THE RUM POWER.
Most people have heard of the man who in a difficulty with a vicious
bull finally got the animal by the tail. He could not hurt the brute,
yet he did not dare to let go, so he was slung about most unmercifully,
and at last accounts he was still being slung. The bull was in the
wrong, the man in the right; still he had the animal only by the tail:
instead of quieting or frightening the brute, he merely made him angry
and was severely punished for his well-meant efforts.
The people of the United States in their contest with the rum power are
in the position of the man with the bull. The rum power is in the wrong;
the people are in the right, yet they have the monster only by the tail,
so they only worry him and make misery for themselves.
It is not necessary to recount the harm done individuals and families by
the liquor traffic. Almost every charge that the most rabid
prohibitionist makes can be substantiated by a thousand men who sell
liquor, aside from what total abstainers may know or believe or
imagine.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE HON. POTTER PALMER.]
Bishop Warren, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, is not an excitable
man, but he does not overstate the truth at all when he says:
“Innumerable are the crimes of dolorous and accursed ages, and a
fruitful source of them all is intemperance. It robs the body of its
strength, the senses of their delicacy, the mind of its acuteness, the
spirit of its life. It fires every passion, makes every base appetite
the master of mind and will, leaves man an utter wreck. Of its work
there are frightful statistics of robberies, arsons, murders,
insanities, and curses to the third and fourth generations; but there
are no statistics that can measure the heartbreaks of wives, hungers of
children, disappointments of fond parents, and physical inheritance of
deterioration and unconquerable appetite. It is the one great, stark,
crying curse of our race and age. It is the personal foe of every
parent, Sunday-school teacher, and preacher of righteousness.”
Miss Frances Willard, who is doing more successful temperance work than
any man who is in the same field at present, states the case as
earnestly as Bishop Warren, and with the extra force which figures
always give--figures which no one contradicts because no one can. She
says: “No man of the smallest intelligence can be ignorant of the fact
that the saloon is to-day the chief destructive force in society; that
the cumulative testimony of judge, jury, and executive officers of the
law declares that fifty per cent. of the idiocy and lunacy, eighty per
cent. of the crimes, and ninety per cent. of the pauperism come from
strong drink; that the saloon holds the balance of power in almost every
city of ten thousand inhabitants; that it is the curse of workingmen and
the sworn foe of home.”
It isn’t necessary, either, to call attention to the harm done free
institutions at election times by the influence of rum. The late
“Petroleum” Nasby, whom all of us knew for a lovable fellow and an able
editor, once consumed a gallon of whiskey a day on the average. When he
stopped drinking he wrote a series of temperance editorials, concluding
with the words “Paralyze the rum power.” “Pete” had been in politics
himself: he knew what the “power” of rum was, and how it was used.
The demoralizing effect of plenty of liquor is so well known that the
first duty of a local campaign manager, no matter of which party, is to
make proper arrangements with rum-shops for supplying free drinks for
the purpose of changing voters’ views. The man who has opinions, no
matter what they may be, is quite likely to modify them if asked when he
is under the influence of a few drinks; and if his liquid consolation is
to be supplied at the expense of some other man, the opinions of the two
are likely to be in entire accord before the transaction is concluded.
Votes are easier purchased with rum than with money, no matter how large
the sum that may be at the disposal of any political boss or ward
committee. The public heard, a few years ago, to its horror, that an
important State had been carried for the victorious party by a general
distribution of new two-dollar bills. The truth is, as any one can learn
by visiting the districts which then were close in the State alluded to,
that a great deal more money than the entire number of two-dollar bills
amounted to had previously been expended in rum-shops to which men who
were willing to listen to what was called “a fair presentation of
conflicting views” could be persuaded to come. Liquor is cheaper in the
western States than in large cities. It is worse, too. A little of it
goes a long way, and the man who will spend an evening in a rum-shop in
a rural locality, is equal to any enormity, compared with which an
apparent change of sentiment on political subjects is a mere trifle. As
Channing used to say, “Rum outwits alike the teacher, the man of
business, the patriot, and the legislator.”
