of short tales were up to the highest 
 literary standard, and have furnished and have 
 been taken as models for the story-writers of 
 France for the past sixty years. 
 
 Poe was the only one of the great American 
 
7 8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 poets who toyed with intoxicants and was ruined 
 by them. The smoke of the distillery and brew- 
 ery settled down as a cloud upon him, and many 
 of the things he wrote in poetry and prose were 
 darkened with misery and hopeless gloom, proph- 
 ecies of the tragedy to follow. Did not his habit 
 steadily, almost insensibly at first, but surely, build 
 about him a cage against which he wounded the 
 wings of his great soul, and against the bars of 
 which he threshed out his precious life? 
 
 One of the best literary authorities has this to 
 say of the effect of Poe's drinking habits upon his 
 professional career. "His brilliant and well- 
 known ability readily procured him employment, 
 and his frantic habits of dissipation, with the 
 regularity of a natural law, insured his early and 
 ignominious dismissal." 
 
 In 1835 Poe was made editor of the Literary 
 Messenger, in Richmond, with the promise of a 
 good income and opportunity to redeem his name 
 from the youthful follies and sins that had dis- 
 graced it, but his habit was so strong and will so 
 weak that he went on frequent sprees, for which 
 the owner of the paper discharged him. He 
 wrote a letter with a pitiful plea for reinstatement, 
 and the publisher sent back this reply: "That 
 you are sincere in all your promises I firmly be- 
 lieve, but when once again you tread these streets, 
 I have my fears that your resolution will fail and 
 that you will drink again till your senses are lost. 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 79 
 
 If you rely on your own strength, you are gone. 
 Unless you look to youj^ Maker for help you will 
 not be safe. How much I regretted parting from 
 you is known to Him only and to myself. I had 
 become attached to you. I am still. I would 
 willingly say return, did not a knowledge of your 
 past life make me dread a speedy renewal of our 
 separation. You have fine talents, Edgar, and 
 you ought to have them respected as well as your- 
 self. Separate yourself from the bottle and from 
 bottle companions forever." 
 
 But he did not take the advice of this good 
 man, did not give up the bottle nor bottle com- 
 panions; he did not lean on God for help, but 
 floundered, the mighty genius that he was, in the 
 mire, a slave of evil habit. A biographer says 
 he became so besotted that he sold the memoir of 
 his beautiful wife whom he loved devotedly to 
 get money to buy rum to drown his sorrow. 
 
 In 1859, realizing what a fearful wreck he was, 
 and knowing that he would soon fill a drunkard's 
 grave if he did not reform, he did what he had 
 so often done before, resolved to quit drinking; 
 and to help his resolution he joined a temperance 
 society and took a pledge of total abstinence, 
 which he kept for six months, to the joy of his 
 friends and himself. Sobered up as he was, with 
 a new start for life, he became engaged to marry 
 a wealthy widow of Richmond, Virginia, whom 
 he had loved in his youth. He went to Baltimore 
 
So KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 to make some preparations for his wedding, and 
 there met some of his old convivial friends, who 
 carried him away on a carousal which left him 
 dead drunk in the gutter, from which he was car- 
 ried to the Marine Hospital of that city. Awak- 
 ening out of his drunken stupor, he opened his 
 eyes widely and said, "Where am I?" The physi- 
 cian replied, u You are cared for by your best 
 friends." With a look of insufferable weariness 
 and inexpressible agony he answered, "My best 
 friend would be the man who w y ould blow out my 
 brains." In four days after, on Sunday, October 
 7, 1859, he died. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe died at forty years of age, 
 with a life only fairly begun ! What a sad com- 
 mentary on the alcoholized times that were as 
 much to blame as he for his ruin! If the trend 
 of his environment could have been toward tem- 
 perance and piety, and his will could have had 
 better help to withstand the temptations of ap- 
 petite, it is possible he would have lived to three- 
 score years and ten, as all of his contemporary 
 poets did, and sung sweet and marvelous songs 
 all that time to bless his fellows in our own land 
 and throughout the world. 
 
 What a glorious group of veterans his contem- 
 poraries were! Lowell lived to be seventy-three; 
 Longfellow to be seventy-five; Bryant to be 
 eighty-four; Whittier and Holmes each to be 
 eighty-five. 
 
ALCOHOL AND LITERATURE 81 
 
 It is mere speculation, and yet it is possible 
 that Poe was made by nature to be the great 
 American ideal poet, matching and expressing the 
 magnificences everywhere else, and that the drink 
 habit hindered and dwarfed him, cut his life short. 
 If with his creative genius he could have had the 
 abstinence of a Whittier and the religion of a 
 Longfellow, whom he so mercilessly lashed in his 
 criticisms, he might have measured up to the de- 
 mands of so mighty a nation and been crowned 
 as its poet laureate. Since Poe, under his fearful 
 handicaps of drink and brief life of misery, could 
 secure such a permanent place in literature, to 
 what an eminence might he have been elevated, 
 on what a throne of power might he have been 
 seated, and what a scepter of authority might he 
 have wielded, had he been free from those handi- 
 caps, free to soar and sing through a generation 
 and generations to come? 
 
 The poet for whom the great America has 
 looked has not appeared. God will send him in 
 his own good time. In poetic genius, righteous- 
 ness, truth, love and faith a giant like those of 
 classic story, whose feet were on the earth and 
 whose head was among the stars, and yet a charm- 
 ing minstrel, whose lyre will be sweet enough and 
 strong enough to be heard by the millions of all 
 nations and by the centuries to come. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 
 
 A THING so bad for the individual as rum 
 is bad for society. Individuals injured 
 by drink make a damaged community. 
 And the people who do not use intoxicants are 
 greatly pestered and distressed by those who do. 
 Hence it is natural that society should resist and 
 fight this enemy. 
 
 Society is putting up a fierce fight against booze 
 on account of the inefficiency that it causes in 
 every department of industry. 
 
 Nearly all the biggest forms of industry in this 
 country discourage, if they do not forbid, the use 
 of intoxicants by their employees. 
 
 The railroads of the United States forbid their 
 men to take liquor. Many years ago a rule was 
 made in reference to their men drinking or enter- 
 ing a saloon, which has been well kept by most of 
 the railway lines, and has become more and more 
 strict each year. It seems that the men them- 
 selves do not consider this prohibition a hardship, 
 but as a rule recognize that it is for the mutual 
 good of the men and of the roads. They recog- 
 nize that the perils even to sober men are very 
 
 82 
 
ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 83 
 
 great, and know that those perils are largely in- 
 creased when liquor is in evidence. 
 
 RAILROAD RULE "G" 
 
 I called on Mr. Hardin, first vice-president of 
 the New York Central Railroad, for details as 
 to the rule forbidding drink among the men. He 
 handed me a pamphlet and said: "Here it is, 
 Rule G, which is that the use of intoxicants by 
 employees while on duty is prohibited. Their 
 use or the frequenting of places where they are 
 sold is sufficient cause for dismissal." 
 
 I asked Mr. Hardin whether this is a contract 
 with the men or a rule of the road. He said: 
 
 It was a rule agreed upon by the railroads of the 
 country many years ago, at the time when railroad men 
 were rougher than they are now, and at a time when most 
 people drank. The rule is kept, and the most hopeful 
 thing is that the men themselves do much to enforce it. 
 About all of the men holding positions of responsibility 
 keep this rule. The various labor organizations also help 
 to enforce it. If, for instance, an engineer should be 
 found taking a drink, a representative of the organization 
 would come to him and say: 'You must stop; this will 
 not do. If you have liquor in you, you may run into my 
 train and kill me and kill yourself/ Scarcely a man hold- 
 ing any responsible position of importance on any of the 
 great railroads of the country can be coaxed to take a 
 drink of intoxicants. The railroad men are a fine set of 
 men. When you come down to the man on the track 
 
84 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 with his shovel and pick, we cannot enforce our rule so 
 strictly, though we wish to discourage drink in the home 
 of the humblest laborer. With reference to abstinence of 
 men charged with responsibility I know whereof I speak. 
 I have 400 secret service men, many of them unknown to 
 the other men themselves, to report to me in detail the 
 habits of the men. If a man were found drinking any- 
 where on our lines, we would hear about it within a week. 
 There was a trial of a railroad case the other day, involv- 
 ing the carelessness or fault of an engineer, and the law- 
 yer of one side slurred the railroad men as being tough 
 and addicted to drink. The opposing lawyer with feel- 
 ing denied the charge, and defied any one to show an 
 engineer on the whole line of the road who used intoxi- 
 cants at all, and that if one could be found drinking he 
 would be instantly discharged. This trial was with refer- 
 ence to a road other than our own, but it illustrates the 
 fact as to the total abstinence of men charged with the 
 gravest responsibility in the railroad industry. 
 
 I had interviews with a number of leading loco- 
 motive engineers, firemen, conductors and train- 
 men on the subject and found not only unanimity 
 of opinion on the subject, but real enthusiasm in 
 their friendliness to Rule G, calling for prohibi- 
 tion. They said that when they took the lives of 
 the people in their hands they felt the gravity of 
 the responsibility that it would be a crime, even 
 the highest crime of murder, to take intoxicants 
 that would dull their senses or their intellectual 
 faculties and cause fatal accidents. One of them 
 
ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 85 
 
 called my attention to the fact that on a leading 
 railroad which stood well up toward the head of 
 the column in the few accidents that had occurred 
 annually, a man running an engine called at a 
 saloon before daylight on his way to his cab and 
 became stupid with drink. After the train left 
 the station he let his engine run wild and crashed 
 into the train in front of him, killing fifty people 
 and occasioning a large number of damage suits. 
 This is an illustration of the terrible crime of a 
 railroad man who is charged with great responsi- 
 bility having anything whatever to do with drink. 
 
 Mr. Stone, the president of the Locomotive 
 Railroad Engineers of the country, has said and 
 written some of the sanest and soundest things on 
 the damage of drink to the railroad man and to 
 the working man in any department of industry 
 that we have seen in American temperance litera- 
 ture. 
 
 Leaving Mr. Hardin's office, I found a bar 
 down stairs. That costly, magnificent building 
 had become prostituted to the low task of hous- 
 ing a saloon. I thought that Rule G, forbidding 
 any of the men to drink and a saloon in the sta- 
 tion, tempting the men to intoxicants and de- 
 bauching the public, were contradictions. I felt 
 that the lowest down Bowery joint was as respec- 
 table in the eyes of a good conscience and of God 
 as this bar in the Grand Central Station. 
 
 The directors who are responsible for the in- 
 
86 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 stallation of this iniquitous place are saloon- 
 keepers and hypocrites. No matter what im- 
 portant pews they may occupy on the Sabbath in 
 the sanctuary, or how conspicuous they m'ay be in 
 their leadership of the church, no matter how 
 prominent they may be on the boards of educa- 
 tional or benevolent institutions; no matter how 
 conspicuous as leaders they may be in business or 
 the social world, no matter how much they may 
 cry out against the "low groggery" and demand 
 Rational Prohibition, they are saloonkeepers 
 themselves. 
 
 Standing in the bar-room of the Grand Central 
 Station, in imagination, I strapped the white apron 
 of a bartender on each one of these millionaire 
 directors and put the black stamp of "hypocrite" 
 on his forehead. I do not forget that these same 
 directors founded one of the finest Railroad 
 Young Men's Christian Associations in America, 
 a few blocks up the avenue. I have personally 
 enjoyed its hospitality, and feel that the public 
 owes a debt of gratitude to these officers that it 
 can never repay. And yet that magnificent 
 Y. M. C. A. to save the young men does not 
 justify the saloon in the station in destroying 
 them, but makes it more improper and hypocriti- 
 cal. It was the love for the damnable dollar that 
 opened the bar in the Grand Central Station, the 
 same vice that built every brewery and distillery, 
 and opened every saloon in the country. 
 
ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 87 
 
 There are other railroads besides the New 
 York Central which have bars in their stations, 
 and they are included in these words of condem- 
 nation. 
 
 Deep as the hypocrisy of the station saloon is 
 that of the dining-car where intoxicating liquors 
 are sold. Such a dining-car is a saloon on wheels, 
 and gives the lie to Rule G. The engineer, the 
 fireman, the conductor, the brakeman, the bag- 
 gageman, the peanut-vender, are all forbidden to 
 touch a drop of liquor, and yet a saloon car is put 
 on the train and the dining-car conductor, in the 
 service of beer, whisky, and wine, is the officially 
 authorized barkeeper. And the charge is made 
 that some diners serve drinks going through dry 
 States and districts in defiance of the law, and in 
 so doing become bootleggers of the lowest and 
 most contemptible sort. The negro in the dry 
 village down in the canebrake, with the razor, 
 and with bottles of illicit liquor in his bootlegs, is 
 just as honorable as those responsible for the 
 blind-tiger dining-car. Fortunately the conscience 
 and decency of the directors of many of the rail- 
 roads have taken the drinks off the dining-car bill 
 of fare, and our words of criticism of course do 
 not refer to them. 
 
 There is no more reason why there should be a 
 Rule G for the employees than for the officers 
 of the road, from the directors and president 
 down. The same sagacity, wisdom, level-headed- 
 
88 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 ness, freedom from alcohol and strength is re- 
 quired of the officers who plan, as is demanded of 
 the men who execute those plans. Fortunately, a 
 large proportion of the officers of the roads are 
 strict temperance men, many of them total ab- 
 stainers, who keep the rule they require of the 
 men. 
 
 STEEL MANUFACTURERS 
 
 The steel manufacturers are dealing the liquor 
 business a staggering blow in their opposition to 
 drink among their men. It is a cold question of 
 economy. It used to be thought by both manu- 
 facturers and men that drink was necessary to 
 those who were among the furnaces. At the close 
 of each heat, the men laid off a little time to go 
 to the nearest saloon for refreshment. This false 
 notion has been reversed by both the proprietors 
 and workmen. 
 
 This placard is posted all over the works of 
 the Illinois Steel Company at Joliet: "To the 
 employees of the Joliet Works, Illinois Steel 
 Company: For the promotion of safety and wel- 
 fare it is hoped that all employees will avoid the 
 use of intoxicating liquors. Under the rules of 
 the Joliet Works, any employee who uses intoxi- 
 cating liquor while on duty will be discharged. 
 In making promotions in any department of the 
 plant, superintendents of departments and fore- 
 men will select for promotion only those who do 
 not use intoxicating liquors." 
 
ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 89 
 
 Any one entering the great works of the 
 United States Steel Corporation at Gary, Indiana, 
 at night, will see huge electric lights blazing out 
 these questions: u Did booze ever do you any 
 good?" u Did booze ever get you a better job?" 
 u Did booze ever contribute anything to the happi- 
 ness of your family?" 
 
 In regard to abstinence at the mill at Coates- 
 ville, Pennsylvania, Mr. Charles L. Huston sent 
 me the following: 
 
 When I first took hold as superintendent of the works 
 some twenty-five years ago, I decided after careful con- 
 sideration that I could not be satisfied to give any coun- 
 tenance to drinking on the part of the men. So I began 
 to deal with them in a kindly, forceful way when I found 
 out they were in the habit of indulging even when away 
 from their work, and, of course, could not permit any- 
 thing like drinking or evidence of intoxication while at 
 work. I was a little fearful lest it might result in a 
 shortage of capable men, but found just the reverse, as 
 we never had to hunt for men or advertise for them. We 
 have always found a sufficient number of applicants, good, 
 respectable men, who were glad to work in a place where 
 there was decent behavior and a freedom from things 
 which make it obnoxious or painful for Christian men 
 to work with satisfaction. 
 
 The problem was a comparatively simple one until we 
 began to get foreign-speaking men to do the unskilled 
 labor American men not relishing this work when they 
 could get anything else to do. We housed the foreign 
 workmen in comfortable quarters built upon our own 
 
90 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 property, where we could control their actions. When 
 the beer wagons started to deliver we warned them to 
 keep off, and when they persisted we arrested them and 
 forced them either to plead guilty or to suffer convic- 
 tion, on the charge of selling liquor in an illegal manner, 
 the restriction of this kind of traffic being quite stringent 
 and effective, if one will take the time and trouble to 
 look it up and handle it vigorously. In addition to this, 
 all of our foreign-speaking men, who are the principal 
 offenders in this line, are required to sign in their rental 
 contract that they will not bring liquor nor allow it to 
 be brought into their houses, and the men themselves 
 recognize the manifest benefit that has come to them by 
 this restriction. 
 
 We find in our work that the very best men are the 
 men who never have touched intoxicants; Christian men 
 who work at every opportunity and who are dependable 
 at all times and can stand the physical strain of the hot 
 work of the furnaces better than drinking men can; 
 retain their abillity to work through a longer period of 
 years, and give a totally different degree of satisfaction 
 in the manning of all our different departments. I most 
 firmly believe, from all standpoints, that drink is an abso- 
 lute evil, ruining a man physically, morally and spirit- 
 ually, and that the only right course is for every man to 
 let it absolutely alone. I believe a great deal of our 
 economic unrest would be remedied if the liquor business 
 were put out of our land, as it destroys the efficiency of 
 such an enormous army of men and wastes such enormous 
 sums of their hard earnings for that which is not bread. 
 Our concern has been established for a long time, having 
 grown from a modest-sized establishment to one employ- 
 
ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 91 
 
 ing about two thousand men, paying out, when running 
 full, about $100,000 a month in wages. 
 
 Mr. James Brown, president of the Gulf States 
 Steel Company, has sent me the following commu- 
 nication, dated July 23, 1917: 
 
 As president of the Gulf States Steel Company, I can 
 state that it is our inflexible rule not to promote to a 
 position of any importance men who to our knowledge 
 are addicted to the drinking of intoxicating liquor, either 
 on or off duty. To the best of my knowledge, every 
 holder of a position of trust either indoors or outdoors 
 in our various departments is an abstainer. I myself 
 became one forty years ago as an example to the work- 
 men employed under me. We find the percentage of 
 accidents is materially reduced in our steel works, as 
 compared with some others where, the management is not 
 so pronounced in keeping away intoxicating liquor. With 
 us it is ground for immediate discharge if any man is 
 found bringing liquor into the works. 
 
 As vice-president of the Bessemer Coal, Iron and Land 
 Company, which sells homes on the long instalment plan, 
 I can state that that company in 1907 had several hun- 
 dreds of sale contracts running with ore and coal miners 
 of the Bessemer district, near Birmingham. At that time 
 the county voted out liquor, and the change was quite 
 surprising. The vote took place the same day in October 
 as the big panic in New York, with the suspension of the 
 Knickerbocker Trust Company. Nearly half of the blast 
 furnaces, coal mines, and ore mines in the district closed 
 down in the supervening panic, and the others went on 
 
92 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 short time; bui we found that, owing to the prevalence 
 of total abstinence, the money was paid to us on home 
 purchase instalments that might otherwise have gone for 
 whisky. Collectors of rents and dealers in furniture 
 told me the same thing, and that the condition of the 
 negro miners was better under panic-abstinence condi- 
 tions than it was before the crash under prosperity- 
 whisky conditions. I am personally a determined foe 
 to whisky. I realize that our men work very hard, and 
 I want to see them save their money and buy homes and 
 furniture, and be well fed and clothed. 
 
 During the past week it has been decided in this city 
 to pull down the south side jail, and build a negro school- 
 house on the site. The commissioner in charge of street 
 improvements has complained to the city commission that 
 he has not enough prisoners to keep the streets clean, 
 and must hire free men for the purpose. This is the 
 result of Alabama going dry, which has so greatly re- 
 duced the number of crimes and prisoners that one jail 
 now in the city will take the place of two under whisky. 
 
 Almost all the forms of big business are radi- 
 cally opposed to drink among their men in the 
 interest of greater efficiency. 
 
 In 1914, the National Safety Council, in a con- 
 vention of seven hundred members, representing 
 a very large element of the employees of labor, 
 unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that 
 "the drinking of alcoholic stimulants is productive 
 of a heavy percentage of accidents and of disease 
 affecting the safety and efficiency of workmen." 
 
ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 93 
 
 In going through the large manufacturing es- 
 tablishments of the country, one's eye is greeted, 
 whichever way one may turn, with the following 
 placard: 
 
 "We want only clear-thinking men in our em- 
 ploy. You cannot think clearly and act safely if 
 you are a boozer. Booze poisons the brain. It 
 stimulates for a short time only then deadens 
 the senses. When men's minds are dull, accidents 
 are bound to occur. It takes alertness quick 
 thinking and acting to avoid danger. If you 
 must booze, then don't report for work. We 
 don't want boozers on our premises. They are 
 dangerous, not only to themselves, but to all 
 others who come in contact with them. Booze 
 will never get you a job nor help you to hold one. 
 Booze will never help you pay your debts*, nor 
 increase your earning power. Booze and work 
 won't mix. Sooner or later one must be sacrificed 
 for the other. Sidetrack booze before booze side- 
 tracks you." 
 
 In a letter dated Portsmouth, Ohio, July 17, 
 1917, Mr. George D. Selby, president of a shoe 
 manufacturing company, says : 
 
 We have given careful attention to your request for 
 information on the question of "Alcohol and Efficiency." 
 We have been earnestly and carefully trying to eliminate 
 the use of intoxicating liquors by our employees for the 
 past twenty-five years, but have not wholly succeeded, 
 
94 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 on account of the case with which intoxicantss can be 
 obtained in our "wet" town. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the care we have given this ques- 
 tion, we have been compelled to discharge a number of 
 our employees recently, on account of the drink habit. 
 Will say that after all we can do in "wet" territory it 
 is a handicap of perhaps from three to five per cent, of 
 our payroll, the aggregate of which is over $1,000,000 
 per annum, considering the inefficiency of the drinker him- 
 self and the loss of wages to others on account of the 
 delayed and inefficient work. 
 
 We have always done and will continue to do every- 
 thing we can to eliminate the intoxicating liquor traffic 
 for beverage purposes, and we think we have a good pros 
 pect of our State going "dry" in November. 
 
 I heard ex-Governor Foss of Massachusetts 
 make a powerful address on the reason why the 
 business world is fighting rum, and how certain it 
 is that it will never cease that warfare until the 
 traffic in liquors is destroyed. I asked him to pre- 
 pare in succinct form his views on the subject to 
 be used as a paragraph in this chapter on Busi- 
 ness Against Booze, and he gave me this, which 
 hits the nail on the head: 
 
 In my practical experience as an employer of labor 
 (5,000 men) I have found that drink causes more 
 trouble than almost any other one factor. It is at the 
 bottom of irregularity in work, lost time, and many other 
 dislocations and irritations. It causes a very large pro- 
 portion of accidents. This is serious for the employed. 
 
ALCOHOL AND CAPITAL 95 
 
 It is also serious for the employer, who is liable for the 
 results of accident. 
 
 Drink is distinctly injurious to production. It takes 
 the fine edge off mental tools; it slows down efficiency. 
 Brewing and distilling are destructive industries. They 
 lower the purchasing power of the masses for legitimate 
 'products to a very serious degree. This means that 
 great quantities of clothing, shoes, food, furniture, and 
 manufactured articles remain unbought. The result is 
 stoppage in industrial production until the stocks on 
 hand are lowered. In this way drink plays an important 
 part in producing periods of depression and industrial 
 crisis. 
 
 Drink, bj diverting money to socially unproductive 
 industries which otherwise would be deposited in banks, 
 lessens the amount of capital available for new productive 
 enterprises, and in this way shuts off thousands of pos- 
 sible openings for employment. It is a well-known fact 
 that capital invested in alcohol manufacture has a low 
 employing power. 
 
 Mr. J. Ogden Armour of Chicago, whose 
 meat-packing company does an annual cash busi- 
 ness of $500,000,000, and which has an army of 
 40,000 on its pay-roll, has assured me that he 
 is personally an advocate of temperance and so- 
 briety, and that the organization of Armour & 
 Company puts a premium on men who abstain 
 from the use of liquor and, in accord with the 
 trend of the times, the drinkers are gradually 
 being weeded out and replaced by more efficient 
 men who do not drink. 
 
96 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 One of the strong reasons why the big business 
 of the country is fighting drink so vigorously and 
 driving it so swiftly out of their communities, is 
 the Workmen's Liability Law which has been 
 passed in so many States, which makes the pro- 
 prietor responsible for the accidents of the work- 
 men. Drink is the fruitful cause of accidents 
 in the establishment, and hence the fierce warfare 
 against intoxicants. 
 
 At the Raritan Cooper Works in Perth Amboy, 
 New Jersey, they studied their accidents and 
 found that the time of greatest peril is the first 
 hour of the day shift on Monday and on the 
 days following holidays. They have a General 
 Safety Committee which gets the facts and pub- 
 lishes them in a bulletin called the Ingot Here 
 is the Ingot's comment on the accident figures: 
 
 To any man who can think in a straight line these 
 statistics mean just one thing. It is a plain fact, and we 
 will state it plainly. Too much drinking at night means 
 foggy eyes and unsteady nerves next morning. Then 
 the accidents pile up. Now, let's get right down to 
 brass tacks. This is no grape-juice journal; we hold no 
 brief for Prohibition. What we are working for is 
 safety. Cut down the booze, and as surely as day 
 follows night you will cut down the accidents. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ALCOHOL AND LABOR 
 
 THE workmen are greatly pleased with the 
 prohibition that industry has required. 
 At first they thought it was an infringe- 
 ment of their rights, which they were inclined to 
 resent; but on a trial they found that they were 
 so much stronger and better able for their work, 
 that they lost fewer days, that their families 
 were so much better provided for, and so much 
 happier, that they not only acquiesced in the rule, 
 but have been among the most vigorous instru- 
 mentalities for enforcing it and driving rum out 
 of their communities. 
 
 Terence Powderly, the old grand master of the 
 Knights of Labor, said: 
 
 Had I ten million tongues, and a throat for each 
 tongue, I would say to every man, woman and child 
 here to-night, throw strong drink aside as you would 
 an ounce of liquid hell. It sears the conscience ; it destroys 
 everything it touches. It reaches into the family circle 
 and takes the wife you have sworn to protect and drags 
 her down from her purity into that house from which 
 no decent woman ever goes alive. It induces the father 
 to take the furniture from the home, exchange it for 
 
 97 
 
98 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 money at the pawnshop, and spend the proceeds for rum. 
 It damns everything it touches. I have seen it in every 
 city east of the Mississippi River, and I know that the 
 most damning curse to the laborer is that which gurgles 
 from the neck of the bottle. I would rather be at the 
 head of an organization having one hundred thousand 
 temperate, honest, earnest men, than at the head of an 
 organization of twelve million drinkers, whether moderate 
 or any other kind. 
 
 John Mitchell, a famous leader in the labor 
 world, said: "I have no sympathy with the state- 
 ment, so often made, that the manufacture and 
 sale of liquor has contributed to the industrial 
 development of the nation. On the contrary, I 
 believe that liquor has contributed more to the 
 moral, intellectual and material deterioration of 
 the people, and has brought more misery to de- 
 fenseless women and children, than has any other 
 agency in the history of mankind. 
 
 Hon. William E. Borah, United States Senator 
 from Idaho, in his speech on the Food Bill in the 
 Senate, July 6, 1917, thus powerfully portrays 
 the disastrous effects of alcohol upon the laboring 
 man: 
 
 "A few years ago in a Western State, during 
 some labor troubles, it became necessary to invoke 
 martial law. Martial law was invoked and ex- 
 tended over a very large portion of the State, a 
 portion of the State in which thousands of men 
 were in the employ of mine operators and of 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 99 
 
 other owners of industries. It was a very ex- 
 traordinary situation, one in which riot and crime 
 for a time held almost complete sway. Before 
 those who had charge of the situation could even 
 begin to restore order and law it became necessary 
 to close the saloons and drinking places in that 
 district, and, under the authority of martial law, 
 every saloon and every place where intoxicating 
 liquors were sold or could be had were closed. 
 They remained closed, and the prohibition of the 
 sale and of the drinking of liquor remained in 
 force for many months. 
 
 "I had an opportunity to observe personally 
 the effect of that upon that entire district, upon 
 the workingmen in the district, upon the indus- 
 tries, and upon the efficiency which it brought to 
 labor. The homes underwent a change which it 
 would be very difficult for language to portray. 
 When night came the laboring man did not re- 
 main at the saloon or upon the streets, but he 
 went to his home. When Saturday night came 
 he did not spend the evening in the saloon, but 
 he returned to his home and took his week's pay 
 with him. When he left his home on Monday 
 morning it was an entirely different home to what 
 he had been in the habit of leaving while the 
 saloons were open. 
 
 "The experience which we had there in the 
 few months while those saloons were closed was 
 one of the most potent factors in the cause of 
 
ioo KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 absolute prohibition in that State. I had not my- 
 self prior to that time been what you would call 
 a radical advocate of the prohibition cause, but 
 I became so by reason of my opportunity of wit- 
 nessing with my own eyes the effect upon the labor 
 world of taking liquor out of the laborers' lives. 
 It was not by reason of any theory, but by reason 
 of example, as to the effect of which and the im- 
 portance of which and the significance of which 
 there could be no doubt." 
 
 The liquor men have claimed to be the cham- 
 pions of labor. They have counted upon working- 
 men as their friends, their unfailing allies. For 
 a time, they had untold influence over labor or- 
 ganizations, arranging that the meetings of many 
 of the large units should be held in the rooms 
 back of or over saloons. 
 
 The disappointment of the barroom is bitter 
 at the manner in which the working people of the 
 nation have thrown off the yoke of allegiance 
 and have marched up to the ballot boxes and 
 voted against the saloon. That is why the saloon 
 is going so fast because the common people, 
 the working people, are against it. They know 
 better than any one that the wife and children 
 and job are their friends, and that the saloon is 
 their bitterest enemy. 
 
 The plea of money losses to the laboring man 
 in the destruction of the liquor traffic by Prohi- 
 bition is answered conclusively by Rev. Chas. 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 101 
 
 Stelzle, an authority on the subject, in the follow- 
 ing communication which he furnished me: 
 
 According to the defenders of the saloon, 1,000,000 
 workingmen would permanently be thrown into the labor 
 market following the introduction of national Prohibition. 
 This argument is based entirely upon the absurd prop- 
 osition that if the liquor dealers fail to get the money 
 now spent for beer and whisky nobody else will get it. 
 It is assumed that if a man does not spend a dollar 
 for booze he will throw that dollar into the sewer or 
 into some kind of a bottomless pit, instead of using it 
 to purchase some other commodity which will do good 
 instead of harm, which will have a permanent value, 
 and which will give the workingmen of the country 
 more work, more wages, and gr^are'* prosperity^ every 
 way than if the same amount of money were spent for 
 beer and whisky. 
 
 For every $1,000,000 invested in the average industry, 
 practically four times as much raw material is required, 
 four times as much wages are paid, and four times as 
 many workers are employed as is the case in the liquor 
 industry. 
 
 The figures given by the liquor interests as to the 
 number of men who would be affected by the abolition 
 of the liquor traffic are greatly exaggerated. The Census 
 Report of 1910 tells us that in all manufacturing indus- 
 tries there were then employed 6,616,046 persons. The 
 liquor industry employed 62,920, or just about one per 
 cent, of the total. But of this number only about 15,000 
 were brewers and maltsters, distillers and rectifiers. The 
 remainder of the 62,920 were employed as engineers, 
 
102 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 carpenters, machinists, teamsters, bottlers, etc. occupa- 
 tions which are not at all peculiar to the liquor business. 
 There were more teamsters employed than there were 
 brewers and maltsters, distillers and rectifiers. 
 
 There are about 100,000 bartenders in the United 
 States. What will become of these when the saloon is 
 abolished? What is it that makes a successful bartender? 
 It is his ability as a salesman, and a man who is a good 
 bartender will make a good clerk or salesman in prac- 
 tically any other kind of business. Furthermore, it re- 
 quires many more people to sell $2,000,000,000 worth 
 of bread and clothing, for example, than it does to sell 
 liquor of the same value. And it is more likely that 
 at least as many salaried employees, such as traveling 
 salesmen, bookkeepers, and stenographers, will be em- 
 ployed, 
 
 But. what ?bout the* 15,000 or so brewers and malt- 
 sters, distillers and rectifiers? They will, of necessity, 
 be compelled to adjust themselves to changed conditions. 
 But this does not mean that they will either go adrift 
 or cause a labor panic. The constantly changing situa- 
 tion in the industrial world in this country often compels 
 men to transfer from one occupation to another, many 
 of them being required to learn entirely new trades. 
 Take, for illustration, the situation when the Mergen- 
 thaler typesetting machine was introduced. The printers 
 thought that their trade was destroyed. However, they 
 immediately learned how to run typesetting machines, 
 with the result that today there are more printers em- 
 ployed than ever before, and they are receiving higher 
 wages than at any time in their history. As a matter 
 of fact, however, more workingmen lose their jobs because 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 103 
 
 saloons are open than would be the case were the saloons 
 to be closed. 
 
 As somebody put it, "When liquor puts a man out of 
 a job it unfits him for another job. When no-license 
 puts a bartender out of a job, it makes him a wealth- 
 producing workingman instead of a wealth-destroying 
 workingman. It is better that the bartender should lose 
 his job and get a better one than that dozens of his 
 patrons should lose their jobs and be unfitted for any 
 job." 
 
 Big business has no more right to demand 
 abstinence of the workingman than the working- 
 man has a right to demand abstinence on the part 
 of the employers in the interest of the same 
 efficiency. A management befuddled with alcohol 
 is as bad a business proposition as one where the 
 growler is constantly rushed in the mill. The rich 
 man does unjustly and unwisely when he takes 
 beer away from his workmen and has champagne 
 on his own table. It is a blessing to take the beer 
 from the workman. It will be as great a blessing 
 for the proprietor to cut out his champagne in 
 the interest of business efficiency, if for no, higher 
 motive. Fortunately, a large majority of the cap- 
 tains of industry are abstainers from strong 
 drink. 
 
 This fact is verified by the economical reasons 
 which Mr. Edward Bok, Editor of the Ladies 9 
 Home Journal, gives for being a total abstainer. 
 He says: 
 
KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 As I looked around and came to know more of people 
 and things, I found the always unanswerable argument 
 in favor of a young man's abstinence; that is, that the 
 most successful men in America today are those who 
 never lift a wine-glass to their lips. Becoming interested 
 in this fact, I had the curiosity to inquire personally into 
 it. I found that of twenty-eight of the leading men in 
 the country, whose names I selected at random, twenty- 
 two never touch a drop of wine. I made up rny mind 
 that there was some reason for this. If liquor brought 
 safe pleasure, why did these men abstain from it? If, 
 as some say, it is a stimulant to a busy man, why do not 
 these men, directing the largest business interests in the 
 country, resort to it? And when I saw that these were 
 men whose opinions in great business matters were ac- 
 cepted by the leading concerns of the world, I concluded 
 that their judgment in business matters could command 
 the respect and attention of the leaders of trade on both 
 sides of the sea, and their decision as to the use of liquor 
 was not apt to be wrong. 
 
 CARNEGIE ADVISES ABSTINENCE 
 
 K little Scotch boy came over to this country. 
 His widowed mother was poor and had to work 
 hard to support him. When a mere lad he struck 
 out to earn a few dollars a week to support his 
 mother. And Andrew Carnegie went from the 
 foot of the ladder of poverty and labor to the 
 head of one of the greatest industrial institutions 
 in the world. He is an excellent authority on 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 105 
 
 the value of abstinence to both labor and capital, 
 and to its efficiency in all the callings of life. 
 
 I had known the deep interest Mr. Andrew 
 Carnegie had in the war on King Alcohol, but 
 had not realized how intense was his hostility to 
 rum, or his practical labors personally to prevent 
 its sale or use, until I had a conversation with him 
 at his Fifth Avenue home. He told me how dan- 
 gerous he considered strong drink, how it reduced 
 the physical, mental and moral efficiency of many, 
 and how fatal it was to so many victims. He 
 said it harmed everybody, but his greatest anxiety 
 was for the young men who were most likely 
 to be tempted by the iniquitous saloon, and who 
 in many cases would be destroyed by it. 
 
 Mr. Carnegie has made a permanent record 
 of his radical temperance views in an address 
 he made in October, 1905, in Dundee, Scotland, 
 at the formal opening of a gymnasium building 
 in connection with the University of St. Andrews, 
 of which he was Lord Rector. This address of 
 dedication was made in the presence of many 
 notable men in business and professional life, 
 with leading representatives of the educational 
 institutions of that country. In that address Mr. 
 Carnegie said that the first and most serious habit 
 was the use of alcoholics. A dangerous habit 
 very likely to cause grievous results, all agreed; 
 that it could cause no beneficial results all agreed. 
 It was therefore the part of wisdom to abstain 
 
106 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 from the habit that might work evil and could 
 do no good. That no ill effects were visible from 
 indulgence during the vigorous period of youth 
 rendered the danger of serious consequences in 
 after life still greater than if the ill effects were 
 visible from the beginning. They were playing 
 with an insidious foe. Viewing them as young 
 steeds training for the race of life, he knew of 
 no one habit so likely to defeat them in the con- 
 test as the drinking of alcoholic liquors. That 
 taken in excess, they destroyed the character of 
 men and rendered them useless members of so- 
 ciety, they all knew. The line between excess and 
 sufficiency was so narrow that it was very seldom 
 the drinker knew and observed it. Better be on 
 the safe side. Why run into danger? As no 
 possible good could result from indulgence, no 
 risk should be incurred. In the stern game of 
 life they had all to play, they could afford to 
 throw no advantages away. He did not wish 
 to preach to them. He put the case to them 
 simply as a matter of policy. Drink was the 
 greatest danger in front of them, aeainst which 
 they could protect themselves completely in the 
 campaign of life by a firm resolution of absti- 
 nence. It was good sense for them to do so. 
 Drunkenness was the great rock ahead in the 
 career of every young man. It was far more 
 important that he insure himself against it than 
 against death. A drink policy was worth ten 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 107 
 
 life policies in their case. Abstain and avoid the 
 danger. 
 
 In another address to young men Mr. Carnegie 
 has said: 
 
 The first and most seductive peril, and the destroyer 
 of most young men, is the drinking of liquor. I am no 
 temperance lecturer in disguise, but a man who knows 
 and tells you what observation has proved to him; and 
 I say to you that you are more likely to fail in your 
 career from acquiring the habit of drinking liquor than 
 from all other temptations likely to assail you. You 
 may yield to almost any other temptation and reform 
 may brace up and, if not recover lost ground, at least 
 remain in the race, and secure and maintain a respectable 
 position. But from the insane thirst for liquor escape 
 is almost impossible. I have known but few exceptions 
 to this rule. 
 
 Mr. Carnegie handed me a copy of his book, 
 "Problems of To-day," saying, "On pages 10 and 
 n, in my chapter on * Wealth,' you will find my 
 views on the damage of drink to the working- 
 man." This is the passage to which he refers : 
 
 The dire consequences resulting from the use of liquor 
 would justify much higher taxation upon it in the interest 
 of the workers themselves. The greatest single evil in 
 Britain to-day is intemperance. Seven hundred and eighty- 
 five million dollars yearly is the drink bill. How much 
 of this is paid by the working classes is, we believe, 
 unknown; but even if it be only one-half, here is three 
 
io8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 hundred and ninety-two and a half millions worse than 
 wasted by them. The liquor interests have now received 
 title to their drinking places, when before they had only 
 licenses from year to year a present made to them, as 
 estimated by some, equal to fifteen hundred million dol- 
 lars. When one asks himself what would most benefit 
 the worker, there is no hesitation in the reply to avoid 
 liquor and gambling. The workingman who indulges 
 in either is, to the extent he does so, the architect of his 
 own poverty. Here is the issue of greatest moment to 
 the workingmen. One cannot help those who do not 
 help themselves. One man cannot push another up a 
 ladder. The moment he releases his grasp the assisted 
 one falls. It is only possible to really help those who 
 co-operate with the helper. It is not the submerged 
 but the swimming tenth that can be steadily and rapidly 
 improved by the aid of their fellows. The former should 
 be the special care of the State, and should be isolated. 
 
 As I bade Mr. Carnegie good-by, he said: "I 
 will treat you as I do the rest of my visitors and 
 give you my personal card." This was the card: 
 Printed in large letters at the top, "Andrew Car- 
 negie on the Curse of Drink" ; and this was under- 
 neath, printed pretty nearly as large: 
 
 The curse of drink is the cause of more failures in 
 life than anything else, and while it may be possible 
 to surmount any other faulty habit, the man who is a 
 confirmed drinker has not one chance in a million of 
 success in life. Liquor will conquer you a million chances 
 to one if you give it sway. 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 109 
 
 On thinking with gratitude and joy over the 
 visit and what it revealed, I wondered whether 
 his testimony to the damage of liquor would not 
 be stronger than the testimony of the brewers and 
 distillers and saloonkeepers who hold that drink 
 is food, is good for the body and mind, and will 
 not hinder but promote success in life. 
 
 Mr. John A. Poynton, Mr. Carnegie's com- 
 petent and courteous, private secretary, confirmed 
 a rumor I had heard that Mr. Carnegie has a 
 rule that the men on his large estate of Skibo, 
 Scotland, who abstain from liquor during the 
 year receive a bonus of ten per cent, on their 
 salary. I asked what number of the men em- 
 ployed on the estate were included in the propo- 
 sition, and the answer was, u Every mother's son 
 of them." Mr. Poynton continued: u ln all indus- 
 trial enterprises he never ceased to hammer home 
 the total abstinence policy to his workmen and 
 heads of departments, in every way possible. He 
 has rarely made an address or written a pamphlet 
 or book without frequent references to the desira- 
 bility of leaving liquor alone." 
 
 Besides Mr. Carnegie's keen individual interest 
 in this subject, he takes a wide view of the subject 
 and contributes generously to the cause. He told 
 me once that he not only contributed money to 
 fight the saloon in this country, but that he also 
 gave cheerfully to the cause in other lands in the 
 hope that there would be a speedy and complete 
 
no KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 elimination of the liquor traffic in this country and 
 throughout the world, that peace, sobriety, pros- 
 perity, happiness and usefulness might universally 
 prevail. 
 
 THE FARMERS FOR PROHIBITION 
 
 The farmers are pretty nearly solid against the 
 saloon. They fight it because it damages farm 
 labor, and also because it corrupts public morals. 
 The farmers used to befriend drink. Within the 
 memory of some men the whisky-barrel was in 
 every country store, and the "little brown jug" 
 in every country home. Especially did they use 
 liquor in harvest time, to prevent sunstroke, they 
 said. An old man told me that he cut and hewed 
 the logs for his new home in the West and sawed 
 the joints to fit, and set the day for the neighbors 
 to come in to help with the log-raising. He said 
 he was one of the few in that rural neighborhood 
 who was a total abstainer, and did not provide 
 the whisky that was always in evidence on such 
 occasions. The men refused to lift a log, and he 
 had to send out and get a supply of grog before 
 a hand was moved. They said he was mean 
 and discourteous, and that as they donated their 
 labor they thought the least he could do was to 
 set up the refreshment. It was a common sight 
 to see a splendid young man spend years of hard 
 work to get a farm, and then drink it up at the 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR in 
 
 crossroads grocery, and go to disgrace and the 
 grave. 
 
 The annual meeting of the National Grange in 
 Washington declared for Prohibition for the 
 farmers and demanded the passage of the Na- 
 tional Constitutional Prohibition measure and its 
 ratification by the States. The farmers with 
 their families number 20,000,000 of our hard- 
 working people, and the action at Washington 
 has considerable political as well as moral sig- 
 nificance. The liquor men who have talked so 
 flippantly about the green "country Jakes" being 
 the only ones against them know that it is the 
 ax of the farmer on election days that is doing 
 so much to chop down their business. 
 
 ABSTINENCE FOR SOLDIERS 
 
 Colonel L. M. Maus, Assistant Surgeon Gen- 
 eral of the United States army, retired, delivered 
 an address before the American Medical Society 
 for the Study of Alcohol and Narcotics, from 
 which I quote the following statements regarding 
 abstinence in the army : 
 
 In order to attain success in war, as well as in other 
 walks of professional life, the individual must preserve 
 his general health, which is the keynote to efficiency and 
 success; and from an experience of over forty years as an 
 army medical officer, I know of no factor which con- 
 
H2 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 tributes more to the general health and efficiency than 
 total abstinence. 
 
 During one of General Wolseley's campaigns, he 
 divided some of his men into squads for marching ex- 
 periments. The first squad was given a daily ration of 
 whisky, the second a ration of beer, and the third water. 
 At first the whisky squad marched gaily ahead, but was 
 soon overtaken by the beer squad, which in turn was 
 passed by the water squad. The water squad followed 
 an even gait, and after passing both whisky and beer 
 squads, reached its destination long before its competitors. 
 
 Lord Kitchener allowed his men no spirits whatso- 
 ever during his campaign in the Soudan. Lord Roberts 
 was equally firm in encouraging abstinence from alcohol. 
 Dr. Wahlberg, surgeon-in-chief of the Finnish army dur- 
 ing 1877-8, said non-drinkers endured better, and that 
 the old drinkers were the first men to break down. 
 
 The Boers, whose endurance was generally commented 
 upon favorably, used neither spirits nor beer. Sir Fred- 
 erick Treves, who served at Ladysmith, says that the 
 drinking men fell out and dropped as regularly as if 
 they were labeled with the big letter "D" on their backs. 
 
 During the Swedish alcoholic investigation among 
 soldiers, a number of picked non-commissioned officers 
 and men were selected for rifle practice. The tests cov- 
 ered a number of days, part of which time the men 
 were tried out with small quantities of alcohol, about 
 1^2 ounces of brandy. When alcohol was taken dur- 
 ing the quick fire, the hits were thirty per cent, less, 
 though the men imagined they were firing quicker. Dur- 
 ing slow aiming, the difference was fifty per cent, in favor 
 of abstaining days. 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 113 
 
 During the marching test, some of the men were 
 allowed alcohol, while others were deprived of its use. 
 The drinking men were found inferior in marching and 
 enduring qualities; besides, all the sunstrokes and heat 
 exhaustions occurred among the drinking classes. As a 
 result of these series of experiments the Austrian soldier 
 is not allowed to carry brandy on his person, as was 
 previously the case. 
 
 The use of alcohol as a beverage among troops con- 
 tributes more to camp diseases and detracts more from 
 efficiency than even poor camp sanitation. This was true 
 during the recent Spanish war and the Philippine insur- 
 rection. Especially was this true of diseases which stood 
 for years at the top of camp diseases due to immorality 
 in our army, and it became a subject of congressional 
 discussion. 
 
 During 1898-1902 the Government permitted the un- 
 limited introduction and distribution of all kinds of alco- 
 holic beverages among the army of 70,000 regular and 
 volunteer troops which were on duty in the islands dur- 
 ing that period, as a result of which the admission rate 
 to sick report ran up four or five times as high as the 
 present rate in the United States. 
 
 While a large amount of the sickness was no doubt 
 due to climatic influences and poor sanitation, at least 
 fifty per cent, of the excess was due to the use of alcohol. 
 Hundreds of the men were invalided home on account 
 of intestinal and stomach troubles, insanity, neurasthenia 
 and other forms of neurosis, due more or less to alcohol, 
 ninety-five per cent, of whom recovered before they had 
 reached San Francisco, during the month's voyage of 
 return. 
 
ii 4 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Besides sickness and loss of efficiency in the army as 
 a result of alcohol, we know that practically all of the 
 crimes and military offenses committed in military circles 
 are due to the use of intoxicants. All of the murders, 
 suicides, court-martials, and dismissals of officers, prison 
 and guard-house desertions are usually confined to the 
 drinking element. 
 
 From a careful study of the effects of alcohol on the 
 human organism I find that: 
 
 1. As a beverage it lowers all the mental faculties, 
 such as judgment, memory, perception, thought, compari- 
 son, caution, and quickness of action. 
 
 2. It lessens working capacity, marching endurance, 
 accuracy and rapidity in rifle firing, ability to command 
 troops or navigate ships, to act as members of military 
 courts or boards, or to perform the higher administrative 
 duties of official life. 
 
 3. It causes sickness, impairs health and usefulness, 
 adds greatly to the non-efficiency of officers and men, 
 increases the burden of the medical department in time 
 of peace and war, deprives the government frequently 
 of the services of those who drink, and increases unneces- 
 sarily the retired and pension lists of the army and navy. 
 
 4. It lowers the moral standard, lessens self-restraint, 
 and is productive of unreliability, untruthfulness, dis- 
 honesty and crime. 
 
 The United States Government shares these 
 opinions of Colonel Maus, and by legislative 
 action shields our noble soldiers and sailors from 
 the curse of drink. 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 115 
 
 ABSTINENCE FOR SAILORS 
 
 Admiral Dewey, a short time before he died, 
 put himself unequivocally on record as to the 
 value of abstinence to the officers and men of the 
 United States Navy. The record was in an 
 interview by George Creel for the New York 
 World. The Admiral gave his opinion about 
 the u wine mess" in answer to the question, u What 
 about the famous drinking order?" 
 
 "A good thing!" His answer was instant. 
 "There was some feeling about it at first, because 
 the papers made fun of it, and there was also 
 an attempt to make it appear that Secretary 
 Daniels was charging officers with intemperance. 
 I think that the feeling has disappeared com- 
 pletely. Every railroad, every great corporation, 
 has long had an ironclad rule forbidding men to 
 drink while on duty. Isn't a ship as important 
 as a locomotive? Practically every European 
 power has copied the order, by the way." 
 
 At this point Admiral Dewey handed to Mr. 
 Creel an article by Hector Bywater, the famous 
 naval expert, written for a British journal, after 
 a careful study of the American navy. The Ad- 
 miral had the following paragraph marked: 
 "Those best qualified to speak assert that the last 
 four years have witnessed a remarkable all- 
 around improvement in the quality of the per- 
 sonnel. Thanks to the Secretary's drastic order 
 
n6 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 shortly after he came into office, intemperance has 
 disappeared from the navy, and although the 
 drink prohibition excited ridicule and bitter oppo- 
 sition at the time, the majority of naval officers 
 now agree that it has had a most beneficial effect 
 on efficiency and discipline." 
 
 "Do you stand for that?" Mr. Creel asked, 
 looking up after reading the paragraph aloud. 
 
 "I would be dishonest if I didn't," the Admiral 
 answered. 
 
 The learned professions as well as the indus- 
 trial world are fighting rum on the ground of 
 efficiency as well as of principle. 
 