Stepping aside from sentiment, and coming down to practical facts, Rev.
Theodore Cuyler says that the liquor question “enters more immediately
into the enrichment or the impoverishment of the national resources than
any question of tariff or currency. More money is touched by the drink
traffic and the effects of the traffic than by any other trade known
among men. The tax upon national resources levied by the bottle is far
heavier than the combined taxes for every object of public well-being.”
Statistics of drink are undoubtedly more appalling than those of the
most bloody and senseless war that the world ever knew. Some that are
published are entirely untrustworthy; a head for reform does not always
mean a head for figures; so figures are often made to lie, like
tombstones. But the truth is bad enough. It is plain to any man who
knows anything about current values that the price of a glass of poor
beer will buy a pound of good bread, and the price of a glass of best
whiskey will buy a pound of the best meat. Yet a great deal more money
goes for beer and whiskey than for bread and meat.
Why?
Depraved appetite, answers the professional moralist. This is the
veriest nonsense, although it is the commonest of the reasons that are
given for inordinate indulgence in stimulants. An appetite, properly
speaking, must be of a fixed nature. There is no drunkard alive who has
a fixed appetite for liquor. The depraved appetite, so-called, is an
occasional manifestation of the influence of long indulgence in
alcoholic stimulants, but it is no more possible to prolong it and make
it a fixed condition of a man’s life than it is for a human being to
make a voyage to the moon.
The first purpose of drink, to any one who is beginning to use liquor,
is to “feel good,” and there is no denying that this is a general
longing in every grade of humanity, from the highest to the lowest. Most
human beings of the lower order are full of physical defects, all the
way from those of the muscles and joints to those of the vital organs
and nerves. If you ask the southern field-hand how he feels, you may
safely bet that he will answer, “pooty porely,” and to get relief from
his aches and pains he resorts to liquor, whenever he can get it. The
Indian is another specimen of the man who wants to “feel good.” He is
supposed to be physically a splendid child of nature, but he seldom is
without some serious functional disorder or inherited curse of the flesh
which makes him the willing slave of any stimulant he can get. A great
host of unfortunates who have come to the United States from other lands
are practically in the same condition; starved, abused, and underfed for
generations and centuries, a glass of rum is to them like the touch of
an angel, and a jugful is the equivalent of a heavenly host. There is no
sense in talking about “depraved appetites” when you contemplate these
people, from whom come the mass of the rumseller’s customers.
The second strong impulse to drink is like unto the first; it is to
“brace up.” Human nature is either a dreadfully weak machine, or one
which the majority persist in overworking. Men’s energies, spurred by
their necessities, too often outrun their strength; then stimulation
will be resorted to if it is at hand. It is quite true to say there is
more strength, and stimulus too, in a loaf of bread or pound of meat
than in a glass of liquor; but the food works slowly; the liquor works
quickly. There are drinkers almost innumerable among the better classes,
who use liquor medicinally, as literally as other men use quinine. Their
liquor habit never is an indulgence; they would as lieve take some other
stimulant were it equally convenient and effective, but they do not know
of any; neither do their doctors.
When men feel the need of stimulation, yet dread the use of alcohol,
they will search for help somewhere else. With the nominal decay of the
rum influence in the United States some years ago, began the enormous
sale of bitters, anodynes, narcotics, stimulants, nerve foods, brain
foods, and other nostrums of similar purpose, with which the advertising
columns of a great many newspapers, including most of the religious
weeklies, were filled, as some are at the present time. In the city of
New York, where there is one rum shop to every thirty families, it is
not a common experience to smell opium or chloral in the breath of the
man next you in church or street-car or business resort. But in the
State of Maine, which has had more experience with close prohibition
than all the other States of the Union combined, it is hard to go into
any community of men without being made cognizant of the fact that
resort to these stimulants is quite common in that virtuous State. I do
not say this in contempt of Maine’s effort to get rid of liquor. The
prohibition movement in Maine has done incalculable good in some
directions. There is no other State in the Union in which young men have
never been invited into bar-rooms, and do not know what public
opportunity for drinking is.