 DR. ELIOT BECOMES ABSTAINER 
 
 For a generation the liquor men have been 
 quoting Doctor Charles W. Eliot, president eme- 
 ritus of Harvard, as their friend and champion. 
 Hence my surprise when I saw his name among 
 those asking for Prohibition during the war as 
 an economic measure. I wrote Doctor Eliot ask- 
 ing him if he would not write me his views on the 
 liquor problem generally for my book. He at 
 once sent me the specially prepared essay which 
 I have set down bodily in this volume. It will 
 astound and confound the liquor people as much 
 as it will surprise and delight the friends of Pro- 
 hibition. In the commnnication Doctor Eliot an- 
 nounces to the public that he reversed the views 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 117 
 
 of a lifetime on the drink problem, after he was 
 eighty years of age. This is his remarkable and 
 powerful essay, which is a temperance library on 
 one shelf, in a single book: 
 
 My opinion about war prohibition is that the law 
 should prohibit the manufacture and sale of distilled 
 spirits as a beverage; but that it should permit the manu- 
 facture of beer containing not more than two per cent, 
 of alcohol. Such beer is not intoxicating, no matter in 
 what quantity it is swallowed ; and yet it tastes and smells 
 like beer. It does not seem to me to be safe to permit 
 the manufacture and sale of beers and wines in general; 
 because they may easily be taken in quantities which 
 diminish the self-control of the person who drinks them 
 freely. Beers and wines of the ordinary strength in 
 alcohol diminish the productiveness of workers in many, 
 indeed most, of the national industries through the in- 
 jurious effect of alcohol, even when taken in moderate 
 quantities, on accuracy and speed in manual and clerical 
 labors. 
 
 Until the United States went to war with Germany, I 
 had never advocated a prohibitory law. The process by 
 which I have arrived at that advocacy is correctly de- 
 scribed as follows: 
 
 I have never been a total abstainer in any part of my 
 life, until within two months. I drank beer or wine 
 occasionally, but not habitually, and never perceived that 
 it had any bad effect on me. Having lived about forty 
 summers at Mount Desert in the State of Maine, I saw 
 the very serious evils which have there accompanied an 
 imperfect execution of a prohibitory law. The Maine 
 
n8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 law did good in communities in which a decided majority 
 were opposed to any use of alcoholic drinks, but in the 
 larger towns and summer resorts the law was either of 
 no effect, or, when imperfectly or unfairly enforced, had 
 a bad effect on the administration of justice and the 
 people's respeGt for law in general. I have therefore 
 advocated in Massachussetts and elsewhere a local option 
 law, and have witnessed great community benefits from 
 local Prohibition, in spite of the well-known difficulties 
 created for no-license towns and cities by the contiguity 
 of towns or cities whose voters were in favor of license. 
 
 During the past thirty years biological, chemical, and 
 physiological science has made great advances in respect 
 to knowledge of the effects of alcohol on the human body ; 
 and in recent years it has been to my mind demonstrated 
 beyond a question that any man who wishes to do his best 
 work with brains or hands, or both, is better off without 
 alcoholic drinks, even the mildest forms, than with them. 
 I have thence inferred that it was wiser to be a total 
 abstainer than a moderate drinker. Accuracy and speed 
 are reduced by even moderate doses of alcohol, not only 
 in factory or group work, but also in individual or de- 
 tached labor. 
 
 During my fifty-five years' service as teacher and edu- 
 cational administrator, I came into more or less close 
 contact with thousands of young men in whose subse- 
 quent careers I took an interest. Among the personal 
 and family tragedies which have come to my knowledge 
 have been some which have occurred not from the habitual 
 use of distilled spirits or of the strong wines and beers, 
 but from the occasional use of the milder alcoholic drinks 
 in quantity sufficient to diminish temporarily the drinker's 
 
ALCOHOL AND LABOR 119 
 
 self-control. While in that condition, young men of good 
 character, whose conduct is habitually unexceptional, can 
 contract disease with which years afterward they may 
 infect innocent persons. Of course hard drinkers are 
 liable to the same disasters; but their conduct and visible 
 characteristics warn the innocent, so that the worst 
 tragedies may be avoided. 
 
 For twenty years past I have paid much attention to 
 the subject of social hygiene; and these studies have shown 
 me that drinking alcohol and the male demand for pros- 
 titution are always intimately connected. I have learned, 
 too, that when young men are herded together in camps 
 and barracks, as they must be in all armies, commer- 
 cialized vice is always rampant in their neighborhood, and 
 requires a vigorous repression which is not to be expected 
 from the professional soldiers of any nation. I am in- 
 formed that effectual repression was not provided in many 
 of the cantonments of the American troops on the Mex- 
 ican border. When the United States went to war with 
 Germany, and it appeared that our soldiers would soon 
 be serving in large numbers in France, I thought it was 
 high time to provide for our boys such protection as a 
 national prohibitory law can give them in their training 
 places and camps, both here and abroad. 
 
 Since I was eighty years old, I have had a suspicion 
 that I could work better if I took no alcohol at all, so 
 last May, having become an advocate of total abstinence 
 for others, I became a total abstainer myself with much 
 satisfaction. 
 
 I write thus, because when an old educator, who has 
 always opposed prohibitory laws, changes his mind and 
 advocates Prohibition, it is fair that people who pay any 
 
120 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 attention to his exhortations should know the grounds 
 or reasons for his change of opinion and conduct. 
 
 JOSEPH H. CHOATE 
 
 In a delightful interview I had with Mr. Joseph 
 H. Choate in his home, only a few weeks before 
 his death, I asked him as the President of the 
 Associated Charities of New York State, and as 
 the acknowledged head of the American bar, 
 what he considered to be the relation between 
 the saloon and suffering and crime. He promptly 
 replied that he had no hesitation in saying that 
 much of the suffering, and most of the crime of 
 the land, can be traced directly to the saloon; 
 the most conservative possible estimate would be 
 50 per cent, of the suffering and 50 per cent, of 
 the crime are the direct result of the saloon. 
 
 DR. LYMAN ABBOTT 
 
 In a conversation with Dr. Lyman Abbott, 
 whom the liquor people have quoted so often as 
 friendly to them, he showed me statistics to prove 
 the success of Prohibition in Cornwall, his home 
 town, and expressed his sympathy with the move- 
 ment to drive the saloon out of the states and 
 nation. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 
 
 FOR fifty years the liquor people have 
 claimed Lincoln as their friend and 
 champion, and have featured him as such 
 in their advertisements in the papers and in their 
 trade circulars. They have boldly claimed that 
 Lincoln used intoxicating drinks and that he had 
 been a saloonkeeper. From year to year, the face 
 of dear "Old Abe," the homeliest to the eyes of 
 clay but handsomest to the eye of the spirit, in 
 all the commonwealth, has been put in the news- 
 papers to advertise some brand of whisky or 
 other liquors. The liquor dealers did so partly 
 because they made much of the "personal lib- 
 erty" argument in defence of their business, and 
 featured the Emancipator as the chief exponent 
 of freedom, and partly because with their be- 
 fogged intellects and befuddled consciences they 
 really thought that Lincoln had been one of their 
 craft, and were boasting that a saloonkeeper had 
 gotten to be President of the United States. 
 
 For half a century, I have seen that lovely 
 face debauched by its foul setting in the liquor 
 
 121 
 
122 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 advertisements, and have been filled with anger 
 and contempt at the sight. I have felt like spit- 
 ting on the page that was debased by it, and have 
 often taken my knife and cut out this picture 
 advertisement and, tearing it into pieces, have 
 thrown it into the waste basket. This adver- 
 tisement does not appear as frequently as it used 
 to; for the personal liberty argument for liquor 
 has been pretty well abandoned, and the temper- 
 ance sentiment of the nation has grown to be such 
 that the people count it an impertinence, if not 
 a sacrilige, to use the face of so great and good 
 a man as Lincoln to represent so low and dia- 
 bolical a business. 
 
 What are the historical facts which give the 
 liquor dealers even the flimsiest excuse for claim- 
 ing Lincoln as their friend and champion? Sim- 
 ply this: When Lincoln was twenty-four years 
 of age, he concluded to try the mercantile busi- 
 ness in New Salem, Illinois. He bought an in- 
 terest in a country store and had as his partner 
 a man by the name of Berry. Country stores in 
 those times almost without exception kept dry 
 goods, boots and shoes, hats and caps, sugar and 
 coffee and other goods, and whisky. I myself 
 remember when the decent, respectable country 
 stores, almost all of them, kept whisky, which 
 they sold with no more compunction of conscience 
 than they did anything else they had in stock. 
 
 Lincoln never drank; disliked the whisky fea- 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 123 
 
 ture of the business; protested strongly to Berry 
 against it, with a demand for its removal; and 
 he himself declined to have anything practically 
 to do with that part of the business or be charged 
 with any of its responsibility. And he told 
 Leonard Swett, one of the greatest lawyers of 
 Chicago and America, and one of the most inti- 
 mate friends he ever had, that he did not know 
 the taste of one kind of liquor from another, and 
 that the main reason for his quarrel with Berry 
 which led to the dissolution of the partnership, 
 was that Berry would not consent to cut the 
 whisky feature out of the store. After the dis- 
 solution of the partnership Berry went off and 
 established a low groggery, answering to the 
 meanest saloon of to-day. 
 
 Judge Weldon, a warm personal friend of 
 mine, said that he was in a hotel at Bloomington, 
 Illinois, one day when Lincoln called on Judge 
 Douglas in a personal, courteous visit. Judge 
 Douglas took out his flask, as was his custom and 
 the custom of almost everybody, and offered Mr. 
 Lincoln a drink, who thanked him but declined, 
 stating, "Judge, I do not drink at all." 
 
 We will here record historical facts which 
 prove conclusively that Lincoln was a total ab- 
 stainer all his life from boyhood, and that he 
 was one of the most consistent, persistent, and 
 powerful enemies the liquor traffic in America 
 ever had. 
 
124 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 MAJOR JAMES B. MERWIN 
 
 I called on Major James B. Merwin at his 
 residence, 1732 Grove street, Brooklyn. I found 
 him an invalid, seated in an easy chair, and past 
 eighty-four years of age. Major Merwin had 
 been very close to Lincoln, especially during the 
 period of the Civil War, working in harmony 
 with him in one of the most tragical periods of 
 the world's history. Whoever was really close 
 to Lincoln at that time was in the business of 
 empire-building, and Major Merwin was one of 
 the makers of history in the second place, because 
 he was one of those "crank" pioneer Prohibition- 
 ists who started the greatest moral revolution in 
 the temperance line in six thousand years. 
 
 "I have come to see you," I said, "especially 
 about your relation to Lincoln in the war against 
 alcohol, and for your testimony as to what you 
 know personally about Lincoln's temperance 
 habits and the immensely efficient service he ren- 
 dered in fighting strong drink." 
 
 The Major's eyes flashed, his face shone and 
 he became younger by a score of years as he 
 said: 
 
 "No subject on earth is so dear as the one you 
 have come to talk with me about, no man is so 
 precious to my memory as Lincoln and no work 
 so dear as that in which we were engaged so 
 intimately together. You will do me a personal 
 favor if you will take anything I may say to- 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 125 
 
 night, or anything that I may have said at any 
 time, arid give it to the audience you will have 
 in your book, and let my humble life go on with 
 its mission of service after I shall have been 
 gathered to my fathers. 
 
 "The tidal wave that swept so many States 
 into Prohibition about 1850 carried me into the 
 warfare on liqi/or," the Major continued. u As 
 a young man I felt as greatly called to give my 
 life to the work of saving the young people from 
 the ravages of drink as any minister could be 
 called to the task of preaching the Gospel; and 
 I began my mission, which I considered from 
 God, actively in the contest in the State of Con- 
 necticut. Though prepared for Amherst, circum- 
 stances prevented my going to college, and under 
 this new divine call I became editor of the "Foun- 
 tain," a temperance organ printed in Hartford, 
 and corresponding secretary of the Connecticut 
 Temperance Society. After the Maine law had 
 been passed we undertook to have a similar law 
 passed in Connecticut, and I led in the nonparti- 
 san and interdenominational fight to secure that 
 law. I enlisted among our corps of speakers 
 Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley, P. T. 
 Barnum, and others; Neal Dow himself appeared 
 before our Legislature, and after a fierce fight 
 the Prohibition Law was passed. 
 
 "At an enthusiastic meeting, before the passage 
 of the law, a citizen of Springfield, Illinois, who 
 
126 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 either happened to be in the audience or was sent 
 by the temperance people of Illinois for the pur- 
 pose, heard me speak at the meeting, and at the 
 close of the exercises he said to me, 'When this 
 work is over, if you will come out to Springfield 
 and make just the same kind of an address to 
 our citizens that you made to-night, I will not only 
 be responsible for your expenses, but will see that 
 you have proper compensation for your time as 
 well/ 
 
 "After we had won out in Connecticut I went 
 out to Springfield, Illinois, and my coming had 
 been widely prepared for; it was heralded in the 
 papers, great care was taken to announce the 
 meeting by handbills, and as the Legislature was 
 not in session, the hall of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives of the State Capitol was secured. The 
 hall was, filled with people, and I thought I had 
 a measureably good time describing the substance 
 of the Maine law, the fight we had made at our 
 State capital, the damage of drink to the com- 
 munity, and especially to the young, and the ne- 
 cessity of having a law that would put an end 
 to the vice rather than license it to do its destruc- 
 tion for cold money. My address at the close 
 was heartily applauded, and as I supposed the 
 meeting was over, there came a call here and 
 there, all over the house, 'Lincoln ! Lincoln ! Lin- 
 coln !' and it grew louder until there was universal 
 demand for 'Lincoln. 1 Not knowing the gentle- 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 127 
 
 man that was called for, I wondered what he 
 would look like, but did not wonder long, for 
 just to my left a homely, tall man got himself up 
 out of a very low chair. As he unfolded his long 
 arms and longer legs and walked to the platform 
 I shall never forget the feeling that came over 
 me, and when this unique, unkempt individual 
 took his place to speak, I was more than half 
 afraid he was out of the enemy's camp and going 
 to tear what I had said to pieces, or that he was 
 some man who had invited himself to tone down 
 and temper something that had been said. All 
 doubt fled from my mind when, as he placed his 
 hands on the secretary's desk, he began a talk 
 which lasted twenty minutes, taking as his theme 
 the law, its majesty, and its necessity in protect- 
 ing the home, the Church and the State. He said 
 law was never made for the protection of wrong 
 but for the protection of the right and the pre- 
 vention and punishment of the wrong. He said 
 that splendid public sentiment had been made by 
 the Washingtonian total abstinence movement, 
 which he had so heartily commended in his pub- 
 lic addresses, and rejoiced that while some had 
 broken the pledge and gone back to their bad 
 habits, numbers had also remained faithful. 
 'But,' he said, Ve have come to the place in the 
 history of this movement where it is necessary 
 to have the powerful hand of the law to keep 
 back this giant evil and protect the men, the 
 
128 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 women and the children against the damages of 
 the liquor traffic.' Greeley had made level- 
 headed and convincing Prohibition speeches in our 
 campaign in Connecticut, and Henry Ward 
 Beecher with his fervid eloquence had carried 
 everything by storm in our great gatherings; but 
 I never had heard till that night in Springfield, 
 nor do I ever remember to have heard since, any- 
 thing so powerful as Lincoln's twenty minutes 
 on the necessity for a prohibitory law in the State 
 of Illinois. 
 
 "The silence was so great that the heartbeats 
 of the audience could almost be heard, and the 
 impression on the audience was profound beyond 
 expression. At the close of this address, this 
 same Mr. Lincoln, of whom I had never heard, 
 but who was pretty much of a character to me 
 by the hour's experience, came up to me, thanked 
 me for my message, expressed the hope that I 
 might find permanent employment in leading the 
 campaign in Illinois as I had done in Connecti- 
 cut, and asked me if I would not go home with 
 him and he his guest for the night, which invita- 
 tion I gladly accepted. We were both so full of 
 the subject of temperance and so anxious for its 
 success in the country and State that we talked 
 and talked and talked until about daylight before 
 we went to bed. 
 
 "The fight was conducted by the Illinois State 
 Maine Law Alliance, and it was under the aus- 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 129 
 
 pices of that Association and as secretary of it, 
 that I went into the campaign, in which I had 
 Lincoln as my strong right arm. I got Lincoln 
 to write the prohibitory bill that was to be voted 
 upon. After he had drafted it he said, 'There, 
 I think that will hold water, but what I want to 
 know is whether it will hold whisky' ; and he 
 named twenty or twenty-five of the finest lawyers 
 of the State and had me go to them with the 
 draft he had made to see whether the law would 
 be declared good by the courts in case the people 
 should vote for it. Lincoln was a great cam- 
 paigner, and among other speakers whom I 
 booked for the State contest we had none so 
 strong as Lincoln, who made at least thirty ad- 
 dresses in favor of Prohibition. There is this 
 to say about Mr. Lincoln's speeches: they were 
 never vituperative, never bitter in personal de- 
 nunciation. He did not pour out volleys of hatred 
 against saloonkeepers; he claimed that society 
 was equally guilty in licensing them to do their 
 evil work, but he emphasized the danger of drink, 
 the complete ruin it would effect in the case of 
 those who tampered with it, the tremendous evils 
 of the institution of the saloon in destroying 
 health, usefulness, happiness and life itself, and 
 made an argument which was positively unanswer- 
 able. 
 
 "Lincoln was so deeply interested in the fight 
 that he helped me raise money for it. In fact, it 
 
i 3 o KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 was through his personal influence mostly that 
 the funds necessary for carrying on the campaign 
 were raised. I recall well this incident: Mr. 
 William B. Ogden, then president of the Chicago 
 and Northwestern Railroad, and a man of tre- 
 mendous influence, who was deeply enlisted in 
 the fight for no-license in the State, asked me to 
 bring Mr. Lincoln into his office for a confer- 
 ence as to the most efficient method of carrying 
 on the contest. I took Mr. Lincoln to his office 
 and we entered seriously and heartily into the 
 discussion of the problem, at the close of which 
 Mr. Ogden wrote out his personal check for 
 $2,500 and, handing it to Mr. Lincoln, said: 
 'If you need more money come back to me and 
 I will duplicate that check cheerfully. No 
 greater moral warfare could be conducted than 
 that in which you are engaged, and I am so 
 anxious to see you succeed.' In those days, you 
 will remember, $2,500 was as much in proportion 
 as ten or even twenty-five thousand dollars would 
 be now. 
 
 "Lincoln personally commanded not only re- 
 spect but the most perfect confidence, and money 
 flowed into our treasury, through him as the chan- 
 nel, sufficient for all our purposes. 
 
 "Will you not be surprised when I tell you that 
 in that early period we came within 15,000 votes 
 in a popular election of carrying Illinois for 
 Prohibition?" 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 131 
 
 I said to him, "Major, I have seen you exhibit 
 the gold watch which you received as a souvenir 
 at the close of that great State campaign in Illinois 
 of which you have just spoken. Have you it 
 handy? I should like to see it at close range." 
 
 He called for it and passed it over to me. I 
 opened one side of the watch and found Lincoln's 
 picture in it; I also opened the other and found 
 this inscription cut into the case: "Presented by 
 the friends of temperance in Chicago to J. B. 
 Merwin, Corresponding-secretary of the Illinois 
 Maine Law Alliance, as a token of their confi- 
 dence and regard for his untiring energy and per- 
 severance in its campaign of 1855 for Prohibi- 
 tion." 
 
 Tears came into the old man's eyes as he said, 
 "Doctor, just to think that Lincoln wrote that 
 inscription himself without any solicitation or 
 prompting upon the part of any one else, and I 
 have reason to believe that it was his own sug- 
 gestion, personally, that led to the gift of the 
 watch and the little ceremony of presentation." 
 
 "Major Merwin, please tell me about your as- 
 sociation with Lincoln in temperance work during 
 the period of the Civil War." 
 
 "At the beginning of the Civil War I was agent 
 of the Michigan State Temperance Alliance, with 
 my headquarters in Detroit. I received a letter 
 from Mr. Lincoln, asking me to come to Wash- 
 ington and see him. He said to me, 'Merwin, 
 
I 3 2 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 you have done important temperance work, and 
 I know what its quality is and I know what 
 you are, and I want a man of your type on the 
 ground here at Washington to promote the cause 
 of temperance amongst our soldiers and sailors. 
 There will be opportunity for you to make ad- 
 dresses here and there at the soldiers camps and 
 other places, but I want you especially to deal 
 personally with the men, talk to them like a 
 brother and try and protect them against the 
 drink habit, which would so lessen their efficiency 
 and spoil their character.' And for four years 
 I was engaged in that specific task. Lieutenant' 
 General Winfield Scott, who, next to Lincoln, was 
 the head of the army, gave me a letter officially 
 authorizing the specific task to which Mr. Lin- 
 coln had called me. I preserved a fac-simile of 
 that letter, which I have in a drawer there, and 
 I will let you read it." 
 
 I took the letter and read: 
 
 I esteem the mission of Mr. Merwin to this army a 
 Kappy circumstance, and request all commanders to give 
 him free access to their camps and posts, and also to mul- 
 tiply occasions to enable him to address our officers and 
 men. 
 
 WINFIELD SCOTT. 
 
 "That was in 1861," Major Merwin continued. 
 "General Scott told me that Mr. Lincoln had 
 made a special request of him for this official 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 133 
 
 commendation. General Scott died early in the 
 contest, as you know, and the generals did not 
 seem to want to pay much attention to his old 
 order to give me the right of way for temperance 
 work among the soldiers, and, in fact, rather put 
 barriers in my way, as they presumed I was, per- 
 haps, a crank, and, maybe, in the way. I told 
 Mr. Lincoln about this and he said, 'I will fix 
 it so there will be no difficulty in the premises/ 
 and he issued this commission : 
 
 The Surgeon-General will send Mr. Merwin wherever 
 he may think the public service may require. 
 
 A. LINCOLN. 
 
 Major Merwin sent for the original order, 
 and I held it in my fingers, signed, "A. Lincoln." 
 
 "You see it is written in Lincoln's own hand," 
 the Major said, u and signed with his own pen; 
 and there is not money enough in all the States 
 of this Union to buy it. At my death that is to 
 go to the Anti-Saloon League to be deposited in 
 its archives as an immortal heritage. 
 
 "Lincoln said to me one day, 'Merwin, your 
 work of temperance is so benovelent and so nearly 
 like that of the Christian ministry, that I think 
 you ought to be ordained a minister, and that 
 will give you the special right of way to the hos- 
 pitals and hearts of men in a little more intimate 
 and sacred way.' He had a special friend in 
 
i 3 4 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Adrian, Michigan, to whom he wrote and asked 
 him if he would not bring about my ordination, 
 and in the letter he added this little piece of 
 humor, so like him: 'When you ordain him, be 
 sure and do not spoil him.' You understand that 
 I was a full-fledged chaplain, with rank as such 
 in the United States army, and I did the work 
 of a chaplain often and have official endorsement 
 of that branch of my work, but Lincoln said to 
 me, 'Do not forget that your one work is to 
 hammer into the minds of the boys the necessity 
 of total abstinence ; do not stop short of anything 
 else than total abstinence.' One of the sweetest 
 memories of my life is the fact that Lincoln 
 treated me as a chaplain as well as a temperance 
 reformer, for many a time, in his private office, 
 we have bowed down and prayed to the God of 
 Heaven; sometimes I would lead in prayer and 
 sometimes he would lead in prayer himself, and 
 oh, such prayers, as that giant lifted a whole 
 nation up in his arms and laid it upon the bosom 
 of the Almighty, and how agonizingly did he ask 
 God to lead him as he led the nation." 
 
 "Major Merwin," I said, "I have heard you 
 say from the platform several times that the last 
 time you saw Mr. Lincoln he told you that as 
 General Lee had surrendered, and slavery had 
 been destroyed and the Union preserved, the next 
 great national issue would be the destruction of the 
 liquor traffic.' 1 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 135 
 
 "I can give you the substance, and about the 
 words, that Lincoln spoke to me that day," the 
 Major replied, u they made such a deep impres- 
 sion upon my mind that I never shall forget them : 
 4 Merwin, we have cleaned up with the help of 
 the people a colossal job. Slavery is abolished. 
 After reconstruction, the next great question will 
 be the overthrow and abolition of the liquor 
 traffic; and you know' for I had known him 
 since 1852 intimately 'and you know, Merwin, 
 that my head and my heart and my hand and my 
 purse will go into that work. In 1842 less than 
 a quarter of a century ago I predicted, under 
 the influence of God's Spirit, that the time would 
 come when there would be neither a slave nor a 
 drunkard in the land. I have lived to see, thank 
 God, one of those prophecies fulfilled. I hope 
 to see the other realized.' 
 
 "It struck me as so important a statement that 
 I said to him: 'Mr. Lincoln, shall I publish this 
 from you?' He instantly replied: 4 Yes, publish 
 it as wide as the daylight shines.' 
 
 "One more thing I would like to have you 
 speak about, Major Merwin," I suggested, "is 
 that Internal Revenue Act I might honestly say, 
 'Infernal Revenue Act, which was passed by 
 Congress during the war to tax the liquor business 
 in this country for a war revenue. You have 
 said publicly that Lincoln signed that bill with 
 great hesitation." 
 
136 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 The Major said: "I heard Salmon P. Chase, 
 Secretary of the Treasury, one of the best men 
 the country has produced, say to Mr. Lincoln: 
 'We have got to have the resources of evil as 
 well as good to end this rebellion, and we must 
 have the resources.' The President hesitated and 
 hesitated, and said, 'I don't want to sign it.' Mr. 
 Chase said, 'Mr. Lincoln, the strain is so great 
 we cannot stand it much longer, and this is an 
 actual necessity.' 'Very well,' said Mr. Lincoln 
 to Henry Wilson and Mr. Chase in my presence, 
 'I had rather lose my right hand than sign a 
 document that shall perpetuate the liquor traffic, 
 but as soon as the exigencies pass away, I will 
 turn my whole attention to the repeal of that 
 document,' and that I know was his design, for 
 he told me so, and he never would have signed 
 it had he not had the promise of the members 
 of the Cabinet and the committees of the Senate 
 and House, having the matter in charge, that the 
 law should be repealed at the close of the war." 
 
 I said, "Major, it was a great pity that that 
 pledge was not kept after Mr. Lincoln's sudden 
 death, for that Act was one of the greatest blots 
 on the page of our American life, and one of the 
 greatest curses to the civilization of our country. 
 The brewers and distillers paying such a large 
 amount into the treasury each year to support the 
 Government, had a mortgage on it so large that 
 they thought they owned it, and acted as though 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 137 
 
 that were the case ; and the pity to the nation was 
 that their ownership was so absolute and so 
 necessarily recognized that it seemed the people 
 could not get out from under that despotism, and 
 it is only just now that the Congress of the United 
 States, echoing the voice of the voters of the 
 nation, are declaring their independence from this 
 tyranny and their determination to utterly de- 
 stroy it." 
 
 His parting message to me was this: "The be- 
 ginning of the end of the liquor traffic is near. I 
 do not have to stay to see it. With prophetic eye 
 I see it is in the immediate future. I feel now 
 like saying with Simeon of old: 4 Now, Lord, let- 
 test thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine 
 eyes have seen thy salvation.' ' 
 
 He went into the realm and reward which his 
 spiritual vision beheld only a few days after that. 
 I took up a New York paper and read a full col- 
 umn article with this heading: 
 
 Major Merwin Dies. Friend of Lincoln. President 
 Appointed him to Temperance Work in Union Army. 
 Famous as a Lecturer. Campaigned with Lincoln in 
 1855, for State-wide Prohibition in Illinois. 
 
 I was not greatly surprised, but was very sad, 
 and I seemed to hear a voice from the White 
 Throne saying, "Well done, good and faithful 
 servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, 
 
138 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 I will make thee ruler over many things; enter 
 thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
 
 WILLIAM O. STODDARD 
 
 Lincoln had three private secretaries at the be- 
 ginning of his administration, John Nicolay, John 
 Hay and William Osborn Stoddard. I made a 
 pilgrimage to see Mr. Stoddard at his home in 
 Madison, New Jersey. I found a man in latest 
 cut of clothes, tall, straight as an arrow, gentle 
 and polite in voice and manner. It was a bene- 
 diction to meet with his sunshine and cheer, his 
 ready wit, his constant flow of humor, and, best 
 of all, his knowledge of and love for Lincoln. 
 I told him I was very glad of an opportunity to 
 get from his lips some evidence of Lincoln's 
 habits of total abstinence, and the unspeakable 
 eloquence of his voice and example against the 
 liquor habit and traffic. I said, "Please tell me 
 a little bit about your private secretaryship to Mr. 
 Lincoln. How did you come to be appointed ?" 
 
 He said, "I was editor of a paper in Cham- 
 paign, Illinois, called the 'Central Illinois Ga- 
 zette,' which had the honor of presenting Abra- 
 ham Lincoln for the first time in public print as 
 a candidate for the Presidency of the United 
 States." 
 
 "What kind of a paper was it?" I asked. 
 
 "It was the most fanatical temperance paper 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 139 
 
 of Eastern Illinois/ 1 he answered. "Such papers 
 were exceedingly scarce. I can recall hardly any 
 between where I lived and Chicago. Prohibi- 
 tion was not as popular then as it is now, and 
 those of us who espoused it were accounted cranks 
 to the utmost limit. I was the crank editor my- 
 self, and wrote everything that went into it. The 
 paper was also violently anti-slavery and friendly 
 to the Free Soil (Republican) party." 
 
 Mr. Stoddard showed me his two articles first 
 naming Lincoln for the Presidency. The local 
 article read: 
 
 PERSONAL 
 
 Our Next President. We had the pleasure of intro- 
 ducing to the hospitalities of our sanctum a few days 
 ago the Hon. Abraham Lincoln. Few men can make 
 an hour pass away more agreeably. We do not pretend 
 to know whether Mr. Lincoln will ever condescend to 
 occupy the White House or not, but if he should, it is 
 a comfort to know that he has established for himself 
 a character and reputation of sufficient strength and purity 
 to withstand the disreputable and corrupting influence 
 of even that locality. No man in the west at the present 
 time occupies a more enviable position before the people 
 or stands a better chance for obtaining a high position 
 among those to whose guidance our ship of State is to be 
 entrusted. 
 
 The editorial in the same issue, nominating Mr. 
 Lincoln, closed with the following : 
 
140 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 No man will be so sure to consolidate the party vote 
 of the State, or will carry the great Mississippi Valley 
 with a more irresistible rush of popular enthusiasm than 
 our distinguished fellow citizen, Abraham Lincoln. We 
 in Illinois know him well, in the best sense of the word; 
 a true democrat, a man of the people, whose strongest 
 friends and supporters are the hard-handed and strong- 
 limbed laboring men, who hail him as a brother and 
 who look upon him as one of their real representative 
 men. A true friend of freedom, having already done 
 important service for the cause, and proved his abundant 
 ability for still greater service, yet a staunch, conserva- 
 tive, whose enlarged and liberal mind descends to no 
 narrow view but sees both sides of every great question, 
 and of whom we do not fear will lead him to the betrayal 
 of any trust. We appeal to our brethren of the Repub- 
 lican press for the correctness of our assertions. 
 
 "Doctor Stoddard," I asked, "did Lincoln's 
 temperance proclivities have anything to do with 
 your friendliness to him as a candidate?" 
 
 He said, "Most certainly they did. Lincoln 
 was known far and near as a total abstainer and 
 one not afraid or ashamed to acknowledge it. 
 His voice had frequently been raised in the cam- 
 paigns against the saloons, and his writings 
 against them also were well known. You might 
 be sure that as cranky a Prohibition paper as the 
 'Central Illinois Gazette' was, would not have 
 nominated him if he had not been radically right 
 on the temperance question. We were sure of 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 141 
 
 that and knew we made no mistake in making him 
 our representative. Besides, he was radically 
 right on the slavery question and gave me good 
 reason, as a Republican as well as crank temper- 
 ance editor, to name him as our leader. I had 
 two hundred extra copies of the paper containing 
 the editorial naming Lincoln as a candidate for 
 the nomination, and sent them to various news- 
 papers and leading politicians in the State. I 
 sent a special marked copy to Mr. Lincoln, who 
 was greatly pleased, and told me afterward how 
 kind a thing it was in me to do so. After Lin- 
 coln's election I went over to Springfield to see 
 him. I had hardly gotten home when I received 
 a letter from him appointing me as one of his 
 private secretaries, and he instructed me to go 
 before him to Washington and see that things 
 at the White House were in readiness for him, 
 'and be ready to meet me when I come.' I did 
 so, and from that time on I was with him in the 
 office and at the White House daily, you might say 
 hourly, to within a few months of Mr. Lincoln's 
 death. The terrible excitement and heavy strain, 
 and some virus I caught somewhere, threw me 
 into typhoid fever, which took me down to noth- 
 ing and disqualified me for further service; but 
 I would not take a million dollars for those years 
 I had of pleasant personal companionship with 
 the immortal Lincoln, and service with him for 
 country." 
 
142 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 "Doctor Stoddard," I said, "the object of my 
 visit to you to-day is to get your views fresh from 
 your own lips as to Lincoln's total abstinence 
 habit, and his relation to the liquor business. " 
 
 He said, "Lincoln was a total abstainer of total 
 abstainers. You can't put it too strong in your 
 book; double-lead it, emphasize it; there is no 
 debate nor doubt about it. I never saw him take 
 a glass of the lightest wine or ale, much less the 
 whiskies and brandies and stronger beverages. I 
 have been at the White House times without num- 
 ber, and have eaten there, and never saw a glass 
 of liquor and never saw a glass of wine on his 
 table. I have seen him at public functions and 
 I never saw him put a drop of strong drink to his 
 lips. He was down on the whole 'pisen' business, 
 and said that nothing that had alcohol in it should 
 pollute his lips or corrupt his body and mind. I 
 never heard him say a harsh word about a 
 brewer, distiller or saloonkeeper in my life; I 
 never heard him say a rough word about a drunk- 
 ard, only words of sympathy and love and hope ; 
 but his colossal will never set itself down firmer 
 than it did when he said 'No' to any form of 
 temptation to use liquor. What an example he 
 was to me as a young man and to others of my 
 class, and to the great nation of which he was 
 the illustrious head! But he carried his idea of 
 the danger of liquor into his own life at the White 
 House, and did the unusual, the startling thing 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 143 
 
 of banishing wine from the White House. This 
 was a social revolution in Washington, and at- 
 tracted the notice and comment of the whole na- 
 tion. He effected the social change as to liquor 
 in so quiet and modest a way, and yet with that 
 firmness with which he did all things, that he 
 thought were right." 
 
 I said, "You have touched a vital historic 
 point in our temperance national movement. Tell 
 me a little more about the circumstances of the 
 time, and what he did in the White House as to 
 serving liquors." 
 
 "I have it here in a nutshell," he said, "in one 
 of my books, 'Inside the White House'; and I 
 will read it to you and you can take bodily what 
 I read to you." 
 
 This is what he read: 
 
 The first of the regular series of Friday evening public 
 receptions at the White House was held March 8, four 
 days after inauguration. There was at least this dif- 
 ference between the pack of 1861 and the memorable 
 rush in Andrew Jackson's day in that all these hand- 
 shakers were apparently well-behaved and entirely sober. 
 It was hardly so in 1829, if historians have correctly pic- 
 tured the effects of the "superabundant refreshments" 
 provided according to the ideas of hospitality prevailing 
 at that day. A great deal of that old idea survives, 
 lingering upon the sideboards of old Washington fam- 
 ilies, in the cupboards of professional offices, under the 
 desks of officeholders, civil, military and naval; over all 
 
144 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 of the hotels, meeting everybody in the street whenever 
 he meets anybody else; and it is powerfully entrenched 
 under each of the two Houses of Congresss at the Capi- 
 tol, and its very citadel is the famous "Hole in the Wall," 
 convenient to the Supreme Court rooms and operating as 
 a half-way social house between the two legislative 
 houses. Sometimes one can understand the old times 
 better after a late-in-the-day inspection of the sociability 
 going on in the "Hole in the Wall." There is nothing 
 of the sort in the White House at present, for Mr. Lin- 
 coln is strictly abstinent as to all intoxicating drinks. His 
 first printed paper, written while a mere boy, was a vigor- 
 ous denunciation of the evils produced by whisky among 
 the settlers in the backwoods of his own State. And yet 
 some of the newspapers of the North, in company with 
 other slanderous falsehoods, claimed that the funny jokes 
 he told, and acts unfriendly to them which he performed, 
 were while he was under the influence of liquor. 
 
 I said, "Doctor Stoddard, I have read with 
 deep interest and not a little amusement the epi- 
 sode of the sending of liquors to the White House 
 by friends in New York, and of your settling the 
 dilemma by suggesting to Mrs. Lincoln that they 
 be sent to the hospitals for the sick." 
 
 "Oh, yes," he said, "that incident is as fresh 
 in my mind now as it was at the time it occurred." 
 Then going to his shelf and taking down a vol- 
 ume, "Lincoln at Work," written by himself, and 
 turning the pages, he said: "That account in full 
 is here, and I will read it to you and you can take 
 it down as part of this interview: 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 145 
 
 Precisely what was the new order of things may be 
 illustrated by an incident which was almost amusing. 
 Among Mr. Lincoln's warm admirers in the city of 
 New York were several gentlemen with social tendencies; 
 they knew little of his personal habits and prejudices; 
 but they were aware that he was from the West, and 
 believed that he was familiar with the social customs. 
 They were also aware of the costly exactions of White 
 House hospitality, and they determined to aid him in 
 bearing that part of the tremendous burden put upon 
 him. Their intentions, according to such light and 
 knowledge as they had, were patriotic, and their perform- 
 ance was liberality itself. They made out a "wine list" 
 which omitted hardly anything supposed to be required 
 by the sideboard or locker of the Commander-in-Chief, 
 and the supply included even his dinner table. Every- 
 thing sent was choice of its kind, and it was expressed, 
 prepaid, with warm declarations of good will. The 
 first that I heard of it was a sudden, peremptory summons 
 to me from Mrs. Lincoln to come and see her at once. 
 I hurried down stairs to her reception room, the historic 
 Red Room, somewhat anxious to know what might be 
 the matter. There was enough, indeed, for serious con- 
 sultation; for she rapidly unfolded to me the story of 
 the New York contribution. 
 
 "Now!" she exclaimed, in a very comical perplexity, 
 "what are we to do? I don't wish to offend them, of 
 course, but Mr. Lincoln won't have it in the house. He 
 never uses any. I never touch it myself. And oh, there 
 is so much of ;t!" 
 
 "Where is it, Mrs. Lincoln?" 
 
 "Why, it is all downstairs in the basement. I haven't 
 
146 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 told Mr. Lincoln, and I don't wish to bother him about 
 it. I wish you would just decide the matter, and tell 
 me what to do. What answer shall I give to these gen- 
 tlemen? What am I to do with all the liquor and 
 wines?" 
 
 Her dismay had set me laughing, but I thought I could 
 see a way out of her very serious dilemma. 
 
 "As to them/' I said, "Madam, all you need to do 
 is to send an entirely informal acknowledgment to who- 
 ever has acted as their agent. Only a business-like re- 
 ceipt for parcels duly delivered. As for the wines and 
 liquors, don't let them stay in the house at all. Do not 
 worry the President about it, either. Make a fair division 
 of the whole lot among the army hospitals, and ship 'em 
 right away; the surgeons and nurses will know what to 
 do with them. Put all the responsibility upon the scien- 
 tific people. If any of the sick soldiers need it, there it is." 
 
 "That's exactly what I will do !" she exclaimed. "Every 
 bit of it shall go out, right away; then if anybody ever 
 says anything about it, all I need to do is to tell what we 
 did with it." 
 
 This was very nearly at the beginning of the Lincoln 
 administration, and the kind of moral testimony which it 
 represents went on in silent power, year after year. Men 
 did not feel like drinking before going to call upon Mr. 
 Lincoln. Officials of all sorts felt the unseen pressure, 
 and it was all the while aided, added to, by the precept 
 and example of several prominent statesmen. The tone 
 of official conduct and life underwent a gradual change. 
 
 "How do you feel, Doctor Stoddard," I asked, 
 "now that you are an old man, about this temper- 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 147 
 
 ance question, on which you were such a 'crank' 
 in your early life?" 
 
 He said, U I have the same views today I had 
 then, and I am very thankful that I had the ex- 
 ample of Lincoln to encourage and strengthen 
 my right resolutions." He said, "If I had toyed 
 with the poison of alcohol I should not now be 
 upon the earth at eighty-two. I greatly rejoice at 
 the tides of Prohibition sentiment and legislative 
 action that are sweeping away the whole business, 
 and it looks now as though I might possibly see 
 the end of this great enemy." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN (Continued) 
 
 IT was my good fortune to enjoy the warm 
 personal friendship of Noah Brooks, who 
 was on the editorial staff of the "New York 
 Tribune" for years, and on the editorial staff of 
 the "New York Times" a longer term. My 
 friendship began with him when he was chief 
 editor of the "Newark Advertiser." I preached 
 a sermon on Lincoln in the Central Methodist 
 Church, of which I was pastor, and Mr. Brooks 
 printed it in his paper. He said to me one day, 
 "You have related a number of incidents of Lin- 
 coln that you got from his old friends and clients 
 in the West that had never been printed in the 
 magazines and books; I can give you some new 
 ones if you would like to have me do so, as I was 
 one of the closest friends Lincoln had in Illinois 
 "id afterward in Washington." 
 
 We had a good long talk on Lincoln. Mr. 
 Brooks had just written a "Life of Lincoln," the 
 preface of which he read to me, showing how 
 intimate was his knowledge of the subject: 
 
 It was my good fortune to know Lincoln with some 
 degree of intimacy. Our acquaintance began with the 
 
 148 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 149 
 
 Fremont campaign of 1856, when I was a resident of 
 Illinois, and continued through the Lincoln-Douglas can- 
 vass two years later. That relation became more inti- 
 mate and confidential when, in 1862, I met Lincoln in 
 Washington and saw him almost daily until his tragical 
 death. This preliminary egotism may be pardoned by 
 way of explanation of the fact that many things relating 
 to his early life, herein set down, were derived from his 
 own lips, often during hours of secluded companionship. 
 
 "Mr. Brooks," I said, "I should like to have 
 from you some facts about Lincoln's temperance 
 habits and his stand on the drink question.'' 
 
 He said "Lincoln was a consistent, persistent 
 total abstainer, and foe of the liquor traffic. That 
 chapter of his life is very clear and bright. I 
 shall take that subject up with you in a moment 
 or two. Before I do so, I want to tell you what 
 a devout man Lincoln was. He turned his heart 
 inside out to me, and I saw in it how deep his 
 piety was. I will give you this illustration : I was 
 at the White House one day when the fate of the 
 nation hung in the balance, and a decisive battle 
 was then raging. Lincoln walked back and forth 
 in the room anxiously. He took out his watch 
 and said to me, 'Twelve o'clock, and no word 
 from the battle.' One o'clock came, and two, and 
 he said, 'No news is bad news. I fear we have 
 been defeated.' Three o'clock came, and the sus- 
 pense was unbearable. Four o'clock came, and a 
 courier rushed in with a telegram. Lincoln tore 
 
1 50 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 open the envelope and read it. He turned ashen 
 pale and handed me the message. Sure enough, 
 the Union army had suffered a terrible defeat. I 
 shall never forget his wail of agony as he cried 
 aloud, 'O God! What in the world are we going 
 to do? O God, help me!' An old gray-headed 
 man, a relative of the family, was the only other 
 person in the room. He cried like a child; and 
 though I am not much given to tears, I cried, too 
 at the insufferable agony of Lincoln. It seemed 
 a veritable Gethsemane, where 'a man of sorrows 
 and acquainted with grief wrestled with the sins 
 and the woes of the world. Then stretching him- 
 self up and looking right into heaven, and taking 
 the nation in one arm, and the hand of the 
 Almighty with the other, he cried, *O God of 
 Israel, God of our native land, my God, do not 
 let our nation die. Save us, oh, save us! Give 
 us wisdom to plant, but, O God, come down to our 
 battlefield and lead our armies to victory.' 
 
 "His mother's teaching and the awful examples 
 of drunkenness in his neighborhood, awakened 
 sympathy and a hatred of drink in the boy, and, 
 when he became old enough to write compositions, 
 he tried his best on one on the evils of strong 
 drink. He carried it over to the home of a friend 
 and asked him to read it and see if he thought it 
 good enough to print in the paper. The man 
 said he thought it was, but did not know what 
 the publisher might say about it. He said, 'Abe, 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 151 
 
 let me have it and I will see what can be done 
 about it.' The friend got a Baptist preacher to 
 send it to Ohio, where it was published in a paper. 
 Lincoln was proud to see his first piece in the 
 paper, and happy in the hope that it might do the 
 people some good. Ward Hall Lamon, in his 
 'Life of Lincoln,' gives a detailed report of the 
 writing of this essay on temperance." 
 
 "Mr. Brooks, the first line to the public from 
 the pen of the immortal Lincoln, then, was an 
 arraignment of the liquor evil, was it not?" 
 
 He answered: "It was." 
 
 I asked Noah Brooks about the incident that 
 made such a sensation at the time Mr. Lincoln 
 refused to serve liquors or allow others to serve 
 them, on the occasion of his notification by a com- 
 mittee of his nomination for the Presidency the 
 first time. 
 
 u The incident is historically true," he said. "I 
 have made a record of it in the book I have 
 written. More than once Mr. Lincoln spoke to 
 me about it. He said at first he was not a little 
 worried, as he did not wish to offend those who 
 were so insistent, and had been such loyal friends, 
 but, said he, 'I do not know how to be incon- 
 sistent with myself. After a long life of total 
 abstinence, and of opposition to the drink habit, 
 it would have been a thing unthinkable for me to 
 drink or allow wines to be drunk in my house. 
 By so doing I should have forgotten all the things 
 
152 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 I had said and written against drink, the many 
 pledges I have induced others to sign, and my 
 own self-respect. I felt that the situation, not 
 made by me but by my friends, with the best of 
 intentions, furnished me an opportunity, in the 
 eyes of the nation, to put myself on the right side 
 of this great moral question." 
 
 Charles Carlton Coffin, as a member of the 
 press, accompanied the committee to notify Mr. 
 Lincoln of his nomination. In his "Life of Lin- 
 coln" Mr. Coffin says: 
 
 The clock had struck eight o'clock in the evening of 
 May 17, 1860, when the party from Chicago proceeded 
 to the house of Mr. Lincoln in Springfield. Mr. Ash- 
 man, president of the convention, made a brief address. 
 The reply was equally brief. Smiles rippled upon Mr. 
 Lincoln's face as he then addressed William D. Kelley 
 of Pennsylvania: "You are a tall man, Judge Kelley. 
 What is your height ?" "Six feet three." "I beat you," 
 said Mr. Lincoln; "I am six feet four without my high- 
 heeled boots on." "Pennsylvania bows to Illinois. I 
 am glad we have found a candidate for the Presidency 
 whom we can look up to, for we have been informed 
 that there were only little giants in Illinois," a graceful 
 allusion to Mr. Douglas. 
 
 "Formalities laid aside," Mr. Lincoln said, "Mrs. Lin- 
 coln will be pleased to see you in the other room, gen* 
 tlemen. You will be thirsty after your long journey. 
 You will find something refreshing in the library." 
 
 In the library were several hundred volumes arranged 
 upon shelves, two globes, one of the earth, the other of 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 153 
 
 the heavens, a plain table, a pitcher of cold water and 
 glasses, but no liquors. 
 
 Artist Carpenter, who painted the celebrated 
 picture, "Signing the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion," says in his book, "Six Months in the White 
 House," that a friend who attended the conven- 
 tion and the notification told him that when the 
 party entered the library Mr. Lincoln said, "Gen- 
 tlemen, we must pledge our mutual healths in the 
 most healthy beverage God has given to man. 
 It is the only beverage I have ever used or al- 
 lowed in my family, and I cannot conscientiously 
 depart from it on the present occasion. It is pure 
 Adam's ale from the spring." And talcing a 
 tumbler he touched it to his lips and pledged them 
 his highest respect in a cup of cold water. 
 
 The next morning a citizen said to Coffin: 
 "You did not find any great spread of liquors, I 
 take it." 
 
 "No, I did not," said Coffin. 
 
 "Thereby hangs a little story," said the man. 
 "When we knew you were on your way, a number 
 of us called on Mr. Lincoln and said that in all 
 probability some of the members of the commit- 
 tee would need some refreshment, wines or 
 liquors. C I haven't any in the house, 1 he said. 
 'We will furnish them.' 'Gentlemen, I can not 
 allow you to do what I will not do myself,' came 
 the reply. But that was not the end of it. Some 
 
154 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 of our good citizens, feeling that Springfield had 
 been highly honored by the nomination, sent over 
 some baskets of champagne, but Mr. Lincoln 
 sent them back, thanking them for their intended 
 kindness.' ' 
 
 Senator Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois, has 
 made this reference to the incident: "I recall 
 distinctly when the committee of citizens, includ- 
 ing myself, called at Lincoln's home after he was 
 nominated for President to talk over with him 
 the arrangements for receiving the committee on 
 notification. Lincoln said, 'Boys, I have never 
 had a drop of liquor in my life, and I don't want 
 to begin now.' That part of the entertainment 
 was provided for elsewhere." 
 
 This incident, denied so stoutly by the liquor 
 men, is verified by Lincoln himself, who came, 
 the new figure on the stage and in the eyes of 
 the nation and the centuries, proclaiming himself 
 a total abstainer, the inveterate foe of intoxicat- 
 ing liquors. Mr. J. Mason Haight, hearing of 
 the incident, wrote Lincoln to know whether it 
 was true or not, and received this answer, dated 
 Springfield, Illinois, June n, 1860: 
 
 I think it would be improper for me to write or say 
 anything to or for the public upon the subject of which 
 you inquire. I therefore wish the letter I do write to 
 be held as strictly confidential. Having kept house six- 
 teen years, and having never held the "cup" to the lips 
 of my friends there, my judgment was that I should not, 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 155 
 
 9 
 
 in my new position, change my habit in this respect. 
 What actually occurred on the occasion of the committee 
 visiting me, I think it would be better for others to say. 
 
 In my visit and interview with Noah Brooks, 
 he said: "There never lived a more consistent 
 total abstainer than Lincoln, nor one "who felt 
 more deeply the damage drink was doing to the 
 individual and to society. He used to point out 
 to me some of the most brilliant and promising 
 men in public life and lament the fact that their 
 usefulness and life had been cut short by strong 
 drink. Time and time again he told me that he 
 attributed much of his strength of body, vigor of 
 mind and moral courage to the fact that he had 
 never allowed alcohol to poison his body, muddle 
 his mind or soil his soul. He had no harsh words 
 for the drunkard, only the deepest pity for him, 
 nor bitter condemnation of the liquor dealer, 
 claiming that society, which demanded and legal- 
 ized the traffic, was responsible for its curse and 
 wreckage. He expressed the hope and belief that 
 in some good time in the future the people would 
 arise and destroy the cruel despotism of rum. 
 Close as I was to Lincoln before and after his 
 election, I never saw him touch a drop of liquor. 
 I ate at the White House dozens, I might say 
 scores, of times. I never saw a drop of beer or 
 the lightest wine on his table, and at public func- 
 tions I noticed that he either turned his glass down 
 or pushed it aside untouched." 
 
156 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Noah Brooks's "Life of Lincoln/' in style, 
 clearness, fulness and reliability, is one of the 
 standard works of American literature. 
 
 Colonel William H. Crook, who had experi- 
 ences at the White House under five administra- 
 tions and who was one of Lincoln's bodyguards, 
 gave me a number of incidents illustrating Lin- 
 coln's total abstinence. He said Lincoln was a 
 hearty eater, although he never took on much 
 flesh, but that he never touched a drop of intoxi- 
 cants. He never allowed them on his table at 
 the White House, not even the mildest forms of 
 alcoholic drinks, and at the public functions he 
 never used a drop. "Mr. Lincoln ordered me to 
 go with him on his trip to Richmond, which he 
 entered thirty-six hours after the Confederate 
 army had retired from it," said Colonel Crook. 
 "It was a dangerous and rash thing, but Lincoln 
 knew no danger. He went to the Federal head- 
 quarters, which was the old Jefferson Davis home, 
 a large house of gray stucco with a garden at the 
 back. I asked the old colored servant if they had 
 anything to drink there. He said: 'Oh, certainly, 
 marster,' and went down cellar and brought up 
 a long black bottle of whisky. It was passed 
 around and, if my memory serves me correctly, 
 every person in the company took a swig but Mr. 
 Lincoln, who, shaking his head and waving his 
 hand, said, 'None for me.' This is an illustration 
 of a hundred times I have seen Lincoln refuse 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 157 
 
 liquor when his friends and associates did not 
 hesitate to take it." 
 
 THE LINCOLN-LEE LEGION 
 
 The Rev. Howard H. Russell, D.D., founder 
 of the Anti-Saloon League of America, in taxing 
 his fertile brain to organize a Young People's 
 Auxiliary to the League, naturally turned his 
 thoughts to Lincoln, the ideal man and pro- 
 nounced temperance advocate, as a character 
 around whom the institution could be built. In 
 search of historical data he went to Springfield, 
 Illinois, early in 1900. He found at Mr. Diller's 
 drug store in Springfield an old desk which Lin- 
 coln used when he was a member of the State 
 Legislature, and on which he had written in plain 
 letters, "A. Lincoln." Diller told Russell that 
 there was a farmer by the name of Cleopas 
 Breckenridge living in Sangamon County, about 
 sixteen miles away, who knew a great deal about 
 Lincoln's temperance proclivities, and he was sure 
 that Russell would be deeply interested in getting 
 data from him. A few months later Doctor 
 Russell wrote Mr. Diller, asking him if he would 
 not request Mr. Breckenridge, if possible, to meet 
 him at a certain date. The arrangement was 
 made and Breckenridge drove into Springfield 
 upon a stormy day and met Russell at the Leland 
 Hotel in that city, when he told Russell the fol- 
 lowing story: 
 
1 58 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 "When I was a boy," said Breckenridge, "I 
 lived with my father upon the same farm which 
 I now own in Cotton Hill Township in this 
 county. One day in the summer of 1846 or 1847, 
 when I was about ten years old, my father came 
 home and told us that there would be a temper- 
 ance meeting held at the new schoolhouse, and 
 that we could all go to the meeting if we wished 
 to do so. Most of the family attended the meet- 
 ing. The speaker on the occasion was a young 
 lawyer from Springfield, who already had gained 
 a reputation as a public speaker, and the an- 
 nouncement of the fact that he was to speak called 
 out a large crowd, almost all the families in that 
 part of the county being represented. The 
 speaker made a very earnest appeal for total ab- 
 stinence from the use of all intoxicating drinks. 
 He gave reasons why he was in favor of total 
 abstinence, and why he thought others should 
 become total abstainers. He said, 'Let us make 
 this meeting one of strong and lasting value. 
 Whether we have been in the habit of drink- 
 ing or not, let us here set an example to 
 others by enrolling in the ranks of pledged 
 abstainers. I have signed this pledge my- 
 self and would be glad to have as many 
 of my neighbors who are willing to do so 
 sign the same pledge with me.' The pledge 
 was passed from one to another and was 
 signed by a good many of those present. 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 159 
 
 After a number had signed, the first thing I 
 knew the speaker was standing in front of 
 me. He said to me: 'Sonny, don't you want 
 your name on this pledge?' I said: 'Yes, sir.' 
 He said: 'You know what it means, that you 
 are not to drink intoxicating liquor?' I said: 
 'Yes, sir.' He asked me my name and I told 
 him, 'Cleopas Breckenridge.' He wrote my name 
 on the paper, then he transferred the pencil to 
 his left hand, and holding the paper and pencil 
 in his left hand, he leaned over and laid his right 
 hand upon my head and said: 'Now, Sonny, you 
 keep that pledge, and it will be the best act of 
 your life.' The speaker who addressed that 
 meeting, and who wrote my name on the pledge, 
 was Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 The more the auxiliary to the League occupied 
 his mind the more Russell felt that Lincoln must 
 be the center of it, so he made another trip to 
 Springfield, Illinois, and drove out to the farm of 
 Cleopas Breckenridge, where he was entertained 
 admirably overnight, and where he had an oppor- 
 tunity to get more definite data. He asked Breck- 
 enridge whether he could recall any others who 
 were at that meeting at South Fork schoolhouse 
 when he himself had signed the pledge. At first 
 he could not be sure, but the next morning he 
 said to Russell that there were two men living at 
 Edinburgh, Christian County, Illinois, who he 
 thought were likely to have been there, and so 
 
160 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Russell went over with Breckenridge that same 
 day and luckily found the two men in town, R. E. 
 Berry and Moses Martin. He took them to the 
 notary public, where they both made affidavit 
 that they were present at the meeting, remem- 
 bered Lincoln's address, and signed the pledge 
 that Lincoln had written and signed himself with 
 them. Martin in his affidavit says : 
 
 Among those who signed the pledge in that meeting 
 were George, William, and Uriah Hughes and their 
 mother; Preston Breckenridge and his children, and R. E. 
 Berry, now of Edinburgh, Illinois. I myself signed then 
 and there my first pledge and I have kept it until 
 now. I further remember and state that after Mr. 
 Lincoln had spoken and the pledge had been signed, Mr. 
 Lincoln asked if any one had anything to say for or 
 against the movement, and Mr. Preston Breckenbridge 
 rose up and spoke of the importance of parents taking 
 an interest in the matter. The wife of the said Brecken- 
 ridge had recently died, and he pointed to his mother- 
 less children and spoke of his anxiety for them, and as 
 he spoke the tears ran down his face. Afterward at 
 various times and places the said Preston Breckenridge 
 held Washingtonian meetings and I went with him and 
 acted as secretary and helped enroll the signers to the 
 pledge. 
 
 The meeting above referred to conducted and ad- 
 dressed by Abraham Lincoln was the beginning of a 
 series of Washingtonian meetings which did great and 
 lasting good in this section of the country. 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 161 
 
 After Russell's return to New York he received 
 a letter from Cleopas Breckenridge, stating that 
 he had found another person who when a child, 
 signed the same Lincoln pledge Mrs. Almarinda 
 Bell Galloway. These four survivors of that his- 
 toric event went to Springfield, had a reunion, 
 went to the photographers and had their picture 
 taken, and present a very intelligent and digni- 
 fied quartet of veterans. 
 
 This is the text of the pledge which Lincoln 
 wrote with his own fingers and signed with the 
 grown people and children at South Fork school- 
 house : 
 
 Whereas, the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage 
 is productive of pauperism, degradation and crime, and 
 believing it is our duty to discourage that which pro- 
 duces more evil than good, we therefore pledge ourselves 
 to abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors as a bev- 
 erage. 
 
 A Southerner suggested to Doctor Russell that 
 the name of Robert E. Lee be added to that of 
 Lincoln, making it the Lincoln-Lee Legion. Rus- 
 sell agreed to the suggestion, and the name of 
 Lee, one of the ablest, purest, truest and best men 
 , personally this country ever produced, who was a 
 total abstainer, was added to that of Lincoln ; the 
 abstinence pledge of the Lincoln-Lee Legion has 
 been signed by 4,000,000 people. 
 
1 62 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 LINCOLN'S ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD 
 
 We will now call to the witness stand Lincoln 
 himself to testify in the case of Lincoln vs. Alco- 
 hol. From the great address he made in Spring- 
 field before the Washingtonian Society which on 
 February 22, 1842, we take copious quotations as 
 follows : 
 
 Although the temperance cause has been in progress 
 for near twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just 
 now being crowned with a degree of success hitherto un- 
 paralleled. 
 
 The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions 
 of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause it- 
 self seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract 
 theory, to a living, breathing, active, and powerful chief- 
 tain, going forth "conquering and to conquer." The 
 citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed 
 and dismantled; his temples and his altars, where the 
 rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, 
 and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be 
 made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of 
 the conqueror's fame is sounding from hill to hill, from 
 sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to 
 his standard at a blast. 
 
 But when one who has long been known as a victim 
 of intemperance bursts the fetters that have bound him, 
 and appears before his neighbors "clothed and in his right 
 mind," a redeemed specimen of long lost humanity, and 
 stands up with tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell 
 of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 163 
 
 forever; of his once naked and starving children, now 
 clad and fed comfortably; of a wife, long weighed down 
 with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to 
 health, happiness, and renewed affection; and how easily 
 it all is done, once it is resolved to be done; however 
 simple his language, there is a logic and an eloquence in 
 it that few with human feelings can resist. 
 
 But I have said that denunciations against dram sell- 
 ers and dram drinkers, are unjust as well as impolitic. 
 Let us see. 
 
 I have not inquired at what period of time the use of 
 intoxicating drinks commenced; nor is it important to 
 know. It is sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit 
 the world the practice of drinking them is just as old as 
 the world itself, that is, we have seen the one just as 
 long as we have seen the other. When all such of us 
 as have now reached the years of maturity first opened 
 our eyes upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicat- 
 ing liquor recognized by everybody, used by everybody, 
 and repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the 
 first draught of the infant, and the last draught of the 
 dying man. From the sideboard of the parson down to 
 the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was con- 
 stantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and 
 the other disease. Government provided it for its soldiers 
 and sailors; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking 
 or hoe-down anywhere, without it, was positively in- 
 sufferable. 
 
 So, too, it was everywhere a respectable article of manu- 
 facture and of merchandise. The making of it was re- 
 garded as an honorable livelihood; and he who could 
 make most was the most enterprising and respectable* 
 
1 64 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Large and small manufactories of it were everywhere 
 erected, in which all the earthly goods of their owners 
 were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town 
 boats bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted 
 it from nation to nation; and merchants bought and sold 
 it, by wholesale and by retail, with precisely the same 
 feelings, on the part of seller, buyer, and bystander, as 
 are felt at the selling and buying of flour, beef, bacon, or 
 any other of the real necessaries of life. Universal pub- 
 lic opinion not only tolerated, but recognized and adopted, 
 its use. 
 
 It is true that, even then, it was known and ac- 
 knowledged that many were greatly injured by it; but 
 none seemed to think that the injury arose from the use 
 of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing. 
 . . . The victims to it were pitied and compassionated, 
 just as now are heirs of consumption and other hereditary 
 diseases. Their failing was treated as a misfortune, and 
 not as a crime, or even as a disgrace. 
 
 If, then, what I have been saying be true, is it wonder- 
 ful that some should think and act now, as all thought 
 and acted twenty years ago ? And is it just to assail, con- 
 demn, or despise them for doing so? 
 
 But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who 
 have suffered by intemperance, personally, and have re- 
 formed, are the most powerful and efficient instruments 
 to push the reformation to ultimate success, it does not 
 follow that those who have not suffered have no part 
 left them to perform. Whether or not the world would 
 be vastly benefited by a total and final banishment from 
 it of all intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now to be 
 an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 165 
 
 affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest 
 acknowledge it in their hearts. 
 
 Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what the 
 good of the whole demands? Shall he who cannot do 
 much be for that reason excused if he do nothing? "But," 
 says one, "what good can I do by signing the pledge? 
 I never drink even without signing." This question has 
 already been asked and answered more than a million 
 times. Let it be answered once more. For the man 
 suddenly, or in any other way, to break off from the use 
 of drams, who has indulged in them for a long course 
 of years, and until his appetite for them has become ten 
 or a hundred fold stronger and more craving than any 
 natural appetite can be, requires a most powerful moral 
 effort. In such an undertaking, he needs every moral 
 support and influence that can possible be brought to his 
 aid and thrown around him. And not only so, but every 
 moral prop should be taken from whatever argument 
 might rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding. 
 When he casts his eyes around him, he should be able to 
 see all that he respects, all that he admires, and all that 
 he loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him onward ; and 
 none beckoning him back to his former miserable "wal- 
 lowing in the mire." 
 
 But it is said by some that men will think and act for 
 themselves; that none will disuse spirits or anything else 
 merely because his neighbors do; and that moral influence 
 is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us ex- 
 amine this. Let me ask the man who would maintain 
 this position most stiffly, what compensation he will ac- 
 cept to go to church some Sunday and sit during the 
 sermon with his wife's bonnet on his head? Not a trifle, 
 
1 66 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 I'll venture. And why not? There would be nothing 
 irreligious in it; nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable. 
 Then why not? Is it not because there would be some- 
 thing egregiously unfashionable in it? Then it is the 
 influence of fashion; and what is the influence of fashion 
 but the influence that other people's actions have upon 
 our own actions; the strong inclination each of us feels to 
 do as we see all our neighbors do? Nor is the influence 
 of fashion confined to any particular thing or class of 
 things. It is just as strong on one subject as another. 
 Let us make it as unfashionable to withhold our names 
 from the temperance pledge as for husbands to wear their 
 wives' bonnets to church, and instances will be just as 
 rare in the one case as in the other. 
 
 "But," say some, "we are no drunkards; and we shall 
 not acknowledge ourselves such by joining a reformed 
 drunkards' society, whatever our influence might be." 
 Surely no Christian will adhere to this objection. If 
 they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotence condes- 
 cended to take on himself the form of sinful man, as such, 
 to die an ignominous death for their sakes, surely they 
 will not refuse submission to the infinitely lesser con- 
 descension, for the temporal, and perhaps eternal, salva- 
 tion of a large erring and unfortunate class of their own 
 fellow creatures. Nor is the condescension very great. 
 
 In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen vic- 
 tims have been spared more from the absence of appetite 
 than from any mental or moral superiority over those who 
 have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards 
 as a class, their heads and hearts will bear an advan- 
 tageous comparison with those of any other class. There 
 seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 167 
 
 the warm-blooded to fall into this vice. The demon of 
 intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the 
 blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but 
 can call to mind some dear relative, more promising in 
 youth than all of his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to 
 his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth, like the 
 Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not the 
 first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now be 
 arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest, all can 
 give aid that will; and who shall be execused that can 
 and will not? Far around as human breath has ever 
 blown, he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and 
 our friends prostrate in the chains of moral death. To 
 all the living everywhere we cry, "Come, sound the moral 
 resurrection trump, that these may rise and stand up, an 
 exceeding great army." . . . "Come from the four 
 winds, O breath! arid breathe upon these slain, that they 
 may live." 
 
 If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be esti- 
 mated by the great amount of human misery they allevi- 
 ate, and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will 
 this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen. Of 
 our political revolution of '76 we all are justly proud. 
 It has given us a degree of political freedom far exceed- 
 ing that of any other of the nations of the earth. In it 
 the world has found a solution of that long-mooted prob- 
 lem as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it 
 was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow 
 and expand, into the universal liberty of mankind. 
 
 But with all these glorious results, past, present, and 
 to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth famine, 
 swam in blood and rode on fire; and long, long after, the 
 
1 68 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 orphan's cry and widow's wail continue to break the sad 
 silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable 
 price, paid for the blessings it bought. 
 
 Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we 
 shall find a stronger bondage broken; a viler slavery 
 manumitted; a greater tyrant deposed. In it, more of 
 want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. * 
 By it, no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it, 
 none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest. Even 
 the dram-maker, and the dram-seller, will have glided 
 into other occupations so gradually as never to have felt 
 the shock of change; and will stand ready to join all 
 others in the universal song of gladness. 
 
 And what a noble ally this, to the cause of political 
 freedom. With such an aid, its march cannot fail to be 
 on and on, until every son on earth shall drink in rich 
 fruition the sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect liberty. 
 Happy day when, all appetites controlled, all passions sub- 
 dued, all manners subjected, mind, all-conquering mind, 
 shall live and move, the monarch of the world. Glorious 
 consumation! Hail, fall of Fury! Reign of Reason, all 
 hail! 
 
 And when the victory shall be complete when there 
 shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on earth how 
 proud the title of that land, which may truly claim to 
 be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions 
 that shall have ended in that victory! How nobly dis- 
 tinguished that people who shall have planted and nur- 
 tured to maturity both the political and moral freedom 
 of their species! 
 
 The historical fact of the delivery of this ad- 
 dress is attested by Lincoln himself in letters 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 169 
 
 written to friends on the subject, and one of those 
 was to George E. Pickett, who afterward became 
 the famous Confederate general who led the 
 charge at Gettysburg, and whose mother a few 
 years ago, in a letter to one of the American mag- 
 azines, gave the letter in full, which is as follows : 
 
 The fact is, truth is your truest friend, no matter what 
 the circumstances are. I have a congenital aversion to 
 failure, and the sudden announcement to your Uncle 
 Andrew of the success of your "lamp-rubbing" might 
 possibly prevent your passing the severe physical examina- 
 tion to which you will be subjected in order to enter the 
 Military Academy. You see, I shall like to have a 
 perfect soldier credited to dear old Illinois. No broken 
 bones, scalp wounds, etc. So I think it might be wise 
 to hand this letter from me in to your good uncle through 
 his room window after he has had a comfortable dinner, 
 and watch its effect from the top of the pigeon house. 
 
 I have just told the folks here in Springfield, on this 
 i nth anniversary of the birth of him whose name, mighti- 
 est in the cause of moral reformation, we mention in 
 solemn awe, in naked, deathless splendor, that the one 
 victory we can ever call complete will be that one which 
 proclaims that there is not one slave or drunkard on the 
 face of God's green earth. Recruit for this victory. 
 
 Now, boy, on your march, don't you go and forget 
 that "one drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon 
 of gall." Load your musket with this maxim, and smoke 
 it in your pipe. 
 
 Another letter on the subject is to Joshua F. 
 Speed, one of the dearest and best friends Lincoln 
 
KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 ever had in his young manhood and in Washing- 
 ton : 
 
 You will see by the last Sangamon Journal that I made 
 a temperance speech on the Twenty-second of February, 
 which I claim that Fanny and you shall read as an act 
 of charity to me, for I can not learn that anybody else 
 has read it or is likely to. Fortunately it is not very long, 
 and I shall deem it sufficient compliance with my request 
 if one of you listens while the other reads it. 
 
 It would be thought that the liquor dealers 
 would never dare mention the name of Lincoln 
 as in any way friendly to them, but they have 
 persisted in their audacity in dragging him into 
 their support even up to the present time. Not 
 very long ago, at a hearing in Albany on a local 
 option bill for cities of the third class, the attorney 
 of the State Liquor Dealers' Association made an 
 eloquent speech against the measure, using as his 
 peroration a part of this speech of Lincoln at 
 Springfield which referred to personal liberty, 
 and using that speech to claim Lincoln as an ally 
 of his cause. The liquor dealers, who were out in 
 large numbers, and brewers and distillers leading 
 in the fight, cheered the gentleman lustily for such 
 a capital hit in his speech. I sent a little slip to 
 the one having charge of our side of the hearing 
 and said: "I want just three minutes at the 
 close;" and in those three minutes I said: u My 
 able friend closed his address most eloquently by a 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF LINCOLN 171 
 
 quotation from the address of Lincoln at Spring- 
 field, Illinois. I want to finish that address for 
 you." And then, having read the address over 
 so many dozens of times, and knowing it almost 
 by heart, I recited the part where Lincoln pleaded 
 for the cause of total abstinence, referring to the 
 cruel slavery of rum to the body and mind, and 
 how he hoped and prayed for the day when there 
 would be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the 
 face of God's green earth, and the friends on our 
 side of the house burst out into the wildest en- 
 thusiasm. The ruddy-faced brewers turned red- 
 der in the face, and they set on their attorney in 
 great anger with their complaints that he should 
 so have left himself open to criticism. In great 
 excitement and discomfort he said, "That part 
 that Doctor Iglehart recited is not in Lincoln's 
 speech at all; Lincoln never said anything of the 
 kind," reaching his hand toward his pocket he 
 said, "I have the book and you can read it for 
 yourselves; it is not there." This occurred after 
 the hearing was over. Of course he did not have 
 that part against his business in his liquor dealers' 
 book which was printed for general circulation. 
 It was the business of the liquor men to misrepre- 
 sent him as they always do; it was their business 
 to take a piece of what he said that they could 
 distort into endorsement of themselves, and to 
 leave out this terrific arraignment of their busi- 
 ness by so great a man. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 
 
 ABOUT sixty years ago a wave of Prohibi- 
 tion swept over the Northern States. 
 Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
 Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, 
 Michigan, Indiana and Iowa adopted statutory 
 prohibition. One State after another dropped 
 out of line until in 1907 Maine, Kansas and 
 North Dakota were the only ones of the eighteen 
 States that had tried the experiment of Prohibi- 
 tion that retained it, they having adopted consti- 
 tutional Prohibition. 
 
 In 1907 a wave of popular indignation set in 
 which has moved with steady, swift, merciless 
 fury against the saloon. 
 
 Ten years ago, after fifty years of fighting, 
 there remained but three dry States. In a short 
 decade twenty-three more States have been 
 added to them, making more than a majority of 
 all the States, embracing two-thirds of the geogra- 
 phical area, and over a half of the population of 
 the country. 
 
 172 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 173 
 
 MAINE 
 
 Col. Fred Dow, son of the great General Neal 
 Dow, known throughout this country and the 
 wide world as the father of prohibition in modern 
 times, the worthy successor of his father in the 
 realm of business, moral reform, and warfare on 
 the liquor traffic, has furnished me this immensely 
 important information on Maine and Prohibition. 
 
 In 1851 Maine adopted Prohibition. The novel legis- 
 lation became widely known and famous as "The Maine 
 Law." Of that enactment its author said: "More than 
 any other measure it will bless the people who adopt it." 
 The immediate benefits in Maine traceable to Prohibi- 
 tion were so great as to justify the prediction of its 
 author, and to lead twelve States, within five years, to 
 adopt laws largely patterned after that of Maine; and 
 to-day the principle of "The Maine Law" finds wide ap- 
 proval in this and other lands. All this testifies to the 
 wisdom and virility of the leadership of the early move- 
 ment. Few have so deeply impressed themselves upon the 
 legislation of so many lands as did Neal Dow. 
 
 Through that law Maine became the leader of a re- 
 formation destined to influence many States. But though 
 honor be accorded leadership, danger always attends it. 
 Maine incurred the hostility of the liquor interest, drew 
 all the criticism and condemnation which opposition to 
 Prohibition could bring to bear upon her, became from 
 that day a target for unmeasured misrepresentation on 
 the part of paid and volunteer agents of the liquor pro- 
 paganda, and has suffered in reputation because some 
 honest people thus misled have believed and repeated it. 
 
i 7 4 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Space will not permit notice and refutation of those 
 misstatesments in detail. Such of them as are not merely 
 the mouth-froth of a kind of moral delirium tremens 
 are founded only on isolated instances, sporadic as to time 
 and place, exploited as evidence of general conditions. 
 Such tests and reasoning, used to discredit Prohibition in 
 Maine, might show as effectually that the prohibitions of 
 the Decalogue would better be permissions, and that civil- 
 ization is a curse and not a benefit to mankind. Though my 
 opportunities for observation in Maine and for acquiring 
 knowledge of her people are quite up to the average, I 
 know of no justification for much of the disparagement 
 to which I refer. The liquor trade is not entirely elim- 
 inated from the State. Sixty years has been scant time for 
 that. So also some of the Ten Commandments, though 
 hoary with age, are yet violated. But where the traffic 
 drags its intermittent existence it is under the restraint 
 of the fear that the halter of the law about its neck may 
 at any moment be tightened to the choking-point. 
 
 To the same effect may be quoted substantially all of 
 the men of Maine who won national fame in the fifty 
 to sixty years following the enactment of Prohibition. 
 They were competent and reliable witnesses, none better 
 to be found anywhere. They were such that Maine men 
 have held in Washington, at one and the same time, the 
 positions of Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, 
 Presidency pro tern, of the Senate, chairmanships of the 
 committees of Ways and Means, Commerce, Appropria- 
 tions, Navy, and Public Buildings; while a Maine man 
 born and matured was the Chief Justice of the United 
 States Supreme Court. Among the nation-known men 
 from Maine who during their lives testified to the efficacy 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 175 
 
 and benefits of Prohibition in Maine I mention Hannibal 
 Hamlin, William Pitt Fessenden, Lot M. Morrill, James 
 G. Elaine, Eugene Hale, William P. Frye, Thomas B. 
 Reed and Nelson Dingley. Who knows not of them must 
 be himself unknown. Many others only less known to 
 fame might be cited for the same purpose. 
 
 Neal Dow advocated Prohibition among other reasons 
 because, as he claimed, it would be of economical benefit 
 to the State. Maine adopted his views in 1851. The 
 census of the preceding year had shown Maine, judged 
 by her per capita wealth, to be the poorest of the Atlantic 
 Seabord States. Sixty years after, her per capita wealth 
 had increased by a larger percentage than that of any, 
 save one, of her seacoast sisters. The great Empire State 
 of New York, into whose coffers the commerce of the 
 world was pouring tribute during all those years, escapes 
 inclusion by less than two per cent. But between 1900 
 and 1910 the percentage of Maine of the increased value 
 per acre of all farm property, land, buildings, implements 
 and live stock was much larger than that in New York. 
 
 Maine in 1910 had a less percentage of mortgaged 
 farms than any of the New England, Middle States and 
 Maryland, save one. That State, under Prohibition 
 nearly as long as Maine, leads her by one per cent. The 
 average amount of farm mortgage debt in Maine is less 
 than in any of the States mentioned save her Prohibitory 
 companion, and there it is only three dollars less; while 
 the percentage of the value of the equity in all mortgaged 
 farms is larger in Maine than in any of those ten States. 
 
 Nor has Maine neglected the productivity of her farms. 
 From 1899 to 1909 she increased the amount paid for 
 fertilizers by a much larger percentage than did any of 
 
1 76 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 the States mentioned. The excess she paid for them in 
 ten years, over an average for the period equal to the 
 amount paid in 1899, would have discharged all her farm 
 mortgages, with seven millions of dollars over. 
 
 I claim to know something of Maine and of her people. 
 I was born there, have always lived within her borders, 
 and, please God, I expect to die there. Time and again 
 I have traversed her territory from Kittery to Quody and 
 from Katahdin to the sea. I have fished in her streams 
 and lakes, have hunted in her woods. I have worn over- 
 alls, carried a dinner pail and worked with her mechanics. 
 I have been with her lumber men in their camps and 
 with her fishermen on their smacks, with her business men 
 in their counting-rooms and their marts of trade, have 
 served with them in the directorates of manufactures and 
 banking and railroad corporations. I have met her people 
 in their schoolhouses, their churches, their halls, on their 
 farms and in their homes. I have held elective and ap- 
 pointive offices among them, and feel that I am familiar 
 enough to express an intelligent opinion of them. And 
 I do not hesitate to declare, without fear of successful 
 refutation, as the result of a most careful investigation, 
 in substantially the language of James G. Elaine, used 
 by him a few years before his death, that nowhere in the 
 Anglo-Saxon world can be found an equal number of 
 people better founded in all the essentials of good citizen- 
 ship and consuming a smaller quantity of intoxicating 
 liquors than the people of Maine. And I think, as do 
 thousands of her citizens, that the State in indebted to 
 Prohibition for much of this. 
 
 A short time before his death, my father was speaking 
 of the possibilities of a nation free from the evils pertain- 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 177 
 
 ing to a legalized liquor traffic. And I said to him, 
 "father, you surely cannot expect to live to see that." With 
 eyes brilliant with the light of his glorious belief in im- 
 mortality which he cherished to the last, he said: "I surely 
 do, but it will be from the other side." 
 
 SENATOR FERNALD 
 
 Prohibition has done much for Maine. This 
 was true even in the period before the present era 
 of enforcement, when in many sections of the 
 State the law was ignored. It was true, even in 
 the territory where the most flagrant nullification 
 existed. True, because in those sections one did 
 not find the open saloon and open drinking. By 
 the very manner in which the saloons were con- 
 ducted under the systems, known variously as the 
 Peters plan, the Bangor plan, the Androscoggin 
 plan and the Pennell plan, there was thrown 
 about it an atmosphere of shame. The youth of 
 our State, unconsciously imbibed the idea that 
 drinking was disgraceful; that it was something 
 to be hidden from the public. 
 
 But there is far more to it. Our State has 
 grown under Prohibition. Examine the banking 
 reports of Maine and compare the savings per 
 capita of its citizens with those of license States 
 and the finding will be in our favor. 
 
 Visit other States and examine the personnel 
 of its men, its leaders, if you please. I care not 
 whether you look to members of the legal profes- 
 
i 7 8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 sion or to that of medicine or to the business men, 
 you will find men from Maine constitute these 
 leaders. You will find them everywhere and you 
 will find them in the forefront of affairs; judges 
 of courts, engineers of great undertakings, heads 
 of larger mercantile and manufacturing establish- 
 ments. No State has furnished so many men of 
 brains and leadership to the other States as has 
 Maine. We have sent our young men and our 
 young women out into the rest of the country to 
 help in its upbuilding, to pilot those other States, 
 and yet we have not lost in population, but have 
 gradually increased. 
 
 And, now, look at Maine as an industrial State. 
 Go into our manufacturing centers and what do 
 you find? No such slums as one so easily locates 
 in similar centers of license districts. You do not 
 find the want and squalor or the degeneracy 
 in Maine that you find in wet States. 
 
 Prohibition has given our boys and girls a 
 greater stamina, a better intelligence, a greater 
 regard for sobriety, morality and honesty. It has 
 helped to make the citizenship of Maine the best 
 in the Union. 
 
 GOVERNOR MILLIKEN 
 
 Few will deny that Prohibition prohibits at the 
 present time in Maine. Under the brave and de- 
 termined administration of Governor Milliken 
 the law is respected and enforced, 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 179 
 
 In a letter addressed to me, July 17, 1917, 
 Governor Milliken says: "It goes without say- 
 ing that we believe in the advances of Prohibi- 
 tion for the State of Maine. I am doing my ut- 
 most for a thorough, honest, and State-wide en- 
 forcement of the law, and the results, as a rule, 
 are very satisfactory." 
 
 The bootleggers whose wares are confiscated, 
 as well as the district attorneys and sheriffs who 
 if they dared would wink at the non-enforcement 
 of the law, know full well how strictly the Pro- 
 hibitory law is administered. 
 
 A gentleman told me the other day that a 
 prosecuting attorney of a certain Maine county 
 went to Augusta at the call of the Governor. He 
 had his resignation already written out and 
 handed it to the Governor, who accepted it. He 
 had been playing false with the State, forgetting 
 his oath and betraying the people in shutting one 
 eye to the illicit traffic in intoxicants. The day 
 when any sheriff or district attorney can make 
 himself judge and jury and allow the liquor law 
 to be nullified has gone by. 
 
 KANSAS 
 
 Governor Arthur Capper of Kansas gave me 
 the following: 
 
 When I first went to Topeka there were fifty or sixty 
 saloons. The jails were filled most of the time. The 
 
i8o KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 "Daily Capital" rarely had enough men to do its work 
 the day after pay day. Indeed, I got my first job on 
 that paper because too many of the printers were absent 
 from drink and the foreman was willing to take any one. 
 It was a wide-open town. Even up to fifteen or twenty 
 years ago I believe a majority of the leading business men 
 favored high license, under the impression that saloons 
 were needed if the town was to be a live place, and 
 especially for the revenue they contributed. 
 
 But ultimately, through a period of observation, of 
 education, these business men learned that they might as 
 wisely license morphine or cocaine. They discovered that 
 their fears about revenues were groundless and that the 
 town lived and prospered amazingly under the rule of 
 decency. 
 
 When I went to Topcka the men in my trade never 
 had anything except trouble and unpaid bills and head- 
 aches. Now the majority of the printers own their homes, 
 many have motor cars; they have their vacations now, 
 with their families; they are good citizens. A few months 
 ago a printer in the "Daily Capital" plant received a check 
 for $10,000 from the ^Etna Building and Loan Society, 
 representing his savings and interest. In the same plant, 
 of which I am the owner, we have a savings society with 
 more than a hundred members, which includes printers, 
 pressmen, and stereotypers, all of whom save a certain 
 part of their wages every week. The number of arrests 
 in Topeka for drunkenness has constantly decreased, 
 though our population is steadily increasing. 
 
 As a strictly business proposition Prohibition has paid 
 big dividends in Kansas. Its strongest advocates in the 
 State are the large employers of labor, the managers of 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 181 
 
 the big railroad properties, and the labor organizations. 
 More than 4,000 men are employed in the Santa Fe rail- 
 way shops at Topeka the dryest city of its size in the 
 world. Those shops maintain the highest degree of effi- 
 ciency of any on the Santa Fe system. The books show 
 that they turn out more work, consistently and promptly 
 the year round, than any other railroad shops. Seventy- 
 two per cent, of the married men in these shops own their 
 homes a showing that cannot be equaled by any other 
 railway town in America. 
 
 On a dollar basis, merely, Prohibition has paid. As 
 to the domestic side, the records of a survey show that the 
 families of the shopmen are, of course, in very much better 
 condition than those in license States. Naturally they have 
 more money to spend. There is far less family trouble. 
 There are fewer divorces. The children and the wives 
 wear better clothes; they live happier lives. The fathers' 
 earnings go to the family support instead of to the saloons. 
 
 We are not paying dearly for this decency. The State 
 tax in Kansas in only $1.30 per thousand, the lowest, with 
 two exceptions, in the United States. Compared with 
 like cities, Topeka's taxes are no higher and certainly are 
 not sufficiently burdensome to bring a protest from the 
 people. Any student of such facts knows that no saloon 
 ever contributed enough taxes to pay for the trouble it 
 caused. No one ever heard of the liquor interests pro- 
 ducing enough revenue to pay for the police and the jails 
 and the courts needed to hold the criminals the saloons 
 create. It is still the custom of wet communities, in wet 
 or semi-wet States, to pave the streets and roads with 
 fines from vice resorts, while these resorts pave the way 
 to perdition for the young people; but the cities of Kansas 
 
1 82 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 that have received no revenue whatever from vice have a 
 lower tax rate than those cities which in the old days 
 stuck to the last to the license-fining system. More than 
 five million dollars was spent by the cities of Kansas in 
 the year ending June 30, 1916, for paving, electric light, 
 parks, waterworks and other improvements, but not a 
 dollar was contributed by the liquor traffic or commercial- 
 ized vice. To-day there is no such thing as a slum or 
 licensed red-light district in any city in Kansas. Nowhere 
 in all the civilized world are moral conditions cleaner and 
 better than in Prohibition Kansas. 
 
 Prohibition has been in operation thirty-six years in 
 Kansas. If the people were not satisfied with the law and 
 the conditions it has produced they certainly could have 
 changed them long ago. It seems to me, as the lawyers 
 say, that the people themselves are the best evidence. The 
 surest way to bring about the repeal of an objectionable 
 law is to enforce it. We enforce the prohibitory law in 
 Topeka and in the State and I have seen no disposition 
 to repeal it. Certainly not on the score of taxes. 
 
 The last defense of the saloon is the plea that its rev- 
 enue helps to pay the taxes. It does, but it does it at 
 a cost of blood, of broken hearts and wrecked homes as 
 well as of dollars and cents. The saloon, wherever it 
 exists, is our greatest public debt-maker, our greatest pub- 
 lic burden. 
 
 Kansas sends more boys and girls to public schools, to 
 the university and the colleges, in proportion to popula- 
 tion, than any other State in the Union. Kansas is one 
 of the two States in the Union having the smallest num- 
 ber of persons who cannot read and write less than two 
 per cent, of its population. According to an investigation 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 183 
 
 completed in 1914 and authenticated by the Federal 
 Health Department, Kansas has a death rate of 9.8, the 
 lowest of any State in the Union comprised within the 
 registration area recognized by the government. 
 
 Kansas is one of the few States in the Union without 
 bonded indebtedness. The last outstanding bond was 
 taken up January I, 1916. 
 
 I have laid stress upon the testimony of the people of 
 Kansas themselves. Let me give this testimony in a little 
 detail : 
 
 Every Governor of Kansas for twenty- two years has 
 said over his signature that Prohibition is a great success. 
 
 Every member of the Supreme Court of Kansas and 
 every State official says that Prohibition succeeds. 
 
 More than 700 of the 780 Kansas editors in State con- 
 vention, including newspapers of every political faith, 
 unanimously endorsed Prohibition. 
 
 Every political party in Kansas favors the prohibitory 
 law, and has endorsed the law in its platform. 
 
 No minister in Kansas ever opens his mouth in favor 
 of returning to the licensed saloon, nor any teacher. 
 
 From our experience of successful Prohibition in Kansas 
 we stand for and demand Prohibition for the nation. 
 
 SENATOR CHARLES CURTIS 
 
 United States Senator Curtis of Kansas gave 
 me the following facts: 
 
 There are many and substantial benefits from Prohibi- 
 tion, which is now a settled policy in the State. The 
 people are well satisfied with the law and are insisting 
 upon its rigid enforcement. The many legislatures since 
 
184 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 its first enactment in 1881 have strengthened the law, 
 and the sentiment in favor of the law has grown stronger 
 and stronger each year. Our people believe it has been 
 a great success and that many benefits have resulted from 
 the Constitutional amendment and the legislation enacted 
 since the adoption of it. 
 
 The official reports of the various counties in the State 
 show a decrease in crime and a great reduction in the 
 number of the poor supported by county authorities. In 
 1914 there were twenty-eight counties in Kansas that 
 did not have a single prisoner in jail during all of that 
 year; there were forty-eight counties in which there were 
 no convicts sent to the State Penitentiary during the 
 year; in twelve counties no jury has been required to try 
 a criminal case in a number of years. In 1914 there were 
 twenty counties without a prisoner in the State Peniten- 
 tiary, and of the 740 prisoners in the State Penitentiary 
 in that year, forty per cent, of them were non-residents 
 of the State; thirty-eight county poor farms had no in- 
 mates, and there was only one pauper in the State to 
 every three thousand of its population. 
 
 There are thousands of young men and women in the 
 State who never saw a saloon, and there are thousands 
 who have never seen a drunken man within the State. 
 It seems to me that these facts, presented from the records, 
 are the best evidence of the success of Prohibition in Kan- 
 sas, and they are the best answer that can be made to the 
 many false claims that have been sent out by the liquor 
 interests. 
 
 WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE 
 
 I wrote to Mr. William Allen White, known 
 throughout the nation as editor and author, for 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 185 
 
 facts about Prohibition in Kansas and he sent me 
 these: 
 
 Prohibition is not responsible for all the good things 
 in Kansas. Our soil is rich; our people are the native 
 American stock with a strong infusion of blood from the 
 north of Europe. Our climate is equitable, and our rain- 
 fall on the whole dependable and plenteous. And we 
 have made Prohibition succeed somewhat because of these 
 things rather than that Prohibition has brought these 
 things. Yet there are certain earmarks of Kansas that 
 are distinctly Prohibition earmarks. 
 
 I should say that the first thing for which Kansans are 
 to be grateful, as a distinct result of the abolition of the 
 saloon, is a clean State politics. There is practically no 
 corruption or bribery in the State. That doesn't mean 
 that there is no corruption or bribery. Our voters are not 
 all "just men made perfect;" but corruption and bribery 
 are as negligible here as leprosy is in our social order. We 
 have built up a whole race of politicians who are not 
 afraid of the liquor interests, because there are no liquor 
 interests in Kansas. That does not mean that there is 
 no liquor sold in Kansas, for there is plenty of it more 
 of it than there should be. This is a town of ten thou- 
 sand people, and I have no doubt whatever that at the 
 Christmas time a hundred quart bottles of whisky were 
 sold in violation of the law the night before Christmas, 
 which means, of course, that the bootlegger fram Kansas 
 City brought down in his suit case or had shipped to him, 
 disguised as nails or whatnot, this liquor in small bottles ; 
 that he went skulking around the dark corners of the 
 town Friday and Saturday nights before Christmas, beck- 
 
1 86 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 oning such wayfarers as he thought might buy his wares, 
 and that he sold his wares. But one hundred quarts of 
 liquor divided among ten thousand people is not an im- 
 portant violation of the law. It would be as wise to say 
 that our marriage laws were a failure because of the 
 occasional violation of the statutes against adultery, as to 
 say Prohibition fails because an occasional bootlegger, 
 flitting up an alley, disposes of an occasional quart of 
 liquor. 
 
 The bootlegger has no place of business. He can only 
 be found by those who are willing to labor and wait, 
 and he can have no influence on our politics. His whole 
 force combined in this town would consist of half a 
 dozen colored men and one or two mangy, half-starved 
 white men, and that wouldn't be any liquor interest that 
 any politician would not be glad to kick in passing. So 
 that, as I said, the net gain we have received from Pro- 
 hibition is clean politics. When a man runs for office 
 a good man is not beaten because of his belief in Pro- 
 hibition and a bad man is not elected because of his friend- 
 ship for the liquor interests. Liquor is "out on the hills 
 away" from our politics, and that is an unquestionable 
 gain. 
 
 It seems to me also that the abolition of the saloon has 
 reduced crime in Kansas, and that it has something to 
 do not everything, but something to do with our phe- 
 nomenal prosperity. We do not patronize savings banks. 
 We are an agricultural people, but we have a large com- 
 parative per capita of wealth larger than any other agri- 
 cultural State of our age, in this part of the West and 
 I think Prohibition has helped. But the thing Prohibi- 
 tion has done is to improve the tone of the State; to make 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 187 
 
 it possible to appeal to the people on moral issues and to 
 make possible a response from the people to moral issues. 
 
 Now these opinions on Prohibition are not mine alone. 
 I took occasion recently to address various representative 
 heads of the various organized activities of the State 
 political, professional, agricultural, commercial and indus- 
 trial receiving from them all the positive statement that 
 Prohibition does prohibit, and that Prohibition is an un- 
 mixed blessing to the material, mental and moral welfare 
 of the State. 
 
 NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 Hon. Charles A. Pollock, ex-United States 
 Judge of Fargo, North Dakota, has given me a 
 history of the war against the saloon in North 
 Dakota and of his relation to it. His testimony 
 will be taken as authority on any question, judicial 
 or moral, anywhere in this country. Judge Pol- 
 lock writes : 
 
 Prohibition refers to a governmental method of dealing 
 with an admitted evil; total abstinence to the habit or 
 personal practice of the individual. It often happens that 
 a heavy drinker is in favor of Prohibition simply for per- 
 sonal protection. He is perfectly consistent in so acting, 
 although he may meet with much criticism. It was by 
 keeping these distinctions before our people, in the fight 
 which began over thirty-five years ago, that we were later, 
 in the year 1899, enabled to secure the adoption of the 
 Prohibitory clause of our constitution against the manu- 
 
1 88 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 facture, sale and keeping for sale, of intoxicating liquors 
 as a beverage. 
 
 During Territorial days I was the prosecuting officer 
 under the license system and for the past twenty years 
 have been the sole presiding Judge of the Third Judicial 
 District, which includes the counties of Cass, Traill and 
 Steele. It is from the standpoint of experience in courts, 
 as well as my general information concerning the develop- 
 ment of Prohibition in the Territory of Dakota and State 
 of North Dakota, that I now speak. 
 
 To properly understand what is possible in the future 
 permit me just a word as to what has been done by the 
 past generation, of say, thirty-five years in this Territory 
 and State. Those who came in the early eighties will 
 tell you, "Rum was king." It ruled our politics. It 
 stalked abroad in council chamber and legislative hall. 
 City, county and Territorial governments were under its 
 grasp. The saloon boss controlled the polls. The ab- 
 sence of a legally constituted ballot under the Australian 
 system and a secret polling booth enabled the bogus 
 single ballot, in the hands of the licensed saloonkeepers 
 and their allies, to determine who should receive the ma- 
 jority vote. Every village and hamlet had its full quota 
 of saloons. Farmers in the proper control of their help 
 were embarrassed, delayed and annoyed. The rainy day 
 was a terror. Stabbing affrays and murders were of fre- 
 quent occurrence. Scant police protection could not afford 
 relief. Business men were clamoring for no change, lest 
 their sales would be injured, rents decrease and general 
 stagnation follow. Young men were growing up, feeling 
 that the business of the saloonkeeper was respectable and 
 the open sesame of political preferment. There was, of 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 189 
 
 course, here and there, the occasional mortgage fore- 
 closure for then the country was new because the 
 owner of the farm had squandered all in drink. Business 
 and professional men generally drank. In Fargo, with 
 few exceptions, the followers of Blackstone, numbering 
 about forty, were regular members of more than one bar. 
 Many became habitual drinkers, and most of them were 
 among the so-called moderate class. Six of the most 
 brilliant now fill untimely graves the direct result of the 
 liquor habit. 
 
 Now, exactly the reverse condition exists. In Cass, 
 my home county, there are sixty-five men entitled to 
 practice. All of our leading lawyers, with rare excep- 
 tions, are total abstainers, and only three or four can be 
 classed even as moderate drinkers. When we consider 
 the influence which the lawyer can exert for good or evil, 
 fortunate indeed is that community whose legal fraternity 
 is composed of sober men. 
 
 Some facts may help to show that Prohibition as a 
 method of dealing with the traffic helps instead of hurts 
 the true development of the State. For example, when 
 admitted as a State both with Prohibitory clauses in their 
 Constitutions, South Dakota, with about 1,000 more 
 square miles of territory, had about 250,000 population, 
 while North Dakota had but 190,000. South Dakota 
 went back to license in 1894 an d nas been under it until 
 recently. She now has less than 600,000, while North 
 Dakota, continuously under Prohibition, has about 650,- 
 OOO inhabitants. 
 
 In North Dakota the per capita wealth was increased 
 from $1,114 in 1890 to $2,000 in 1910. In the Peni- 
 tentiary were found at the end of the same period only 
 
1 90 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 1.4 prisoners for every 5,000 inhabitants. The products 
 of our soil, mines and farming industries in 1915 were 
 over $250,000,000. We have 650 State and 151 Na- 
 tional banks, carrying a total deposit for March, 1916, 
 of $116,062,027. The combined resources of the banks 
 , in Fargo alone are $13,000,000. 
 
 It is interesting to study the combined statement of the 
 State banks alone, as showing the prosperity of our people. 
 From December 31, 1915, to March 7, 1916, there was an 
 increase in time certificates of deposit of $3,506,157.67, 
 thus showing the savings of our people. More might be 
 said did the length of this article permit. The fact that 
 sporadic cases of law violation occur argues nothing 
 against the system. Prohibition, both constitutional and 
 statutory, in this State has come to stay, not only because 
 it is morally right, but because it is also economically the 
 better system of dealing with a traffic which undermines 
 the health and happiness of the community. 
 
 GOVERNOR FRAZIER 
 
 111 answer to a letter of inquiry, Governor 
 Lynn J. Frazier of North Dakota, has sent me 
 this brief but unequivocal testimony to the suc- 
 cess of Prohibition in his State : 
 
 I have no hesitancy in writing you that Prohibition has 
 been a clearly defined success in North Dakota. This 
 fact is so well established that it is not questioned by 
 any one familiar with conditions in our State. 
 
 The saloon was thrust out of our midst many years 
 ago. Its record while here was not such as to commend 
 
PIONEER PROHIBITION STATES 191 
 
 it for further consideration at the hands of our voters, and 
 resubmission has never been a live issue in any political 
 campaign. 
 
 I take pleasure in recommending Prohibition to all con- 
 sidering its enactment into law. 
 
 SENATOR GRONNA 
 
 United States Senator Gronna of North Da- 
 kota has given me his opinion as an expert wit- 
 ness on the succes^ of the fight against the saloon 
 in his State and his efficient relationship to it. This 
 is the clear, able and unanswerable testimony he 
 gave to the effect that Prohibition prohibits in 
 North Dakota : 
 
 Having lived in the Territory of Dakota and in the 
 State of North Dakota for thirty-seven years, I know the 
 country from its infancy; and I also know that Prohibi- 
 tion has been the most potent factor in our rapid growth 
 and advancement. 
 
 The early pioneers of that Territory consisted mainly 
 of poor people who took possession of it when it was 
 known as a barren v/aste. At any rate, it was altogether 
 undeveloped some forty years ago. It has been changed 
 from a wilderness to one of the most productive areas on 
 the American continent. The pioneer, or the home- 
 steader, soon discovered the need of man power in order 
 to cultivate and develop the millions of acres of virgin 
 soil, where for centuries the Indian and the buffalo had 
 roamed. The early pioneers consisted of young men and 
 young women, who in the early Territorial days realized 
 
192 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 the importance of conserving human energy. To accomp- 
 lish this a temperance revolution was necessary; control 
 of the mind and the appetites of man was necessary. All 
 poisonous matters had to he subdued. The saloon had 
 to be eradicated; the great tyrant, John Barleycorn, had 
 to be deposed; the dram-maker and the dram-seller had 
 gradually to find other occupations where they could be 
 more useful to themselves and their families, ready to 
 join all others in the universal song of gladness, because 
 of the opportunity to rear their families in the wholesome 
 atmosphere of temperance. 
 