Do I mean to say that alcoholic stimulants are absolute necessities of
life? No; I do not, but--don’t underrate the meaning of that little
word--but the majority of our voters do, and majorities rule in this
country. There is altogether too much indulgence and drunkenness--too
much yielding to the desire to “feel good.” The use of alcohol in large
quantities has a bad effect upon the character and conduct of anyone;
the temperance men will give you all the dreadful statistics you like as
to the part rum plays in filling our jails, poorhouses and insane
asylums, and God himself would shudder to tell us how many homes it
ruins--how many widows and orphans it makes. On a division of the
subject which is out of the province of statisticians, physicians will
admit that more sexual immorality comes from rum than all other causes
combined. There is no fear of overstating the aggregate bad effects of
over-indulgence in liquor--it is beyond the power of words or figures to
overstate it.
Having admitted that the curse of rum in the United States is quite as
great as any moralist or prohibitionist has ever asserted, it follows
that some remedy is necessary, and the question naturally occurs, What
shall it be?
The almost unanimous reply will be, Control the demon by law. The
majority of law-abiding citizens are quite willing to admit that this
should be done, but the question arises and becomes more urgent year by
year, What shall the law be? Shall it be in the direction of
prohibition? The experience of several States, Maine no less than
others, is overwhelmingly to the effect that prohibition does not
prohibit. Perhaps not as much liquor is consumed in Maine as if there
were open bars in every town. But anyone who is fond of a glass knows by
experience that it is quite as easy to gratify his tastes in the State
of Maine as it is in the city of New York. Worse still, the stranger
going from another State to Maine, if he has any acquaintances at all in
the prohibition State, is so importuned by hospitable souls, who wish to
make him feel entirely at home, and as comfortable as he might be if he
were in his native city or village, and has set before him liquors in
such variety, that he generally goes to bed with a heavier head and
awakes in the morning with a harder headache than if he had been in the
worst rum-cursed portion of the country.
Have I heard the arguments in favor of prohibition? Well, can anyone
help having heard them? No project ever placed before the public has
been more earnestly and persistently advocated. But where is the sense
of demanding a law against which you know the majority of the people
will be arrayed? Suppose during momentary enthusiasm a State carries a
prohibition law by a small majority, some drinking men themselves being
constrained by their neighbors to vote for the law and against their own
inclinations, how is the law to be maintained? By public opinion. Who
creates public opinion? The majority. But the majority drink, and will
continue to do so for some generations to come, unless all signs fail.
Every State has a law against bribery and corruption of voters. Is
bribery or corruption less common than before the law passed? No; it
becomes worse year by year. Why? Because public opinion dare not and
will not support the law. Personal interest, expressed in party feeling,
winks at its violation--not all the while, but merely every time there
is anything to be gained by it.
Both sides of the prohibition question were well put in a recent
conversation between a prominent prohibitionist and Bishop Foss, of the
Methodist Church, who has worked industriously for years to decrease the
rum influence, but believes restriction is the only means practical.
“Bishop,” said the prohibitionist, “if you saw a rattlesnake in the
street, biting people and destroying human lives, would you kill it, or
try to pen it up?” The bishop replied, “If I had been chasing it up and
down the street for thirty years, trying to kill it but never succeeding
in doing anything but make it uglier, I would consider myself lucky if I
had a chance to pen it up.”
Then should law take the form of restriction? Yes; but immediately the
law-makers discover in the words of some satirist of the past
generation, that a great many men can be found in favor of a certain
provision in law, who are against its enforcement by any method that is
suggested in the form of a bill before any Legislature or Congress. A
restrictive measure immediately affects a great many business interests.