 In production and resources our State has made the 
 most wonderful progress; in education and intelligence 
 the most marvelous advancement has been made by our 
 people. A second generation has grown to manhood and 
 womanhood and consists of a healthy, virile, and intelli- 
 gent class of young men and women. The abolition of 
 the liquor traffic and the temperance habits of the first 
 generation already manifests its effect upon the second, or 
 new generation. 
 
 A great many progressive reforms have been enacted 
 into law, and in no State in the Union has more progres- 
 sive legislation been written into law than in our State. 
 
 Our people are not extremely wealthy, nor are they 
 extremely poor. It is true that we have very few mil- 
 lionaires; neither have we a single poorhouse in the State. 
 Our condition is not yet perfect, but with our sober and 
 enlightened people, the march of a mighty people will 
 in the near future make greater progress. Prohibition 
 will manifest itself as a distinct blessing for the improve- 
 ment and the betterment of mankind. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ROOSEVELT AND THE SUNDAY SALOON 
 
 IN no form of lawlessness have the saloons 
 been more flagrant than in the infraction of 
 the Sunday closing law. Few things have 
 so stirred the American conscience to a hatred of 
 the saloon and a determination to destroy it as 
 has its persistent assault upon the Lord's Day. In 
 no place has there been such open and notorious 
 and shameful violation of the Civil Sabbath by 
 the saloons as in New York City, the wettest spot 
 in America. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt, when Police Commis- 
 sioner of New York, gave an order that on the 
 next Sunday all saloons were to be closed, and 
 that if the proprietors did not close them they 
 would be arrested by the police and prosecuted 
 for an infraction of the State law. As pastor of 
 the Park Avenue Methodist Church, New York 
 City, I preached a sermon on that Sunday morn- 
 ing asking the people of our church and Method- 
 ists generally, and the ministers and members of 
 all denominations, Protestant, Catholic and He- 
 brew, and the citizens who were members of no 
 
 193 
 
i 9 4 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 church who loved law and order, to stand behind 
 Mr. Roosevelt in his effort to compel the law- 
 defying and crime-breeding saloon to close on 
 Sunday. Sure enough, some of the liquor deal- 
 ers, who had always been stronger than the law 
 and authorities, considered the threat a joke and 
 kept open. And, of course, the Commissioner was 
 in dead earnest and not joking, and with his 
 strong intellect and determined will put six thous- 
 and policemen on the job of detecting and arrest- 
 ing these lawbreakers. He scared the brewers, 
 distillers and saloon-keepers till they fairly shiv- 
 ered and their teeth chattered with fear. 
 
 On the Monday morning following I went 
 down to the police headquarters to see Commis- 
 sioner Roosevelt. I said to him, "Mr. Roose- 
 velt, you do not know me; I never met you; I saw 
 you once. It was at the National Republican 
 Convention in Chicago which named James G. 
 Elaine for the Presidency and John A. Logan for 
 the Vice-Presidency. You were in the New York 
 delegation, in the group with George William 
 Curtis. You had on a little straw hat and were 
 not so fleshy as you are now. You were young, 
 had not been long out of Harvard, but were one 
 of the notables of the Convention and was pointed 
 out to me as such. I did not speak to you nor 
 have I seen you since that day. I have come 
 down this morning to introduce myself to you, 
 and to congratulate you on your courage in de- 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 195 
 
 termining to close the Sunday saloons. The town 
 has waited for twenty-five years for the coming 
 of such a man. It ought not to be counted a 
 heroic thing for a man to keep his oath solemnly 
 made and to earn his salary by the discharge of 
 his official duty, but the moral sense of the com- 
 munity is so low through the polluting influence 
 of the liquor dealers, and their collusion with cor- 
 rupt officials, that a man is counted a hero who 
 dares keep his oath to enforce the law or earn his 
 salary by so doing. I will stand by you till the 
 last hour in the day; you are in a fight for the 
 people and for God, and I belong in it and am 
 proud to have such a leader. Our church will 
 stand by you, too. In my sermon yesterday morn- 
 ing I asked all good people to sustain you in this 
 crusade against the Sunday saloon." 
 
 The Commissioner said: "I saw what you said 
 in your pulpit in the report of this morning's 
 papers, and thank you very much." 
 
 I continued: "I am only one, and an humble 
 one at that, but you may count on me to stand 
 with you on the front of the firing-line. When- 
 ever you shoot your big gun down here in Mul- 
 berry street just listen and you will hear its echo 
 in the crack of a little fine-bored pistol on the 
 corner of Park Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street, 
 and that little pistol will be in my hand and I will 
 be shooting at the thing at which you aim. 1 ' 
 
 He said enthusiastically, "You're the stuff! I 
 
196 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 am looking for you as much as you are looking 
 for me;" and, taking my hand warmly, he added, 
 "I will stand with you in the fight till the end." 
 Then he continued: u Do you know that you are 
 the first man whose opinion I count of any value 
 who has commended my action in closing the Sun- 
 day saloons? Do you see those letters and tele- 
 grams on that table? There are perhaps fifty of 
 them. Every single one criticises me ; some abuse 
 me bitterly. These are some of the quotations 
 from them: "What an ass you are"; "You are 
 the biggest crank and fool in the world"; "You 
 have wrecked the Republican Party"; "You have 
 killed yourself politically, you will never be heard 
 from again" ; "You are the deadest political duck 
 that ever died in a pond." 
 
 "Commissioner Roosevelt," I assured him, "I 
 do not believe a word of them. For every enemy 
 you make you will gain ten friends. In the long 
 run, the most popular thing a man can do polit- 
 ically is to do the right thing morally. In my 
 opinion you are not dead, but have just begun to 
 live politically." 
 
 He answered with considerable feeling, "I 
 have entered this fight with no idea of making 
 friends or fearing enemies; that has nothing to 
 do with the question. It is simply a question of 
 duty. That law is on the statute books and I 
 have taken an oath to enforce it with the rest," 
 and looking up he continued, "With the help of 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 197 
 
 God I intend to do so. Whether my course will 
 bring friends or foes, promotion or relegation to 
 the rear, does not enter an instant into my cal- 
 culation. It is mine only to do present duty which 
 is plain to me." 
 
 On taking his hand to leave I said, "In your 
 vision of righteousness and moral courage in pur- 
 suing it you show stuff of which I think a good 
 President could be made. I should like to vote 
 for you for that office some day." And I did! 
 
 I spoke with Commissioner Roosevelt in halls 
 and other public places, visited the ministers' 
 meetings and used the press to arouse a militant 
 spirit among church members and good citizens 
 generally. I also contributed to the magazines 
 in the support of the Commissioner in his war on 
 the Sunday saloon. In digging amidst the rub- 
 bish of my study I have just come upon a copy 
 of the "North American Review" of October, 
 1895, containing an article by myself on "The 
 Saloon and the Sabbath," backing Mr. Roosevelt's 
 efforts. 
 
 In the u Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1897, 
 Commissioner Roosevelt wrote of his stormy ex- 
 perience as the head of the Police Department. 
 In the article he thus arraigns the liquor traffic: 
 "Any man who studies the social condition of the 
 poor knows that liquor works more ruin than any 
 other one cause. The liquor business does not 
 stand on the same footing with other occupations. 
 
i 9 8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 It always tends to produce criminality in the 
 population at large and lawbreaking among the 
 saloonkeepers themselves. " In referring to the 
 forces that opposed him in closing the saloons 
 on Sunday he said: "The rich brewers and liq- 
 uor-sellers who had made money rapidly by vio- 
 lating the excise law, with the corrupt connivance 
 of the police, raved with anger, and every cor- 
 rupt politician and newspaper in the city gave 
 them clamorous assistance ; but the poor man and, 
 notably, the poor man's wife and children, bene- 
 fited very greatly by what we did. The one im- 
 portant element in good citizenship in our country 
 is obedience to law. This we gave." 
 
 We shall never forget the scene at the be- 
 ginning of the fight, when the frenzied brewers, 
 distillers, saloonkeepers and their hired represen- 
 tatives appeared at a hearing they had called be- 
 fore Mayor Strong, and how bitterly they de- 
 nounced Mr. Roosevelt and how insolently they 
 demanded a change in his policy. They said it 
 was a cosmopolitan community, that the Sunday 
 closing feature of the law had never been ob- 
 served, and they insisted that the Mayor require 
 the Commissioner instantly to stop his insane 
 policy and give a "liberal" enforcement of the ex- 
 cise law. 
 
 When the liquor men had finished their say 
 Commissioner Roosevelt made his reply. I shall 
 never forget it. I was standing just against him 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 199 
 
 when he spoke. He said: "Your Honor, these 
 gentlemen have savagely attacked me and my 
 policy of Sunday closing, and they have demanded 
 of you that you require me to give a 'liberal' en- 
 forcement of the excise law." With vehemence 
 and biting sarcasm he continued: "These men 
 want me to enforce the law a 'little bit,' to en- 
 force it a little, tiny bit. Your Honor, I do not 
 know how to do such a thing and I shall not be- 
 gin to learn now. I did not take an oath to en- 
 force the law a little, tiny bit. The great Empire 
 State did not put that law on the statute books 
 to be enforced a tiny bit, and so long as I am at 
 the head of the Police Department of the city I 
 shall do all in my power to enforce the law hon- 
 estly and fearlessly." 
 
 The terrible assault of the liquor dealers and 
 others of great influence scared Mayor Strong 
 almost out of his wits, and the Commissioner had 
 to brace up the Mayor's backbone with one hand 
 while he hammered the saloons with the other. 
 
 General Francis V. Greene has this to say of 
 Theodore Roosevelt's administration as Police 
 Commissioner: "He held this office for two years, 
 and though subjected to much criticism from cer- 
 tain quarters for enforcing the liquor license law, 
 yet it can be said, in a word, that during his admin- 
 istration he placed the department on a thoroughly 
 efficient basis, broke up the system of blackmail 
 which had hitherto prevailed in the department, 
 
200 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 and gained the affectionate admiration of the 
 members of the force to an extent which has 
 never been equaled by any Police Commissioner 
 before or since." 
 
 Since Col. Roosevelt's time the Sunday saloon 
 has continued with no official protest, thriving 
 fully as well under the reform administrations of 
 Low, Gaynor, and Mitchel, as under Tammany 
 Hall, in defiance of the laws of God and man. It 
 is likely that it will not be six years till there will 
 be no Sunday saloon in New York, Chicago, San 
 Francisco, or any other city or town, and no 
 saloon on any other day, either. 
 
 At the close of Mr. Roosevelt's two years' ex- 
 perience as President of the Police Board, Pres- 
 ident McKinley, on taking office in 1897, ap- 
 pointed Mr. Roosevelt Assistant Secretary of the 
 Navy. He spent nine months putting the ships 
 in good shape for the Spanish-American War, 
 and then determined to go out to the field him- 
 self. I wrote him a letter suggesting that as it 
 was to be largely a naval contest he could serve 
 his country better by staying in the Navy Depart- 
 ment. He wrote me that there was just cause for 
 the war; that he had helped bring it on; and that 
 he intended to go out into the field if he had to 
 leave his dead body there. He, with his Rough 
 Riders, after Dewey, was the most significant per- 
 sonality of the war. 
 
 He returned from the short war of a few 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 201 
 
 months, just before the meeting of the Republican 
 State Convention in September, 1898, and his 
 name was considered a possible candidate for the 
 nomination for Governor. Taking up a New 
 York paper one morning I noticed that Senator 
 Platt had stated that Colonel Roosevelt would 
 not be nominated, but that Governor Black would 
 be renominated for a second term. Senator Platt 
 was the "easy boss," and I knew that unless there 
 was a change in the situation the Colonel would 
 not be nominated. 
 
 That same day I took a train down to Man- 
 hattan Beach to the Oriental Hotel to see the 
 Senator. I told him I had come down to see him 
 about the nomination of Colonel Roosevelt for 
 the Governorship. He was cold on the subject 
 and discouraged me. 
 
 "What are your objections to the Colonel's 
 candidacy?" I asked him. 
 
 "Well, he is rash and impulsive," said the 
 Senator. 
 
 "Yes," I said, "he is impulsive, but his im- 
 pulses are good, and if you will notice, he is run- 
 ning in the right direction." 
 
 "But he slops over," the Senator continued. 
 
 "Yes, he does," I replied, "because there is so 
 much of him to slop. He is so large that he 
 often fills the vessel to overflowing. He has an 
 overplus of vitality and manhood." 
 
 The Senator said, "He made such a dismal 
 
202 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 failure in the administration of the Police Com- 
 missionership that his unwisdom and unpopular- 
 ity, in the judgment of many, take him out of 
 serious consideration for the nomination. He has 
 provoked the violent hostility of the liquor people 
 of the State." 
 
 "Senator," I persisted, "I disagree with you 
 entirely. The moral heroism he manifested in his 
 fight against the Sunday saloons of New York 
 will be an asset to the Republican Party. Remem- 
 ber, there are a good many people in the State 
 who live above the Harlem and who have no love 
 for, nor even patience with, the saloon on Sunday 
 or on any other day, and, besides, I believe the 
 number of voters in New York City who are un- 
 friendly to the saloon is often underestimated. 
 Are you not too smart a man and leader to at- 
 tempt to compete with Tammany Hall for the 
 saloon vote? The liquor dealers may promise 
 to vote for your ticket, but on election day they 
 will vote for Tammany Hall, which they count 
 a friend to be relied upon. You can run Theo- 
 dore Roosevelt and win without the saloon vote. 
 You can win in spite of it. So able a man as 
 David Bennett Hill so great a national figure 
 that, backed by his party in the State, he surely 
 would have received the nomination for the Presi- 
 dency on the Democratic ticket in 1892, if Cleve- 
 land had not taken it from him made the fatal 
 political mistake of overestimating the saloon vote 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 203 
 
 in this State, and was driven from power largely 
 on account of his supposed friendliness to the sa- 
 loon. When he ran for the Governorship in 
 1894 it was reported that he said he would rather 
 have the votes of the saloonkeepers than of the 
 preachers. Whether he ever made the statement 
 or not, it was so generally believed that the 
 preachers took him at his word and fought him, 
 and the church people of both parties turned 
 against him and beat him by more than 100,000 
 votes. On account of that mistake you are in 
 Mr. Hill's place in the United States Senate and 
 have displaced him as the dominant political 
 figure of the State. If you make the mistake he 
 did and punish Roosevelt for having fought the 
 Sunday saloons it will so anger the church people 
 that they will bury your ticket under an avalanche 
 of 150,000 majority; you will step down and out, 
 and Mr. Hill will return to the political leader- 
 ship of the State. There are many people who 
 are not total abstainers who count the saloon a 
 bad institution and will knock it at the polls, and 
 many more who resent the impertinence and im- 
 piety of the Sunday saloon and will work actively 
 against your ticket. I have always voted a straight 
 Republican ticket; but, Senator, if you depose 
 Colonel Roosevelt for having done his sworn duty 
 as Police Commissioner I will bolt the ticket this 
 fall, and you will find my ballot in that avalanche 
 of votes. I never made a political speech in my 
 
204 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 life, and yet if you turn down Roosevelt because 
 you fear the saloon power will beat him, I will 
 take the stump and make a score, or if need be 
 fifty, speeches from here to Buffalo between now 
 and election day and tell the people how it hap- 
 pened, and ask them what they think of it. There 
 is especial reason for caution this fall. You will 
 be handicapped by the fact that this is an 'off' 
 year, not a Presidential one, and by the severe 
 criticism on the Republican policy for its adminis- 
 tration of the canals of the State; and you will 
 need Roosevelt's physical, mental and moral en- 
 thusiasm to pull your ticket through.'' 
 
 It had gotten to be 5 :3O o'clock in the after- 
 noon, and I bade the Senator good-by and walked 
 over a short distance to take a train for home. 
 Who should get off the train I was to take but 
 B. B. Odell, Jr., Chairman of the Republican 
 State Committee, Joseph Dickey, Mr. Bain and 
 others of Newburgh, my personal friends. Mr. 
 Odell said: "Hello, what are you doing down 
 here?' 1 
 
 "I came down to see Senator Platt," I replied, 
 "to try to persuade him to nominate Colonel 
 Roosevelt for the Governorship. I saw in the 
 paper this morning that he had told you boys last 
 night that the Colonel would not be nominated." 
 
 Mr. Odell said, "I am glad you came down. I 
 am for Roosevelt myself and so are my friends 
 here. I think he is the logical candidate as a war 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 205 
 
 hero and reformer, and would poll a heavy vote 
 and be elected. The Senator has faith in your 
 judgment, thinks that you reflect the moral senti- 
 ment of the State pretty accurately; I wish you 
 would stay down and have another interview with 
 Mr. Platt Suppose you go back to the hotel and 
 have dinner with me and see him again tonight." 
 
 I went back and sat down as a guest at his 
 table. After dinner I had another talk with the 
 Senator, in which I said: u Senator, do not think 
 for a moment that Colonel Roosevelt sent me 
 down to see you in the interest of his nomination. 
 He does not know I am here. I have never 
 spoken to him on the subject. While I have cor- 
 responded with him ever since he was Police Com- 
 missioner, even since he came back to Montauk 
 Point to be mustered out, the matter of the Gov- 
 ernorship has never been mentioned by either. I 
 am here because I have seen Theodore Roosevelt 
 at close range for two years and know him to 
 be a man of great ability and all-daring moral 
 courage, and believe that as a leader his adminis- 
 tration would work for righteousness." 
 
 I went home thoroughly discouraged, the Sena- 
 tor was so cold and keen in answering my argu- 
 ments and unresponsive to my warm appeals. Be- 
 fore going to bed I sat down and wrote a letter 
 to the Colonel at Montauk Point, in which among 
 other things I said: "I had thought the Repub- 
 lican leaders would have had wisdom enough to 
 
206 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 offer you the nomination for the Governorship, 
 but in a morning paper I saw that Senator Platt 
 had said you would not be the candidate. I knew 
 that settled the matter, if that opinion continued. 
 So, without your advice or consent, I hurried 
 down to the Oriental at Manhattan Beach today 
 and have had two long, earnest interviews with 
 the Senator, in which I tried to convince him of 
 the wisdom of your nomination. But I feel dis- 
 couraged. I fear I have made no impression on 
 him whatever. Whenever I would come around 
 to the plea that he be friendly to your nomina- 
 tion, a Sphinx is eloquent compared to the sudden 
 silence of his lips. Unless he shall change his 
 mind I fear your nomination will be impossible." 
 The Colonel was nominated. I never knew I 
 had made the least impression till some time after 
 the Convention, when one of the men with whom 
 I went back to the hotel for dinner, the day of 
 the interviews, told me that when I left that night 
 the Senator called the group of State leaders who 
 were stopping at the hotel and said that he had 
 told them the night before that Governor Black 
 would have to be renominated or there would be 
 a split in the Republican Party. But Doctor 
 "Inglehart" (he always put an "n" in my name) 
 had been down to see him and had given him four 
 reasons why Colonel Roosevelt should be nom- 
 inated, three of which he considered valid. On 
 the strength of them had concluded to reverse 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 207 
 
 his opinion and favor Mr. Roosevelt's nomina- 
 tion. The gentlemen said from that moment that 
 Roosevelt was as good as nominated. Chairman 
 Odell worked loyally and successfully with the 
 Colonel, who was elected by about twenty thous- 
 and majority. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt was made Governor, and 
 consequently Vice-President and President, be- 
 cause he closed the saloons of New York on Sun- 
 day. He would have doubtless become President 
 later by another route, but it was the plan of 
 Providence to lead him through this gateway of 
 moral heroism to the White House. 
 
 In my interview with Senator Platt I made the 
 moral element in his availability paramount and 
 insisted that while he would run well as a war 
 hero, he would run still better as a moral hero. 
 It was because, scorned by the Democrats, ridi- 
 culed by the Republicans, hissed at by hell, he put 
 his giant hands against eight thousand saloons 
 and shut them, in spite of hundreds of millions of 
 dollars back of the brewers and the distillers and 
 the enormous vote of the municipal underworld. 
 
 During Mr. Roosevelt's candidacy for the Pres- 
 idency on the Progressive ticket he made some 
 speeches in Ohio at the time the wet and dry 
 proposition in that State was being carried on, 
 and in several of his speeches he said that the 
 liquor people were entirely to blame for pushing 
 the question to the forefront of politics at that 
 
208 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 time, and that if he were living in the State he 
 would vote for Prohibition. 
 
 Just about that time I received a telegram from 
 my personal friend, Mr. J. Frank Burke, Superin- 
 tendent of the Oregon State Anti-Saloon League, 
 dated March 15, 1912, stating that on the plat- 
 form and in the press it was charged that Colonel 
 Roosevelt was on his way rapidly to a drunkard's 
 grave and a drunkard's hell and asked me as the 
 Colonel's friend to wire a denial of the slander- 
 ous statements to be used at a political meeting 
 to be held in Portland that same night. 
 
 I immediately sent this telegram in reply: 
 
 Statement diabolical falsehood. Roosevelt never claimed 
 total abstainer. Drinks almost nothing. No alcohol in 
 eye or muscle. Not a spot on him, body, mind or soul. 
 The bloom of best American civilization. Idol of people. 
 Christly McKinley suffered same villainous slander from 
 same source. Hell is not far from lying scandalmonger. 
 
 Though corresponding with the Colonel regu- 
 larly, I did not say anything to him about this 
 telegram or my answer at the time. I felt a little 
 delicacy in doing so, as the slander was so foul 
 and false that I did not care to irritate him with 
 it, but in a letter of mine to him of May 1 1, 1912, 
 I gave him the text of the telegram received and 
 of the one I sent in reply. His answer was the 
 following : 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 209 
 
 EN ROUTE PULLMAN PRIVATE CAR OCEANIC, 
 
 MAY 14, 1912. 
 MY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 You are a trump! I am very glad you sent precisely 
 that telegram. You are absolutely correct. I have never 
 claimed to be a total abstainer, but I drink as little as 
 most total abstainers, for I really doubt whether on an 
 average, year in and year out, I drink more than is given 
 for medicinal purposes to many people. I never touch 
 whisky, and I have never drunk a cocktail or a highball 
 in my life. I doubt whether I have drunk a dozen tea- 
 spoonfuls of brandy since I came back from Africa, and 
 as far as I now recollect, in each case it was for medicinal 
 purposes. In Africa during the eleven months I drank 
 exactly seven ounces of brandy; this was under our doc- 
 tor's direction in my first fever attack, and once when I 
 was completely exhausted. My experience on these two 
 occasions convinced me that tea was better than brandy, 
 and during the last six months in Africa I took no brandy, 
 even when sick, taking tea instead. I drink just about 
 as much as Dr. Lyman Abbott and I say this with his 
 permission. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt nursed his wrath until he 
 could nail the lie, which he did in his successful 
 suit againt an editor, in which he got the complete 
 vindication which he demanded and deserved. On 
 the rendering of the verdict I wired the Colonel : 
 "Supremely happy at victory and complete vindi- 
 cation. " To this Mr. Roosevelt sent the follow- 
 
210 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 ing response: "Heartiest thanks for your tele- 
 gram. Naturally I am pleased with the way 
 things went in the libel suit." 
 
 Never since that day has any person of re- 
 sponsibility dared repeat the foul slander, and 
 Theodore Roosevelt stands as a superb personal- 
 ity against the iniquity of the saloon and its inti- 
 mate partnership with corrupt politics. 
 
 On January 4, 1917, I called by appointment 
 on Colonel Roosevelt at his office with the "Met- 
 ropolitan Magazine," and said to him: "I am writ- 
 ing an anti-alcohol book, and I have come to ask 
 you to give me a little something from your pen 
 which I may put bodily as a gem into that book." 
 
 "Well, on what phase of the subject do you 
 want those words?" 
 
 "I would like you to give me in condensed form 
 your views against the saloon as you have so often 
 done to me in private conversation, and especially 
 on the collusion of corrupt politics with the sa- 
 loon. Your fight in New York City was tragic 
 and epoch-making, and you might make that the 
 basis of what you say." 
 
 He called his stenographer and began: 
 
 "Mv DEAR DOCTOR IGLEHART: It has been 
 my good fortune to be associated with you ever 
 since the days " 
 
 I halted him and said: "Colonel, cut out the 
 compliments to me and put in your knowledge of 
 the badness of the saloons and of their partners, 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 211 
 
 the rum politicians." He waved his big arm to- 
 ward me and said, "Just hold on. I know better 
 what I want to say than you do," and continued 
 to the stenographer : 
 
 MY DEAR DOCTOR IGLEHART: It has been my good 
 fortune to be associated with you ever since the days 
 when I was President of the Police Commission of New 
 York, when I worked hand in hand with you, and with 
 the Ministers' Association that you represented on behalf 
 of temperance, and of doing away with the evil of the 
 saloon power in New York City. At that time our fight 
 was for a proper observance of the Sunday law. There 
 could have have been no more practical illustration of 
 the hideous evil wrought by the liquor traffic than was 
 afforded by the results of its stoppage for the few Sun- 
 days during which we were able to keep the saloons ab- 
 solutely closed. During this period the usual mass of 
 individuals up in the courts on Monday morning, on 
 charges of being drunk and disorderly and committing 
 assaults, diminshed by two-thirds or over. The hospitals, 
 such as Bellevue, showed a similar diminution of persons 
 brought to them because of alcoholism and crimes due to 
 drunkenness. On the other hand, the healthy Sunday re- 
 sorts in the neighborhood of New York showed a great 
 increase in business. Men who would otherwise have 
 stayed in New York drinking, while their wives and 
 children suffered in the heated tenement houses, took 
 these same wives and children for a Sunday holiday in 
 the country. Unfortunately, by the end of that time, the 
 decisions of the courts and juries had so hampered our 
 action that, to a very large extent, the old system was 
 
212 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 reinstated. While this was partly because public opinion 
 had not been educated to sustain us, it was partly because 
 of the alliance between the saloon power and the politi- 
 cians. Any man who fails to take into account both of 
 these facts is blinding himself to two of the prime fac- 
 tors in the misgovernment of our citizens and in the misery 
 of our city populations. If you care to know my views 
 more fully, as written at the time, I refer you to my 
 chapter on the subject printed in a book called "Ameri- 
 can Ideals." The only change I have since to record is a 
 constantly growing appreciation of the wide-reaching evil 
 of the liquor traffic, and of the need of extending, by 
 every method possible through our country, a full under- 
 standing of what this evil is. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 
 
 In "American Ideals," to which Colonel Roose- 
 velt referred me, I find this reference to criminals 
 who were office holders, and political leaders. 
 There was one case of an assemblyman who 
 served several terms in the Legislature, while his 
 private business was to carry on corrupt negotia- 
 tions between the Excise Commissioners and own- 
 ers of low haunts who wished licenses. The pres- 
 ident of a powerful semi-political association was 
 by profession a burglar, while the man who re- 
 ceived the goods he stole was an alderman. An- 
 other alderman was elected while his hair was 
 still short from a term in State Prison. A school 
 trustee had been convicted of embezzlement and 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE SALOON 213 
 
 was the associate of criminals. A prominent offi- 
 cial in the Police Department was interested in 
 disreputable houses and gambling saloons and 
 was backed politically by their proprietors. 
 
 In urging National Prohibition as a war meas- 
 ure, Colonel Roosevelt said: 
 
 When we are threatened with a shortage of foodstuffs, 
 when it is our duty to supply food to our allies to our 
 utmost ability, we should see that needed food necessities 
 are not diverted from their proper use. Most of the 
 belligerent nations of Europe have taken up this problem 
 and settled it. Let us begin at once to see to it that our 
 grain is kept for food and not put into alcoholic beverages. 
 
 I sent Colonel Roosevelt a copy of the first 
 edition of this book and received from him the 
 following letter: 
 
 u Mv DEAR DR. IGLEHART: I thank you for your 
 book and appreciate your sending it to me and I wish to 
 congratulate you on what has happened in Congress and 
 the success that is crowning your long fight against alco- 
 holism. The American saloon has been one of the most 
 mischievous elements in American social, political and in- 
 dustrial life. No man has warred more valiantly against 
 it than you have, and I am glad that it has been my 
 privilege to stand with you in the contest. 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT." 
 
 This letter was dated December 19, 1917. On 
 December 17, 1917, only two days before, the 
 House passed the National Prohibition resolu- 
 tion, and on the day following the Senate adopted 
 the amended measure. This is the Congressional 
 action to which the Colonel refers in this letter 
 written the day after that action had been taken. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 
 
 WITHIN eight years, from 1907 to 1915, 
 nine of the Southern States rebelled 
 against the authority of King Alcohol. 
 By the action of their legislatures and the people's 
 ballots they declared their independence of his 
 despotism in a voice that stirred the nation and 
 attracted the attention of the world. 
 
 GEORGIA 
 
 Georgia was the first of the Southern States to 
 abolish the saloon, by the passage of a law in 
 July, 1907. For forty years good men and wo- 
 men had been planting the seeds of hostility to 
 drink that came to the harvest that day. Georgia 
 not only achieved the first victory in the modern 
 anti-drink crusade, but gave to the movement one 
 of her most gifted sons to be perhaps the most 
 conspicuous and potential leader in stirring the 
 solid South into the banishment of alcohol. It 
 was Sam Jones, a minister of the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, South, who spent twenty years as 
 a traveling evangelist in the South and other parts 
 
 214 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 215 
 
 of the country. He was as noble in his character 
 as he was keen in his intellect, eloquent as an ora- 
 tor and powerful as a preacher. His biting sar- 
 casm and terrific invective made the cold chills 
 run up and down the back; his inimitable wit and 
 humor convulsed his audiences with laughter, 
 while his pathos melted them into tears. He 
 was called on to speak almost everywhere, on all 
 occasions, and was always the able, fearless, per- 
 sistent and inveterate enemy of the liquor traffic. 
 He spoke in a village of twelve hundred people 
 one night, and said : 
 
 "You have a nice village, with lovely residences 
 and grounds and gardens; you have good streets 
 and stores and public buildings ; but you could not 
 get along without three saloons to damn your 
 boys. What license do they pay?" 
 
 One spoke up: "A hundred dollars a piece." 
 Jones continued: "The three would make three 
 hundred dollars. You have twelve hundred in- 
 habitants. If you were each to walk up to the 
 treasurer and pay forty cents you would have 
 your revenue and no saloon. What does a hog 
 bring in this neighborhood?" 
 
 A man called out, "Twelve dollars." 
 "That is about what I thought," said Jones. 
 "Hogs worth twelve dollars, folks forty cents a 
 head, around here. You have sold your boys and 
 girls to hell and yourselves to the devil for forty 
 cents a head; and as far as you are concerned the 
 
216 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 devil has got the worst of the bargain, for those 
 of you who would sell your sons and daughters to 
 damnation for forty cents each are not worth five 
 cents a head. And when at the last day the over- 
 throw of your children will be charged on you 
 and you are called upon to answer what you sold 
 your boys and girls to hell for, look the Judge in 
 the face and tell Him the truth: 'For forty 
 cents.' " 
 
 For twenty years Sam Jones went up and down 
 the Southland, hammering with his merciless logic 
 into the minds of the people, and burning with a 
 divine flame into their hearts, the great fact that 
 no money consideration in the form of a license 
 fee can weigh for an instant in the balance against 
 the bodies, minds and souls of the precious boys 
 and girls. The people of the South believed what 
 he said and acted accordingly in saving the boys 
 and girls, the men and women, and scorning the 
 license fee. 
 
 Such is the seed sowed broadcast which appears 
 in the white harvest of today; it is the dynamite 
 that charged the mines that wrecked the saloons 
 of the South. The method of saloon elimination 
 he preached, he practised. He drove the saloon 
 out of his home town of Cartersville, in the 
 county of Bartow, and for fifteen years compelled 
 a rigid enforcement of the law there. But one 
 night in October, 1906, he died of heart failure 
 on a railway train in Arkansas. His funeral was 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 217 
 
 a State event in Georgia. But the liquor people 
 of Bartow, his home county, were jubilant at the 
 thought of a return to license, with their greatest 
 enemy out of the way, and early in June called a 
 new election. The temperance people were in 
 consternation at first without their great leader, 
 but they organized, prayed in the churches, 
 paraded the streets and made a hand-to-hand 
 campaign. When the ballots were counted there 
 were eighty-five votes for the saloon and 1,687 
 for no license. The ghost of Sam Jones had 
 come back to Cartersville to lead the fight. 
 
 The marvelous victory in Bartow county was 
 the torch of Prohibition that set all Georgia on 
 fire. Lowndes County, a rum stronghold, cast 
 her vote resulting in 1,684 f r Prohibition to 
 406 against it. The legislature was in its sum- 
 mer session. Its members had not been elected 
 on the issue of State-wide Prohibition. But the 
 victories of Bartow and Lowndes Counties had 
 set the whole State wild with temperance enthu- 
 siasm, and the Anti-Saloon League, Women's 
 Christian Temperance Union, Prohibitionists, 
 Good Templars and other temperance societies 
 were well organized and united, and, seeing that 
 the psychological moment had come, pressed the 
 measure. The Hardman-Covington Bill was 
 backed by its authors and by Williford, Knight, 
 Neal, and Seaborn Wright championing the meas- 
 ure. After a long and desperate fight in which 
 
218 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Mrs. Mary H. Armor and the "Daily Georgian" 
 were important factors, the bill was passed in the 
 Senate by 34 to 7, and in the Hous by 139 to 39. 
 A scene of wildest enthusiasm followed. Men 
 and women, old and young, sang and cried and 
 laughed and shouted for joy. Above all was the 
 hymn of praise to God for victory. 
 
 Though the adoption of Prohibition by the 
 Legislature was sudden, there had been years of 
 preparation for it. At the time of the passage 
 of the law the saloon had been driven by local 
 option from 135 out of the 150 counties of the 
 State. The law went into effect January i, 1908. 
 
 In search of the very best authority on the sub- 
 ject of Prohibition in Georgia, my rnind turned to 
 United States Senator Hoke Smith, who had been 
 a successful lawyer in Atlanta, proprietor of the 
 "Atlanta Journal," a member of President Cleve- 
 land's cabinet, twice elected Governor of his State, 
 and twice United States Senator. Senator Smith 
 delivered a speech in the Senate, January 9, 1917, 
 on the District of Columbia Prohibition Bill, 
 from which I make the following quotations, 
 which are so powerful and convincing as to leave 
 very little room for debate on the subject: 
 
 During the summer of 1907 the State of Georgia, 
 which I represent here in part, adopted State-wide Pro- 
 hibition. There has been some effort to criticize the 
 manner in which the law is enforced in Georgia. I do 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 219 
 
 not claim that it is completely enforced and that the use 
 of intoxicating drinks has been entirely suppressed in 
 Georgia. But, having approved that law as Governor of 
 the State, I watched the effect of it in the city of Atlanta, 
 my home and the largest city in the State. I can say 
 that in many an humble home after its passage, and even 
 with partial enforcement, there was more food and better 
 clothing for the women and children, and in many a 
 home there was gentleness and kindness instead of coarse- 
 ness and brutality from an intoxicated husband and 
 father. 
 
 I have the report of the chief of police of the city of 
 Atlanta, a city of more than 225,000 inhabitants. He 
 gives the relative effect of the open barroom in the city 
 of Atlanta for six years before Prohibition and for six 
 years afterward. The statistics which he furnishes show 
 that the number of cases made for intoxication in propor- 
 tion to the population was about one-half in the city after 
 Prohibition, as compared to the number before, and that 
 the number of arrests for crime was at least one-third 
 less in proportion to population after the adoption of 
 Prohibition than before. 
 
 My own observation throughout the State satisfies me 
 that Prohibition has been beneficial and helpful to the 
 people of the State. I was a local optionist before the 
 passage of the law, but promised in my campaign for 
 Governor that if the State passed State-wide Prohibition 
 I would approve it. Today any influence I might have 
 in the State would be thrown against returning to local 
 option and in favor of the maintenance of State-wide 
 Prohibition. I would pursue this course as the result 
 of the beneficial effect, in my judgment, of the legislation. 
 
220 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Coming to the economic side of the question, 1 am sure 
 that the general business of the city of Atlanta has pros- 
 pered as a consequence of Prohibition; that the legitimate 
 business of the city has largely received the money that 
 was before wasted on liquors in the saloons. There has 
 been a rapid accumulation of deposits in the banks, not, 
 of course, entirely due to this subject, but in part. There 
 has been an improvement in the business of the general 
 retail stores and the department stores of the city, in part, 
 in my judgment, due to Prohibition. 
 
 We have one city in Georgia which was very much 
 opposed to Prohibition, the second largest city in the State, 
 and for a long time the enforcement of the law was re- 
 sisted there. I refer to the city of Savannah; but within 
 the past twelve months the law has been enforced there; 
 and I hold in my hand an editorial from the " Savannah 
 Morning News" dealing with the business condition of 
 that city during the Christmas holidays, in which the 
 editor rejoices that the merchants have done the best busi- 
 ness in the history of the city. The editor, though never, 
 I believe, a prohibitionist, further attributes at least a part 
 of that improved business to the fact that money was 
 going into legitimate lines, instead of being wasted for 
 intoxicating spirits. 
 
 I wish to see barrooms driven from the District of 
 Columbia; I wish to see the sale of intoxicating liquors 
 for beverage purposes stopped in the District of Columbia. 
 I believe a majority of the Senate is in favor of stopping 
 it. Here come, every day almost, thousands of visitors, 
 young and old, to all of whom the lessons of patriotism 
 from a visit to the Nation's Capital result in a higher 
 type of citizenship, and the pride of participation in the 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 221 
 
 affairs of our Government grows stronger with the real- 
 ization of its latent power and outward dignity and 
 grandeur. Let me stop a moment to say that as they 
 come I want them to see that the National Congress at 
 the National Capital has closed barrooms, has forbidden 
 the sale of liquor, and I want them to go back from here 
 with the inspiration of knowing that their national legisla- 
 tors are helping them in the fight which, pray God, will 
 close such places everywhere, from ocean to ocean, and 
 from the Lakes to the Gulf. I wish to see the barrooms 
 closed; I wish to see the sale of liquor for beverage 
 purposes stopped here, and to my constituents at home I 
 hold myself responsible, and I vote what I believe to be 
 their wishes, accepting the responsibility myself and de- 
 clining to refer it to anybody else. 
 
 Senator Reed of Missouri asked Senator Smith 
 this question: "Are not the citizens of the Sena- 
 tor's own State permitted to import liquor for 
 their own use under the laws of the State ?" 
 
 Senator Smith answered: 
 
 That is true. The bill was passed, I think, under a 
 misapprehension of the meaning of the Webb Act. They 
 were of the opinion, so I was advised, that they could not 
 absolutely prohibit it and remain within the Constitu- 
 tion; but I feel perfectly sure that this summer they will 
 stop it. At least I hope so. In other words, I am in 
 f^vor of stopping men from using it, not simply playing 
 with it. I want to say that to the Senator. I am in 
 favor of trying to make our State bone-dry. With me 
 opposition to the use of spirituous and intoxicating drink 
 
222 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 has been a gradual growth. When I leave myself free 
 to think about it and realize the skeletons found in almost 
 every home as a result of its use, I have reached the place 
 where I am willing in my State this next summer to help 
 make it absolutely dry, and I hope the people of the State 
 are ready to give up entirely the use of intoxicating 
 drinks. 
 
 But Georgia could not, would not, wait till the 
 summer, but went dry at once, only a few weeks 
 after the Senator had spoken. 
 
 Governor Nat. E. Harris of Georgia, in reply 
 to a letter of inquiry from me, has written me the 
 following letter: 
 
 I am in sympathy with every one in the American 
 Union who is traveling the pathway that your letter in- 
 dicates you to be on. In my State I am thinking of 
 calling a session of the Legislature to cut off the monthly 
 shipments of two quarts allowed to each individual. This 
 has been our Trojan horse, but the sentiment here is so 
 strongly in favor of a "bone-dry" program that there will 
 be no difficulty in changing our law and adjusting our- 
 selves to the present trend of affairs. It looks like Pro- 
 hibition is going over the world. 
 
 Very sincerely and fraternally yours, 
 
 N. E. HARRIS, Governor. 
 
 Precisely this thing the Governor did. He 
 called a special session of the Legislature to pass 
 a bone-dry law, which it did, and then adjourned 
 and went home, rejoicing in having done the work 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 223 
 
 of a generation in a day. Now the rich man in 
 his palatial home cannot have a glass of cham- 
 pagne, nor the negro a drop of his alcohol in his 
 river street joint. 
 
 Why need we multiply witnesses? Senator 
 Smith and Governor Harris ought to know as 
 much about the situation in Georgia as the brew- 
 ers, the distillers, the saloonkeepers and their 
 hired mercenaries in the editorial sanctum, in 
 municipal and legislative halls, who bellow out 
 their loud lament, and shed their crocodile tears 
 at the "failure of Prohibition in Georgia." 
 
 OKLAHOMA 
 
 Oklahoma was the next State to adopt Pro- 
 hibition. Congress, in the enabling act of 1906, 
 required Prohibition for twenty-one years in the 
 Indian Territory section of the new State. In 
 the election of delegates to the constitutional con- 
 vention the liquor question was one of the fore- 
 most. Then the pressure was made by both sides 
 on the delegates to incorporate or leave out of 
 the constitution a prohibitory provision. The con- 
 vention prepared a constitutional provision, but 
 made it necessary for the people at the polls to 
 determine whether they would make it a part of 
 their constitution or not. [After an exceedingly 
 excited contest the prohibitory provision was 
 adopted at the election in November, 1907, by a 
 
224 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 majority of 18,000. And thus Oklahoma, the 
 youngest of Columbia's fair daughters, entered 
 the sisterhood of States adorned with garments 
 unstained by wine or beer, unfouled by the fumes 
 of alcohol, clad in the pure white robe of Prohi- 
 bition. The following fall the liquor forces sur- 
 prised and alarmed the temperance people by a 
 demand for a new vote on a technicality, but the 
 measure for the repeal of the Prohibition amend- 
 ment was defeated, November, 1910, by a major- 
 ity of 23,000 votes. 
 
 The legislature of 1913 passed severe meas- 
 ures of law enforcement. It included a peniten- 
 tiary sentence for keeping a place for the sale of 
 intoxicants, made a felony of the second offense 
 against any feature of the prohibitory law, and 
 rendered amenable to impeachment and dismis- 
 sal any State officer charged with drunkenness or 
 the excessive use of intoxicants. 
 
 A young physician at the head of a hospital 
 in one of the cities of Oklahoma, said he went to 
 that State a few years ago with favorable notions 
 of beer and with a positive prejudice, if not con- 
 tempt, for Prohibition as a remedy for the evils 
 of drink. But he said the practical working of 
 the law had changed his mind on the subject, had 
 entirely converted him. He said that the drastic 
 features of the law, even sending men of influence 
 to the penitentiary for terms long enough for se- 
 rious reflection for an infraction of the law, had 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 225 
 
 been salutary to public morals. He said that no 
 one acquainted with the facts would deny that 
 Prohibition in Oklahoma prohibits. 
 
 ALABAMA 
 
 The wires had scarcely carried the word that 
 President Roosevelt had accepted the new State of 
 Oklahoma, with its prohibitory amendment, when 
 the Legislature of Alabama passed a State Pro- 
 hibition law, to take effect on January i, 1908. 
 
 The original excise law had been amended 
 from year to year, allowing privileges of local 
 option to special localities, till the saloon had been 
 driven out of twenty counties. As the sessions of 
 the Legislature were only quadrennial, the anti-sa- 
 loon people determined to make the best use of 
 their opportunities at the winter session of 1907 to 
 press radical temperance measures. Laws were 
 passed allowing local option for counties, pre- 
 venting the shipment of liquors from wet into 
 dry territory, compelling temperance instruction 
 in the public schools, and forbidding the sale of 
 "hop-jack" and other drinks containing a smaller 
 percentage of alcohol. 
 
 In November of the same year Governor 
 Comer called a special session of the Legislature 
 to consider the differences between the railroads 
 and the State. He did not make any mention of 
 the temperance question in his message, as he did 
 not intend that it should be considered until the 
 
226 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 regular session, three years thence. Because he 
 did not make mention of it in that call a two- 
 thirds majority was required to carry such a 
 measure. When the members arrived at Mont- 
 gomery, they were blazing with the enthusiasm 
 that had fired the law-makers of Georgia, and 
 they would not give a single thought to railroads 
 till they had "expressed" the saloon out of the 
 State by the adoption in the Senate of the House 
 Bill prohibiting the manufacture and sale of 
 liquors as a beverage by a vote of 32 to 2. 
 
 Soon after the passage of the measure Gov- 
 ernor Comer, coming out of his executive cham- 
 ber, said to a friend, u Did you see that woman 
 go out of the door just then?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Hers was a pathetic mission. She came to 
 ask me to pardon her husband for having killed 
 her brother. Both were honest men, good work- 
 men, personal friends. They got to drinking one 
 night till they were drunk, got into a fight over 
 nothing, and her husband killed her brother, and 
 was sent to prison for life, and she and her chil- 
 dren are destitute, and she has come crying to me 
 for a pardon. There are many widows and or- 
 phans down in the wiregrass of Alabama, caused 
 by strong drink, and we expect the new prohibi- 
 tory law to greatly lessen the number of such 
 tragedies." 
 
 The passage of the Prohibition law was fol- 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 227 
 
 lowed instantly by a fierce reaction. The officers 
 of the law in the cities were not in sympathy with 
 it; the compactly organized liquor-dealers exerted 
 their powerful influence in politics to discredit it; 
 they sowed the State with blind tigers, and then 
 made many temperance people believe it was the 
 law that was responsible for them, instead of 
 themselves who had created them by breaking the 
 law. Amidst this riot of nullification a special 
 session of the Legislature in August, 1908, sub- 
 mitted the question of a Prohibition amendment 
 to the constitution, to be voted upon Novem- 
 ber 29. The amendment was lost by a large major- 
 ity. The church people innocently believed the 
 statement of their enemies before the election that 
 the State Prohibition law would be sufficient and 
 would not be touched. But immediately the 
 liquor men put into power officers of State, in- 
 cluding the Governor, who did their best to undo 
 the statutory law. The anti-saloon leaders, the 
 day after the election on the amendment, claimed 
 that the defeat was only temporary, and with wis- 
 dom, courage and hope continued a relentless 
 warfare till they elected a friendly legislature 
 and passed a State-v/ide Prohibition law in Jan- 
 uary, 1915, which was vetoed by the Governor 
 and promptly passed over his veto, and went into 
 effect July i, 1915. As deep as was the humilia- 
 tion and disappointment of the no-license workers 
 of the State and Nation at the defeat of the con- 
 
228 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 stitutional amendment, so high was their enjoy- 
 ment that after seven years of the baleful rule 
 of rum Alabama had returned to the ranks of 
 Prohibition. 
 
 MISSISSIPPI 
 
 Mississippi has always been good ground for 
 Prohibition seed. Its citizens are mostly farmers. 
 Of the 1,797,114 inhabitants of the State 1,585,- 
 802 live in the country; only 207,311 dwell in the 
 cities* Meridian is the largest city; has less than 
 24,000; Jackson about 22,000; and Vicksburg 21,- 
 ooo, with Natchez and Hattiesburg coming next 
 with less than 12,000, and all the rest of the cities 
 under 9,000 in population. Difficulties, however, 
 confronted the temperance people. The colored 
 people have, from the close of the Civil War 
 until now, outnumbered the whites, and the rela- 
 tion of the negro to the saloon became a serious 
 problem to be solved. The problem became acute 
 in wet districts like Aberdeen in Monroe County, 
 center for a cotton-planting country, which has 
 18,000 blacks to 12,000 whites, and in Leland in 
 Washington, where the blacks outnumber the 
 whites nine to one. The country saloon was 
 spoiling the negro and the white man as well, 
 and instead of a three mile limit, as in Alabama, 
 the people pushed the saloon five miles away 
 from a church or school, which cleared the farm 
 districts of the cross-roads groggery. 
 
 When the public sentiment of this rural State 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 229 
 
 against the saloon was crystallizing into restric- 
 tive legislation there appeared on the stage one 
 of the most powerful enemies the liquor traffic 
 ever had in Mississippi or in any other State, who 
 became the brains, the heart, the powerful right 
 arm of the Prohibition forces. He was the Rev. 
 Charles B. Galloway, a young Bishop of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He was six 
 feet high, every inch a Southern gentleman, a fine 
 writer, an able speaker, a brave, manly man. He 
 had an intense interest in the spiritual welfare of 
 the church, and also a genius for taking the prin- 
 ciples of his religion into the affairs of everyday 
 life, including the field of politics. For a whole 
 generation he fought like a hero against the rum 
 traffic. With rare prophetic vision he saw the 
 solution of the saloon problem in Mississippi and 
 for the whole nation. Long before the Anti- 
 Saloon League was dreamed of he adopted the 
 identical methods which have become so powerful 
 in the hands of that organization in the destruc- 
 tion of the liquor traffic. He claimed the saloon 
 had to be voted out, and devoted himself to prac- 
 tical politics for that purpose. He held that the 
 voting ought to be done in small units at first, 
 and increased to larger ones as fast as public senti- 
 ment would sustain it, working all the while to 
 educate and create that friendly sentiment. The 
 radicals insisted that he went too slow, and the 
 conservatives that he went too fast. But with one 
 
230 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 hand he held the radicals back, and with the 
 other he pulled the conservatives forward, and 
 allowed the movement to go only as fast as public 
 sentiment would sustain it. His notion was that 
 local option by counties as a unit would pretty 
 nearly clean the saloons out of the State, and he 
 was right. After using the township option law 
 for a while he made a fierce fight before the 
 Legislature of 1886 for his cherished county local 
 option law, and secured it. And after twenty-two 
 years of hard labor and wise use of that law he 
 saw the saloon driven from sixty-nine of the 
 seventy-six counties, which included ninety per 
 cent, of the territory of the State, and, according 
 to his prophecy, the question of State-wide Prohi- 
 bition took care of itself. 
 
 It became almost a matter of form only for the 
 Legislature of 1908 to pass a State-wide Prohibi- 
 tion bill, by almost unanimous vote of both houses. 
 Bishop Galloway used the modern methods of the 
 Anti-Saloon League in bringing the pressure of 
 the church upon the wet and dry campaigns and 
 upon the sessions of the Legislature. The Wom- 
 en's Christian Temperance Union, under Miss 
 Frances Willard, with many in cooperation, de- 
 voted men and women, did much to arouse 
 Mississippi to hostility to and action against the 
 saloon, and was in a large degree responsible for 
 the introduction and passage of the State-wide 
 Prohibition bill in 1908. 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 231 
 
 Bishop Galloway attracted attention outside of 
 his State by his spirited newspaper controversy 
 with Jefferson Davis, who had attacked Prohibi- 
 tion as a political theory. "Jeff Davis prides him- 
 self on having always the last word," said Bishop 
 Galloway, mildly. "Well, I'm a somewhat younger 
 man than he is, and I propose to have the last 
 word in this." And so he did. And it was almost 
 his last word, for he died the year after the State- 
 wide bill was passed, the one in which it went into 
 effect. The last battle fought, the last word said, 
 the hero laid down his sword and went to his 
 reward. 
 
 Governor Bilbo of Mississippi sent me a letter 
 telling what a success Prohibition is in his State, 
 and inclosing a copy of an address made before 
 a Baptist convention, from which I quote: 
 
 Year by year the use of alcohol is being gradualy 
 abandoned by a greater number of our people; social 
 usages are adjusting themselves to the new gospel of total 
 abstinence, and the business world has joined with society 
 and the Church in putting its ban upon whisky-drinking. 
 All of these forces and influences are daily growing 
 stronger and stronger in support of our Prohibition laws. 
 We have lost no ground; every year adds new areas to 
 the territory conquered to Prohibition; the great move- 
 ment has taken no backward step ; its way has been always 
 and unwaveringly onward, and the march has gathered 
 greater confidence and celerity with each forward step. 
 
 But the best fruits of our battle for temperance do not 
 
232 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 lie in our present possession and enjoyment; they lie in 
 the assurance of to-morrow. Under the rule of the saloon 
 and common use of alcoholic beverages, habits of drinking 
 were readily and easily formed, which led to intemperance 
 and its multiplied progeny of woe. The elimination of 
 the saloon under Prohibition removes both the temptation 
 and the opportunity to form what we call the drinking 
 habit; while the abolishment of the social practice and 
 custom of wine-drinking has also gone to restrict the 
 development of this habit; Prohibition unquestionably re- 
 stricts and must ultimately eliminate the habit which 
 produces drunkenness. Thus the new generation is res- 
 cued; the young are protected against intemperance. 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 North Carolina went dry in 1909 by a majority 
 of over 40,000, securing constitutional Prohibi- 
 tion. The Governor, the two United States Sena- 
 tors, the members of Congress and other leaders 
 rolled up their sleeves and drove the rum traffic 
 out. Ex-Governor Glenn rendered invaluable ser- 
 vice in the campaigns. 
 
 I sought a meeting with Congressman Edwin 
 Y. Webb, the able and efficient leader of the Pro- 
 hibition forces in the lower house, for informa- 
 tion with reference to Prohibition in his State and 
 the nation, and of his personal relation to it. He 
 said: 
 
 Prohibition in North Carolina has been a great suc- 
 cess from any standpoint from which it might be viewed. 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 233 
 
 Those who were first opposed to its adoption used the 
 approved arguments against it. Since the law has been 
 tested, its effects have been so beneficial that a proposition 
 to repeal it and go back to the laws in force prior to 1909, 
 would not receive serious consideration. Capital and 
 property which had been previously employed in the liquor 
 traffic, soon found investment and were employed in other 
 business that has aided the State in its great commercial 
 progress, and the men previously employed in the traffic 
 have turned their efforts to help develop the natural re- 
 sources of the State. The State felt no crippling shock 
 from the loss of taxes, which were quickly compensated 
 for by greater commercial advancement and a more healthy, 
 prosperous, and contented people. 
 
 TENNESSEE 
 
 It was according to the eternal fitness of things 
 that the schoolhouse should drive the saloon out 
 of Tennessee, as they represent directly opposite 
 ideas: one, the education and salvation of the 
 young, the other their destruction. It is generally 
 admitted, even in communities with a weak tem- 
 perance sentiment, that drinking-places should be 
 pushed away from churches and schools, anywhere 
 from a hundred feet to a mile or more. It was 
 the law keeping a dramshop four miles away from 
 a school that made Tennessee dry. The original 
 law was passed forty years ago, and for this 
 reason: The University of the South, under the 
 authority of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
 
234 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 situated at Sewanee in the Cumberland Moun- 
 tains, fearing the contamination of the country 
 saloon, secured from the Legislature an act for- 
 bidding the sale of liquor as a beverage within 
 four miles of any incorporated institution of learn- 
 ing, located outside of an incorporated town. Ten 
 years afterward, the clause, "an incorporated in- 
 stitution of learning," was cut out and these words 
 substituted: "any schoolhouse, public or private* 
 where a school is kept." This change at one 
 stroke drove the dramshop out of almost all the 
 rural districts of the State. In 1899 this "Four 
 Mile Law" was made to apply to towns of two 
 thousand or under; in 1893, as the Adams Law, 
 it included cities of five thousand; in 1907, as the 
 Pendleton Law, it applied to cities of 150,000; 
 and in 1909, as the Holladay Bill, doing away 
 with the charter repeal and reincorporation fea- 
 tures and making it universally applicable, the 
 whole State was made dry. The law did not 
 leave a single spot in mountain or valley in the 
 State on which to set a saloon, that would not be 
 within four miles of a schoolhouse. If there had 
 been such a spot a new school would have been 
 built in twenty- four hours. In 1910 a companion 
 law was passed, forbidding the manufacture of 
 intoxicants anywhere in the State. 
 
 As the saloon and anti-saloon forces were grap- 
 pling in the supreme struggle a shocking tragedy 
 occurred, the worst in the history of temperance 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 235 
 
 warfare in America, in the murder of Senator 
 Edward W. Carmack, one of the most brilliant 
 and honorable members the United States Senate 
 ever had from the South. He was the acknow- 
 ledged champion of the anti-saloon cause and died 
 as a martyr to his active and efficient leadership. 
 
 In 1908 Senator Carmack entered the primary 
 contest for the Democratic nomination for the 
 Governorship of the State against Governor M. 
 R. Patterson. Both being able and influential 
 and fine orators, the campaign was a sensational 
 and memorable one. State Prohibition was the 
 paramount issue, Carmack favoring and Patter- 
 son opposing it. Patterson received the nomina- 
 tion and was elected. Carmack 'became editor of 
 the "Nashville Tennessean," continued his relent- 
 less war on the liquor traffic with his pen and 
 demanded of the Legislature a State-wide prohibi- 
 tory law. One of his editorials offended a chief 
 political advisor and director in the gubernatorial 
 campaign, and he with his son waylaid Senator 
 Carmack on one of the most public streets of 
 Nashville and shot him to death. 
 
 The brewers thought that as they had elected 
 their Governor and the champion of their enemies 
 was out of the way, they would certainly be able 
 to defeat State Prohibition. They were mistaken. 
 The shot that killed Carmack killed the saloons 
 of Tennessee, and aroused the temperance people 
 everywhere, and two months after the Legislature 
 
236 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 assembled, they rushed to the capital from all 
 parts of the State and demanded State Prohibi- 
 tion. A company of them marched to the spot 
 in the pavement made red with the blood of their 
 champion, kneeled about it and prayed to God 
 for wisdom and help, and made a new vow of 
 loyalty to the cause for which he had laid down 
 his life. Carmack's ghost was the chief guest 
 and influence in the Legislature. Under his in- 
 spiration the "Four Mile law," meaning State 
 Prohibition, was passed, and though Governor 
 Patterson vetoed it, it was passed over his veto 
 and is now the law. 
 
 Judge Cooper and his son were sent to the 
 penitentiary for twenty years for the murder of 
 Carmack. Governor Patterson pardoned them. 
 Carmack's spirit dominated the next guberna- 
 torial campaign. Patterson did not stand for a 
 third term. Ben W. Hooper, who ran on a fusion 
 ticket of Republicans and Independent Demo- 
 crats, was elected, on a platform of the main- 
 tenance and rigid enforcement of the new Prohi- 
 bition Law, over United States Senator Robert L. 
 Taylor, thought to be personally the most popu- 
 lar man in the State. Hooper served two terms 
 of two years each. He had to call a special ses- 
 sion of the Legislature three times before he 
 could secure any law-enforcement measures. At 
 last he got some, the chief one being the "Nuis- 
 ance Law." 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 237 
 
 Toward the close of his last term Governor 
 Hooper in an address said: 
 
 Five years ago yesterday Senator Carmack, the leader 
 of the fight for decent government, was murdered on the 
 streets of Nashville. The crying of his blood from the 
 ground rallied the forces of good government in the 
 Legislature of 1909, and, beside the State prohibitory law, 
 there was an election law which deprived the liquor in- 
 terests of their control of the ballot boxes of the people. 
 
 The Legislature of 1915 passed the "ouster" 
 bill, removing officers for non-enforcement of the 
 no-license law, and the Soft Drink Stand Act, 
 which have aided in making and keeping Nash- 
 ville, Memphis, Chattanooga and other large 
 cities dry. 
 
 The "Anti-Shipping" law passed under Gov- 
 ernor Hooper's administration was declared un- 
 constitutional by the Supreme Court of the State. 
 But the Legislature of 1917 and the decision of 
 the United States Supreme Court declaring the 
 Interstate Commerce Amendment Bill effective 
 made the State bone-dry. 
 
 GOVERNOR PATTERSON'S CONVERSION 
 
 The contest in Tennessee furnished not only 
 the most horrible tragedy of the temperance re- 
 form movement in America in the murder of Car- 
 mack, but one of its most dramatic and potential 
 
2 3 8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 incidents, the conversion of Ex-Governor Patter- 
 son. It was a staggering blow to the liquor power, 
 when the one who had been the most brilliant and 
 powerful advocate of their cause in Tennessee, 
 if not in the nation, publicly confessed his mistake, 
 fault and sin and his profound sorrow, and dedi- 
 cated the rest of his life to the destruction of the 
 drink traffic. Patterson's address announcing his 
 change of heart before the twentieth anniversary 
 of the foundation of the Anti-Saloon League, 
 held in Columbus, Ohio, November 10-13, I 9 I 3> 
 is one of the best specimens of temperance litera- 
 ture to be found. Among other things he said : 
 
 The Anti-Saloon League and I have not always been 
 friends. The paths we traveled were wide apart. They 
 seemed so parallel that it looked incredible that they 
 should ever meet. But they have met, and we now find 
 ourselves in the same road, marching in the same direc- 
 tion, under the same flag, actuated by the same desire 
 to destroy the traffic in liquor and redeem a nation from 
 its curse. I am neither ashamed or abashed to stand 
 before this great audience, and acknowledge the wrong 
 when I once advocated policies which would have made 
 legal a trade which I have come to look upon as having 
 no rightful place in the scheme and economy of Chris- 
 tian civilization. I grew up in the city of Memphis where 
 saloons were numerous and regarded as permanent insti- 
 tutions. I can not remember to have ever heard of any 
 movement to close them or recall any speech or news- 
 paper article attacking them. I became a lawyer, was 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 239 
 
 elected prosecuting attorney of the District, and during 
 my incumbency saloons were open and licensed under the 
 law and were without restriction as to numbers. I was 
 afterward sent to Congress, where I served six years. 
 At this time liquor was openly sold in the restaurants of 
 both wings of the Capitol. The convenience and comfort 
 with which intoxicating drinks could be obtained often 
 interfered with my own attendance of the sessions, and 
 that of other members, and distracted attention from the 
 duties of our representation. While serving in Congress 
 I became a candidate for Governor of Tennessee. I was 
 elected on a platform friendly to local option, but against 
 State Prohibition. In my message to the Legislature I 
 declared that Prohibition as a governmental policy was 
 fundamentally wrong, and that I would veto any bill 
 providing for it. That message was published in the 
 press of Tennessee, also in other States. It has been 
 circulated as campaign material, published in liquor jour- 
 nals and in books, and used as arguments by those who 
 were contesting the advance of the Prohibition sentiment. 
 I say to you that if this message has encouraged lawless- 
 ness, or even been sought as a refuge for violators of the 
 law, if it had to stand as my last expression on the liquor 
 question, I would consume it in the living fires and erase 
 it forever from the minds and memories of men. I have 
 seen the trail of liquor in the criminal courts where I 
 have prosecuted crime. I know and have been a parti- 
 cipant in its paralyzing and corroding influence in the 
 public and social life of our National Capital. Going 
 through life I have seen it drag down many of the asso- 
 ciates of my boyhood, blasting their hopes and consigning 
 them to untimely graves. I have seen its forked lightning 
 
240 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 strike my firstborn, the child of my young manhood, and 
 have borne with him the suffering and tried to help him 
 in his brave but sometimes melancholy struggle for re- 
 demption. At last I have felt the foul and stealthy blow 
 as it turned upon me in its deadly and shaming wrath 
 upon me, who had pleaded before the people for its very 
 existence. Men have called me strong; and while I could 
 see its harm in others, I thought myself immune, as thous- 
 ands before my time have thought, and suffered for the 
 thought. All this I knew and felt without a revelation 
 of the deep pathos and meaning of it all. I needed help, 
 for I was groping and my feet were stumbling in the 
 dark. Deep in humiliation, tortured and condemned by 
 my own esteem, which is the severest penalty a man may 
 afflict upon himself, I thought of the oft-repeated phrases 
 about personal liberty, of the power of the human will to 
 resist temptation, with which I had beguiled myself, and 
 I found them as unsubstantial as the fabric of a dream. 
 When logic failed and reason gave no answer I cast aside 
 all pride of opinion, all thought of what the world might 
 say or think, and went to the throne of Almighty God. 
 There, on bended knees, I asked for light and strength, 
 and they came. The curtains of the night parted and the 
 way was clear. I arose a changed man. An invisible 
 hand has led me on to where the vision is unobscured, 
 and the purposes of life stand revealed. From a critic 
 of others, I looked within. From an accuser, I became 
 a servant in my own house to set it in order. From a 
 vague believer in the guidance of Divine Power, I have 
 become a convert to its infinite truth. From an unhappy 
 and dissatisfied man, out of tune with the harmony of 
 life and religion, I have become happy and contented, 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 241 
 
 firmly anchored in the faith and ready to testify from my 
 own experience to the miraculous power of God to cleanse 
 the souls of men. Out of this has come the profound 
 conviction that on the questions with which I had to Heal 
 in my public career, all my arguments and all my conclu- 
 sions, so far as they excused or justified the moral right or 
 policy of the State to legalize the sale of liquor, and thereby 
 gave sanction to the ravages on society, were only the 
 empty and hopeless statements of propositions w r hich had 
 no verity or application to a thing wholly and essentially 
 evil, and concerning which no principle of right or order 
 or liberty should ever be invoked for its existence. Civil- 
 ized society can offer no excuse for the temptations which 
 it sets before humanity, for in itself and of itself drunken- 
 ness is a sin without a reason, a degrading crime without 
 a recompense, a promoter and prolific parent of other sins 
 and crimes which sap the strength and wealth of men and 
 nations. Abstinence is, therefore, the only guarantee of 
 safety, and the destruction of the liquor traffic is the only 
 guarantee of abstinence. 
 
 After the personal part of the address given 
 above Ex-Governor Patterson continued at length 
 in an impassioned arraignment of the liquor traf- 
 fic for its wrongs and crimes. Language can not 
 adequately express the effect of this address on 
 the audience. During its delivery the four thous- 
 and delegates frequently burst into applause, halt- 
 ing the speaker, and at its close there was a per- 
 fect tumult of enthusiasm. Round after round of 
 cheers were given. The people stood on the chairs, 
 
242 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 the men twirling their hats on their canes, the 
 women waving their wraps and handkerchiefs. 
 Men and women, old and young, cried like chil- 
 dren, and laughed while they cried for joy, and 
 shouted praises aloud, and spontaneously broke 
 out into songs of rejoicing and victory. The pen 
 of history in recording the most eloquent scenes 
 of American oratory can hardly omit this speech 
 of Patterson before the Anti-Saloon League Con- 
 vention. The Ex-Governor has been making good 
 his pledge in touring the country, scathingly ar- 
 raigning the liquor traffic, and pleading eloquently 
 for nation-wide Prohibition. The bolt that killed 
 Carmack and the vision that halted Patterson on 
 his way to Damascus have been sad specters to 
 haunt the mm power of Tennessee and the na- 
 tion. 
 
 In February, 1917, I asked United States Sena- 
 tor Luke Lea of Tennessee for a brief opinion on 
 the working and effect of the Prohibition law in 
 his State, and at once received the following: 
 
 The oft-repeated argument was heard by those opposed 
 to the passage of the Prohibition laws, that they could 
 not be enforced, and that disrespect and contempt for 
 law would be one of the results. It is true that in the 
 larger cities of the State there was not the strong senti- 
 ment favorable to prohibitory legislation at the time of 
 the passage of these laws that existed in the country dis- 
 tricts. However, eight years have witnessed a steady 
 growth of temperance sentiment in the State, so that 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 243 
 
 to-day the four large cities of the State, Memphis, Nash- 
 ville, Chattanooga and Knoxville, are almost completely 
 "bone-dry." There is not an open saloon in any of these 
 cities, and legislation supplementing the Prohibition laws 
 which have been enacted by the present session of the 
 Legislature, looking to the prevention of shipment into 
 the State from "wet" territory, will completely destroy 
 even the so-called "bootlegging" traffic, which has been 
 in vogue to some extent among the lower elements of 
 our city populations. I think Tennessee is better morally 
 and economically because of Prohibition, and if left to 
 a popular referendum at this time, there is no doubt that 
 it would carry by an overwhelming majority. 
 
 Governor Tom C. Rye, of Tennessee, In a 
 speech in the campaign of 1916 for the Governor- 
 ship for the second term, said: 
 
 The Democratic Party stands committed to temperance, 
 good government and law enforcement. The people have 
 definitely and finally determined that the manufacture 
 and sale of intoxicants as a beverage in Tennessee shall 
 cease; we accept this as an accomplished fact, and de- 
 clare our firm opposition to any movement or effort to 
 repeal or impair existing laws for the suppression of the 
 liquor traffic and the enforcement of the laws. This is 
 the declaration of the last Democratic platform. 
 
 All laws for this purpose were endorsed by the Demo- 
 cratic Party in its last convention; for that reason, and 
 for the further and better reason that I believe these 
 laws are right and should be enforced, I take the same 
 position now that I did as a candidate two years ago, 
 
244 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 and solemnly declare that insofar as the efforts of the 
 Chief Executive of the State and the powers vested in 
 him and the authority given by legislative enactment will 
 authorize and permit, these laws shall be enforced so long 
 as I enjoy the distinction of being your Governor. I am 
 glad to announce that in the effort made along these lines 
 I have had the hearty cooperation of many of the officials 
 of the State charged with the duty of enforcing the law, 
 and I am encouraged to believe that in the future all, or 
 practically all, the officers charged with these responsible 
 duties will be found industriously exerting themselves in 
 upholding the law and maintaining the dignity of the 
 great State of Tennessee. 
 
 In a letter of February 16, 1917, sending me 
 Governor Rye's speech, his private secretary says : 
 
 Since this speech was delivered, Governor Rye has been 
 inaugurated for a second term, and in his inaugural ad- 
 dress he took occasion to express his convictions as to the 
 necessity of the General Assembly passing the so-called 
 Bone-Dry Law, and expressing the pleasure he would 
 receive in having the privilege of signing it. This act 
 has since been passed, which forbids common carriers ship- 
 ping intoxicating liquors into the State. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON (Cont) 
 
 WEST VIRGINIA 
 
 AFTER the tragical contest in Tennessee 
 there was a lull of four years, which the 
 liquor men claimed was a reaction in their 
 favor, but which the temperance people said was 
 a preparation for future victories. The lull was 
 broken by West Virginia, which on November 5, 
 1912, achieved one of the most significant temper- 
 ance victories America had had in the adoption of 
 a constitutional Prohibition amendment by a ma- 
 jority of 93,342 out of a total vote of 235,843, 
 to take effect July I, 1914. Only two counties 
 voted against the proposition of Prohibition. The 
 strange part of the contest was that only one city 
 in the State went "wet," while the oher cities and 
 most of the country places went "dry." Parkers- 
 burg voted by a considerable majority for the 
 amendment. 
 
 Rev. Doctor Thomas Hare, who led the allied 
 forces in the contest, in accounting for the victory, 
 said the church and temperance people were thor- 
 oughly united and fairly sowed the State with no- 
 license literature. 
 
 245 
 
246 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Hon. H. D. Hatfield, Ex-Governor of West 
 Virginia, who held the office four years, thus 
 speaks of the workings of the law: u The general 
 results thus far in the matter of Prohibition have 
 been satisfactory. Many who were against the 
 adoption of the Prohibition amendment originally 
 and voted against it, have repeatedly told me that 
 if an opportunity presented itself in the future they 
 would reverse their action and favor the measure. 
 Of the many letters sent to me on the subject I will 
 quote this one from the manager of two of the 
 largest and best collieries in the State: "Since 
 Prohibition went into effect we have had com- 
 paratively no trouble with our men lying off from 
 work, fighting, etc. The families of the fathers 
 and sons who drank are better cared for and are 
 perceptibly more prosperous. We are troubled 
 a little with bootleggers, but I assure you there is 
 not one pint used now to gallons before Prohibi- 
 tion went into effect." 
 
 VIRGINIA 
 
 Before the Civil war there was only a light 
 traffic in intoxicating drinks in Virginia. Some of 
 the planters got enough to hurt themselves and 
 their promising sons, but the negroes were not 
 allowed to have it. The law of the State made 
 it a crime to sell intoxicants to a slave without a 
 permit from his master. And the master was too 
 smart to give to his slave that which would reduce 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 247 
 
 his earning power, create a criminal menace and 
 shorten his life, which was worth a thousand dol- 
 lars in cold money. At the close of the war the 
 brewers and distillers, feeling that they had a 
 joint ownership in the Government because they 
 continued to pay the liquor war tax, with inso- 
 lence and energy pushed their business into all the 
 States, including the South, where they found in 
 the new-made liberty of the slave an especially 
 fruitful field. In the midst of the chaos and bitter 
 conflict of the reconstruction period in Virginia 
 the saloon was thrust as a new disturbing factor 
 and a grave menace to white and black alike. The 
 good people of the State sensed the danger and 
 began at once to resist it. Their first great vic- 
 tory was achieved in 1885, when the Independent 
 Order of Good Templars, that modest but effi- 
 cient pioneer temperance organization, secured 
 the passage of a Local Option Law for counties, 
 cities, and towns as a unit, under which the saloon 
 was driven from three-fourths of the counties, 
 nine-tenths of the towns and one-half of the cities 
 of the State. The fight for Prohibition in 1914 
 was fierce. It is said the liquor people poured 
 $1,000,000 into the campaign. The temperance 
 and church people were united and organized 
 completely, down to captains of tens. It was 
 found necessary in the contest to establish a daily 
 newspaper, the "Richmond Virginian," which 
 Rev. Doctor James Cannon, Jr., leader in the 
 
248 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 fight, claims had more to do than any other one 
 thing in carrying Virginia for Prohibition. The 
 vote, which was taken on September 22, 1914, 
 resulted in a majority of 30,365 out of a total 
 vote of 150,000 for Prohibition. The law went 
 into effect November i, 1916. 
 
 In an interview Governor Stewart of Virginia 
 said that his State had one of the best prohibitory 
 laws in the country and that he was doing his 
 best to enforce the law and was succeeding. 
 
 Senator Martin, a leader in the Senate, told 
 me that Virginia had a good prohibitory law, 
 which was a great benefit; that it was enforced 
 and that he did not believe the peole would ever 
 think of going back to license. 
 
 ARKANSAS 
 
 For many years they had local option in Ar- 
 kansas, and also the three-mile law, which for- 
 bade a drinking-place within three miles of a 
 church or school on petition of a majority of all 
 the inhabitants of the territory involved, which 
 included mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters 
 over eighteen years of age. As early as 1902 
 forty-four counties had been voted dry, leaving 
 only thirty-one in the wet column. The Legis- 
 lature of 1907 abolished crossroad country sa- 
 loons, stopped liquor salesmen from going into 
 Prohibition territory, and the wholesale houses 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 249 
 
 from advertising liquors in the papers and circu- 
 lars in territory where the sale of liquor was for- 
 bidden by law. The Legislature of 1915 passed 
 a State prohibitory law which took effect January 
 i, 1916. 
 
 Hon. W. F. Kirby, United States Senator from 
 Arkansas, who vouches for the success of Prohi- 
 bition in his State and works actively for its adop- 
 tion by the nation, in a letter to me says, "My 
 position has been well defined on this question for 
 a long time." 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA 
 
 South Carolina, like the other Southern States, 
 was moving along the road of local option to 
 State-wide Prohibition when its progress was in- 
 terrupted by the adoption of the Dispensary Sys- 
 tem of regulating the liquor traffic, which is a 
 system of State control of the same. In 1896 
 United States Senator Tillman, who believed in 
 the dispensary as a wise solution of the question,, 
 by his powerful personal influence had it incor- 
 porated into the State constitution. As a revenue- 
 producer when honestly administered it was a 
 success, but in places it was maladministered and 
 became a scandal. As a moral measure the dis- 
 pensary was a failure. Its record of vice and 
 crime showed an increase over the license system. 
 On September 14, 1915, South Carolina adopted 
 State-wide Prohibition by a vote of 41,735 to 
 
250 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 16,809, being a vote of two and a half to one. 
 Every county in the State but one voted no license. 
 In a personal interview Governor Manning told 
 me of the difficulties encountered in enforcing the 
 prohibitory law, and how he had successfully over- 
 come them. I asked him for his views on the 
 liquor situation for publication, and he gave me 
 the following: 
 
 When I became Governor of South Carolina, three 
 years ago, the liquor business was regulated under a gal- 
 lon-a-month act. I at once inaugurated a campaign of 
 enforcement of the law, using county, municipal and State 
 officers to enforce it. In places where the law had been 
 most flagrantly violated, substantial improvement was 
 made, and the amount of the illegal sale of liquor greatly 
 curtailed. Last winter the Legislature of South Carolina 
 passed a law reducing the amount to any person to a 
 quart a month, for medicinal, scientific and sacramental 
 purposes. Under this act, the sale of liquor was pro- 
 hibited to minors, to students of college, to women other 
 than the head of a family, and provision made for the 
 enforcement of the law by State constabulary. Under 
 the provisions of this act, an aggressive improvement has 
 been waged against the use and illicit sale of liquor, with 
 the result of greatly improved conditions. 
 
 My policy is to steadily tighten the hand of the law 
 against offenders, and the result shows a condition better 
 than even the most ardent advocates of the measure hoped 
 for. I do not mean to say that the law is absolutely fol- 
 lowed, but public sentiment has been aroused, convictions 
 are had for violations, and the State is more nearly "dry" 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 251 
 
 than we had hoped could be brought about in this short 
 time. The public is realizing the advantage of these 
 strict prohibitory measures, and public sentiment is now 
 behind the measure. 
 
 SOUTHERN STATES WHICH HAVE NOT ADOPTED 
 PROHIBITION 
 
 MARYLAND 
 
 State-wide Prohibition lost in the popular elec- 
 tion of 1916 in Maryland, but quite an advance in 
 dry territory was made the same day. But for the 
 powerful influence of the liquor-dealers of Balti- 
 more the State would have adopted Prohibition 
 by this time. There is a wholesome public senti- 
 ment moving steadily toward State Prohibition. 
 
 KENTUCKY 
 
 There are few surprises to friend or foe 
 greater than the temperance situation in Kentucky. 
 There are 106 dry counties in the State and only 
 fourteen that are wet. Old Bourbon County, 
 said to have been the mother of the best whisky 
 in the world, is in the dry column. J. C. W. 
 Beckham was elected to the United States Senate 
 from Kentucky on a Prohibition platform, and is 
 one of the ablest anti-liquor leaders in that body. 
 Kentucky would have been dry long ago but for 
 the tremendously powerful distillery influence in 
 Louisville and its corrupt alliance with politics. 
 
252 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 The liquor people of Kentucky had just as well 
 save their money, throw up their hands and sur- 
 render, as John Barleycorn has been killed, and 
 the State in the immediate future will fairly skip 
 into the Prohibition ranks. 
 
 MISSOURI 
 
 Missouri has for many years been under a 
 local option law by counties, excepting cities of 
 2,500 population or more, allowing them voting 
 units, and leaving St. Louis as a civic unit by it- 
 self. It would have been thought that the over- 
 whelming defeat Prohibition received at the polls 
 three or four years ago would have set the cause 
 back a decade. It had a contrary effect, nerved 
 the temperance people for more vigorous work, 
 and now eighty-one out of the 114 counties are 
 dry, including nearly fifty-one per cent, of the 
 population. Of the 69,000 square miles of ter- 
 ritory 53,000 are under no-license. 
 
 The State would doubtless have adopted Pro- 
 hibition had it not been for the opposition of the 
 Anheuser Busch Brewery Company of St. Louis, 
 perhaps the most powerful enemy of Prohibition 
 in America. When it looked as though the State 
 Legislature were likely to pass a prohibitory law 
 the representatives of this brewery, whose adver- 
 tisements, carried to the ends of the earth, fill 
 the sides of houses and long fences, played the 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 253 
 
 baby act and pitifully pleaded for mercy and beg- 
 ged the members not to drive them out of the 
 State. An anti-saloon leader told me the other 
 day that the State would go no-license at the next 
 election on the question. 
 
 Senator Stone, who astonished the nation by 
 voting yes last summer on the National Constitu- 
 tional Amendment proposition after having been 
 one of the most efficient advocates of the liquor 
 cause, did not imperil himself politically by doing 
 so, taking into account the strong temperance 
 sentiment in his State. 
 
 FLORIDA 
 
 Up to about thirty years ago a license could 
 be taken out to sell liquor anywhere in the State 
 of Florida. But in 1887 Article 19 was added 
 to the Constitution. The people by the use of 
 this law had by 1907 cleared the saloons from 
 thirty-three of the forty-six counties of the State. 
 
 The temperance leaders secured from the Legis- 
 lature of 1915 the passage of the drastic Davis 
 Restrictive Law, which at one stroke killed 200 
 of the less than 300 drinking-places, leaving at 
 this time only seventy-five mail-order and retail 
 liquor-stores in the whole State. The temperance 
 people charge that the millionaire owners of the 
 palatial seaside hotels and pleasure resorts, de- 
 termined to retain their bars for the accommoda- 
 
254 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 :ion of their rich and ruddy guests, have been the 
 most powerful enemies Prohibition has had, in 
 their baleful influence at the State capital and in 
 the popular elections. They may just as well save 
 their money and adjust themselves to the temper 
 and desire of the South, as the Legislature of 
 1917 granted a referendum, and it is morally 
 certain the people will vote Prohibition. Florida 
 adopted prohibition Nov. 5, 1918. 
 
 LOUISIANA 
 
 The liquor dealers have for many years domi- 
 nated the politics of Louisiana. They have been 
 entrenched in their headquarters in New Orleans, 
 the stronghold of their cause in the South. 
 
 In New Orleans, with its many foreigners and 
 pleasure-loving people, and in the other wet par- 
 ishes as well, the rum rule has largely nullified 
 the Gay-Shattuck Law. Notwithstanding the sa- 
 loon's grip on politics, the people have by their 
 parish local option voted the traffic from consider- 
 ably more than one-half of the geographical area, 
 and from fifty-one per cent, of the population, of 
 the State of Louisiana. 
 
 TEXAS 
 
 Texas is an empire in itself. It is not only the 
 largest State in the Union, but it is the most pro- 
 ductive one agriculturally, having recently taken 
 the primacy away from Illinois. It is an empire 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 255 
 
 morally. From the dry territory in this State 
 alone can be cut out Maine, New Hampshire, 
 Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connect- 
 icut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Dela- 
 ware and Ohio, and then have 20,000 square 
 miles left over. The number of its people living 
 under no-license is 700,000 more than the com- 
 bined population of all of the New England 
 States with the exception of Massachusetts. Thus 
 the "pepper-box," and "tooth-pick," the revolver 
 and dagger of the pioneer Texan ranger, have 
 given way in so short a time to one of the best 
 civilizations known. 
 
 In 1875, eighteen years before the Anti-Saloon 
 League was born in America, the United Friends 
 of Temperance wrote into the constitution of 
 Texas the local option provision now in force, 
 and the next year the people ratified it by a popu- 
 lar vote. In 1887 a constitutional Prohibition 
 amendment was defeated at the polls by 91,357. 
 On July 22, 1911, there was another fierce fight 
 over State-wide Prohibition, with 231,096 for the 
 amendment and 237,303 against it, an adverse 
 majority of 6,307, 
 
 The year following, Morris Sheppard was 
 elected to the United States Senate, and a ma- 
 jority of the Congressmen to the House of Rep- 
 resentatives on a Prohibition platform. The no- 
 liquor candidate for Governor, however, was 
 elected. I had a delightful interview with Sena- 
 
256 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 tor Morris Sheppard, of nation-wide fame, as to 
 the great success of Prohibition in the South and 
 throughout the nation, in which he prophesied 
 that the great State of Texas would take her place 
 with her sister States of the South in the no- 
 license column at the next election on the question. 
 I asked the Senator if he would give me in small 
 space his views on the relation of the liquor prob- 
 lem to State legislation, and he gave me the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 Shall a State confess itself powerless by law to abolish 
 the traffic in a drug that will sap the physical strength 
 of its people, reduce them in ever-growing numbers to 
 intellectual and moral ruin, affect their collective capacity 
 for the exercise of free institutions to such an extent as 
 to imperil the priceless gift of liberty, destroy all hope of 
 further progress in the various lines of human endeavor, 
 and, corrupting the very foundations of reproduction, con- 
 vert posterity into a race of weaklings and degenerates? 
 If a State has not the right to defend itself against such 
 an enemy with the strong arm of statutory laws, it had 
 as well dissolve. Is it not folly to assert that a State can 
 not preserve its own existence? If the police power of 
 a State may be invoked to take individual property with- 
 out compensation, in order to prevent the destruction of 
 other property, as in the case of a conflagration, or in 
 order to preserve the lives and health of its citizens, as 
 in the case of an epidemic, how much more justly may 
 that same power be employed to stop a traffic that imperils 
 the existence of the State itself and threatens the lives of 
 multiplied thousands of its people? The appearance of 
 
SOUTH ABOLISHES THE SALOON 257 
 
 an invading army in a single county of our State would 
 bring to arms three-quarters of a million Texans to de- 
 fend the honor and the existence of the Commonwealth. 
 The liquor traffic is a far deadlier enemy of the State 
 than an invading army could ever be. It is a perpetual 
 menace to the life of the individual and the existence of 
 the State. They tell us we cannot enforce a State-wide 
 prohibitory law. We tell them the people of Texas have 
 not lost the capacity of self-government or self-preserva- 
 tion. The adoption of the State-wide amendment is but 
 a step. The next step will be the election of men to 
 executive office in whom the spirit of Goliad and San 
 Jacinto still lives. 
 
 Texas adopted prohibition in 1918. Action 
 declared unconstitutional. 
 
 WHY A SOLID SOUTH AGAINST KING ALCOHOL 
 
 There are reasons why the South should take 
 the lead in this Prohibition movement. It was 
 necessary to remove the saloon from the negro 
 to save Southern industry and civilization. 
 
 The late Booker T. Washington said, "The 
 abolition of the barroom is a blessing to the negro, 
 second only to the abolition of slavery. Two- 
 thirds of the mobs, lynchings and burnings at the 
 stake are the result of bad whisky drunk by bad 
 black men and bad white men." 
 
 Besides, the South is intensely American. In 
 the fourteen Southern States there are but sixteen 
 foreign-born persons to every 1,000 inhabitants. 
 In Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, New York, 
 Illinois and Wisconsin there are 178 foreign-born 
 
258 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 persons to every 1,000 inhabitants. In the moun- 
 tain disticts of the South, where the foreign-born 
 population is the least in America, there are al- 
 most no drinking-places. The "moonshiners" 
 hide in some of the mountain dens, but there >vere 
 scarcely twenty open saloons in the mountain dis- 
 tricts of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ten- 
 nessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arkansas, 
 even before any of these States had gone dry. It 
 is not hard to get the liquor traffic away from so 
 homogeneous a population. 
 
 The Southern people are sentimental and en- 
 thusiastic, and do what they do with an intense 
 zeal. As a rule they have a deep religious in- 
 stinct and the highest moral ideals; the territory 
 is good ground for Prohibition. Thus there are 
 other reasons than the race problem which have 
 made for such local success in the South. The 
 negro question has had nothing to do with Pro- 
 hibition in Maine, Kansas, North Dakota, or 
 other States of the North that have gone dry. 
 The work of abolishing the saloon met least re- 
 sistance in the plantation sections of the South 
 and the rural districts of the North. It has now 
 gotten into the cities and will sweep them. Much 
 of the marvelous growth and glory of the New 
 South, whose progress in some regards has out- 
 stripped that of any other section, can be traced 
 to its inveterate hatred of and deadly warfare on 
 the saloon. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 
 
 THE fires of Prohibition burning in the cot- 
 ton fields of the South crossed Mason 
 and Dixon's line and caught in the prair- 
 ies, cornfields and wheatfields of the West and, 
 raging with merciless fury, wiped out the brewer- 
 ies, distilleries and saloons in its path. In one day, 
 the 3d of November, 1914, four of these States 
 went dry at the polls, thereby securing constitu- 
 tional Prohibition. They were Arizona, Colorado, 
 Oregon and Washington. We have not space for 
 such detailed history of the war on the liquor 
 traffic in the Western States as we gave of that 
 in the South, but we will give room for the testi- 
 mony of the highest possible authority on the suc- 
 cessful working of Prohibition in the Northern 
 States testimony that would convict King Alco- 
 hol of high crimes and misdemeanors in any court 
 on earth. 
 
 ARIZONA 
 
 The action of Arizona was a surprise, as 
 hardly more than a fifth of the population was 
 under no-license laws. There was harmony be- 
 
 259 
 
260 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 tween the temperance forces, as well as organiza- 
 tion and intense activity in the campaign. The 
 law took effect January i, 1915. Women's votes 
 contributed to the result. 
 
 I wrote to Governor Thomas E. Campbell, 
 asking him how Prohibition worked in his State, 
 and received the following reply: "Arizona went 
 into the 'dry' column of January i, 1915, by con- 
 stitutional amendment. Thus we have had a term 
 of two years by which to judge the merits of the 
 case as affecting this State, and for comparison 
 with years in the bygone 'wet' history of the 
 State. Merchants and bankers, regardless of 
 their personal attitude to the use of liquor, unani- 
 mously report increased business, better credits 
 and more cash from the savings of workers. The 
 jails throughout the State are nearly empty, ex- 
 cept in cases of men charged with unlawfully sell- 
 ing whisky; few commitments are of record for 
 drunkenness, and many justices of the peace have 
 practically nothing in the way of criminal busi- 
 ness. Mercantile companies noticed a betterment 
 in credits within six months after the 'dry' amend- 
 ment went into effect, and the improvement con- 
 tinues. Money outstanding before January i, 
 1915, represented a great sum and a huge eco- 
 nomic waste. When it became impossible to ob- 
 tain liquor in large quantities, this condition was 
 bettered at once, and business men who had most 
 bitterly opposed the Prohibition amendment rap- 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 261 
 
 idly became its best friends. A 'bone-dry' law, 
 under which no liquor can be brought into Arizona 
 for any but sacramental purposes, passed the 
 Legislature on March 8 last. Arizona is satis- 
 fied. In the family the greatest improvement is 
 seen. The wife and children of the Arizona 
 wage-earner are better clothed and fed than ever 
 before, and there is ample money for needed vaca- 
 tions. If the matter should ever be brought to 
 vote, I am confident that bone-dry Prohibition 
 would triumph by three to one." 
 
 COLORADO 
 
 The victory of the anti-saloon forces in Colo- 
 rado was brought about by complete organization 
 and persistent neyspaper advertising. The vio- 
 lence in the strike zone had its influence. Billy 
 Sunday, the peerless evangelist, with his great re- 
 vival in the State, made many Prohibition votes. 
 Billy Sunday is one of the most bitter, relentless 
 and efficient enemies of booze the generation has 
 raised up. In a conversation I had with Gover- 
 nor Julius C. Gunter he spoke of some of the 
 difficulties in enforcing the prohibitory law, but 
 had great enthusiasm in its success and its bene- 
 fits. I quote him from a statement made not long 
 ago to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
 for publication in the "Union Signal" : 
 
 A prohibition constitutional amendment was adopted 
 in the State of Colorado at the November election of 1914, 
 
262 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 by a majority of about 11,000 votes, to become effective 
 January i, 1915. After one year of Prohibition a large 
 majority of those most radically opposed to the amend- 
 ment at the time of its submission are its most ardent 
 supporters to-day. Should the question of Prohibition be 
 again submitted to the people of this State, the majority 
 of 1914 would be manifolded. As an evidence of this, 
 the beer amendment submitted to the voters at the No- 
 vember election of 1916 was defeated by a majority of 
 85,789. The practical benefits which are most conspicuous 
 are the relief of suffering among women and children, 
 the decrease in demand on charitable organizations, the 
 great decrease in crime and consequent committals to 
 state prisons, and increase in the number of new savings 
 accounts opened by the various banks throughout the 
 State, totaling 119,000. The Legislature, which is now 
 in session, will doubtless amend the present statute, tend- 
 ing to a more effective and rigid enforcement of the law, 
 as suggested in the inaugural address of the incoming 
 Governor. 
 
 United States Senator Thomas told me that 
 the prohibitory law of Colorado not only justi- 
 fied the action of its friends, but converted the 
 views of many who voted against it. He said the 
 benefits of the law were seen everywhere. He 
 said the success in the cities surprised the friends 
 as well as the enemies of the proposition. Sena- 
 tor Thomas expressed this sentiment in a debate 
 in the Senate recently, when he said : 
 
 I interrupted the Senator from Washington also be- 
 cause the city of Denver is only a few thousand smaller 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 263 
 
 in population than the city of Seattle, and the argument 
 made in Denver against Prohibition and I thought there 
 was a good deal of it was along the same lines on which 
 it was made by the editor of the paper from which the 
 Senator has read. The prophecies and predictions which 
 were made of the effect of Prohibition upon large cities 
 it being conceded that it would not be the same in the 
 smaller places have all keen unverified by the logic of 
 events. 
 
 Senator John F. Shafroth, who takes pride in 
 the victory over the saloon in his State, and is an 
 active friend of Prohibition in the Senate, has 
 sent me a little pamphlet, from which I take the 
 following : 
 
 There was a time when there were less restrictions and 
 when there were no licenses, and then when licenses re- 
 quired only a small payment. But as each step has been 
 taken the realization of the people has grown that the 
 greatest curse this country has ever had or the people of 
 the world have ever had is the work of the saloon and 
 the excessive use of intoxicating liquors. That is what 
 has caused the sentiment and what has caused the change 
 in the situation as to submission. 
 
 There was a time when legislators would not think of 
 submitting the question of Prohibition to the people of 
 a State. Oh, no. You must take it to a community; you 
 must take it to a county. There was a time when a city 
 council could not submit it to the entire city, but would 
 submit it simply to a ward of that city or to a precinct 
 of that city. But as the evil has been shown, as the detri- 
 
264 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 mental effect of the use of liquor has been demonstrated, 
 as its effect upon civilization has been made clear, there 
 has developed this overwhelming sentiment against it. 
 
 OREGON 
 
 In Oregon all but two counties voted for Pro- 
 hibition, and Portland, a city of 250,000, went 
 dry by a majority of 1832. 
 
 I have the following letter from Governor 
 James Withycombe : 
 
 Replying to your inquiry as to the progress of Prohi- 
 bition in Oregon, I have to report that in 1915 at the 
 general election the State went "dry" by a large majority. 
 Under the law as subsequently drawn by the Legislature, 
 in effect the past two years, the sale and manufacture of 
 intoxicants was prohibited in the State, and two quarts 
 of alcoholic beverage or twenty-four quarts of beer could 
 be imported once in each 28 days. At the general elec- 
 tion in November, 1916, an initiative measure was adopted 
 by the people by an overwhelming majority, making the 
 State "bone-dry." It is not legal to import any intoxi- 
 cants whatsoever into the State, or to have the same in 
 one's possession unless it was legally received prior to the 
 enactment of the new law. I am free to say that there 
 is every indication that Prohibition has been and is suc- 
 cessful in Oregon, from an economic as well as a social 
 and moral standpoint. I am confident that under no con- 
 ditions whatsoever would the electorate of this State per- 
 mit the return of the saloon. 
 
 Hon. George E. Chamberlain, United States 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 265- 
 
 Senator from Oregon, sent me the following 
 communication for publication : 
 
 The States of the Union are saying one by one that 
 the saloon must go ; and that means that alcohol in all its 
 forms must cease to be used as a beverage. The reason 
 for this is, first and most important of all the fact 
 that in order to be efficient a man must be sober ; and that 
 does not mean merely that he must be sober at the time 
 his hand is accomplishing a task, but that he must have 
 been sober for some time prior, in order that there be a 
 steadiness of head and heart and hand. In other words, 
 efficiency has demanded these qualifications of men in 
 every walk of life. Railroad corporations, great indus- 
 trial and commercial organizations, whether corporate or 
 individual, will not employ men who patronize the saloon 
 or indulge in the use of intoxicants. They have found out 
 that the use of these is inconsistent with efficiency, and in 
 order to secure employment a man must either give up al- 
 cohol or give up the chance of earning a support for himself 
 and those dependent upon him. What stronger argument 
 was ever educed to sustain the position here assumed than 
 the fact that the powers now engaged in the European War 
 the most terrible in the history of the world put a ban 
 upon the traffic in alcohol ? This was necessary to efficiency 
 in a fighting force. But, aside from the question of effi- 
 ciency, the second reason for the change in public senti- 
 ment is the saloon. It has been instrumental in wrecking 
 more homes, destroying more lives and bringing more 
 sorrow into the world than any one instrumentality in 
 the world. Instead of being outlawed, as its acts de- 
 manded that it should be, it has been recognized and 
 
266 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 licensed, and ft has taken years to make the people under- 
 stand the disaster that the saloon has wrought upon the 
 moral fiber of our civilization. Neither youth, nor age, 
 nor sex, nor condition has been exempted from the ravages 
 that this curse has wrought. But its death knell is soon 
 to be sounded, in America, at least. Forty years ago there 
 was scarcely a village, or a town, or a city, in Oregon 
 where the saloon did not exist, and the more prosperous 
 the community the more numerous the saloons. But 
 gradually the sentiment of the people of that progressive 
 State has changed, and when once the people by consti- 
 tutional amendment secured for themselves the right to 
 enact legislation the saloon began to lose its power in 
 politics, and now the State is absolutely Prohibition ter- 
 ritory. Its effect will be to close the jails in the smaller 
 towns, diminish crimes in the cities, and elevate the moral 
 tone of the whole State. 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 Prohibition won in Washington by a majority 
 of 18,632, carrying all but six counties. 
 
 Hon. Ernest Lester, Governor of the State of 
 Washington, under date of February 19, 1917, 
 wrote me as follows: 
 
 I have at hand your letter of the I2th inst., wherein 
 you ask an expression from me regarding Prohibition in 
 the State of Washington. Replying I may say that sa- 
 loons in the State of Washington were closed on January 
 I, 1916, under the provisions of a law enacted by the 
 people at the general election held in November, 1914. 
 It would be too much to say that there have been no 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 267 
 
 violations of the law. I am confident, however, that were 
 the same law to be again submitted to the voters, it would 
 be enacted by an even larger majority than was given 
 to it in 1914. Sentiment in the State on this subject is 
 best indicated by the vote given at the general election 
 last November on two initiative bills submitted to the 
 people, and which would virtually have nullified the dry 
 law had they been enacted. Both of these measures were 
 overwhelmingly defeated. 
 
 In my message to the Legislature, delivered on January 
 10, I recommended the enactment of a "bone-dry" law. 
 Such a law has been passed by both Houses of the Legis- 
 lature, and I now have it before me for consideration. I 
 expect to approve it today. 
 
 There is no argument but that the State of Washing- 
 ton and its people are better off in every respect with sa- 
 loons closed than they were when the saloons were in 
 operation. The "bone-dry" law to which I refer will, 
 in my opinion, be of great benefit and value to the citizens 
 of the State as soon as it goes into effect. 
 
 Senator Wesley L. Jones, of Washington, in a 
 conversation concerning the success of Prohibition 
 in his State, gave me the following information 
 and comment : 
 
 We have had Prohibition in the State of Washington 
 since January i, 1916. The predictions of dire disaster 
 by those who opposed it have not come true. Beneficial 
 business has not been destroyed, but has been stimulated 
 and improved. Savings-bank deposits have increased, more 
 comforts and necessaries have been brought to our homes 
 than ever before. Women and children have been made 
 
268 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 comfortable and happy. Crime and poverty have been 
 greatly lessened and our jails and almshouses have been 
 emptied. Business men, professional men and laboring 
 men who opposed the law now praise it most warmly and 
 express the hope that it will never be repealed. Person- 
 ally, I have long been in favor of Prohibition and of 
 every step that would lead to it, and have done what I 
 could to bring it about. I hope National Prohibition 
 will soon come. It will promote the growth of business, 
 the welfare of labor, the happiness of the home, the con- 
 servation of health and manhood, the strengthening of 
 our citizenship and the prosperity and welfare of the 
 nation. 
 