Moralists would like the sale of liquor restricted. Well, so would a
great many liquor dealers. If a poll were taken of the wholesale dealers
in liquors in the United States, regardless of section or environment,
it would be overwhelmingly in favor of limiting the number of rum-shops,
and compelling the sale of only the better class of goods. Perhaps the
wholesale dealers are not philanthropists, but their work is in the
direction of philanthrophy in the respect that they make more money on
old and well-refined liquors, and consequently would prefer that nothing
else should be sold.
Restriction can be attained in no other way except through license laws,
and upon these at once the entire public agree to disagree. A license
law that would regulate the traffic in a large city would be utterly
destructive of the entire retail liquor interests of the country
districts. Consequently the country dealers, through their
representatives in Legislatures, protest strongly against any such
enactment as the famous Scott bill, which was of such great service in
restricting the liquor trade in the State of Ohio. The license exacted
from a retailer in a large city would consume the entire profit of a
country dealer, even if he were the only one in his town. City prices
and country prices are different. It may be also stated upon undoubted
authority, for the information of prohibitionists and other gentlemen
who have never looked into the practical details of the liquor trade for
themselves, that the countryman’s drink compares with that of the city
man about as a full bath-tub does to a basin of water.
After restriction, and lowest, though not least important, among the
list of reformatory measures, comes the principle of regulation. Can the
liquor trade be regulated? Should it be regulated in the interest of
morality and the public safety? Yes. We regulate everything
else--absolutely everything--that affects the safety of humanity. We
stipulate by law or special license where dynamite factories shall be
located, how dynamite shall be transported, where it shall be stored,
how it shall be sold, and every other stage of the trade in this
dangerous yet useful article of commerce. We regulate the trade in
gunpowder; there are very few States in which any minor is allowed to
purchase any quantity of gunpowder or any other explosive. We regulate
the sales of poisonous medicines, no matter how useful they may be,
forbidding the chemist to sell them except on a physician’s order, and
we make him keep them specially classified, and label every package or
bottle or box of them which he sells, and to record the name of the
purchaser. We regulate even the speed of horses in large cities;
although every man is supposed to be able to take his ease and pleasure
with a horse and carriage if he can afford them or hire them, in all
large communities it is required that he shall not drive at more than a
certain pace. None of these regulations are regarded as abridgements of
personal liberty. All of them are admitted to be necessary precautions
for the good of the entire community.
Unfortunately the principal opposition to regulation, which is the
easiest and most practicable method of reducing the dangers of the rum
traffic, comes not from rum-drinkers themselves, but from those who
never consume any liquor--I mean the prohibitionists. Their principle
seems to be the old, big-hearted, but utterly impracticable one of “a
whole loaf or none.” In a number of recent local and State elections, in
which the regulation of the liquor traffic was concerned, the
prohibitionists usually voted with the advocates of free rum, not that
they love liquor or liquor dealers, but that unless they could have
their own way they preferred to leave things as they were before. Their
purpose, as nearly as it can be discovered, was that the more fearful
condition society could be brought to by the free use of rum, the sooner
would society protest strongly against it and take “the only true view,”
this being the prohibitionist’s modest way of putting his own opinion.
The Russian Nihilists, whom everybody detests, work on the same
principle;--things can’t be better until they have first been as bad as
they can.
The present influence of rum in the United States upon morals, manners,
society, and politics, must be charged upon those who have labored most
earnestly to lessen it. Again I allude to the prohibitionists. They have
discouraged every practical effort to abate the evils of the use of
liquor. They have regarded all restrictive or regulative measures about
as Mr. Garrison once regarded the Constitution of the United States in
its relations to slavery--as a compact with the devil. The time must
come when it will be not only unfashionable but indecorous and degrading
for any man to use liquor, except in cases of sickness; but when that
time comes the people will owe no thanks whatever to those who have
talked most against the influence of rum. Once more, and for the last
time, I allude to the prohibitionists.