 Senator Jones also gave me a copy of an inter- 
 view of Major Blethen, a Seattle editor, in the 
 "Kansas City Times," who had been an opponent 
 of Prohibition in the campaign, but who acknowl- 
 edges his conversion and thus testifies to its 
 wonderful success in Seattle: 
 
 My paper fought its hardest against Prohibition. We 
 fought it on economic grounds alone. We believed that 
 in a great seaport city with a population of upward of 
 300,000 Prohibition would be destructive; it would bring 
 on economic disaster. We believed that under our sys- 
 tem of licensing saloons we had the liquor traffic about 
 as well controlled as it could be, and we wanted to let 
 it alone, and so we fought as hard as we could fight. But, 
 in spite of all we could do against it, Prohibition carried, 
 and it went into effect in Washington, January i. We 
 have had a month of it now. And how has it worked 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 269 
 
 out? We already know that it is a great benefit morally 
 and from an economic standpoint. Its moral benefit has 
 been tremendous. Seattle had 260 saloons and we had an 
 average of 2,600 arrests a month for crimes and misde- 
 meanors growing out of liquor-drinking. In January we 
 had only 400 arrests, and sixty of those were made Jan- 
 uary i, and were the results of hang-overs from the old 
 year. That in itself is enough to convince any man with 
 a conscience that Prohibition is necessary. There can be 
 no true economy in anything that is immoral. And on 
 top of that great moral result we have these economic 
 facts: In the first three weeks of January the savings 
 deposits in the banks of Seattle increased 15 pe*r cent. 
 There was not a grocery store in Seattle that did not 
 show an increase of business in January greater than ever 
 known in any month before in all the history of the city, 
 except in holiday time. In all the large grocery stores 
 the increase was immense. In addition to this, every dry- 
 goods store in Seattle except one, and that one I have no 
 figures from, had a wonderful increase in business. Each 
 store reported the largest business ever done in one month, 
 except in holiday time. I wished to know in what class 
 of goods the sales increased so greatly, and so I sent to 
 all the grocery and dry-goods stores to find that out. And 
 to me it is a pitiful thing and it makes me sorry that we 
 did not have Prohibition long ago that the increase in 
 sales in all the dry-goods stores was in wearing apparel 
 of women and children and in the grocery stores the in- 
 crease was made up chiefly of fruits and fancy groceries. 
 This proves that it is the women and children who suffer 
 most from the liquor business, and it is the women and 
 children who benefit greatest from Prohibition. Money 
 
270 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 that went formerly over the bar for whisky is now be- 
 ing spent for clothing for the women and children and 
 in better food for the household. It is just like this: 
 When you close the saloons the money that formerly 
 was spent there remains in the family of the wage- 
 earner, and his wife and children buy shoes and clothing 
 and better food with it. Yes, sir; we have found in 
 Seattle that it is better to buy shoes than booze. The 
 families of wage-earners in Seattle are going to have 
 more food and clothes and everything else than they had 
 before. 
 
 Hon. Miles Poindexter, United States Senator 
 from Washington, gave me for use his estimate 
 of the liquor situation in his State, which is as 
 follows : 
 
 Various influences through a number of years con- 
 tributed to the movement to abolish liquor saloons in the 
 State of Washington. The organized fight was conducted 
 largely towards the conclusion of it, especially by the 
 Washington Anti-Saloon League. The time-worn argu- 
 ments were made against the entire movement, but with 
 constantly lessening effect. The fight was first for the 
 extension of local option to counties, and, when this was 
 gained, the fight was extended in behalf of State-wide 
 Prohibition. This came to an acute stage in the general 
 election of 1914, at which there was submitted directly 
 to the people, under our State initiative law, a bill abol- 
 ishing the saloon and prohibiting the manufacture or sale 
 of intoxicating beverages in the State. The influences 
 which led up to this opportunity of the people to pass 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 271 
 
 judgment directly upon the question reach back, in the 
 gradual extension of popular government and the power 
 of the masses of the people, through a number of years, 
 including the granting of suffrage to women in the elec- 
 tion of 1910 and the gradual development in the State 
 of direct legislation, including the initiative, referendum, 
 and recall. Actual results have converted thousands of 
 the hard-headed business men of the State who formerly 
 voted wet It is not too much to say that the enactment 
 of this law has added enormously to the general welfare 
 and happiness of our people. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 PROHIBITION IN THE WEST (Continued) 
 
 IDAHO 
 
 IN February, 1915, the Legislature of Idaho 
 adopted statutory Prohibition, and also sent 
 the question to the people at the polls, who 
 at the November election in 1916 adopted consti- 
 tutional Prohibition by an overwhelming majority. 
 Governor Moses Alexander is a Hebrew and 
 a most efficient champion of the Prohibition cause. 
 I wrote him for his views of the situation in Idaho 
 for record here and received a communication 
 signed by him with the M for Moses two inches 
 tall by measurement, and the letters for Alex- 
 ander all nearly an inch high, which looked very 
 much as though he meant what he said. This is 
 his message: 
 
 I am a Prohibitionist on account of believing In the 
 brotherhood of mankind. To help the weak is our duty, and 
 to throw our arm around our weak-willed brother and 
 strengthen him to withstand the temptation of the demon 
 Alcohol and build him up so that he may walk in the 
 
 272 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 273 
 
 path of success. I am a business man, engaged in active 
 business at several points, and my business success depends 
 upon the number of my patrons, as does the business of 
 every enterprise, and if a man consumes his earnings over 
 the bar every legitimate business suffers, for he then has 
 not the money to spend for food and clothing which are 
 necessities, and certainly not for any of the luxuries of 
 life. By the abolition of liquor a man is placed in posi- 
 tion to enjoy the money he earns, and, more than that, 
 we enjoy the abolition of crime from our communities. 
 When Idaho became dry in 1916, there were some who 
 doubted the wisdom of the enactment on account of busi- 
 ness reasons, but there is none now, and the constitu- 
 tional amendment submitted last fall received an over- 
 whelming majority in every county in the State. Prohi- 
 bition like every other good thing has to be tasted before 
 it is liked, and, once a taste is acquired, you cannot do 
 without it. Idaho is in the Prohibition line now and for- 
 ever, and even the most ardent supporter of Alcohol in 
 the past has changed his opinion. It is no longer a matter 
 of sentiment, but a business proposition with us; we can 
 figure out the benefits to the community in dollars and 
 cents, and Idaho is becoming richer under Prohibition 
 than it has been in the past. 
 
 A personal interview with Senator Borah of 
 Idaho, one of the ablest of our American states- 
 men, elicited from him the most positive testi- 
 mony as to the success of Prohibition in his State, 
 and also his views on the value of Prohibition to 
 the laboring man, which appear in another chap- 
 ter. 
 
274 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 IOWA 
 
 In February, 1915, Iowa, which had been con- 
 stitutionally dry in theory but wet in practice, 
 adopted Prohibition in fact. 
 
 Hon. Albert B. Cummins, United States Sena- 
 tor from Iowa, one of the strongest men in the 
 Senate and country, who was backed by his State 
 for the Republican nomination for the Presidency, 
 in a conversation I had with him testified to the 
 success of Prohibition in his State, and he pre- 
 dicted the speedy removal of the liquor traffic in 
 America. He gave me this statement : 
 
 The one thing upon which the best minds of this coun- 
 try have reached a definite and unalterable conclusion 
 is that the use of alcoholic liquor as a beverage shall 
 cease. Its temperate use does no good and its intemperate 
 use is the admitted cause of more suffering, hardship, 
 poverty, disease, and crime than all other things combined. 
 Those who use liquor temperately, even though they are 
 not conscious of the harm it does them, must surrender 
 their privilege in order that society may avoid the awful 
 consequences of the intemperate use of alcohol. All the 
 influences of safety, efficiency, health, happiness, and com- 
 fort are working day and night to destroy this evil thing. 
 Mothers and wives are praying for the day that will 
 banish it. Children who have a right to the enjoyment 
 of pure minds and strong bodies are demanding its con- 
 demnation. The hosts of morality are fighting it, and 
 the great army of industry is determined to drive it from 
 the memory of mankind. There is no longer a doubt 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 275 
 
 with respect to the outcome. It will not be long before 
 a generation will appear that will look with as much 
 surprise and indignation upon the taking of poison in the 
 form of alcohol as this generation does upon the taking 
 of poison in the form of prussic acid. 
 
 Iowa has another great Senator in the person 
 of Hon. William S. Kenyon, who has gained na- 
 tional fame and a place in the permanent history 
 of the country by the introduction of the Webb- 
 Kenyon Inter-State Commerce Amendment Bill, 
 forbidding the illicit transportation of liquor from 
 wet into dry territory. 
 
 Iowa rejected Constitutional Prohibition by the 
 smallest majority in October, 1917, but retains 
 Statutory Prohibition. 
 
 FOUR STATES 
 
 On election day in November, 1916, just two 
 years from the time the first Western States went 
 dry, another group of four Western States voted 
 no-license, thereby securing Constitutional Prohibi- 
 tion. They were Montana, Nebraska, South 
 Dakota and Michigan. They went into the col- 
 umn by a non-partisan vote, Montana and Ne- 
 braska going for Wilson, South Dakota and 
 Michigan voting for Hughes. That one day 
 drove out of business 114 breweries and 6,528 
 saloons and put 5,000,000 people under no-license 
 rule. It cleared the liquor traffic from a geo- 
 
276 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 graphical area which could be set down over 
 Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Switzer- 
 land and European Turkey, and there would be 
 18,000 square miles left over. 
 
 MONTANA 
 
 I found in Hon. S. V. Stewart, Governor of 
 Montana, a tall, strong, handsome man, a typical 
 Westerner. I asked him how he felt about the 
 prohibitory law in his State. He answered he 
 ought to feel warmly toward it, as he had made 
 the race for the Governorship on that issue the 
 fall before, and that he intended to do all in his 
 power to enforce the law. The Governor gave 
 me a copy of a letter he had written to Rev. 
 Joseph Pope, head of the dry forces in Montana, 
 dated September 2, 1916, which is as follows: 
 
 I regard Prohibition as a purely moral question and one 
 which ought not to be involved in politics, but rather 
 should be determined by each voter irrespective of political 
 affiliations and solely according to the dictates of con- 
 science. Nevertheless, the question is a public one, and 
 many voters feel that they have a right to know the 
 attitude of public men on all public questions. In view 
 of this general feeling and of the further fact that the 
 next administration may be called upon to make Prohi- 
 bition effective, I take this occasion to say to you that I 
 personally believe in State-wide Prohibition and expect 
 to vote for the pending measure at the forthcoming elec- 
 tion. In the event of the adoption of Prohibition by the 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 277 
 
 people I promise that if I am elected Governor of Mon- 
 tana I will do all in my power to enforce the law and 
 make it effective. 
 
 In his message to the Fifteenth Legislative As- 
 sembly, on the second day of January, 1917, Gov- 
 ernor Stewart called attention to the necessity of 
 providing revenue to take the place of that which 
 would be lost to the State when Prohibition be- 
 comes effective. He concluded his discussion of 
 this feature thus : 
 
 In this connection I do not want to be understood as 
 deploring the situation; rather would I commend the peo- 
 ple for the advanced step along the lines of civic better- 
 ment and moral refinement, even though it has affected 
 the revenues of the State. 
 
 NEBRASKA 
 
 I sought Hon. Keith Neville, Governor of Ne- 
 braska, to get from him the no-license situation 
 in his State. He said, "I guess I am not the man 
 you are looking for. I was elected Governor on 
 the wet ticket." 
 
 "Your State accepted Prohibition so heartily," 
 I said, "I supposed that it chose a Governor 
 friendly to the proposition." 
 
 He said to me, "Though elected on a wet plat- 
 form, I intend to keep my oath and enforce the 
 law the best I can." "It is a free country, and 
 
278 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 you have a right to your opinion," I rejoined, 
 "and you are no doubt honest in it. I am not so 
 narrow that I will not listen to the advocates of 
 all sides of the question. But my opinion is at 
 right angles to yours on the subject, and you were 
 correct in the notion that you are not the man I 
 was seeking for testimony as to the blessing of 
 State-wide Prohibition." 
 
 If the Governor will rigidly enforce the law, 
 its benefits will be so apparent that they will prob- 
 ably convert him, as they have done hundreds of 
 thousands yes, millions of those who formerly 
 advocated license. For our purpose we will have 
 to ask Nebraska to let her illustrious citizen, 
 William Jennings Bryan, speak for her on the 
 value of abstinence and State and Nation-wide 
 Prohibition. 
 
 Governor Neville is the only one of the Gov- 
 ernors of dry States whom I interviewed who was 
 not an enthusiastic friend of Prohibition. It may 
 be there are other liquor Governors of dry States. 
 I have heard of at least one other, the head of a 
 great commonwealth in the South, who got his 
 State into a pile of trouble and got into a peck of 
 trouble himself. 
 
 SOUTH DAKOTA 
 
 I was greatlv pleased with my interview with 
 Governor Peter Norbeck of South Dakota, a 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 279 
 
 ruddy-faced, hardy, level-headed, big-hearted man 
 of Scandinavian descent, on the return to consti- 
 tutional Prohibition in his State.. In compliance 
 with my request, he furnished me the following: 
 
 I am a native of this State and have for the second time 
 seen the people adopt State-wide Prohibition. Twenty- 
 seven years ago, when the State was admitted to the 
 Union, the people adopted State-wide Prohibition, only 
 to repeal it seven years later after an unsuccessful effort 
 to enforce it, due to the fact that this State has practically 
 no authority in the enforcement of laws. In the locali- 
 ties where Prohibition was popular the law was enforced. 
 In the mining sections and other parts of the State where 
 the law was unpopular, it was openly violated. Public 
 bars were run seven days in the week, night and day, 
 without any restriction except in so far as the city council 
 saw fit to regulate it. This regulation consisted of per- 
 mitting them to run in violation of the law and a fine 
 at regular intervals, which fine sometimes went into the 
 city treasury and sometimes into the pockets of the col- 
 lectors. In one case the acting mayor of the town col- 
 lected the fine and made no secret of the fact that he kept 
 the money himself. Next we tried local option, the peo- 
 ple voting on the question of license at annual elections. 
 After twenty years of this, about two-thirds of the towns 
 became dry with a pretty good enforcement in the dry 
 territory, but that part of the State which violated the 
 Prohibition law is still permitting the sale under the local 
 option law. A constitutional amendment was submitted 
 by the legislature two years ago and was adopted in 
 November last. 
 
280 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Governor Norbeck sent me a copy of his in- 
 augural address in a nicely bound booklet with 
 the section on Prohibition marked, in which he 
 calls for the passage of rigid enforcement meas- 
 ures among them, one to empower the Attorney- 
 General in cooperation with the Governor to in- 
 stitute prosecutions and to remove sheriffs and 
 State Attorneys for non-enforcement of the law. 
 
 MICHIGAN 
 
 Michigan was the fourth State that adopted 
 Prohibition that November day, bringing with it 
 into the column Detroit, with its 650,000 popula- 
 tion, the largest dry city in the Western Hemi- 
 sphere; Toronto, Canada, coming next with its 
 360,000. 
 
 Ex-Governor Woodb ridge N. Ferris, an effi- 
 cient leader against the liquor interests, wrote me 
 the following about the situation : 
 
 I came to Michigan May 16, 1884. There was hardly 
 a county in Michigan that was dry at that time. The 
 city of Big Rapids, having a population of five thousand, 
 had thirty-three saloons and two houses of ill-fame. The 
 number of saloons diminished under a change in public 
 opinion. The houses of ill-fame did not last long after 
 1884. From that day to this public sentiment has changed 
 to the attitude of the dry. Nearly half the number of 
 counties in the State were dry under local option when 
 it held its election last November. In November the 
 State voted dry by a majority of fifty or sixty thousand. 
 Our legislators have hesitated about whether this meant 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 281 
 
 that Michigan was really dry, or half dry, or spasmod- 
 ically dry. The action of Congress, however, seems to 
 have strengthened our weak brothers at Lansing. The 
 results are going to work out all right, no question at 
 all about that. The whole nation will become dry unless 
 the "drys" themselves make some extraordinary blunders. 
 
 Hon. William Alden Smith, United States Sen- 
 ator from Michigan, selected for me an extract 
 from his speech on the Dry District of Columbia 
 Bill, as an expression of his views on the general 
 situation. It is this : 
 
 And why should not the Capital of the Nation exalt 
 this principle of morality and good conduct ? Why should 
 not the National Government within that part of the 
 public domain which it absolutely controls exalt every 
 civic and moral virtue and make of this Federal City 
 the highest ideal of our national hopes and aspirations? 
 I am glad to be privileged to vote in favor of the passage 
 of this bill and give my approval to the principles here 
 involved. If the National Government, with absolute 
 authority in this District, ten miles square, is unable to 
 enforce the law strictly and impartially, the sooner the 
 country understands the weakness of our system of govern- 
 ment the better it will be for our citizenship. I expect 
 this law to pass; I expect it to be helpful to the cause 
 of temperance everywhere, and I am glad to stand in 
 my place as its advocate and defender. 
 
 Hon. Charles E. Townsend, United States Sen- 
 ator from Michigan, assured me of his gratifica- 
 tion at the no-license victories in his State and in 
 the country at large. 
 
282 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Governor Sleeper of Michigan has written me 
 that he was expecting the Legislature to enact 
 such workable laws as would enable him success- 
 fully to enforce the Prohibition provision the peo- 
 ple had voted into the constitution. 
 
 INDIANA 
 
 These four made twenty-three dry States. It 
 was expected that Utah would be the twenty- 
 fourth, but Indiana beat her to the goal and early 
 in the year 1917 adopted statutory Prohibition. 
 
 Governor Goodrich of Indiana, a vigorous 
 statesman and fearless foe of the liquor traffic, 
 told me he had made his race with a frank decla- 
 ration of his hostility to the saloon and his de- 
 termination if elected to do all in his power to free 
 the people from its curse. He whispered in my 
 ear in a confidential manner, u Wait and see what 
 will happen at the session of the Legislature." I 
 listened and heard. 
 
 Besides the powerful anti-saloon organizations 
 that led in the conflict, Ex-Governor Frank 
 Hanly, who while Governor and since as the 
 head of the Flying Squadron has been such a foe 
 of rum, rendered invaluable assistance in the cam- 
 paign. 
 
 It is with peculiar personal pride and gratitude 
 that I record Indiana's action, as I am a Hoosier, 
 proud of the fact, and more so since my native 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 283 
 
 State has gone dry. This action seems like a 
 miracle, for I remember when only a few years 
 ago both political parties were owned bag and 
 baggage by the brewers, distillers and saloon- 
 keepers, when good conscientious Christian states- 
 men turned pale as death with fear and speech- 
 less as the grave, when the liquor question was 
 raised. They had to keep their mouths shut or 
 they could not be elected to any office, not even 
 to that of "dog-pelter" in the town. But the 
 change in the Hoosier State only measures the 
 miracle of the movement in the whole country. 
 
 UTAH 
 
 Just after Indiana, Utah came in under the 
 string by the adoption of statutory Prohibition, 
 making the twenty-fifth, or one more than a ma- 
 jority of the States adopting Prohibition. 
 
 I saw Governor Bamberger at a conference. 
 It had been intimated that he was not as radical 
 on the temperance question as some. But he said 
 in the canvass in the fall that if elected and the 
 Legislature were to pass a prohibitory law he 
 would not only sign the bill but would put every 
 ounce of strength he had, personal and official, to 
 enforce the law. I saw by the look of sincerity 
 and deep determination in his face that he meant 
 what he said; and so he did, as will be seen from 
 the following communication I received from him 
 after he got back home : 
 
284 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 The Prohibition law has only just gone into effect in 
 Utah, and it is too soon to tell from experience just how 
 the law will work out. However, I believe there is no 
 law on the statute books of this or any other State be- 
 hind which there is such general public approval. Every 
 State official and every county official in Utah is in close 
 sympathy with the law and is pledged to its rigid en- 
 forcement. I believe they will be aided by public-spirited 
 citizens throughout the State. I feel that there will be 
 very few to violate this law, and that these will be dealt 
 with promptly and effectively. We believe that our Pro- 
 hibition law is one of the best in the United States. While 
 some few slight amendments are undoubtedly necessary, 
 the law will certainly make the state "bone-dry." In the 
 practical operation of the law, slight defects not now 
 discernible will undoubtedly be discovered and these will 
 be straightened out by the next legislature. There seems 
 to be a splendid spirit toward the observance of this law 
 by all classes of people within the State, and we expect 
 assistance from the Federal Government in keeping liquor 
 outside of the borders of our State. We believe that 
 Prohibition will give us a happier and more prosperous 
 people; that it will make many homes cheerful; that it 
 will reclaim for society many persons now almost derelicts, 
 will lessen the population of our penal institutions and 
 insane asylums, increase our bank deposits, and give to 
 many women and children a happiness they have never 
 known before. 
 
 NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 The Legislature of New Hampshire at its ses- 
 sion in 1917 adopted statutory Prohibition, put- 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 285 
 
 ting the State back into the no-license column, 
 from which it had fallen. 
 
 United States Senator Gallinger of New Hamp- 
 shire is an especially conspicuous figure in this 
 fight. The Senator is an old man with white hair 
 and mustache, portly, genial, witty, with fine per- 
 sonal presence. I said to him, "You are an old 
 'Prohibition crank/ and that is why I have come 
 to see you and ask a favor of you. For a gen- 
 eration I have been reading what you have said 
 in the papers and in the halls of Congress against 
 the liquor traffic, and I have been thrilled by 
 what you have said no less than I have been proud 
 of your moral courage in standing up in the 
 Capitol building almost alone and fighting King 
 Alcohol. I have come to ask that you will give 
 me something on Prohibition in your State, in the 
 Nation, and above all your personal relationship 
 to it. Words from a man like you will make 
 mighty good and helpful reading at this eventful, 
 tragical time when King Alcohol is being de- 
 throned and destroyed." He gave me the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 The present awakening on the subject of State and 
 National Prohibition, is especially gratifying to those of 
 us who gave encouragement and support to the cause of 
 temperance in the days when it was less popular than 
 now. For myself, I have been a strong advocate of tem- 
 perance from early boyhood, being one of a family of 
 twelve children, no one of whom became addicted to the 
 
 NOTE. Senator Gallinger, now deceased 
 
286 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 use of strong drink. The fact that out of that number 
 nine of the family still live in good health, the oldest 
 being eighty-seven and the youngest sixty, would seem to 
 justify the claim that a temperate life has much to do 
 with good health and longevity. In my younger days 
 I took great interest in temperance societies, such as the 
 Sons of Temperance and similar organizations, and dur- 
 ing my public service it has been my pleasure to advocate 
 the cause of temperance and Prohibition, both on the pub- 
 lic platform and in the halls of the two houses of Congress. 
 I recall with special interest the fact that more tKan fifty 
 years ago, at a time when I was engaged in the practice 
 of medicine, I delivered an address in some of the lead- 
 ing cities and towns of New Hampshire on the subject of 
 "The Physical Effects of Alcohol," and it is a matter of 
 gratification to me that the leading physicians and scien- 
 tists of the country have reached the conclusions that I 
 then held and advocated. The wave of Prohibition, 
 which for the past two years has been sweeping over the 
 country with irresistible force, not only foreshadows the 
 doom of the saloon, but also presages the day when the 
 claims of the men who have advocated temperance as be- 
 ing essential to the well-being of the individual and the 
 community will be fully justified and universally acknowl- 
 edged. 
 
 Naturally I have taken a deep interest in the cause of 
 temperance in the State of New Hampshire, where for 
 twenty-five years I practiced medicine, and for the last 
 thirty years have been permitted to represent the State 
 in both houses of Congress at Washington. For forty 
 years or thereabouts New Hampshire had a prohibitory 
 law, which was very imperfectly enforced, giving the 
 
PROHIBITION IN THE WEST 287 
 
 opponents of the law an opportunity to declare that it 
 was a failure and ought to be repealed. The agitation 
 along that line was persistent, and was actively aided by 
 the saloon interests and financed by the money of the 
 brewers, distillers and wholesale dealers in the large cities 
 of the country. The result was that the prohibitory law 
 was broken down, and a local option law put in its place, 
 which law remained on the statute books for about fifteen 
 years. Dissatisfied with the workings of the law, the 
 Anti-Saloon League, the churches, the Women's Chris- 
 tian Temperance Union, and the men and women of the 
 State who believed that the licensing of the sale of liquor 
 was an immorality, marshaled their forces, and at the last 
 session of the Legislature in 1917 repealed the license law 
 and enacted a strong and efficient prohibitory law in its 
 stead. There is every reason to believe that the awaken- 
 ing conscience of our people, and the determination on 
 their part to see that the law is strictly enforced, will 
 secure for our State a better condition of things than has 
 existed at any period since the organization of the State 
 Government. The people of New Hampshire are so 
 aroused to the importance of the movement that it is 
 safe to say that a large majority of them believe in Na- 
 tional Prohibition, and stand ready to do their part toward 
 bringing about that much-desired consummation. What- 
 ever form the contest may assume in the future, I feel 
 sure that New Hampshire, one of the original thirteen 
 States, will be in the fore-front, doing valiant battle for 
 the cause of humanity and temperance. 
 
 NEW MEXICO 
 
 New Mexico adopted constitutional prohibition 
 November 6, 1917. 
 
288 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 FOUR NEW DRY STATES 
 
 On November 5, 1918, Florida, Ohio, Nevada 
 and Wyoming, voted for State-wide prohibition. 
 
 ALASKA 
 
 In 1916 the people of Alaska voted for no- 
 license by an overwhelming majority and the Na- 
 tional Congress ratified and fortified their action. 
 
 PORTO RICO 
 
 On June 16, 1917, Porto Rico voted for Pro- 
 hibition by a majority of 37,000. It was the 
 first of the Latin nations to go dry. The govern- 
 ment, the press, the leaders were reported to be 
 against prohibition, everybody but the people, 
 who concluded to adopt it. In the campaign 
 circulars the wets had a bottle at the top with 
 this instruction written under it: "This is the way 
 to vote in order to save our island from poverty." 
 The drys had a cocoanut as their emblem, on ac- 
 count of the sweet, non-alcoholic, nutritious milk 
 it contained, with this instruction written under 
 it: "This is the way to vote. Our children would 
 be saved from danger." The voters took the 
 cocoanut in their hand and with it smashed the 
 bottle into a thousand pieces. 
 
 In 1918, Congress gave Hawaii war pro- 
 hibition. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 BRYAN CHAMPIONS PROHIBITION 
 
 PERHAPS the most powerful individual enemy of 
 the liquor traffic in America in recent years has 
 been William Jennings Bryan. 
 
 To those who had long witnessed the domination of 
 the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party as well, 
 by the liquor people, it seemed almost incredible that the 
 acknowledged head of the Democratic Party for nearly 
 twenty years, who had been three times its candidate 
 for the Presidency and who had thrown the Presidency 
 to Woodrow Wilson, should publicly proclaim himself 
 a total abstainer; and more incredible it would seem that 
 as Secretary of State in Mr. Wilson's Cabinet he should 
 have given a State dinner without intoxicating liquors, 
 and that in their place he should have offered his distin- 
 guished guests only unfermented grape juice to drink, 
 stating at the time that his wife and he were opposed 
 to the use of intoxicants from principle, and that they 
 did not wish to offer it to others. 
 
 The brewers, distillers, saloon-keepers and their 
 apologists set up derisive laughter at such a "silly" 
 exhibition, the press as a rule poured out ridicule, and 
 the cartoonists had no end of fun at the expense of the 
 one they counted a fanatic. But the millions of level- 
 headed, determined enemies of the drink traffic, including 
 
 289 
 
2 9 o KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 the church members, generally commended his action, and 
 congratulated him on his moral heroism. 
 
 While Secretary of State, on April 15, 1915, in Phila- 
 delphia, he addressed one of the most significant 
 temperance audiences ever assembled in the history of 
 the world; nothing approaching it had ever been seen 
 in this country. It was held in the Billy Sunday Taber- 
 nacle. So magical was the address on total abstinence 
 that 12,000 men, amid the wildest enthusiasm and 
 deepest determination, arose to their feet and made a 
 pledge of total abstinence from strong drink. 
 
 In the Anti-Saloon campaign in Ohio, in the autumn 
 of 1915, Mr. Bryan made sixty addresses which were 
 condensed into one and presented in the United States 
 Senate by Morris Sheppard, January 25, 1916, as 
 document No. 254, and ordered to be printed. 
 
 In December, 1916, an epoch occurred in Mr. Bryan's 
 life and in the better life of the nation when he demanded 
 that the Democrats adopt Prohibition as a party measure. 
 That demand was on the occasion of a banquet given 
 in his honor on December 6, 1916, at the Hotel La 
 Fayette, in Washington, by more than 300 Democrats, 
 United States Senators, members of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives and others, including many of national 
 prominence. President Wilson, who was unable to be 
 present at the meeting, sent a letter which was read 
 by the toastmaster and was as follows: 
 
 "Will you not be kind enough to convey my very cordial 
 greetings to Mr. Bryan and to those who are assembled 
 to do him honor? In the recent campaign no one rendered 
 more unselfish service than Mr. Bryan, and I am happy 
 to know that this dinner expresses the genuine admiration 
 
BRYAN CHAMPIONS PROHIBITION 291 
 
 of all Democrats for him. May I not by this means 
 convey to him my warmest congratulations and best 
 wishes for his continued health and happiness?" 
 
 After covering a number of important subjects in his 
 advice to his party, including the espousal of woman 
 suffrage, Mr. Bryan made the climax of his speech on 
 the necessity of opposing the rum traffic on the grounds 
 of moral conviction and political expediency and of 
 saving the party from being "buried in a drunkard's 
 grave. " And the subsequent action of Congress with its 
 more than two-thirds dry majority indicated that many 
 Democratic and Republican members of that body as well 
 shared Mr. Bryan's opinion and followed his advice on 
 the subject. 
 
 At the world-wide Conference at Columbus, November, 
 1918, Mr. Bryan said that one week contained two of 
 the most important victories in human history, one the 
 destruction of the Hun, the liquor traffic, on November 
 5th and the other the smashing of the Hun of monarchy 
 by the armistice on November nth. He predicted that 
 forty-four states would ratify the Prohibition Amend- 
 ment within thirteen months of the time the question 
 was handed down to them, and that within five years 
 the ratification would be unanimous. 
 
 REV. DOCTOR DAVID JAMES BURRELL 
 
 In an interview with Rev. Doctor David James 
 Burrell, pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church, New 
 York City, who has represented everything that is ablest 
 and best in the American pulpit for a half century, I 
 asked him to state as briefly as possible the results of 
 
292 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 his observation of and participation in the Temperance 
 Movement for the past fifty years. 
 
 He said: "It was during my first pastorate in Dubuque, 
 Iowa, that the campaign began for Prohibition in that 
 State. My congregation was divided in sentiment and 
 regarding discretion as the better part of valor, I, for 
 a while, held my peace and kept out of it. But when 
 George Haddock of Sioux City was waylaid one night 
 after preaching a temperance sermon, and stabbed to 
 death, my blood took fire and my coat came off. It 
 was not long before I had the distinction of being burned 
 in effigy by some of my fellow citizens; an honor which 
 I esteem to-day above all demilunar fardels. Since then 
 my interest in the temperance cause has never flagged. 
 You ask for my conclusions in brief: here they are: 
 
 "First, the liquor traffic can not be regulated. No 
 restriction statute has ever been enacted which the rum 
 dealer has not defiantly violated. He is constitutionally 
 a law-breaker and must be dealt with that way. 
 
 "Second, Prohibition does prohibit and nothing else 
 will. Experience proves that laws prohibiting the sale 
 and use of intoxicating drinks are as easily enforceable 
 and as practically effective as laws prohibiting any other 
 vice. 
 
 "Third, a prohibitory law in order to be effective must 
 cover the whole field. They say that 'beer doesn't 
 intoxicate/ Tell that to the marines. Beer makes more 
 drunkards than whisky. And what's more, it involves 
 a larger industrial drain. This is where our Food 
 Commissioners are playing a screaming farce; shutting 
 the distilleries and leaving the breweries wide open. 
 What's the use? America has the opportunity of leading 
 the world in the temperance reform and is allowing it 
 to go by default. Who's to blame? Let the Church 
 speak up. What does she propose to do about it?" 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 FEDERAL LEGISLATION 
 
 THE members of both Houses of Congress 
 who have dragged out the doctrine of 
 States' Rights to use as a weapon against 
 Federal action on Prohibition in the District and 
 Nation have shown their ignorance of the history 
 of Federal action on the subject. 
 
 The first Congress of the United States, held 
 in New York, at its second session celebrated the 
 Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1789, by 
 passing a bill which included the following duty 
 on intoxicating liquors imported; on distilled spir- 
 its of Jamaica proof, 10 cents per gallon; on 
 other distilled spirits, 8 cents; on Madeira wine, 
 1 8 cents; on other wines, 10 cents; on every gallon 
 of beer, ale or porter in casks, 5 cents; in bottles, 
 20 cents a dozen. And the third Congress, held 
 in Philadelphia, passed an act, June 5, 1794, 
 which actually licensed men to sell liquor by re- 
 tail. And Congress kept its hand on the liquor 
 business till the close of the Civil War, when 
 Uncle Sam went into partnership with it. 
 
 It was a long time after the people had voted 
 293 
 
294 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 the saloon out of the towns, counties and States 
 before there was any reflection of that action at 
 Washington. The reason was that King Alcohol 
 had such a powerful grip on the throat of Uncle 
 Sam that he could not squeal. Little by little that 
 grip was relaxed. Drink was taken away from 
 the army and navy, including the wine mess, the 
 Soldiers' and Sailors' Homes, the Government 
 buildings, the Indian reservations, the Canal 
 Zone, etc. 
 
 WEBB-KENYON BILL 
 
 On February 8, 1913, the Webb-Kenyon Inter- 
 state Commerce Amendment Bill was passed in 
 the House and the next day by the Senate. Up 
 to that time this was the most staggering blow 
 which the liquor traffic had ever received since 
 the foundation of the Government. It was then 
 that the people took possession of their own Gov- 
 ernment, and took one of the hands of King Al- 
 cohol from the throat of Uncle Sam, and gave 
 him more air to breathe and voice to speak. 
 
 There had been a halt in Prohibition for five 
 years, between 1907 and 1912, caused by the nul- 
 lification of the State prohibitory laws by the mis- 
 use of the Interstate Commerce Law in taking 
 liquors illegally from wet into dry territory. By 
 this law the Federal Government made it impos- 
 sible properly to enforce the State prohibitory 
 laws. The Webb-Kenyon Bill was designed to 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 295 
 
 put an end to that Federal nullification of the 
 State laws. 
 
 Senator Kenyon in the advocacy of the bill 
 said among other things, "The partnership of the 
 Federal Government with the boot-legger ought 
 to be dissolved. The assistance of the Govern- 
 ment in maintaining 'holes in the walls' and 
 'speak-easies' ought to cease. That is the pur- 
 pose of this bill. It never was intended by the 
 Constitution, in conferring upon Congress the ex- 
 clusive power to regulate interstate commerce, to 
 take away from the various States the right to 
 make reasonable laws concerning the health, life 
 and safety of their citizens, even though such 
 legislation might indirectly affect foreign or inter* 
 state commerce/' 
 
 The Webb-Kenyon Bill, passed early in Febru- 
 ary, was held by President Taft till about the 
 close of the session and then returned with his 
 veto, on the ground of unconstitutionality. It 
 was instantly passed over his veto by the two- 
 thirds majority necessary in both Houses, and be- 
 came a law, which aided the States in enforcing 
 their no-license laws, and encouraged new States 
 to adopt Prohibition. That bill at one stroke 
 killed one-third of all the liquor business of the 
 country. By this bill the people took the other 
 hand from the throat of Uncle Sam, removed 
 from him the white apron of the barkeeper which 
 he had worn so long, and set him free, the real 
 
296 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 ruler of the nation instead of King Alcohol, de- 
 throned. 
 
 THE YEAR 1917 
 
 The year of our Lord 1917 has been one of 
 the most eventful periods in the moral history of 
 the world. On January 8 the Supreme Court of 
 the United States declared the Webb-Kenyon 
 Law constitutional. 
 
 Chief Justice White in announcing the decision 
 said: "The all-reaching power of Government 
 over liquor is settled. There was no intention 
 of Congress to forbid individual use of liquor. 
 The purpose of this act was to cut out by the 
 roots the practice of permitting violation of State 
 liquor laws. We can have no doubt that Con- 
 gress has completely authority to prevent the par- 
 alyzing of State authority. Congress exerted a 
 power to coordinate the National with the State 
 authority." 
 
 Mr. Wayne B. Wheeler, general counsel for 
 the Anti-Saloon League, who led the legal fight 
 which resulted in this Supreme Court decision, in 
 an address at the Central Branch of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association of Brooklyn thus 
 expressed the significance of this decision: "The 
 most conservative agency in American Government 
 decided that the people of a given community 
 have the inherent right to better their condition 
 without outside interference, and therefore held 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 297 
 
 that alcohol could not be shipped into a State 
 where the people of that State opposed it. It 
 held, second, that the health and morals of a 
 people are essential to the life of a Government, 
 and recognized that alcohol was therefore an en- 
 emy to the Government. The third point was 
 the most startling of all. The court decided that 
 there were no constitutional guarantees which ap- 
 plied to the liquor business. In other words, the 
 liquor business had no right to exist at all, and 
 if it did exist it was through privilege, which 
 could be withdrawn by the people at any time." 
 
 Mr. Wheeler, when the decision was rendered, 
 turned to the attorneys on the other side and 
 said, "We have beaten you wholesale, retail and 
 cocktail.'* 
 
 I asked Congressman Webb for a line on this 
 Inter-state Commerce Amendment bill, which he 
 fathered in the House, and he gave me the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 "Prior to the enactment of the Webb-Kenyon 
 Law, the laws of the States, passed to regulate 
 and curb the liquor traffic, were practically nulli- 
 fied by shipments of liquor in original packages 
 from other States. Under this law such ship- 
 ments became subject to the State regulations as 
 soon as it came into the State. In this fight which 
 I made for the enactment of the Webb-Kenyon 
 Law, I realized that we had arrayed against us 
 the combined liquor interests of the country and 
 
298 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 all the anti-Prohibition sentiment. The complete 
 victory did not come, however, until the Supreme 
 Court of the United States handed down its 
 opinion this year upholding its constitutionality. 1 * 
 
 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DRY 
 
 Knowing the strong fight Congressman Webb 
 had put up to drive the saloons out of the capital 
 of the nation, I asked him about the District Pro- 
 hibition Bill. He said: 
 
 "The fight for Prohibition within the District 
 of Columbia has been waged in Congress for a 
 number of years. About five years ago I led the 
 fight in the House of Representatives which re- 
 sulted in reducing the number of barrooms from 
 about six hundred to three hundred. A complete 
 victory for Prohibition in the District of Colum- 
 bia was achieved by the Act of March 4, 1917, 
 which goes into effect on the first day of Novem- 
 ber of this year, and prohibits the manufacture 
 and sale of liquors of all kinds for beverage pur- 
 poses." 
 
 POSTAL AMENDMENT BONE-DRY BILL 
 
 Hardly less important than the Webb-Kenyon 
 bill is the Jones-Randall amendment to the Post 
 Office Appropriation Bill, providing for the ex- 
 clusion of liquor advertisements from the mails, 
 not only when directed to States having laws 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 299 
 
 against such advertising, but when directed to 
 places where the solicitation of liquor sales is for- 
 bidden. The Senate bill passed the House on 
 February 21 by a vote of 321 to 72. The cele- 
 brated Reed Amendment to the advertising sec- 
 tion of the bill, providing for the exclusion of 
 liquors from interstate commerce in Prohibition 
 States, made every Prohibition State bone-dry. 
 That meant that the State would not let the peo- 
 ple have any liquor from the inside, and the Fed- 
 eral Government would not let them have any 
 from the outside. It is impossible to describe the 
 smashing blow this law has dealt the liquor traf- 
 fic. It was owing much to the masterly champion- 
 ship of this measure by Rev. Doctor Clarence 
 True Wilson, secretary of the Methodist Church 
 Temperance Society, that its passage was secured. 
 There are to-day over 8,000 newspapers in 
 this country that will not take an advertisement 
 of the liquor business. Their millions of readers 
 object to having such temptation pushed into their 
 homes and under the noses of their sons. 
 
 NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION 
 
 THE VOTE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
 IN 1914 
 
 When in 1914 Doctor Baker announced that 
 the Anti-Saloon League intended to stand for a 
 National Prohibition Resolution, I said to him, 
 
300 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 "I have faith in your wisdom, but I am just won- 
 dering whether the time has come yet to pass 
 such a resolution. The theory of the League has 
 been to go only so fast in legislation as public 
 sentiment will sustain. Are you not afraid that 
 a defeat now would mark a halt in progress, and 
 maybe set back the reform a decade? I do not 
 say it will, I am only asking the reasons for your 
 bold policy." 
 
 He said, "I think the time has come for us to 
 make the strike. I think we are strong enough to 
 make it, and if we are not we shall get the 
 strength we need by the stroke." 
 
 He said the powerful liquor lobbies in combina- 
 tion with the corrupt politicians in the dry States 
 had rendered the enforcement of the prohibitory 
 law so difficult that he feared timid friends would 
 get discouraged and that other States would hesi- 
 tate to come into the dry column. He had con- 
 cluded that they would take the strong arm of 
 the Federal law and wipe the whole thing out 
 at once. "We shall get national agitation," he 
 said, "which means saloon extinction. We shall 
 do in this national contest what we do in that of 
 the towns, counties and States fight; and if we 
 are defeated one season we shall appear fresher 
 and more ready for the fight when the next year 
 begins. Backed by the allied temperance forces we 
 shall put the bill in this Congress, and if we are 
 defeated we shall put it in the next Congress, and 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 301 
 
 the next, and the next, till we win." I said to 
 him, u That is the kind of talk I like to hear. 
 Your arguments satisfy me of the wisdom of your 
 action. I believe there is more good than evil 
 in this Republic, that God is stronger than all his 
 enemies, and that you will be victorious." 
 
 Big plans were laid for introducing the resolu- 
 tion, and a call for one thousand volunteers was 
 made to join in the demand of Congress for the 
 measure. Two thousand answered the call, and 
 marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the 
 New Willard to the Capitol. A finer set of men 
 from every State and every calling never marched 
 down that street. I was in that procession and 
 proud to be in it. As we came to the turn at the 
 foot of Capitol Hill, about one thousand women 
 of the Women's Christian Temperance Union 
 took their places by the side of the men in the line, 
 and went up to the steps of the Capitol to unite 
 with the Anti-Saloon League in a demand for na- 
 tional Prohibition. A policeman said that aside 
 from inaugural occasions he had never seen so 
 many people in front of the Capitol. The ex- 
 ercises, which were imposing and impressive, were 
 held on the outer steps. The princely Richmond 
 P. Hobson spoke eloquently for the measure he 
 was to be responsible for in the House. He was as 
 splendid in his moral heroism as he was in his 
 bravery when he sank the Merrimac. Morris 
 Sheppard, the young Senator from Texas, made a 
 
302 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 speech. I shall never forget the scene as I beheld 
 his manly features, standing out in bold relief 
 against the dark background of a sullen winter 
 sky, and heard his great speech worthy of his 
 great State and the great occasion. 
 
 The Hobson Bill came to a vote in the House 
 of Representatives on December 22, 1914. The 
 vote was 197 in the affirmative, 189 in the nega- 
 tive. That so drastic a measure, the first one of 
 the kind ever allowed to be voted on in Congress 
 since the foundation of the Government, should 
 have eight majority when Mr. Underwood, the 
 Democratic leader, and Mr. Mann the Repub- 
 lican leader, opposed it fiercely, was an astound- 
 ing revelation to the people of this country. An 
 amendment to the Constitution requires a two- 
 thirds vote. The amendment fell sixty-three 
 votes short of the required number, and failed. 
 
 The vote on the Hobson Bill in 1914 so in- 
 spired the temperance people of the country that 
 State after State fell into line in the race for Pro- 
 hibition, and the temperance representation at 
 Washington, increased by the accession of mem- 
 bers from these new States, gave Senator Shep- 
 pard hope when he brought his bill before the 
 Senate. This is the text of the bill: 
 
 Section I. The manufacture, sale or transportation 
 of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, 
 or the exportation thereof from the United States and all 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 33 
 
 territories subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage 
 purposes is hereby prohibited. 
 
 Section 2. This article shall be inoperative, unless it 
 shall have been ratified as an amendment ' to the Constitu- 
 tion by the legislatures of the several States as provided in 
 the Constitution within six years from the date of the sub- 
 mission hereof to the States by the Congress. 
 
 Section 3. The Congress shall have the power to en- 
 force this article by appropriate legislation. 
 
 After a three days' consideration of the bill, 
 it came to a vote on August i, 1917. As the 
 hand of the Senate clock moved from half 
 past four to five it marked one of the most im- 
 portant moral events in the history of the world 
 the passage of the measure by 65 to 20, or 
 more than three to one in favor of the resolution 
 eight more than the necessary two-thirds ma- 
 jority, if all the members were present and vot- 
 ing. As I listened to the roll-call and the answers 
 and the result of the vote, I thought of the great 
 leaders and members of the United States Seriate 
 since the foundation of this government, and of 
 the momentous questions they debated and set- 
 tled. And I said to myself, "No greater moral 
 question was ever debated or settled than this one 
 today, and the leaders and members who sup- 
 ported the resolution arose to the highest stature 
 of mental and moral manhood, measuring up to 
 the traditions and standards of the past in their 
 guardianship of the interests of their fellow-men 
 
304 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 and the welfare and honor of their country." By 
 this vote these giants seized King Alcohol, who 
 had ruled the nation for fifty years, who had 
 made his headquarters in that same Capitol build- 
 ing, and who had mastered and slain some of the 
 ablest men who had ever graced its Senate halls, 
 and hurled him headlong to earth, the weakest 
 and most despised monarch ever dethroned. 
 
 On July 30, Senator Sheppard made a wonder- 
 ful speech in support of his bill. It ought to be 
 printed in booklet form and sent into every home 
 in the land. I am sorry I can not make room for 
 k in full here. But I asked Senator Sheppard to 
 put his views on the subject in succinct form for 
 insertion in this book, and in courtesy and hearty 
 sympathy he gave me the following: 
 
 "This nation-wide Prohibition amendment pro- 
 poses that the Federal Government shall cooper- 
 ate with the States in the destruction of the liquor 
 traffic. I can not see that it violates in any way 
 the fundamental plan on which our Government 
 was founded or contradicts in any sense the 
 doctrine of State rights. As I understand our 
 history, the Federal Government is the creature 
 of the States and possesses only such powers as 
 are expressedly or impliedly delegated by the 
 States. I do not understand that the States are 
 unable to delegate any further powers than those 
 they conferred when the Constitution was origin- 
 ally framed. Whenever it appears to three- 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 305 
 
 fourths of the States that the welfare of the 
 country demands that additional functions should 
 be delegated to the General Government, such 
 States have the power and the right to delegate 
 such functions through proper constitutional pro- 
 cess on such conditions as they deem proper, and 
 the whole performance is in consonance with 
 the true theory of American Government. By 
 this amendment the American people, speaking 
 through the Federal Government, their only col- 
 lective mouthpiece in a governmental sense, will 
 declare that the liquor traffic is an outlaw in every 
 part of the United States, that the Federal Gov- 
 ernment shall be empowered to enforce such de- 
 claration in concurrence, and only in concurrence, 
 with the States, and that those States which have 
 no laws against the traffic and desire no laws 
 against it have not the right to harbor so fright- 
 ful a menace to the happiness and prosperity of 
 the Nation. Under this amendment no State will 
 be deprived of the power to legislate against the 
 traffic. 
 
 "We want the battle to continue in family, pre- 
 cinct, county, State and Nation. No unit of gov- 
 ernment or society is too small, no unit is too 
 large, to have a place in the ranks now gathering 
 for this conflict under the banners of Almighty 
 God. The liquor traffic is so firmly intrenched 
 in some sections of the country that national ac- 
 tion will be necessary to exterminate it. We are 
 
306 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 not simply citizens of States. We are Americans 
 above all things else. We can not wrap ourselves 
 in the mantle of narrow localism. 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PASSES PROHIBITION 
 RESOLUTION 
 
 On December 17, 1917, the National Prohibi- 
 tion Resolution, ably handled by Congressman 
 Webb, passed the House of Representatives by 
 a vote of 228 to 128. One of the most momen- 
 tous and glorious experiences of my life was that 
 of being present at the passage of this resolution 
 which dealt Bacchus his death stab. The galleries 
 cheered when the veteran Joe Cannon voted aye, 
 and burst out into wild applause when Speaker 
 Clark announced the result. 
 
 The next day the Senate promptly adopted the 
 amended bill by a vote of 46 to 8 and the propo- 
 sition was sent down to the State Legislatures, 
 over three-fourths of which have ratified in the 
 following order: Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky, 
 South Carolina, North Dakota, Maryland, 
 Montana, Texas, Delaware, South Dakota, 
 Massachusetts, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, 
 Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Idaho, Ten- 
 nessee, Maine, West Virginia, California, Wash- 
 ington, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, North 
 Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, 
 New Hampshire, Utah, Nebraska, Missouri, 
 Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and others. 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 30? 
 
 WAR-TIME PROHIBITION 
 
 When war was declared it was confidently ex- 
 pected that war Prohibition would be one of the 
 first measures adopted, for three reasons : because 
 of efficiency to the military service, because more 
 than half the States are dry and sixty per cent, 
 of the population live in no-license territory, and 
 because both Houses of Congress were dry by a 
 two-thirds majority, while a bare majority only 
 was necessary to pass the bill. 
 
 And so Congress promptly set itself to its task 
 of passing Prohibition as a national emergency 
 measure. Its committees in both Houses re- 
 ported in favor of the Prohibition of all intoxi- 
 cants, including beer and wine. Immediately an 
 obstacle was struck; it was the whisky barrels and 
 beer casks piled up as high as the dome of the 
 Capitol. When the war broke out the brewers 
 of the nation officially rushed to the front and 
 offered their services to the President to aid in 
 the war on Germany. The New York Methodist 
 Conference was in session at that time, and as 
 the chairman of its temperance committee, com- 
 posed of Corneille, Tucker, Robbins and Robin- 
 son, I read the following resolutions on the sub- 
 ject, which were unanimously adopted by the 
 more than 300 ministers present : 
 
3 o8 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 "Representing the opposite of what the brew- 
 ers do, we suggest that they make good their of- 
 fer of service to the country by closing their in- 
 stitutions at once, putting out the fires of the 
 furnaces, stopping the vomit of the black smoke 
 from their tall chimneys, or by turning them into 
 mills where the grain may be ground into food 
 instead of being rotted into poison. We suggest 
 that the President and the members of Congress, 
 to whom they have offered their patriotic service, 
 will accept it by ordering them to close their con- 
 cerns at once in the interest of the splendid men 
 who are to fight for us on land and sea, close 
 them (as the brewers say in their offer) 'for the 
 honor of our flag, the integrity of our nation, 
 and the spirit of our institutions.' ' 
 
 The brewers were the obstacle Congress struck. 
 What did these patriotic heroes, so greedily anx- 
 ious to defend the "honor of the flag and the 
 spirit of our institutions," do? Why, the very 
 first thing they did was to rush down on Congress 
 as a set of bullies and sandbag it. They com- 
 pelled the Democratic caucus the very next day to 
 rescind its action on Prohibition; they muddled 
 up and paralyzed members of the committee and 
 threatened that if beer were included in the pro- 
 hibition they would hold up all war measures. A 
 frightened Congress believed their threat and de- 
 layed summary action. The brewers never could 
 have made good that threat. For a hundred 
 
FEDERAL LEGISLATION 309, 
 
 years they made good that kind of a threat, but 
 they can not do it now. Alcohol has been de- 
 posed. A long fight ensued in Congress over the 
 question. When the final vote came John Bar- 
 leycorn was thrown under the steam roller, and 
 beer and wine escaped by the skin of their teeth. 
 On September 9 the law went into effect that no 
 food, fruits, food materials, nor feeds shall be 
 used in the production of whisky and other dis- 
 tilled liquors intended for beverage purposes. 
 Then whisky died during the war, pretty certainly 
 forever. 
 
 The surrender of Congress to the demands of 
 the powerful brewers' lobby so enraged the tem- 
 perance conscience of the country that the people 
 served an imperious demand on their representa- 
 tives to pass the Sheppard National Constitu- 
 tional Prohibition Bill. So the defeat in the beer 
 war measure reacted in more overwhelming vic- 
 tory of the constitutional bill, which was of so 
 much greater importance. 
 
 BEER 
 
 There was no good reason to divorce whisky 
 from beer and wine in the war Prohibition. The 
 States in their fights, without an exception, always 
 couple them together as a common evil to be abol- 
 ished together. Not one of the twenty-six dry 
 States will listen for a moment to the plea that 
 
3 io KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 beer and wine are innocent, and promotive of 
 temperance. 
 
 We deny that the beer and wine drinking coun- 
 tries are temperate, and claim that the facts show 
 that they use the largest amount of alcohol, and 
 are cursed with drunkenness and crime as the re- 
 sult. If beer is so innocent and commendable, and 
 whisky is so devilish, why do the brewers, these 
 promoters of temperance, own seventy per cent. 
 of the places in the United States that sell whisky? 
 
 On September 23, 1918, the House of Repre- 
 sentatives passed the war prohibition amendment 
 to the agricultural bill by a vote of 171 to 24, 
 which had already been acted upon favorably by 
 the Senate, forbidding the importation of wine on 
 signature of the bill, the manufacture of beer and 
 wine on May ist, 1919, and the traffic in all in- 
 toxicants on July ist, 1919. The bill was passed 
 and signed by the President, November, 1918. 
 
 President Wilson, after conferring with the 
 food and fuel departments, issued an order closing 
 the breweries on December ist, 1918, as a neces- 
 sary war measure. Many breweries are changing 
 their properties into useful purposes in which their 
 brains and enterprise will insure them success, 
 and many of the employees are securing other 
 positions at better wages. 
 
 The Federal Administration deserves great 
 credit for the manner in which it has safeguarded 
 our precious boys who have given themselves to 
 their country's service in forbidding the dealers 
 to stain their uniform with alcohol 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 
 
 CONFERENCE ON WORLD-WIDE PROHIBITION 
 
 ONE of the most important moral conferences ever 
 held in this country was the one which con- 
 vened in the interest of world-wide prohibition 
 in Columbus, Ohio, November 19-22, 1918. The Con- 
 ference was called by the Board of Directors of the Anti- 
 Saloon League of America. 
 
 The Conference began on Tuesday evening at the 
 Deshler Hotel with a Thanksgiving and ratification 
 service, participated in by stalwart workers from the 
 field, and by distinguished delegates from our own and 
 from foreign countries. Until Friday noon the day meet- 
 ings were held in the Central Methodist Church, and 
 those at night in the Chamber of Commerce Auditorium. 
 Seldom has any convention been supplied with a better 
 grade of talent, or higher order of speaking. On the 
 program were: 
 
 Bishops James Cannon, Jr., W. F. Anderson, F. J. 
 McConnell, T. Nicholson, G. M. Matthews, W. J. 
 Bryan, Governor C. S. Whitman, Filmore Condit, F. 
 Fosdick, S. E. Nicholson, P. A. Baker, H. H. Russell, 
 E. Cherrington, E. J. Moore, W. B. Wheeler, E. C. 
 Dinwiddee, J. G. Wolley, Sam Small, A. J. Scroggin, 
 L. B. Musgrove, S. S. Kresge, J. S. Hoagland, Ex- 
 Governors M. R. Patterson and F. B. Willis, G. B. 
 
 3" 
 
3 i2 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Safford, C. F. Swift, G. M. Hudson, R. P. Hutton, 
 T. J. Bailey, J. Pope, D. M. Gandier, R. E. Farley, 
 J. A. White, H. T. Laughbaum, G. D. Conger, C. P. 
 Keen, R. A. Hutchinson, W. H. Anderson, Scott 
 McBride, Ben. H. Spence, J. K. Shields, G. W. Crabbe, 
 H. Tope, J. Wilbur Chapman, E. L. Bosworth, Father 
 J. J. Curran, A. J. Davis, Brooks Lawrence, E. S. 
 Shumaker, R. N. Holsapple, R. L. Davis, Miss Anna 
 A. Gordon, Mrs. Richards, and others. 
 
 Dr. P. A. Baker the thinker, orator, organizer and 
 fighter delivered an epoch making address in which among 
 other things he said: "If weaker nations are to be pro- 
 tected from the brutally strong, weak men and women 
 should be protected from those who would coin their 
 weakness and wickedness into cash. The time is oppor- 
 tune for this great aggressive world-wide movement." 
 
 In the eloquent address of Dr. Howard H. Russell 
 he said: "There is great danger the friends of sobriety 
 will fold their hands and expect prohibition to enforce 
 itself. Appetite and greed will still exist. 'Eternal 
 vigilance is the price of liberty.' One of the best results 
 of international organization for world-wide sobriety is 
 this: We shall keep our army at home strong and alert 
 to hold the fort which has been won. It will be the 
 finest service ever rendered for the good of other lands, 
 to give to them the truth which shall make them free. 
 It will hasten all the work of missions and speed the 
 savior's reign throughout the world." 
 
 Wayne B. Wheeler, National Attorney of the Anti- 
 Saloon League in his strong, clean style told of the drastic 
 enforcement laws that would be asked of Congress, to 
 make the Federal Amendment practfcally effective, and 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 313 
 
 said America's influence in drying up the world would 
 be measured by her example of successful prohibition at 
 home. 
 
 Rev. E. C. Dinwiddie, the National Anti-Saloon 
 Legislative Supt., who has had such an important part 
 in shaping prohibition in Washington, said that with his 
 knowledge of the Parliaments of the world that he was 
 certain that the Anti-Saloon Methods so successful in 
 this country would work universally. 
 
 As the movement is to be world-wide a profound 
 interest was manifested in the reports of the delegates 
 from foreign countries as to the present condition of 
 temperance sentiment, and organization in their respective 
 fields, and as to their needs, and hopes for the success 
 of the world organization. Prominent among the number 
 were Canon S. A. Johnston of Birmingham, a prominent 
 minister of the Church of England, Hon. W. Bingham 
 J. P. of London, Robert A. Munro of Glasgow, Scotland 
 and Cipriano A. Frausto of Saltello, Mexico and others, 
 all of whom made able addresses full of seriousness spiced 
 with humor and fired with patriotism and Christian hope. 
 
 Hon. Ben. H. Spence, Secretary of the Dominion 
 Temperance Alliance of Canada, who has had such an 
 important part in driving the liquor traffic out of Canada, 
 in his interesting address was inclined to poke a little 
 fun at the United States by saying that Canada had 
 beaten her to national prohibition by both dominion and 
 local option laws and war measures, and claimed that 
 England so often criticized for its tardiness in this reform 
 had made more progress in temperance since the war 
 began than any other part of the world. 
 
 The most astounding information of the Conference 
 
314 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 was contained in a communication from Mr. Lawrence 
 Mott, the representative of the American Anti-Saloon 
 League in Tokyo, which stated that there was a possibility 
 of Japan adopting nation wide prohibition within a year 
 by the action of the Japanese parliament and thus make 
 a magnificent start to the plan of a world-wide prohibition. 
 
 The delegate from China said that though the brewers 
 had established their death dealing institutions in that 
 land that the people had not yet learned the drink habit, 
 and that the world Anti-Alcohol League had made its 
 appearance just in time, and should plant itself imme- 
 diately in that territory. 
 
 Bishop James Cannon, Jr., who has had so much to 
 do with making Virginia and the nation dry, read the 
 report of the committee on Resolutions, which said : "Re- 
 solved, That the Executive Secretary of the Anti-Saloon 
 League of America is hereby authorized to formulate 
 and to carry into effect plans and methods for the efficient 
 co-operation of the Anti-Saloon League with temperance 
 and prohibition workers in the different countries of the 
 world in the formation of such an International League. 
 The Committee is further authorized to render such 
 immediate assistance, financial and otherwise, as it may 
 deem proper and advisable in promoting prohibition w r ork 
 in other countries. 
 
 Bishop Luther B. Wilson of New York one of the 
 founders of the Anti-Saloon League, and its President, 
 who receives the gratitude of the nation for his service 
 in carrying cheer and Christ to our boys in France, 
 superintending the Y. M. C. A. work there not 
 being able to attend the Conference, sent a letter con- 
 taining the following: "It is an auspicious day for such 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 315 
 
 a conference. Victory on the field of battle and victories 
 in the field of moral reform make the year forever 
 memorable. We must conserve all the fruits of our vic- 
 tory upon the battlefield; likewise must we conserve the 
 fruit of victory in moral reform." 
 
 During the session of the Conference the war prohibi- 
 tion bill was passed by the Senate and signed by President 
 Wilson, the announcement of which caused the wildest 
 enthusiasm and called for a resolution of congratulation 
 and thanks. 
 
 It is not surprising that the leaders selected the man 
 around whose business ability and personality one of the 
 greatest printing plants of the world has been gathered 
 to make the official declaration of the purpose of the 
 Conference, and Mr. Ernest H. Cherrington, Manager 
 of the American Issue Publishing Company, and of its 
 literature, on Wednesday morning read a paper which 
 was one of the ablest and most statesmanlike we ever 
 remember to have heard, which we predict will have 
 a permanent place in the best literature of the world, 
 and become a potential factor in the world-wide war 
 on moral evil. We read it over several times for the 
 purpose of cutting it down into smaller space, but could 
 not find anything that could be left out and so we make 
 room for it in full. 
 
 MR. CHERRINGTON'S ADDRESS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 The world stands at the threshold of a new era. 
 During the great world war, now happily drawing to 
 its close, two forces have been contending for the control 
 of the world's destiny. These forces represent two 
 
3i6 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 distinct types of civilization. One catches its inspiration 
 from the past; the other faces the future. The essential 
 quality in one is dictatorship ; in the other it is leadership. 
 One enacts law to be enforced because that law is the 
 decree of the supreme power of the state; the other 
 creates law to be obeyed because that law represents the 
 highest expression of public opinion as to what is best 
 for the individual and for society. The greatest issue 
 in the world war has been whether the civilization of 
 the future is to be interpreted in terms of license or in 
 terms of liberty in terms of reaction or progress. This 
 issue has to do not only with government but with 
 morality and religion, the impelling forces of all 
 government. 
 
 Henceforth the acid test for Christian civilization and 
 likewise for every institution that has to do with Christian 
 civilization is therefore, not what it has done, nor yet 
 where does it stand, but rather in what direction does 
 it move? 
 
 II. WHY A WORLD-WIDE PROGRAM 
 
 The program proposed for adoption by the Anti-Saloon 
 League of America is a world-wide program, because 
 existing conditions compel the consideration henceforth of 
 all human welfare problems in world terms. 
 
 The golden age of individualism closed when western 
 civilization, moving westward, met eastern civilization 
 moving eastward. The French Revolution and other 
 European revolutions, together with the Civil War in 
 America, set back upon the shelf of antiquity the principle 
 of states' rights. The past fifty years has been especially 
 marked as the era of nationalism. The new age is to 
 be the age of internationalism* The wars, treaties of 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 317 
 
 peace, and international relationships, from 1600 to 1775, 
 concerned the rights of sovereigns and royal families. 
 Those from 1775 to 1860 had especially to do with the 
 rights of individual states. Those from 1860 to 1914 
 involved in a peculiar sense the rights of nationalities, 
 while those from 1914 onward will center upon the rights 
 of all the peoples of earth, regardless of race, language 
 and geographical boundaries. 
 
 Already the trade of the world is international. The 
 press spans the oceans and organizes the atmosphere for 
 its service. Labor movements are being organized on 
 the world basis. Education breaks the boundary lines of 
 governments and the seclusion of races. Travel and 
 modern invention have reduced the vast earth of a 
 thousand years ago to a neighborhood; and the Christian 
 religion holds the nations of the globe as its parish. 
 
 No great problem which has to do with human welfare 
 can be solved fully and permanently, by a single nation 
 regardless of the attitude of other nations. Consequently 
 the law of self-preservation and self-defense compels one 
 nation's effort for the solution of the same problem by 
 neighbor nations. The revelations of this war are con- 
 clusive on this point. A democratic government in the 
 United States was not safe so long as there existed any- 
 where upon the earth's surface a powerful autocracy. 
 
 Moreover, races and nations alike must be subject to 
 the high law of international ethics which insists that 
 the solution by any nation, of a problem which concerns 
 the world, places upon that nation the duty and respon- 
 sibility of passing on such solution to other nations. As 
 "no man liveth unto himself," so it may well be said 
 that in this new age no nation liveth unto itself. 
 
318 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 III. THE EVOLUTION OF THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 
 MOVEMENT 
 
 The rapid evolution of the Anti-Saloon League move- 
 ment is one of the most significant facts in modern social 
 history. A few years ago the principal objective of the 
 temperance movement was to secure local Prohibition for 
 townships and rural precincts. It was soon discovered, 
 however, by those who were interested in the temperance 
 reform, that the life of the rural communities was so 
 closely interwoven with that of the neighboring towns 
 and small villages that to insure Prohibition in rural 
 townships Prohibition must also be secured in the 
 incorporated villages surrounded or bordered by such 
 townships. Thus the demand for township and municipal 
 Prohibition evolved into the demand for county Prohibi- 
 tion. It was not long, however, until by reason of the 
 rapid industrial progress of the western world, distances 
 were conquered by automobiles and interurban lines and 
 it became increasingly apparent that if Prohibition were 
 to be effective in the counties the policy must be extended 
 to the state as a unit. Moreover, as state after state 
 fell into line in harmony with this demand, enacting 
 state-wide prohibitory statutes and adopting prohibitory 
 amendments to state constitutions, it became apparent 
 by reason of the operation of the interstate commerce 
 law and by reason of interstate traffic and travel that 
 no single state as a unit could completely enforce state 
 prohibitory laws. Gradually in these recent years, there- 
 fore, the sentiment for national Prohibition has grown 
 until it has developed into an overwhelming demand upon 
 the part of the people of the nation. But just as the 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 319 
 
 hopes of the temperance forces are about to be realized 
 in a national way we find ourselves face to face with 
 the fact that in this day and age of international relation- 
 ships, when the laws of commerce and trade so link 
 together the nations of the world and when great 
 principles of right must be defended and maintained only 
 by the fullest and closest cooperation of many nations, 
 the Prohibition of the liquor traffic in a single nation 
 is practically impossible of complete enforcement without 
 cooperation on the part of all nations having close 
 relationships. The Robinson Crusoe stage of the Prohibi- 
 tion movement is past. The liquor problem is a world 
 problem and the reform institution which would solve 
 this problem must be world-wide in its scope. 
 
 The building of the Anti-Saloon League has required 
 a quarter of a century of intensified effort. Its machinery 
 and equipment have been moulded in the foundry of 
 experience. It presents the unique character of an 
 organized movement for moral welfare which has been 
 able for the first time in human history to unite in 
 common activity in a single progressive program the 
 religious people of all creeds. The practical value of this 
 institution as a successful fighting organization has been 
 fully demonstrated. In truth, it is known by its fruits.) 
 To-day this League presents a thoroughly organized piece 
 of machinery, the like of which for effectiveness in moral 
 reform has never before been known. This organization 
 in the United States employs a thousand people who give 
 their entire time to its activities. In recent years it has 
 been receiving and expending in the great fight for 
 national Prohibition throughout the nation, more than 
 one and one-half millions of dollars each year. A half 
 
320 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 million dollars has been invested in its extensive and 
 modernly equipped publishing interests at Westerville, 
 Ohio, and elsewhere. It publishes and distributes 
 throughout the United States Prohibition periodicals to 
 the amount of more than two million copies per month. 
 More than a half million persons in all the several states 
 are regular financial supporters and contributors to this 
 League, while its active agents- and cooperating friends 
 in practically every city, village and county of every state, 
 are numbered by the millions. 
 
 But more than all this, the Anti-Saloon League to-day 
 holds the distinction (its enemies being judges) of being 
 the most cordially hated and most greatly feared of all 
 the organized Prohibition movements. Moreover, it holds 
 the confidence of the moral and Christian forces of the 
 nation. It has made good as an uncompromising foe 
 of evil and an insistent advocate of righteousness. Hence 
 it stands to-day in a position of greater strength than 
 at any time since its inception. By virtue of the position 
 of confidence and strength which it has won it is to-day 
 in position to do more effective service than ever before 
 in its history. To bring another institution into existence 
 and to advance it to the position of efficiency and influence 
 which to-day characterizes the Anti-Saloon League would 
 require another quarter of a century, hence the utilization 
 of this League in a larger sphere of world activity for 
 universal Prohibition at once insures economy of time, 
 money and effort which are of vital importance and con- 
 cern at this stage in the world's history. 
 
 Shall this most efficient arm for righteousness, known 
 as the Anti-Saloon League, be perfected and utilized in 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 321 
 
 the larger sphere of action, or shall it be demobilized 
 before the war against the liquor traffic is over? 
 
 Article two of the constitution of the Anti-Saloon 
 League of America reads as follows: "The object of 
 this League is the extermination of the beverage liquor 
 traffic." That object will be accomplished only when 
 in every nation of earth the liquor traffic shall live only 
 in the archives and museums of civilization. The hands 
 of the moral forces of America have been set to the 
 plow, and there can be no turning back. 
 
 IV. CONDITIONS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 
 
 The conditions existing at the present time in the 
 several nations and countries of the world, as those 
 conditions are related to the liquor traffic and the 
 Prohibition movement, present what in many respects is 
 the greatest moral problem of the age. The Prohibition 
 countries (assuming the ratification of the Prohibition 
 Amendment to the United States Constitution) are: the 
 United States of America, together with Alaska, Hawaii 
 and Porto Rico; the Dominion of Canada and New- 
 foundland; Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands 
 belonging to Denmark; Roumania and Russia as it was 
 prior to the war of 1914, including Finland. This 
 territory covers more than sixteen million square miles 
 and includes a population of more than three hundred 
 millions, or about one-sixth of the population of the 
 earth. 
 
 The partially Prohibition countries are of two classes: 
 first, those which have provided for Prohibition in local 
 areas, and second, those which have prohibited the liquor 
 traffic in part throughout the whole territory of the 
 
322 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 country. In the first class are to be found Denmark, 
 Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland; 
 while the second class includes those countries which have 
 prohibited absinthe and other spirituous liquors such as 
 France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. 
 
 The countries which are under the influence of the 
 so-called Prohibition religions are China, Manchuria, 
 Japan, India, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey and Arabia, 
 together with certain portions of Northern Africa and 
 a few other sections of Asia. For the most part European 
 and American intoxicants until recently have not been 
 permitted in these countries. In all of them, however, 
 the manufacture and consumption by the inhabitants of 
 so-called native liquors which are distilled by simple 
 processes and which in reality are as deadly as the beer 
 and wine of western nations, have not been the subject 
 of such intensive commercialization as in the countries 
 of Europe and North America. The native liquor 
 problem in these countries, however, as well as the more 
 recent problem presented by the introduction and rapid 
 development of western liquor industry and trade, are 
 such as to insure the complete degradation of the natives 
 unless the traffic is speedily arrested and suppressed. 
 
 Another class of countries are under nominal 
 Prohibtion of the traffic in distilled spirits by international 
 agreements of the great powers of Europe. These terri- 
 tories include practically all of the continent of Africa 
 and a large portion of the islands of the sea. Unfor- 
 tunately these international agreements for the suppression 
 of the liquor traffic have not been generally enforced, 
 and in most of Africa to-day the natives are being 
 degraded and debauched by the deadly combination of 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 323 
 
 their own native liquors and those thrust upon them by 
 European and American liquor interests, with the con- 
 sent of the responsible home governments. 
 
 The countries which have pursued the policy of regula- 
 tion and taxation for purposes of revenue include the 
 British Isles, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, 
 Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal and most 
 of their colonial possessions. 
 
 The nations where the liquor traffic is practically un- 
 challenged by the governments in any way and which 
 are almost prostrate under the domination of alcohol, 
 include the Balkan states, aside from Roumania, together 
 with the republics of Mexico, Central America and South 
 America. Practically all these countries are virgin soil 
 for the Prohibition movement. 
 
 The proportions to which the liquor traffic in most 
 of these foreign countries has already grown are such 
 as to bring the moral forces of the civilized world to 
 attention. Germany and Austria, before the war con- 
 sumed more liquor per capita than any of the other 
 nations of the earth. The pre-war consumption of beer 
 in Munich alone was one and one-half pints per day for 
 every man, woman and child. During the four years 
 of the war Great Britain spent more than four billions 
 of dollars for intoxicants. Four thousand breweries in 
 the United Kingdom have been continuing to do their 
 utmost to weaken the nation. Prior to the war there 
 were more than a million small distilleries in France. 
 There was one wine shop for every forty of the popula- 
 tion. Paris had thirty thousand liquor shops. Belgium 
 with seven and one-half million people, supported 220,000 
 liquor selling establishments. France, Italy, Spain and 
 
3 2 4 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Portugal enclosed most of the wineries of the world, one- 
 half of the world's wine coming from France, one-third 
 from Italy and one-seventh from Spain. Milan, Italy, 
 had more than five thousand drinking places, or one for 
 every forty-six residents, before the war. 
 
 The perplexing character and discouraging aspect of 
 the problem in these countries, interwoven as the traffic 
 is with other evils of the old world and with ignorance 
 and superstition, present a mighty challenge to Christian 
 statesmanship. The employment of barmaids is a most 
 serious phase of the question. In the city of Berlin the 
 barmaid establishments, called "animier kneipen," employ 
 over 1700 "waitresses," while almost every London public 
 house employs women as bartenders. 
 
 Drinking among women throughout Europe is also an 
 alarming feature. In Germany and Austria this is almost 
 universal, while in England, France and Spain the rapid 
 increase of the habit by women is such as practically to 
 constitute a rivalry of the sexes in beer and wine 
 consumption. 
 
 Ignorance and superstition are mighty bulwarks of the 
 liquor traffic especially in eastern Europe, Asia, Africa 
 and the Americas south of the United States. An in- 
 vestigation in Moscow a few years ago revealed the fact 
 that 90 per cent of the drinking population had acquired 
 the habit while in school. Of 18,000 school boys in 
 that city between the ages of eight and thirteen, I2,OOO 
 were drinkers, while 5000 out of 10,000 school girls were 
 addicted to the use of liquor. Verily, the task which 
 awaits Christian education in these countries is herculean. 
 
 The missionary work which needs to be done, however, 
 is not confined altogether to the ignorant and superstitious. 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 325 
 
 Twelve hundred and fifty clergymen of the Church of 
 England together with four hundred and seventy-two 
 women in English rectories to-day own more than 
 $8,000,000 worth of stock in English breweries. In the 
 Pera quarter of Constantinople, on the same plot of 
 ground with the Orthodox Greek Church, there are a 
 dozen drinking places, owned by the church, which is 
 kept up by the revenue from these drink shops. 
 
 That more home missionary work, moreover, is still 
 necessary, is evidenced by significant recent events. With 
 all the great work which foreign missionary representa- 
 tives of the various churches have been doing throughout 
 the missionary countries of the world, they have been 
 tremendously handicapped by reason of the political 
 standards of home governments and the greed of home 
 liquor interests. In April, 1918, when neither flour nor 
 sugar could be bought in Belgian Congo, Africa, and 
 when freight, including a great many of the necessaries 
 of life, was being held up in New York city for months, 
 because of war needs, there sailed into Belgian Congo 
 an American vessel discharging at the Congo ports its 
 cargo, which was made up almost entirely of American 
 beer. In August, 1918, when more than seventy 
 missionaries of various boards, anxious to return to Africa 
 and other foreign fields, were held up in New York 
 city for several months because the government was in 
 need of all the steamers for war work, a steamer left 
 New York city for Liberia and Sierra Leone, West 
 Africa. Only nine of the missionaries awaiting 
 transportation to the Soudan were permitted to sail on 
 this vessel because all the space was needed to accom- 
 modate the cargo, which consisted entirely of whisky 
 
326 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 for West Africa, including thirty thousand gallons of 
 one prominent brand. 
 
 The money power of the French Bourse has been a 
 most important factor in the propagation and protection 
 of the wine industry and traffic. This Bourse, speaking 
 through the government of France, ofttimes with the 
 assistance of the governments of Spain and Portugal, 
 has not only been responsible for holding back the 
 Prohibition movement in Scandinavian countries and 
 Russia, but has also repeatedly compelled 'the prompt 
 repeal of temperance laws enacted by the countries of 
 northern Europe on account of the demands of the wine 
 traffic. Nor are the activities of France in this regard 
 confined to northern Europe. When one of the leading 
 brewing journals of the United States in a recent issue 
 boasts that the government of France, in the interest 
 of the wine traffic, by diplomatic representations has 
 helped to hold up the war-time Prohibition measure 
 recently passed in both houses of the American Congress 
 and now in conference, is it not high time that the 
 government of the United States proceed officially to 
 represent the attitude of the people of this country on 
 the liquor question by doing real missionary work with 
 the governments of European nations, without violating 
 diplomatic proprieties ? 
 
 V. IMMEDIATE AND IMPERATIVE DEMANDS 
 
 The demoralized condition of temperance and Prohibi- 
 tion work in many warring countries and the depleted 
 finances of even the strongest temperance organizations 
 in Europe call for immediate assistance. The demands 
 of the war have of necessity crippled every such move- 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 327 
 
 ment in Great Britain and on the Continent, while most 
 new temperance organizations which, prior to 1914, were 
 springing into existence in some of the more backward 
 countries, have been practically submerged. Many of 
 these organizations are already calling loudly for 
 assistance and the opportunity offered to them for effective 
 service at this crucial period is such as to make imperative 
 the demand upon the moral forces of America for 
 agitational and educational assistance. We must be 
 prepared, moreover, to serve these organizations with any 
 assistance which we may be able to render through wisely 
 directed counsel and conference, while, most of all, we 
 must put our shoulder to the wheel in a peculiar sense 
 in order to aid them with financial assistance commen- 
 surate with the gigantic task which is theirs. 
 
 The peace conference just now impending furnishes 
 another and most important demand. That conference 
 will deal with the control of native races. The Powers 
 represented in the original Brussels agreement for the 
 protection of these races from the curse of distilled 
 liquors, will all be parties to the coming peace treaty. 
 This phase of the liquor question will in all probability 
 be dealt with around the peace table, and it is highly 
 important that the original treaties on this point be 
 repeated and amplified together with reasonable provisions 
 for the full enforcement of the agreement throughout all 
 of the continent of Africa. 
 
 New international trade agreements should take into 
 account, hereafter, conditions in Prohibition countries, 
 thus protecting the numerous anti-liquor laws of the 
 several countries from infringement or encroachment by 
 foreign trade, regulations and treaties. 
 
328 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 Imperative demands, moreover, are not limited to the 
 peace conference. The important need for temperance 
 reform must be recognized in the reconstruction program 
 of the several nations of Europe; otherwise, because of 
 depleted finances and because of financial arrangements 
 which the liquor traffic will certainly atempt to make, 
 the solution of the alcoholic problem in many of these 
 countries may be indefinitely postponed. Already in 
 Russia one government has announced its purpose of 
 resuming the government monopoly of the vodka traffic 
 in order to provide revenue. Quick work is essential if 
 Prohibition is to continue in Russia. 
 
 VI. PRECEDENTS FOR INTERNATIONAL ACTION 
 
 If precedents for international action in the interest 
 of the public health, the public morals and the public 
 welfare were needed, such precedents are not wanting. 
 Instances of international cooperation in warfare for these 
 objects are to be found in the wars of the Crusades, the 
 international action for the suppression of piracy on the 
 high seas, the union against Napoleon, joint action for 
 the protection of Christians in Turkey, the allied expedi- 
 tion in the Chinese Boxer uprising, the interference of 
 the United States for the freedom of Cuba and other 
 islands under Spanish rule, and, most important of all, 
 the concert of nations comprising three-fourths of the 
 population of the world in the present great war for 
 democracy and righteousness. 
 
 Other peaceful treaties and agreements to this same 
 end mark the pages of the history of international 
 diplomacy during the past century, such, for instance, 
 as the Monroe doctrine, the international agreement for 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 329 
 
 the suppression of the slave-trade, resulting later in the 
 simultaneous effort throughout the world for the abolition 
 of human slavery, the Hague Conference provisions, 
 international action for the suppression of opium in 
 Oriental countries, the Brussels agreement provisions, 
 looking toward the same protection of native races as has 
 been given to American Indians and to Indian countries 
 in both Canada and the United States, together with 
 the co-operative world movement for the suppression of 
 what is known as the white slave trade. 
 
 Numerous other instances of international action not 
 subject to formal treaties or agreements may be found. 
 The movement for the abolition of human slavery brought 
 results in the freedom of the serfs in Russia in 1860, 
 and the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1863, 
 as well as similar successes in Great Britain and other 
 countries about the same time. Numerous movements 
 moreover in recent years have been directed toward the 
 organization of the international sentiment against the 
 liquor traffic. These include the international activities 
 of the Good Templars, the Woman 's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union, the Sons of Temperance, the Rechabites, 
 the International Congress Against Alcoholism, the 
 International Prohibition Confederation and other educa- 
 tional movements along similar lines. 
 
 The necessity for precedent, however, in this day of 
 the world's history, is not so essential as it has been in 
 the past. The world is alive to progress and reform, 
 while modern movements in the modern world look not 
 so much to the past as to the future. 
 
330 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 VII. THE PROPOSED PLAN FOR UNIVERSAL PROHIBITION 
 
 The proposed plan of organization for universal 
 Prohibition involves: First, the enlargement of the scope 
 and the extension of the activities of the Anti-Saloon 
 League of America; second, the giving of substantial 
 assistance to existing temperance organizations in other 
 countries; third, the laying of the foundation for the 
 creation of an international anti-alcohol league, formed 
 after the plan of the Anti-Saloon League of America. 
 The new situation, so far as Prohibition in America is 
 concerned, together with the opportunity presented in the 
 proposed world plan for universal Prohibition, demands 
 not only the reorganization of the anti-liquor movement 
 in the United States but a prompt extension of the 
 activities of the Anti-Saloon League to a larger sphere 
 of world influence. As there is a decided difference in 
 many respects between these two spheres of action, there 
 must be a difference to some extent in the methods 
 employed. There are many things which the Anti-Saloon 
 League has done and is doing in a national way which 
 could not be properly done by the League in other nations. 
 There is, however, much important work which can be 
 conducted by the Anti-Saloon League of America in 
 almost every foreign country, such, for instance, as 
 personal and platform lecture work by field agents and 
 missionaries of the Anti-Saloon League of America; the 
 organization of an international Prohibition press associa- 
 tion and the establishment of an international Prohibition 
 periodical to be printed in different languages; the 
 securing of cooperation in publicity work by interesting 
 the daily and wekly newspapers in all countries, and the 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 331 
 
 securing of valuable publicity through the literature of 
 international travel companies and organizations. Great 
 service also can be rendered to the missionary agencies 
 in all mission fields for the building of and organizing of 
 temperance sentiment. 
 
 Educational agencies, moreover, furnish an opportunity 
 which should not be overlooked. Prohibition propaganda, 
 if properly handled, can be conducted through exchange 
 professorships in the universities, college lecture courses, 
 general Chautauqua and lyceum bureaus, university exten- 
 sion work, as well as scientific temperance instruction 
 in the public schools of all countries similar to that which 
 has been so successful in the United States. 
 
 Industrial enterprises and trade organizations may also 
 be used as agencies through which the industrial and trade 
 organizations of other countries may be reached. The 
 results of Prohibition in this country have converted to 
 the program of total abstinence most of the heads of 
 great manufacturing enterprises, and trade organizations 
 generally throughout the country are undergoing a very 
 decided change of sentiment both as to the practicability 
 and the desirability of Prohibition from the standpoint 
 of commerce and trade. 
 
 Another field which should by no means be neglected 
 is that which is presented by labor organizations. The 
 relation of the liquor traffic and the Prohibition move- 
 ment to the welfare of the working man from every 
 point of view must be brought home to the representatives 
 of organized labor in America, and must through the 
 labor organizations of this country eventually be brought 
 to the attention of the labor interests in Europe and 
 elsewhere. 
 
332 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 In addition to all these other avenues of approach to 
 the alcohol problem in other countries, special effort 
 should be made to secure the right kind of diplomatic 
 representations by the official agents of the United States 
 government in all the United States consulates and 
 legations. As the United States of America itself becomes 
 a Prohibition country in accordance with the will of the 
 people of this republic, the official agents of this nation 
 abroad should actually represent the sentiment and 
 attitude of the American people on this great question 
 as that sentiment and attitude is expressed by the legisla- 
 tive bodies of the different states and by Congress. More- 
 over, since these agents of the government are the repre- 
 sentatives of the President of the United States in his 
 official capacity, the Prohibition forces of America should 
 see to it that from the beginning of the Prohibition 
 regime the occupant of the White House, who directs 
 all the diplomatic agents of the United States in all the 
 countries of the world, should himself represent the great 
 body of the American people on this important question. 
 The new position which the United States now occupies 
 among the world powers gives to this government a 
 peculiar opportunity for the investment of influence. 
 
 This proposed plan for the enlargement of the work 
 of the Anti-Saloon League of America, moreover, involves 
 special organized effort to assist existing temperance 
 organizations abroad, not only by counsel and by full 
 cooperation in movements toward the federation of these 
 forces in other lands, but by appealing to the people of 
 America for financial support commensurate with the 
 demands of this world program, thus enabling the Anti- 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 333 
 
 Saloon League of America to render greatly needed 
 assistance to temperance organizations abroad. 
 
 The proposed new plan, however, does not stop with 
 the missionary enterprise contemplated by the Anti-Saloon 
 League of America and the assistance which it is proposed 
 to render to existing temperance organizations abroad. It 
 involves finally the laying of the foundation for organiza- 
 tion at the earliest practicable time of a new international 
 league against alcohol, which shall bring together in one 
 great international federation such organizations as the 
 Anti-Saloon League of America, the Dominion Tem- 
 perance Alliance of Canada, the United Kingdom Alliance 
 in Great Britain, the Ligue Nationale contre TAlcoolisme 
 of France, and similar organizations in Australia, New 
 Zealand, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy, 
 Germany, Austria, Japan and other countries. 
 
 VIII. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME TO STRIKE 
 
 Nothing is clearer than that now is the psychological 
 time to strike for world Prohibition. The remarkable 
 success of the anti-liquor movement in America has 
 encouraged the temperance forces of the world and has 
 correspondingly weakened the defenses of the liquor 
 traffic. The great whisky forces in America are already 
 going out of the propaganda field. The breweries' 
 international trade arrangements are more difficult at 
 present than ever before. The invention of processes in 
 Austria and Italy by which wine can be made free from 
 alcohol, has had a tendency to lessen the inducements 
 for alcohol propaganda work among the wine growers 
 of Europe. This tendency has already been reflected in 
 
334 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 some slight degree in the attitude of the wine producers 
 in the United States. 
 
 Moreover, the partial success of the Prohibition 
 movements in certain countries of Europe have greatly 
 helped as back fires against active propaganda of the 
 liquor interests. The Prohibition of absinthe in France, 
 Holland, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium, has greatly 
 injured the spirits trade in Europe, while the increased 
 strength of the social democratic parties not only in the 
 Central Powers but throughout Europe makes Prohibition 
 a burning question in the political arena, because of the 
 anti-liquor pronouncements of these groups prior to the 
 war, and because of the greater strength for political 
 action w r hich these groups are bound to have after the 
 war is over. 
 
 The financial adjustment due to the war in practically 
 every country of Europe has served to demonstrate that 
 revenue for government purposes is not absolutely 
 dependent upon the liquor traffic and that when a really 
 great crisis arises the liquor traffic can be depended upon 
 to furnish only a very small part of the revenue required. 
 This fact strikes at the very heart of the strongest argu- 
 ment that has ever been advanced in defense of the 
 liquor traffic. 
 
 The necessary war-time effort for conservation of food, 
 fuel, transportation and man-power, has demonstrated in 
 the most convincing manner the scientific fact that from 
 every point of view, so far as any nation is concerned, 
 the liquor traffic is a liability instead of an asset. 
 
 The present close international relationships of a 
 majority of the world's great nations furnish opportune 
 conditions for international representations on practically 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 335 
 
 all questions of reform. The twenty-four nations that 
 have declared war on Germany represent three-fourths 
 of the population of the globe, and are not only united 
 for harmonious military action but are enthusiastic for 
 cooperation of every kind with other nations of the group. 
 With such conditions existing, the part that the United 
 States of America has played gives this country a greater 
 opportunity to speak with force and influence on the 
 liquor question, as well as on any other question, than 
 America has ever had before. Moreover, the intensive 
 world movement toward democracy which is radically 
 affecting every country opens a clearer way for political 
 action on moral reforms by the very fact that the 
 reactionary political forces in all these countries have 
 been greatly weakened, while the progressive forces in 
 political life throughout the world have been propor- 
 tionately greatly strengthened. 
 
 This is also the psychological time to strike because 
 of the fact that the spirit of the world war In a peculiar 
 sense has turned the world's attention to moral and 
 spiritual realities. Business and politics, so far as their 
 hold upon the people is concerned, have been temporarily 
 relegated to the rear, while the tragedies of war have 
 softened the hearts of the people and made them receptive 
 to moral and religious considerations. The great forward 
 movement of all church organizations and denominations 
 in the intensive missionary campaigns now being em- 
 phasized, opens wide the gate for an additional phase 
 of missionary programs which must include temperance 
 and Prohibition work. 
 
 In short, the general psychology of world conditions 
 presents an unparalleled opportunity for the prompt 
 
336 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 organization and speedy success of such a movement for 
 moral betterment as that represented by the anti-liquor 
 crusade. Verily, for a world movement such as the one 
 proposed, the hour has already struck. 
 
 IX. CONCLUSION 
 
 The remarkable temperance progress of recent years 
 in North America is prophetic of permanent victory for 
 the Prohibition movement throughout the world. The 
 great advance of science, in revealing to the medical world 
 the true nature of alcohol, has sealed the doom of the 
 liquor traffic and points the way to abstinence and 
 Prohibition wherever the voice of science is heard. The 
 active propaganda against the liquor habit and the liquor 
 traffic as well, which in recent years has been conducted 
 by great industrial enterprises and transportation com- 
 panies, insures the cooperation of the world of industry 
 in the effort for international Prohibition. The attitude 
 of political parties in America, as well as that among 
 the social democratic parties of almost every country in 
 Europe, insures the joining of the forces of Prohibition 
 and the forces of political democracy in a way that 
 eventually will bring results. The leaven influence of 
 the Anti-Saloon League movement has been one that 
 reaches even far beyond the solution of the liquor problem. 
 It has been a great factor in the movement for church 
 unification, a purifying factor in politics, and has given 
 to the word federation, a new and significant meaning. 
 Just as the political influence of the Anti-Saloon League 
 through moral legislation has exalted national political 
 standards in America, so the proposed international move- 
 ment of the League may well prove to be a helpful factor 
 
WORLD-WIDE WAR ON ALCOHOL 337 
 
 in international political relationships. Just as the Anti- 
 Saloon League of America has made for closer relation- 
 ship between the churches and has given to the so-called 
 moral forces outside of the churches in America a better 
 insight into the value and necessity of Christian work 
 and church organization, so this proposed international 
 movement of the League may well make for world federa- 
 tion of church and religious forces in which those points 
 on which all religions are agreed may be emphasized to 
 the end that a real world kingdom of righteousness may 
 be established. 
 
 The possibilities of such a movement as that which is 
 proposed challenge the imagination. The unparalleled 
 opportunity presented by existing world conditions is such 
 as has never before been presented in the Christian era. 
 For the moral forces to fail to grasp the significance 
 of the opportunity thus presented would be a political, 
 social, economic, moral and religious crime. The 
 organized temperance forces of America cannot avoid 
 responsibility. They dare not fail. 
 
 "On before us gleam the camp fires 
 We ourselves must pilgrims be; 
 Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly, 
 
 For the desperate winter sea; 
 Nor attempt the Future's portals 
 
 With the Past's blood-rusted key." 
 
 On Friday afternoon the delegates went in a body to 
 Westerville, 15 miles from Columbus, to visit the 
 American Issue Publishing Company's printing plant. I 
 felt amidst the rattle of the presses that they furnished 
 much of the ammunition for the guns that shot to death 
 
338 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 John Barleycorn in this country, and will help to supply 
 the guns for the battle on the other side of the water. 
 
 The delegates then walked from the printing plant to 
 the Methodist Church in the village, where the closing 
 service was held, presided over by Dr. Howard H. Russell, 
 the founder of the whole Anti-Saloon League movement 
 in America. And the same man who in his early ministry 
 carried the Anti-Saloon League as a babe to the church 
 in Oberlin, Ohio, to be christened, led the same League 
 grown to be a strong man, a giant, honored by the moral 
 conquest of a 'nation into a church for its ordination 
 to the larger ministry of a world-wide mission for 
 prohibition. After appropriate scripture lesson and song 
 Dr. Russell preached a short sermon, all looking toward 
 the world conquest, and then called the delegates to come 
 forward and kneel at the altar and consecrate themselves 
 to the new task. T ne whole audience came forward and 
 many volunteered to lead in prayer. We felt the Holy 
 Spirit descending upon us and filling our hearts and arose 
 with a new spiritual anointing to follow Christ our cap- 
 tain out into the world conflict for the destruction of 
 King Alcohol. To men and women with such a just 
 cause, with unfaltering faith in a righteous God, inspired 
 with the infinite love of a living Christ with a deep 
 determination to destroy the demon which most hinders 
 the establishment of His kingdom, there can be no such 
 thing as failure. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 
 
 BACK of all organizations hostile to the liq- 
 uor traffic is the home. It is the assault 
 of King Alcohol on the home, on hus- 
 band, father, sons and daughters, on wife and 
 mother, more than anything else, that has 
 stirred the American conscience to anger and has 
 prompted the people at the polls to dethrone and 
 banish him from the several States and from our 
 Federal Nation. 
 
 Woman's love for home and the dear ones in 
 it, whom God has given her to guard, and her 
 fierce warfare on King Alcohol, their worst en- 
 emy, to avenge his cruelties and crimes, more 
 than any other one thing, has made the public 
 sentiment which has crystallized into ballots, 
 which are the bullets that are being shot into the 
 body of the demon king. 
 
 There can be no created life without organiza- 
 tion. This fact is not more manifest in the vege- 
 table and animal world than in the mental and 
 moral realm. Woman's love for home and 
 hatred of alcohol, its enemy, has been splendidly 
 organized, and on that account has been so 
 
 339 
 
340 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 powerful. Without the public sentiment that it 
 has aroused by its messages, its example and its 
 militancy, there would have never been any Anti- 
 Saloon League, the voting agency in the de- 
 struction of the saloon. I requested Miss Anna 
 A. Gordon to give me some facts connected with 
 the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of 
 which she is the national president, and received 
 from her the following, which in spirit and liter- 
 ary style is not unlike that of the great founder, 
 Frances Willard, and which will be read with 
 deep interest. 
 
 WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION 
 
 The National Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
 is an organization of Christian women banded together 
 for the protection of the home, the abolition of the liquor 
 traffic and the triumph of Christ's Golden Rule in custom 
 and in law. It is the lineal descendant of the great 
 Woman's Temperance Crusade of 1873-74, and accepted 
 from the early crusaders a legacy of faith and faithful- 
 ness. From the day the first praying band knelt on the 
 sanded floor of an old-time saloon, an extraordinary task 
 has challenged the home-loving, home-protecting women 
 of this nation. 
 
 For over four decades this God-given task has been 
 ours. We have been true to its sacred obligations, patient 
 under its daily discipline, happy in its heavy hardships, 
 undismayed in its severest storms. Its hope, its happiness, 
 its bigness and its blessedness have led to a consecration 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 341 
 
 commensurate with its challenge. Today half a million 
 women gratefully recognize the extraordinary progress 
 made toward the fulfilment of the vision of Frances E. 
 Willard, founder of the World's W. C. T. U., for our 
 white ribbon emblem, typifying organization and member- 
 ship and the adoption of our principles of total abstinence 
 and Prohibition, is now worn in every section of the 
 world. 
 
 The principles of the Woman's Christian Temperance 
 Union are significantly embodied in Miss Willard's fa- 
 mous epigrammatic saying: "Only the Golden Rule of 
 Christ can bring the Golden Age of Man." "We are 
 organized to make the world wider for women and more 
 home-like for humanity." "Agitate, educate, organize, are 
 our gleaming watchwords of success." "Womanliness first, 
 afterward what you will." "Be steadfast as gravitation, 
 good-natured as sunshine, and as persistent as a Christian's 
 faith." "The joy of life is doing good according to a 
 plan." 
 
 The total abstinence pledge is the foundation of our 
 platform, for we believe in the gospel of the Golden Rule 
 and that each man's habits of life should be an example 
 safe and beneficent foi every other man to follow. When 
 humanity's chorus catches the keynote of total abstinence 
 now vibrating the world around we shall hear in the 
 psalm of each life the glad harmonies of hope and happi- 
 ness. 
 
 The National Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
 had its birth in Cleveland, Ohio, in November, 1874. It 
 is organized in every State, Territory and dependency 
 of the United States, and locally in more than 20,000 
 towns and cities. Young people and children are enlisted 
 
342 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 in the Young People's Branch and the Loyal Temperance 
 Legion. In addition to the paid membership of 400,000, 
 there are hosts of philanthropic women affiliated with the 
 W. C. T. U. Almost every institution or philanthropy 
 has its temperance aspect, and with that the W. C. T. U. 
 is in close touch. Our national society owns its head- 
 quarters in Evanston, Illinois, and maintains headquarters 
 in Washington, D. C., for its legislative work. Its 
 publishing house and its Publicity Bureau are located 
 at Evanston. The "Union Signal/' its well edited weekly 
 organ, makes temperance and Prohibition sentiment the 
 world around. Its monthly paper for children, "The 
 Young Crusader," is an attractive illustrated publica- 
 tion. Its Frances E. Willard Memorial Organizing Fund 
 sustains our great work in new territory and among 
 foreign-speaking people and negroes. Its Lillian Stevens 
 Campaign Fund is used in campaigns for State and Na- 
 tional Prohibition. 
 
 The W. C. T. U. is essentially a home protection 
 society. It is the greatest anti-liquor, anti-vice, anti- 
 everything-that-strikes-at-the-home organization in exist- 
 ence, and numerous are its activities for social betterment. 
 Our thirty departments of work are classified under these 
 six general heads, preventive, educational, evangelistic, 
 social, legal, and the department of organization. It is 
 this "Do Everything" policy that makes our organization 
 unique and powerful. 
 
 We have a vast and ever-extending network of tele- 
 graph lines along which fly swift, blessed and constructive 
 messages. Building these lines, establishing the stations 
 and enlisting State, country and local workers is the dif- 
 ficult and adventurous task of our ninety-five National 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 343 
 
 W. C. T. U. superintendents, organizers, lecturers and 
 evangelists. 
 
 These indefatigable and devoted W. C. T. U. spe- 
 cialists are guardian angels for the little ones; they edu- 
 cate for a life of total abstinence the child in public school 
 and Sunday school; they help mold the young for purity, 
 for health, for total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, 
 for thrift, for mercy, for industrial training and for all 
 temperance activities. They teach our great principles 
 through literature, the press, the pulpit, the medical world ; 
 through cooperation with missionary societies; through 
 the betterment of labor interests ; through the awful strug- 
 gle with vice conditions ; through W. C. T. U. institutes, 
 medal contests, prison reform; through our Gospel car- 
 ried to railway men, to lumbermen and miners, to soldiers 
 and sailors; through social meetings, flower mission and 
 relief work, fairs and open-air gatherings; through many 
 forms of legislative effort for Prohibition, woman suffrage 
 and Christian citizenship. The achievements of these 
 mighty sentiment-makers read like a thrilling romance, 
 or would make picture film of surpassing interest. 
 
 It was the W. C. T. U. that originated the idea of 
 scientific temperance instruction in the public schools, and 
 it was chiefly through its influence that mandatory laws 
 were secured in every State; also a Federal law govern- 
 ing the District of Columbia, the territories, and all In- 
 dian and military schools supported by the government. 
 Many States have provided by law for the observance of 
 Temperance Day in the schools. In most of them it is 
 designated as "Frances E. Willard Day." Temperance 
 teaching and training of the children make deep and last- 
 ing sentiment for Prohibition and its enforcement. An- 
 
344 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 other great educative agency, the public press, is being 
 utilized by the W. C. T. U. In addition to work done 
 in this direction by State and local organizations the Na- 
 tional W. C. T. U., through its Bureau of Publicity, 
 supplies material which is used by papers all over the 
 country in the form of ready-prints and plates. 
 
 The extraordinary influence of the petition work of the 
 W. C. T. U. has been felt by the Legislatures of every 
 State and by the United States Congress. During the 
 debate in the Senate, July 30 and 31 and August i, 1917, 
 on the Sheppard resolution for a referendum to the States 
 on national constitutional Prohibition, there stood in front 
 of the Senate platform a huge roll of petitions collected 
 by the W. C. T. U., representing twelve million endorsers 
 of the bill. It is generally conceded that to the W. C. 
 T. U. belongs much of the credit for the anti-liquor 
 sentiment which has given this country so much Prohibi- 
 tion territory and which is soon to give it national con- 
 stitutional Prohibition. It has borne a leading part in 
 State Prohibition campaigns and has secured many reform 
 laws, particularly those for the protection of women and 
 children. It has been a prize-winner at all the great ex- 
 positions of recent years, notably in the recognition of its 
 Anti-Alcohol Exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition 
 in San Francisco, California, in 1915. 
 
 In cooperation with the Department of Labor, the 
 Bureaus of Immigration and Naturalization and the 
 Americanization Committee of the National Chamber, 
 the National W. C. T. U. is promoting varied and bene- 
 ficient plants for Americanizing immigrant women, and 
 for securing them as allies in our great battle for right- 
 euosness. 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 345 
 
 For more than thirty years the W. C. T. U. ha& 
 actively conducted a patriotic welfare service for soldiers 
 and sailors. Every encampment, fort and battleship has 
 been reached. In the present national crisis this work has 
 been greatly enlarged. In cities and localities near the 
 camps the boys in uniform are made welcome in rooms 
 conducted by "White Ribboners," who give them the 
 home atmosphere and wholesome entertainment and treats. 
 One young recruit gratefully exclaimed: "The Y. M. 
 C. A. fathers us, but we also need mothering, and the 
 W. C. T. U. is our mother." A supreme effort is being 
 made by our organization to bring about the abolition of 
 saloons and dens of vice near training camps and mobiliza- 
 tion centers. Large numbers of our local auxiliaries are 
 making hospital supplies. The department of Flower 
 Mission and Relief Work reaches with its beautiful bene- 
 factions even the little French orphans made fatherless 
 by the European War. 
 
 Over forty countries are federated in the World's W. 
 C. T. U. Its motto, "For God and Home and Every 
 Land," suggests the breadth of its work and the depth 
 of its patriotism. The W. C. T. U. cooperates with mis- 
 sionary societies and works for the passage of bills pro- 
 hibiting the transportation of alcoholic liquors to native 
 races. The famous Polyglot Petition originated with Miss 
 Willard and was written by her. It is addressed to the 
 governments of the world asking them to do away with 
 the manufacture of and traffic in alcoholic liquors and 
 opium, and the legalization of impurity. It has 7,000,000 
 signatures and attestations, and already has been publicly 
 presented to representatives of the governments of the 
 United States, Great Britain and Canada. 
 
346 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 The National W. C. T. U. early advocated an Inter- 
 national court and arbitration for the settlement of dif- 
 ferences between nations. World-wide Prohibition and 
 woman's ballot will help bring permanent peace. A clear- 
 brained generation of men who have not inherited the 
 alcohol taint will maintain peace, for they will ever ex- 
 ercise good-will and sane self-control. 
 
 Extensive plans are being made for a nation-wide cele- 
 bration in 1924 of the fiftieth birthday of the National 
 W. C. T. U. Exultant praise fills our hearts as we dare 
 to prophesy that this jubilee convention will be signalized 
 by the triumph of national constitutional Prohibition and 
 of international and lasting peace. 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE 
 
 Women have done their marvelous work in 
 this temperance revolution in making public sen- 
 timent and affecting legislation without the bal- 
 lot. No Southern State has adopted woman suf- 
 frage, and the South has become solid for Prohi- 
 bition without a woman's vote. Only in three 
 or four of the Western States has woman suf- 
 frage cut any figure in the Prohibition contest; 
 in these few instances woman has opposed the sa- 
 loon. 
 
 The defeat of woman suffrage in Maine, the 
 pioneer no-license State, by a majority of two to 
 one at the same special election at which the peo- 
 ple put into the constitution a provision remov- 
 ing sheriffs for not enforcing the liquor law, and 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 347 
 
 the opposition of the saloonless South to woman's 
 vote, have raised the interrogation mark in the 
 minds of its friends, as well as opponents, as to 
 the relation that woman suffrage sustains to Pro- 
 hibition. It is pretty clear, however, that, as 
 would be naturally expected, women have it in 
 for the saloon and will with the men knife it at 
 the polls when they have an opportunity. 
 
 I spoke at the Methodist church at Oyster Bay, 
 New York, one Sunday morning, and after the 
 service a young woman who said she was from 
 Kentucky, snapped her black eyes and said, "What 
 you said about woman's influence in driving out 
 the saloon is true. But when you pictured woman 
 on her knees praying God to wipe out this curse, 
 why did you not suggest that men help God to 
 answer that prayer by giving her the right to 
 vote?" Colonel Roosevelt, who attended service 
 at that church that morning, standing near, heard 
 her question and said, "She is correct in her be- 
 lief that women would vote against the saloon. I 
 have just returned from a tour of Michigan in be- 
 half of woman suffrage, and in the windows of 
 the saloons I saw large placards 'Vote against 
 Woman Suffrage,' and on the streets I saw ad- 
 vertisements of the saloon in living forms mut- 
 tering out in their intoxication 'Vote against the 
 women.' Of one thing I am convinced, and that 
 is that the liquor people fear woman's vote as a 
 deadly enemy." 
 
348 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 When woman suffrage had been so badly 
 beaten in New Jersey, the day after the election 
 the cartoonist of one of the New York City 
 papers pictured a banquet in a bar-room with 
 bloated guzzlers around the table as guests cele- 
 brating the victory. Their hands were waving 
 and their mouths were open wide in shouts, and 
 underneath the picture it said, "Hurrah, Hurrah, 
 we have saved our homes." A saloon bum was 
 quite active on election day against woman suf- 
 frage, and he said, "Let the women stay at home 
 where they belong." Some one knowing the facts 
 asked him where his wife was, and he said, "She 
 is out washing." Yes, she was out washing be- 
 cause her husband would not support her and 
 the family, but made her support him. 
 
 MORAL SUASION MOVEMENT 
 
 The moral suasion movements of Father Ma- 
 thew and others led to the ballot. In 1 840 the pub- 
 lic sentiment against the liquor traffic was so 
 strong that the people felt that they should make 
 an attempt to vote it out, and they secured local 
 option laws in a number of States and eliminated 
 the saloon from many districts. Ten or twelve 
 years after, the Prohibition votes got so numerous 
 that they secured State Prohibition in Maine and 
 a number of other States. Then the Civil War 
 came on and the American conscience turned it- 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 349 
 
 self to the destruction of slavery. After the war, 
 the fight on the saloon was renewed. In 1865 the 
 National Temperance Society and Publication 
 House was organized at Saratoga, New York, by 
 325 delegates from twenty-five States and about 
 every temperance society and religious denomina- 
 tion, including the Catholic. Its great service in 
 making public sentiment would be worthy of a 
 volume by itself. About the time this society 
 was started the conviction was deep in the minds 
 of the temperance people that they should organ- 
 ize to vote the saloon out. But there was a split 
 in the camp as to the method to be used. One 
 group thought that a temporary political party 
 should be organized, with local, State and na- 
 tional ticket; the other group seriously objected 
 to the proposition, and insisted on a non-partisan 
 war on the saloon, using both of the old parties 
 against it. 
 
 THIRD PARTY PROHIBITIONISTS 
 
 The faction favoring a new party was the more 
 enthusiastic and persistent, and on September i, 
 1869, in Farwell Hall, Chicago, 500 delegates 
 organized a political party which was named the 
 Anti-Dramshop Party, but which before the ad- 
 journment of the Convention was changed to the 
 National Prohibition Party. Three years later 
 they ran a Presidential ticket, and have had one 
 
350 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 in the field every presidential election since, in- 
 cluding that of 1916. They are the most inter- 
 esting group of moral reformers this country has 
 ever had. Possessed of one idea, the badness of 
 the saloon and the collusion of both political par- 
 ties with it, they started out to hammer that 
 thought into the mind of the nation, and they did. 
 They were fighters from way back. They fought 
 the saloons, fought the old parties, and sometimes 
 their friends, if they did not agree with them. 
 But they were fighters, and nothing so stirs public 
 sentiment as a fight. A dog fight will stir a 
 neighborhood; a man fight will start a town. 
 
 These moral militants, well organized, with a 
 bravery unsurpassed, went through all parts of 
 this country and banged away at the saloon and 
 all whom they thought had any responsibility for 
 it, until they stirred the whole nation to arms 
 against the public evil. They never found the 
 practical path of political success in the elimina- 
 tion of tKe saloon, but they found the path of 
 moral success. They were never large in num- 
 bers, but in the battle of the centuries it is not 
 numbers but principles that count. With supreme 
 optimism they expected that the growth of the Re- 
 publican Party, from a small beginning in its re- 
 volt against slavery, would be repeated in their 
 little band becoming the dominant political force 
 of the nation. For forty-five years they have 
 fought and been beaten every time, but not de- 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 351- 
 
 feated morally. And now after forty-five years 
 of defeats they find the whole nation has come 
 to adopt their idea, and they find themselves on 
 the platform with the allied temperance forces 
 for national Prohibition. Any just estimate of 
 the modern temperance revolution must give these 
 party Prohibitionists, with their bravery, con- 
 stancy, and conscientious conviction, their share 
 of credit for its success. At my request Mr. Vir- 
 gil G. Hinshaw, the able chairman of the Prohi- 
 bition National Committee, gave me the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 The Prohibition Party has been the John the Baptist of 
 the Prohibition reform. For forty-eight years it has gone 
 by its present name and has held to the one purpose, the 
 prohibition of the sale, manufacture, transportation, im- 
 portation, and exportation of alcoholic liquors for beverage 
 purposes. It took upon itself that name when the men- 
 tion of the word Prohibition invited to obloquy and scorn. 
 It conceived its one great purpose when, among all the 
 organizations striving toward truth and morality and in- 
 dustrial economy, it walked alone. 
 
 It has been more than a John the Baptsit. It has 
 helped to bear the cause of National Prohibition on tri- 
 umphal entry into popular public consciousness. Its rep- 
 resentatives, along with the representatives of 113 other 
 national organizations, marched down Pennsylvania Ave- 
 nue, Washington, D. C., in December, 1913, and sounded 
 together its oft-repeated slogan "National Prohibition of 
 the Liquor Traffic." 
 
 It has done more than merely stand for the principles 
 
352 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 it enunciates. It has borne its banner into the halls of 
 State Legislatures, and finally into the halls of Congress, 
 carried by men elected on the Prohibition Party ticket, 
 and in every presidential campaign since 1872 it has dis- 
 puted the right of any man to be President of these United 
 States who owed his election to the quadrennial slaughter 
 of a half million of the American populace. 
 
 The achievements of Congress the past two years, 
 among the most notable in American history, are most 
 vitally and necessarily interwoven with the career of 
 Charles H. Randall, Party Prohibitionist, elected from 
 the Ninth District of California. 
 
 Those who have honored the Prohibition Party as 
 candidates for President since its organization are the 
 following: James Black in 1872, Green Clay Smith in 
 1876, Neal Dow in 1880, John P. St. John in 1884, 
 Clinton B. Fisk in 1888, John Bidwell in 1892, Joshua 
 Levering in 1896, John G. Woolley in 1900, Silas C. 
 Swallow in 1904, Eugene W. Chafin in 1908, Eugene W. 
 Chafin in 1912, J. Frank Hanly in 1916. Those who 
 still survive are Joshua Levering, John G. Woolley, Silas 
 C. Swallow, Eugene W. Chafin and J. Frank Hanly. 
 
 The story of each of its campaigns is a story of heroism 
 and sacrifice, of the launching of great movements with 
 only the eye of faith witnessing from day to day the manna 
 of support provided as by a miracle hand a story too 
 lengthy to be recounted in this brief sketch, but which 
 will live and burn brighter with the roll of years. 
 
 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 
 
 The other faction of the early prohibitionists 
 held that ttfb way to vote the saloon out was not to 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 353 
 
 start a new party, but to use the old ones as the 
 instrument for the purpose, and in 1885 they or- 
 ganized the National League for the Suppression 
 of the Liquor Traffic, non-partisan and non- 
 sectarian, with Rev. Doctor Daniel Dorchester as 
 President, and headquarters in Boston. 
 
 Eight years later, Rev. Doctor Howard H. 
 Russell, at Oberlin, Ohio, organized the Anti- 
 Saloon League as the omnipartisan inter-denomi- 
 national agency of killing the saloon with the bal- 
 lot. Rev. Doctor Alpha G. Kynett of Philadel- 
 phia caught the idea at about the same time, and 
 was putting it into execution but was not able 
 to give his whole time to putting the movement 
 into shape. Russell felt called to give his life to 
 the task, and did. Russell is an intellectual genius, 
 and out of his fertile brain there sprang the well- 
 defined plan of the great movement that was to 
 destroy the rum traffic at the polls. At first he 
 started out himself alone to speak, raise money 
 and fight the saloon at every step. Then he got 
 money enough to hire other helpers, and then 
 others. He manifested almost superhuman sag- 
 acity in the men he gathered about him at the 
 start, men of the highest intellectual ability, sterl- 
 ing character and indomitable industry. And one 
 of the most significant facts is that these really 
 great men whom he selected as founders of the 
 League have stayed with him ever since and are 
 now just as vigorous and efficient, or more so, 
 
354 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 as when they began the fight. It seems most in- 
 credible that a great moral movement should lead 
 in the final destruction of so great an evil, in the 
 lifetime of the man that founded it, and of those 
 he first gathered about him in doing so. Russell 
 went from city to city and from State to State 
 planting his idea in organization, until every State 
 and Territory in the United States and the Fed- 
 eral Government at Washington had its Anti- 
 Saloon League. There has scarcely been a ses- 
 sion of any State Legislature that there has not 
 been some bill unfriendly to the saloon introduced 
 by the League, and most of the measures of Pro- 
 hibition in the States and at Washington have been 
 handled by its representatives. The State and 
 district superintendents are splendid men. 
 
 I heard forty State superintendents make three 
 minute speeches at a convention on one day. They 
 were superb men, most of them young. I was 
 profoundly impressed. I do not remember ever 
 to have heard such an array of talent, moral 
 courage and real enthusiasm at one time. Hav- 
 ing been for nearly ten years New York City 
 superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League, I knew 
 nearly all of these men personally, and I said, 
 "No wonder the liquor traffic is being so rapidly 
 destroyed with such giant generals to lead the 
 fighting forces in the States. The national officers, 
 including the Headquarters Committee, are men 
 of the same splendid type. Rev. E. C. Dinwiddie, 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 355 
 
 a Lutheran minister, whom Russell selected as 
 one of the founders, possesses political sagacity 
 and knowledge of parliamentary law equal to the 
 members in either House, and his influence as na- 
 tional legislation superintendent can not be calcu- 
 lated. Together with Dinwiddie, Wayne B. 
 Wheeler, National Attorney of the League, 
 James Cannon, Jr., and Doctor Barton, make a 
 powerful lobby at Washington respected and co- 
 operated with by the Prohibition Congressmen 
 and Senators, and by the representatives of the 
 other temperance societies cooperating with them 
 at the capital. 
 
 Doctor Russell was the first who acted as 
 the National Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon 
 League, and then Rev. Doctor P. A. Baker be- 
 came his successor, and to his generalship, states- 
 manship, forensic ability, character, his incessant 
 labors, and to the executive ability, literary talent 
 and efficient management of the great publishing 
 department of the institution by Mr. Ernest 
 Cherrington can be attributed much of the success 
 of the movement. I asked Doctor Baker to give 
 me a short account of the League and he gave me 
 the following: 
 
 The Anti-Saloon League was born not only at an 
 opportune but providential time in the history of the 
 Temperance reform. Strictly speaking, the League is 
 just what its name indicates a League a League of all 
 
356 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 churches and societies that hate the liquor traffc and are 
 willing to cooperate for its overthrow. A prominent 
 gentleman said recently, "I did not at first like the League, 
 and refused to cooperate with it; but I discovered we got 
 along better whenever the League was in the fight, so I 
 swallowed my prejudice and became a Leaguer." 
 
 It has three distinct departments of activity to which it 
 has strictly adhered, viz., Agitation, Legislation and Law 
 Enforcement. These are logical steps. Agitate, which 
 means to educate, that we may wisely legislate. This is 
 the political department of the League. It looks care- 
 fully to the nomination of candidates on the major party 
 tickets for all officers that have to do with the enact- 
 ment and enforcement of laws touching the liquor traffic, 
 friendly to such legislation and law enforcement. Failing 
 to secure such nomination on one party ticket and suc- 
 ceeding with another, we appeal to our constituency to be 
 big enough to vote for a good candidate on the opposite 
 ticket rather than a bad one on their own. After a law 
 is enacted it must be placed in the hands of its friends 
 for enforcement, if it is to be a success. The League does 
 not transform its agents into policemen to enforce law. 
 It proceeds on the assumption that most men in public 
 life would rather be right than wrong, if you make it as 
 politically safe for them to do right as it is to do wrong, 
 and the business of the League is to make good at the 
 ballot-box by making it safe for public officials to do 
 right. 
 
 It has been rightly called "The Church in Action 
 Against the Saloon." Hundreds of thousands in the 
 churches find it a desirable agency through which to co- 
 operate, and the churches contribute above a million dol- 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 357 
 
 lars annually to its support. The League is directed and 
 governed everywhere locally by members of the churches. 
 The policy of the League is to push the reform just as 
 fast and just as far as the average sentiment of the church 
 will permit. It chooses the church as the basis for organ- 
 ized effort rather than a political party, first because the 
 working church is the natural foe of the drink traffic, and 
 second because the church is dogmatic in policy while 
 political parties are timid. The church can meet defeat 
 as often as is necessary to settle any question according to 
 the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Political parties abandon issues when in the judgment of 
 their leaders to do so means more votes for the party. Be- 
 sides, it is expensive in both money and energy to keep 
 up a political organization. The sixty per cent, of the 
 population and the more than eighty per cent, of the terri- 
 torial area of the republic now under Prohibition, if not 
 made so under the leadership of the League was made so 
 by the methods which the League has always employed: 
 the omnipartisan and inter-denominational method. It 
 has taught the Christian voter independence in politics as 
 no other agency ever has. It has been opportune in method 
 but dogmatic in principles. It has striven to do the thing 
 that could be done while pushing forward toward the 
 thing that ought to be done. It has never been averse to 
 taking the half loaf when it could not get the whole. It 
 has believed that small victories were more inspiring to 
 its forces than big defeats. It has placed greater emphasis 
 on the direction in which we were going than in the rapid- 
 ity of the movement. It has always preferred to wait and 
 win rather than to fight and fail. In other words, it has 
 distinguished between a fighting chance and a chance to 
 
358 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 fight. It marshals the sentiment that exists and brings it 
 to bear at a given point for immediate results. It seeks 
 municipal option where it cannot get county option, and 
 county where it cannot get State-wide Prohibition. As 
 the engine on the track makes steam faster when in mo- 
 tion than when standing still, so sentiment on this ques- 
 tion grows by exercising the franchise even in the smaller 
 political units. By being political and not partisan it 
 has an appeal that does not run counter to that strongest 
 of all prejudices party prejudice. 
 
 The wisdom of the League's policy has been amply 
 justified by results. A dozen years ago the most sanguine 
 did not dream the present advance would be made in a 
 generation. Two or three things have greatly contributed 
 to these results. 
 
 First. When the natural friends of the League criti- 
 cized its methods and scolded and denounced its policies 
 it did not reply in kind. It very seldom replied at all. 
 
 Second. While the leaders of the movement have dif- 
 fered sharply at times, those differences have been fought 
 out in Conference Councils and never carried to the pub- 
 lic. There has never been a split in the ranks of the 
 leaders. 
 
 Third. It has always had a continued sustained mo- 
 ney support. It is no sooner through with one fight than 
 it is ready to enter another with equal or greater vigor. 
 Hitherto the traffic has been able to wear out the opposi- 
 tion and to recuperate and repair any damage that may 
 have been inflicted. A great advance was made when the 
 liquor business was driven from the association of things 
 that were decent and made to stand alone before the 
 world, exposing its hypocrisy and its hideous deformities. 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 359 
 
 It was then that it became the best asset for the Prohibi- 
 tion forces. There is a rapidly growing sentiment that 
 the traffic in intoxicating liquors has no rightful place in 
 our modern civilization. An institution of such a character 
 that war must first make war upon it before it can con- 
 duct war scientifically and successfully, certainly has no 
 claims for protection at the hands of a civilized people. 
 Everything in the world that is of good repute is against 
 it, and it must go. It is going. Already it has no advo- 
 cates and few partisans. It must depend for the continu- 
 ation of its worthless life upon appetite which it has cre- 
 ated, and greed for gain, both of which appeals to the 
 weakness and wickedness of humankind. 
 
 In the past it has made and unmade public officials at 
 will, but that is of the past. Public officials no longer 
 bow the "pregnant hinge" before it. Its threat of politi- 
 cal extinction and boycott has no terrors for men in office 
 or business. It is a liability and not an asset. Its known 
 support of a candidate for any office in almost any State 
 or community means the undoing of that candidate. Its 
 foul breath spreads miasma and death wherever it touches. 
 More laws, State and national, are passed against it 
 and over its protest than are passed on any other subject. 
 The final drive for the speedy and complete overthrow 
 of the traffic is now on. The Senate by a vote of three 
 and one-half to one voted to submit the question to the 
 States for ratification or rejection, which means ratifi- 
 cation. The Lower House will follow its example. 
 
 To attempt to stop National Constitutional Prohibi- 
 tion is as futile as to attempt to stop the mouth of Vesu- 
 vius with a bundle of straw, or to turn back Niagara 
 with a child's hand. The accumulated Christian con- 
 
360 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 science and Christian forces of a century are pouring an 
 irresistible flood of wrath against this monster of horrors. 
 Commerce, business, science, industries of all kinds have 
 joined hands with religion to make common cause against 
 this decivilizer of the race. Nqt only must the world be 
 made safe for democracy, but it must be made safe for 
 childhood and womanhood as well. We are soon to see 
 the fulfillment of the vision of Abraham Lincoln when 
 he saw the day when there should be neither a slave nor 
 a drunkard under the ample folds of the Stars and Stripes, 
 and when childhood throughout the Republic shall have 
 a fair chance for citizenship in the Coming Kingdom. 
 
 THE ORDER OF GOOD TEMPLARS 
 
 The Good Templars are a world-wide organ- 
 izantion composed of more than half a million 
 total abstainers. In 1851 it was organized in 
 this country and has been one of the most effi- 
 cient agents in the destruction of the saloon. 
 
 The Sons of Temperance, which sprang out of 
 the old Washington Maine movement, has been 
 efficient in saving men from drink and fighting 
 the saloon in America. 
 
 While the Anti-Saloon League has taken the 
 lead at the voting end of the destruction of the 
 liquor traffic, it has not done all the work. Most 
 of the temperance and church forces of the nation 
 have cooperated with it in the war on the saloon; 
 among these organizations, besides those men- 
 tioned, are the National Temperance Council, the 
 
FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS 361 
 
 Scientific Temperance Federation, the Interna- 
 tional Reform Bureau, the Inter-collegiate Asso- 
 ciation, the National Inter-Church Federation, 
 the Templars of Honor and Temperance, the 
 Independent Order of Rechabites, and the 
 temperance societies of the various churches. 
 Representatives of most of these organizations 
 have visibly and vigorously promoted the cause of 
 State and Federal legislation. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 
 
 THE liquor problem is a psychological one, 
 having as its basis a soul thirst of drink 
 and a soul hunger for gold. It is a theo- 
 logical one, because God is the drink and food of 
 the soul, because He is the medicine that cures 
 the perverted appetites and the physician that 
 keeps the sin-sick soul alive. 
 
 The problem is elementally a theological one, 
 involving the relationship of the human soul to 
 its Creator. God has no earthly enemy so in- 
 veterate as King Alcohol. No such assaults have 
 been made on the Church as those waged by the 
 saloon. There never was a more clearly defined 
 issue between right and wrong than in the conflict 
 between the Church and the saloon during this 
 modern temperance revolution. They represent 
 ideas exactly opposite. One stands for everything 
 that is bad, the other for everything that is good. 
 The saloon breeds disease, disorder, misery, crime; 
 the Church brings order, health, wealth, happiness 
 and virtue. The Church represents the idea of 
 God the best, the saloon the idea of the devil the 
 
 362 
 
ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 363 
 
 worst in the world. The saloons are the breeding 
 place of all kinds of vice and crime. In them 
 the thieves, the gamblers, the murderers, the gun- 
 men, the ballot-box stuffers, grafters, purchasers 
 of law, the debauched and the ruined find their 
 education and protection, and from them go out 
 to prey upon society. How could the Church with 
 the spirit and mission of her Master do other than 
 fight such an institution and fight it to the death? 
 Precisely this thing it is doing. Science, Big Busi- 
 ness, law, the ballot, have been powerful factors 
 in the destruction of the saloon, and those who do 
 not look back far enough to find the origins think 
 that these have done it all. But the fact is that 
 back of all and more powerful than all is Reli- 
 gion, which is destroying the saloon. It is right 
 beating down the wrong, love conquering hate; it 
 is righteousness overcoming iniquity; it is happi- 
 ness putting an end to misery; it is heaven banish- 
 ing hell. It is God through His Church who is 
 dethroning and killing the Devil King Alcohol. 
 God made the world, He made the people in it, 
 and He is in it Himself, a real factor, the most 
 real factor in human life. He is in this world not to 
 witness events, but to shape them; not to see man 
 toil, but to help him in it ; not to watch the battle, 
 but to marshal His soldiers and to lead them in 
 the fi%ht against moral evil. The leading figures 
 who have appeared in the temperance movement 
 in this country from the beginning until now have' 
 
364 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 not stood out in bold relief more plainly than has 
 the form of the Son of Man as He has marched 
 down the years and taken an active part in the 
 battle against King Alcohol. 
 
 Father Mathew, an Irish Catholic priest, in 
 organizing a total abstinence society in 1838, 
 said: "If through any humble instrumentality of 
 mine I can do good to my fellow creatures, and 
 give glory to God, I feel I am bound as a minister 
 of the Gospel to throw all my personal considera- 
 tions aside and give a helping hand. Indeed, if 
 only one poor soul could be rescued from destruc- 
 tion by what we are now attempting, it would be 
 giving glory to God, and worth all the trouble we 
 could take." And when he took the pen and 
 signed the pledge at the head of sixty other names 
 he said, "Here goes, in the Name of God." And 
 God was so sensibly with him that under his divine 
 spell 150,000 men signed the pledge in four days. 
 Rev. Doctor Theodore Cuyler, one of the greatest 
 apostles of temperance in America, said that when 
 he was a young minister he attended a Father Ma- 
 thew meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, at which 
 50,000 men were gathered on the lawn, and multi- 
 tudes kneeled down on the grass to take the pledge 
 from the priest, who had them ask God to help 
 them keep it. In describing this meeting Doctor 
 Cuyler said: "Father Mathew spoke with modest 
 simplicity and deep emotion, attributing all his 
 wonderful success to the direct blessings of God 
 
ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 365 
 
 upon his efforts to persuade his fellowmen ta 
 throw off the despotism of the bottle." 
 
 John B. Gough, the most eloquent temperance 
 orator of the nineteenth century, was as devout a 
 Christian as he was eloquent as a speaker, and 
 much of his magnetism was due to the ethical and 
 spiritual element. 
 
 The work of Francis Murphy, one of the great- 
 est temperance reformers the country ever had, 
 was not more manifest than was God's call to 
 him to enter it, and the divine presence in it. He 
 was a saloon-keeper in Portland, Maine, sent to 
 prison for illegal selling in 1873. God's Spirit 
 sent a little band to the jail one Sunday, who came 
 in singing, "All Hail the power of Jesus Name," 
 to hold a Gospel service. Murphy, seated on his 
 iron bed in the cell, was coaxed out into the meet- 
 ing and was so deeply convicted that he became 
 converted. He asked the sheriff to let him hold 
 a prayer meeting, at which fifty prisoners pro- 
 fessed conversion. When his time was out, he 
 determined to devote his whole time to the rescue 
 of men from drink by the pledge and by the con- 
 version of the soul by the Gospel. God sent him 
 with this Gospel temperance message through this 
 country and to other nations of the earth. 
 
 The idea of God is the central thought of the 
 Prohibition Party. It was organized to fight a 
 wrong which God hates and which they claimed 
 good people ought to hate. It was a religious 
 
366 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 idea pure and simple, and that is why the institu- 
 tion has lived so long and fought so hard. That 
 is why nearly all of the five hundred men who or- 
 ganized the party were ministers, or members of 
 the Christian Church, and that is why to this day 
 nearly all who vote that ticket are ministers or 
 devout Christians. 
 
 The Woman's Crusade, the mother of the 
 Woman's Christian Temperance Union, was a re- 
 ligious movement entirely, born in the agonizing 
 prayers of women imploring the Heavenly Father 
 to come down and save their families and remove 
 the saloon curse from their community. The 
 women wrestled with God in prayer in that church 
 in Ohio. They prayed and cried, and cried and 
 prayed, until they received the full assurance of 
 faith, and then they marched out of the church 
 brave as lions and said with the strength of Is- 
 rael's God that they would fight the saloon till 
 it was destroyed, and went out on the streets and 
 in front of the saloons to pray to God and plead 
 with men. Some of the saloon-keepers got mad, 
 others took it good-humoredly. Some of the sa- 
 loon-keepers laughed at the performance as a huge 
 joke. They were mistaken, as they have since 
 learned; for nothing with God in it is a joke. 
 
 When the Woman's Christian Temperance 
 Union succeeded the Woman's Crusade, it in- 
 herited the same prayer and faith in divine 
 guidance and victory. And it was this intense 
 
ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 367 
 
 spiritual element in the movement which attracted 
 to it one of the most brilliant young women this 
 country ever had, Miss Frances Willard, who 
 felt a special call of God so to organize the 
 women of America that their influence might be 
 focalized in its opposition to the saloon. When 
 she and Miss Anna Gordon, her secretary, went 
 through every state in the Union, planting the 
 societies, she put the name "Christian" in the new 
 organization, calling it the Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union. She did so because she 
 claimed that Christ had put the thought of the 
 new organization in her mind, and because it was 
 on Him that she relied for success in the warfare 
 on the liquor traffic. During her long service as 
 head of the society, and since to this day, the 
 Christ element has been magnified, and that is 
 why it has had such influence in this nation and 
 throughout the wide world. It is the Christ who 
 has sanctified woman's love for home and family 
 and made it more than mortal in its energy in 
 fighting its worst foe. 
 
 The religious ingredient in the Order of Good 
 Templars and some other temperance organiza- 
 tions is marked. 
 
 Religion is the element that dominates the Anti- 
 Saloon League. This organization, raised up by 
 Providence to take so important a part in teaching 
 the people how to vote to kill the saloon, and to 
 impel them to do so, is a strange combination of 
 
368 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 the most human political machine with the strong- 
 est faith in divine guidance and help. From the 
 human side there has scarcely been anything like 
 it in the history of American politics in the last 
 two decades nothing like its political sagacity, 
 its persistency, its desperate hand-to-hand fights 
 in the campaigns, and in its continued and startling 
 success at the polls and in legislative halls. But the 
 human faith in the divine energy is the paramount 
 element in the League. It was so in the foundation 
 and has been so till the passage of the National 
 Prohibitory Resolution by the Senate and House. 
 The League was born in the heart of a preacher, 
 and that heart was filled with love for the Christ. 
 Doctor Russell is a Congregational minister, and 
 the son of an Episcopal rector, and the new move- 
 ment was the child of agonizing prayer and faith 
 in Almighty God. Impelled with this religious 
 impulse, he naturally went to the church for the 
 material of his new organization. The morning 
 after he held the funeral service of a mother 
 whom drink had killed, he said to himself, "I will 
 go out to my brethren of the churches and demand 
 that they become responsible for an organized 
 activity that shall hasten the day when such a 
 tragedy will be done away." So Russell took his 
 religious thought to a church for organization, 
 the old First Church in Oberlin, Ohio, at a union 
 meeting of the pastors and members of all the 
 churches of the place, and on June 4, 1893, was 
 
ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 369 
 
 born the Ohio Anti-Saloon, which soon grew into 
 the National Anti-Saloon League. All of the 
 leaders the founder called about him at the start 
 came into the movement after earnest prayer im- 
 pelled by deep religious conviction. About all of 
 the workers in the twenty-six years following 
 have entered and pursued their tasks under the 
 divine impulse and blessing. About two-thirds 
 of all the State superintendents of the League are 
 ministers of the Gospel, representing most of the 
 denominations, and the other third are laymen 
 who are just as consecrated to the task of de- 
 stroying the greatest enemy of the Church and 
 establishing the Kingdom of Christ as any min- 
 ister could be. 
 
 Bishop Wilson, the able and honored resident 
 Methodist Bishop of New York City, one of the 
 founders of the League, has for many years been 
 president of the National Anti-Saloon League. 
 In one of the most eloquent addresses in the tem- 
 perance literature of any land Bishop Wilson thus 
 expresses his faith in the divine guidance to ulti- 
 mate victory: "Facing now our opportunity, re- 
 solving that for the welfare of the Republic, for 
 the good of all, rich and poor, high and low, 
 wise or unlettered, Prohibition should be written 
 in the Constitution, and declaring ourselves for 
 the accomplishment of this most worthy end, let 
 us this hour send up to the God of nations our 
 solemn pledge that, whatever happens, there shall 
 
3?o KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 be no turning back. It may be it must be that 
 as we join in such a pledge our Divine Leader 
 shall give to us His token of approval/' 
 
 At first the churches were slow and timid in 
 accepting Russell's idea, or cooperating with him 
 in it. But he and his enthusiastic band of reli- 
 gious reformers hammered and hammered on the 
 church doors till one after another opened to 
 them, and to-day on every Sabbath, in every State 
 in the Union, there are hundreds, perhaps a half 
 thousand official representatives, who occupy the 
 pulpits delivering a religious message at a reli- 
 gious service, and at its close taking up an offering 
 for a religious purpose which in the aggregate 
 amounts to over $1,000,000 a year. Pretty close 
 relation this between religion and the destruction 
 of the liquor traffic; between the Church and the 
 'death of the saloon. 
 
 And yet there are those who say that the 
 Church has lost its power, and waste their time 
 in dissertations on why it is so. It is not so 
 at all. The Church was never so strong since 
 Christ founded it as it is to-day. The triumph 
 of the Church over the saloon in our time is 
 one of the most gigantic religious victories in 
 the history of the world for a thousand years. 
 God's Nature, Word and Kingdom are not more 
 pledged to defend and maintain the right than 
 they are pledged to fight against and overthrow 
 the wrong. It is as religious a thing to fight and 
 
ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 371 
 
 abolish a saloon as it is to say prayers or take the 
 communion. To say the prayers and take the 
 communion and have no hand in destroying the 
 moral evil about us is the faith without works 
 which is dead. If the Church had done nothing 
 else in the last hundred years than drive the liq- 
 uor evil out of the land, it would have justified 
 its existence and its divine mission. For it in- 
 volves the salvation of the precious bodies and 
 souls of hundreds of thousands of the people, the 
 checking of suffering, vice pnd crime, and the pro- 
 motion of health, happiness and prosperity to mil- 
 lions of citizens such as no language can describe 
 and no arithmetic can compute. Next to the great 
 modern missionary movement, which is to possess 
 the world, is this Christian temperance revolution 
 of to-day, which is defeating and destroying the 
 drink traffic, the most powerful incarnation of 
 moral evil in this world. This victory should 
 awaken profound gratitude in the hearts of Chris- 
 tians and prompt renewed courage and action 
 against all human wrongs. 
 
 Dulled by materialism, it is considered quite 
 the thing by some people to leave out sentiment 
 and God in human calculations. They claim that 
 the cold scientific fact that alcohol is a poison, with 
 no sentiment or morals in it, is abolishing the sa- 
 loon; and they make the more metallic statement 
 that Big Business on the ground of efficiency, of 
 cold dollars with no sentiment or duty about it, 
 
372 KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED 
 
 is alone responsible for making the nation dry. 
 These materialists are right in the contention that 
 science and business have been strong factors 
 against the saloon; but they are mistaken in over- 
 looking the moral and spiritual forces that have 
 been more powerful than they. If they will wipe 
 the scales from their eyes they will see that the 
 drink problem is a religious one, a question of 
 right and wrong; a theological problem that the 
 Almighty is solving; they will see that it is God 
 the Omniscient One who is the source of all 
 science, and God the Omnipotent One, who has 
 conducted a big business in manufacturing worlds 
 and intelligences, is here in this world, which 
 belongs to Him, to take charge of it and save it, 
 and in so doing He is using science, business, law, 
 the ballot and other agencies as weapons with 
 which to destroy the saloon. If they will look 
 with the eye of Faith they will see it is Jesus 
 Christ, the Captain, with the soldiers of the Cross, 
 who have marched under his banner, that have 
 put the vile hordes of King Alcohol to ignomini- 
 ous flight and have dragged him from his throne. 
 Alcohol is a psychological and a theological 
 question, because it involves the soul and God's 
 relation to it. He is not only the food of the soul 
 but is also its medicine to cure the appetite for 
 strong drink, and every other spiritual malady. 
 The liquor problem is a psychological and theo- 
 logical one because it involves human conduct, 
 
ALCOHOL AND THEOLOGY 373 
 
 character and immortal destiny. Alcohol does not 
 unfit the individual for the duties of this earthly 
 existence more than it disqualifies him for the end- 
 less life which is to follow. The diabolical 
 tragedy is that alcohol, besides breaking down the 
 body and blighting the mind, burns and blasts the 
 soul with its limitless capabilities, unfitting it 
 for the scenes, the employments, the enjoyments 
 of immortality. King Alcohol takes man made in 
 God's image, with wings to fly to Him and with 
 Him through eternity, and breaks those wings and 
 sinks him, a leaden force in the universe, away 
 from beauty, from truth, from love, from life 
 a lost soul. In the discussion of this question, we 
 must take account of things that neither the dis- 
 secting knife, nor microscope, nor test tube, nor 
 scales can apprehend; that drink spoils a man for 
 this life and for the heaven which is to come. 
 Word has just been flashed over the wires that 
 more than three-fourths of the State Legislatures 
 necessary have ratified the Amendment. Let all 
 the people of the nation arise and sing the Long 
 Meter Doxology, "Praise God, from whom all 
 blessings flow," and let them hold up their right 
 hands and pledge each other and God to carry 
 this war to other lands, for universal democracy, 
 universal prohibition, and universal Christianity. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, Dr. Lyman, 120 
 Abstinence in mill by C. L. 
 
 Huston, 89; Jas. Brown, 91; 
 
 G. D. Selby, 93; Ex. Gov. 
 
 Foss, 94; in big business by 
 
 J. O. Armour, 95 
 Absinthe abolished in Europe, 
 
 334 
 
 Alabama, 225 
 Alaska, 288 
 
 Alcohol and psychology, i; in- 
 jury of to brain, 5; and in- 
 sanity, 21 ; and physiology, 
 33; a poison; slays Paraclesus, 
 33; causes diseases, 33; con- 
 demned by physicians, poisons 
 life's organs, 41 ; Dr. Stockard's 
 experiments with, 41 ; blights 
 the cradle, 46; and athletics 
 48; and literature, 55; curses 
 Burns, 61; kills Poe, 77; and 
 capital, 82; and labor, 97; 
 and theology, 362; destroys 
 soul, 373 
 
 Alexander, Gov., 272 
 America sends beer to Africa, 325 
 America Issue Pub. Co., 320, 337 
 American poets temperate, 73 
 Anheuser Busch Co., 252 
 Anti-Saloon League, 348, 352 
 Arizona, 259 
 Arkansas, 248 
 
 B 
 
 Baker, P. A., 312, 355 
 Bamberger, Gov., 283 
 Barmaids, 324 
 
 Base ball and abstinence, 40 
 
 Bilbo, Gov., 231 
 
 Bingham, Wm., 313 
 
 Bok, Edward, 103 
 
 Boran, Senator, 273 
 
 Breckenridge, C., signed pledge 
 with Lincoln, 158 
 
 Brooks, Noah, on Lincoln's Ab- 
 stinence, 149 
 
 Bryan, W. J., 289; Wineless 
 dinner, 289; addresses, 12,000, 
 290; banquet to, 290; Presi- 
 dent Wilson congratulated, 290 
 
 Burns cursed by drink, 61 
 
 Burrell, Dr. David J., 291 
 
 Campbell, Gov, T. E., 260 
 Cannon, Bishop, Jas., Jr., 247, 
 
 3H 
 Capper, Gov. on " dry," Kansas, 
 
 179 
 Carmack, Senator, murdered, 
 
 235 
 Carnegie, Andrew, opposed 
 
 drink, 104 
 
 Chamberlain, Senator, 264 
 Cherrington, Ernest H., address 
 
 of, 3i5 
 
 Children hurt by drink, 46 
 China and prohibition, 314 
 Choate, Joseph, on saloon and 
 
 crime, 120 
 
 Church fights saloon, 363 
 Clergymen and liquor problems, 
 
 325 
 
 Colorado, 261 
 Cobb, Ty., abstainer, 49 
 
 375 
 
376 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Condit, Filmore on insanity, 
 
 24-27 
 Crook, Col., declares Lincoln 
 
 abstainer, 156 
 Cummins, Senator, 274 
 Curtis, Senator on dry Kansas 
 
 183 
 
 D 
 
 Daniels, Secretary, abolishes 
 
 wine mess, 115 
 Dinwiddie, E. C., 313 
 District of Columbia dry, 220, 
 
 281, 298 
 
 Dow, General, Neal, 173 
 Dow, Col. Fred, 173 
 Drink and accidents, 96 
 Drink and school children, 324 
 Dry nation, world obligation, 332 
 
 Eliot, C. W., President Emeritus, 
 favors abstinence, 116; on 
 drink danger at Harvard, 119; 
 on drink and social evil, 118; 
 favors war prohibition, 119; 
 becomes abstainer and pro- 
 hibitionist after eighty years 
 of age, 119 
 
 Emerson, Dr. H., against alcohol, 
 33 
 
 Gallinger, Senator, 285 
 
 Galloway, Bishop, C. B., 229 
 
 Georgia, 214 
 
 God is killing saloon, 363; em- 
 ploying science, big business 
 law, ballot and church, 363- 
 372 
 
 Goldsmith injured by drink, 55 
 
 Good templars, 360 
 
 Goodrich, Gov., 282 
 
 Gordon, Miss Anna A., 340 
 
 Gronna, Senator, 191 
 
 Gunter, Gov. J. C., 261 
 
 H 
 
 Hanly, Gov., 282 
 Harris, Gov. N. E., 222 
 Hatfield, Ex. Gov., 246 
 Hawaii, 288 
 Hinshaw, Virgil, 351 
 Hobson, R. P., 301 
 Home against saloon, 339 
 Hooper, Gov., 236 
 
 Idaho, 272 
 Indiana, 282 
 Insanity from drink, 24 
 Iowa, 274 
 
 Farmers favor prohibition; for- 
 eign countries and liquor 
 problems, 321 
 
 Federal legislation, 293, 310 
 
 Fernald, Senator, 177 
 
 Ferris, Ex. Gov., 280 
 
 Florida, 253 
 
 Foreign temperance society, riot 
 by war, 326; aid given to, 
 330; and anti-saloon legisla- 
 tion, 330 
 
 Frausto, C. A., 313 
 
 Frazier, Gov. on N. Dakota, 190 
 
 French money opposing prohibi- 
 tion, 326 
 
 Japan and prohibition, 314 
 Johnston, Canon, S. A., 313 
 Jones, Sam, 215 
 Jones, Senator, Wesley L., 267 
 
 K 
 
 Kansas, prohibition in, 179 
 
 Kentucky, 251 
 
 Kenyon, Senator, 275; Kenyo* 
 Webb bill, 294; declared con- 
 stitutional, 296 
 
 King Alcohol, God's Greatest 
 enemy, 362 
 
 Kirby, Senator, 249 
 
INDEX 
 
 377 
 
 Labor and drink by T. Powderly, 
 97; John Mitchell, 98; Sena- 
 tor Borah, 98; Chas. Stelzle, 
 101 
 
 Lea, Senator Luke, 242 
 
 Lee, Robt. E., abstainer, 161 
 
 Lester, Gov., 266 
 
 Lincoln falsely claimed by liquor 
 men, 121; was life long ab- 
 stainer, 123; worked for Ills. 
 State prohibition, 126, 131; 
 favored abstinence in Civil 
 War, 131; intended to take up 
 national prohibition, 135; gave 
 notification Com. only cold 
 water, 151, 154; banished nine 
 from White House, 143; 
 speech of at South Fork 
 School Home, 143-158; wrote 
 and signed pledge, 158; ad- 
 dress at Springfield against 
 drink, 162; his prophecy of 
 world wide democracy and 
 prohibition, 167, 168 
 
 Lincoln-Lee Legion founded by 
 Howard N. Russell, 157-161 
 
 Liquor revenue not necessary, 
 334; a liability not asset, 334; 
 Civil War tax on, a crime, 136 
 
 Longbillow, abstainer, 75 
 
 Louisiana, 254 
 
 M 
 
 Maine, first prohibition state, 173 
 
 Manning, Gov., 250 
 
 Maryland, 251 
 
 Mathew, Father, 348 
 
 Maus, Col., on abstinence lor 
 
 Soldiers, in 
 Merwin, Major, worked with 
 
 Lincoln for prohibition, 124- 
 
 137 
 
 Michigan, 280 
 Milliken, Gov., 178 
 Munro, R. A., 313 
 Mississippi, 228 
 Missouri, 252 
 
 Montana, 276 
 Mott, L., 314 
 Murder from drink, 226, 232 
 
 N 
 
 National Constitutional prohibi- 
 tion passed by Senate, 303; 
 Senator Sheppard on, 304; 
 passed by House, 306; and 
 ratified by forty states, 306; 
 favored by Roosevelt, 213 
 
 Nat. Temp, and Publication So- 
 ciety, 349 
 
 Nat. Safety Council, 92 
 
 Navy wine mess abolished, 115 
 
 Nebraska, 277 
 
 Neville, Gov., 277 
 
 New Hampshire, 284 
 
 Norbeck, Gov., 278 
 
 North Carolina, 232 
 
 North Dakota, 187 
 
 Nov. 5th, 1918, four new dry 
 states, 288 
 
 Oklahoma, 223 
 Oregon, 264 
 
 Paraclesus, drink killed, 33 
 Parents drinking injures children, 
 
 46 
 
 Party prohibitionists, 349 
 Patterson, Gov., his conversion, 
 
 237 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allen, drink ruins, 77 
 Poindexter, Senator, 270 
 Pollock, Judge C. A., 187 
 Porto Rico, 288 
 
 Prize ring and abstinence, 51-53 
 Proprietors, abstainers, 103 
 Prohibition wave sixty years ago, 
 
 172 
 
 Prohibition War, 307-309 
 Prohibition National Constitu- 
 tional passed by Senate, 303; 
 by the House, 303 
 
378 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Prohibition and foreign coun- 
 tries, 321, 326; value of, 268 
 
 R 
 
 Railroads against drink, 82; 
 maintain bars, 85 
 
 Reed bone dry amendment, 299 
 
 Religion basis of all Temperance 
 Society, 364; of W. C. T. U. 
 party prohibitionists, Good 
 templars, Anti-Saloon League, 
 366-370 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, closes Sun- 
 day saloons, 1 93-207; demands 
 war prohibition, 213; favors 
 National Constitutional pro- 
 hibition, 213; on badness of 
 saloon, 213; sues scandal- 
 monger, 208, 209 
 
 Sailors and abstinence, by Ad- 
 miral Dewey, 115 
 
 Saloon and crime by Joseph 
 Choate, 120 
 
 Sewer Gang Tragedy, 28-32 
 
 Scientific instruction in schools, 
 
 343 
 
 Scientific Temperance Federa- 
 tion, 257 
 
 Shafroth, Senator, 262 
 
 Sheppard, Morris, 256, 304 
 
 Sleeper, Gov., 282 
 
 Smith, Senator Hoke, a pro- 
 hibitionist in Georgia, 218 
 
 Smith, Senator W. A., 281 
 
 Sons of Temperance, 360 
 
 Soldiers, abstinence for, in 
 
 Solid, South, Why, 257 
 
 Soul blighted by drink, 373 
 
 South Carolina, 249 
 
 South Dakota, 278 
 
 Spence, B. H., 313 
 
 Steel manufacturers against 
 drink, 88-92 
 
 Stelzle, Chas, 101 
 
 Stewart, Gov. S. V., 276 
 
 Stockard, Dr. and guinea pigs, 
 41 ; on alcohol and life organs, 
 46-48 
 
 Stoddard, W. O., testimony to 
 Lincoln abstinence, 138-146 
 
 Temperance societies, 361 
 
 Tennessee, 233 
 
 Texas, 254 
 
 Thomas, Senator, of Col., 262 
 
 Townsend, Senator C. E., 281 
 
 Utah, 283 
 
 Virginia, 246 
 
 U 
 
 W 
 
 War prohibition favored by 
 Roosevelt, 213 
 
 Washington City dry, 220, 281, 
 298 
 
 Washington, State of, 266 
 
 Webb-Kenyon bill, 294; Justice 
 White declares constitutional, 
 296 
 
 Webb, Congressman, N. Y., 232, 
 297 
 
 West, prohibition in, 259-272 
 
 West Virginia, 245 
 
 Westerville Church memorable 
 meeting in, 338 
 
 Wheeler, Wayne B., 296 
 
 White, Wm. Allen, on prohibi- 
 tion in Kansas, 184 
 
 Whittier, abstainer, 75 
 
 Willard, Miss Frances, 341 
 
 Willard, Jess, abstainer, 51 
 
 Wilson, President, stops brewer- 
 ies, 310; signs War Prohibition 
 Bill, 310 
 
 Withycombe, Gov., 264 
 
 Woman's Christian Temperance 
 Union, 341 
 
 Woman's Suffrage, 346 
 
INDEX 379 
 
 Woman, drinking in Europe, 324 "World War friendly to it, 335 
 
 World Wide Prohibition and World War magnifies moral 
 
 Democracy, Lincoln prophe- questions, 335 
 sies it, 167-168 
 
 World Wide Prohibition League, 2 
 333; American success en- 
 courages, 333 Zone, War, 310 
 

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