There is a cause for the moral paralysis upon society. Our laws sustain
an evil which is sapping their very foundations. Many deplore the
wrongs which they know exist, but consider themselves free from all
responsibility in the matter. This can not be. Every individual exerts
an influence in society. In our favored land, every voter has some
voice in determining what laws shall control the nation. Should not
that influence and vote be on the side of temperance and virtue? The
advocates of temperance fail to do their whole duty unless they exert
their influence, by precept and example, by voice and pen and vote, in
behalf of prohibition and total abstinence. We need not expect that
God will work a miracle to bring about this reform, and thus remove
the necessity for our exertion. We ourselves must grapple this giant
foe, our motto, “No compromise,” and no cessation of our efforts till
victory is gained.--_Mrs. E. G. White._
_Does Prohibition Prohibit?_
“‘Prohibition doesn’t prohibit!’ That phrase has been worn threadbare
by friends of the liquor traffic. They claim that as much liquor
is sold in ‘dry’ districts as in ‘wet.’ Yet they do not look with
indifference upon the strides made by prohibition; they are working
as if the very life of their business depended upon the defeat of
the temperance forces. And it probably does; for every distillery,
brewery, and saloon must have a license before its doors can swing open
for business. In France the liquor dealers found it most profitable to
have no prohibition law; for when the government granted liberty to the
liquor trade, the consumption of alcohol increased nearly one hundred
percent.”--_Temperance Torchlights._
_Some Results of Prohibition_
“I consider the prohibition law in Kansas as worth more to the railroad
men than any other one thing.”--_Superintendent of Santa Fe Railroad._
“The five ‘wettest’ counties of West Virginia have four hundred
fifteen convicts; the other fifty counties have four hundred
thirteen. One-eleventh of the counties furnish one-half of the
convicts.”--_Statistics of 1909._
“There is more hypocritical, illegal selling in license States than
in Maine; for every joint or blind tiger under prohibition in Maine,
there are sixteen blind tigers in licensed New York, plus twenty-seven
thousand State licensed saloons.”--_Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens._
“Atlanta, at the end of 1908, showed 3,903 fewer arrests for
drunkenness, and 8,102 fewer arrests for disorderly conduct--200 fewer
juvenile arrests.”--_Mrs. Mary Harris Armor._
“One-third of our counties are without prisoners in their jails
or paupers in their almshouses; one-half of our counties sent _no
convicts_ to our prisons this year, and one-half of our prison inmates
never lived in Kansas long enough to acquire a residence here.
Churches and schools flourish, the spiritual outlook is hopeful, and
the saloon is practically banished.”--_Governor Hoch, of Kansas, in his
Thanksgiving Message._
ATLANTA, GEORGIA.--“For the first time in its fifteen years of
existence, every cell at the police jail yesterday afternoon was empty.
Not a prisoner was incarcerated, and the turnkeys and matrons were
having a very dull afternoon. The police attribute this remarkable
condition to the prohibition law which went into effect the first day
of the year.”--_Washington Times, Jan. 25, 1908._
* * * * *
“Without one dollar of revenue from the saloon, Maine has a larger
percentage of the total population in the public schools than any other
of the New England States, or New York, with its twenty million dollars
of revenue from the saloon. It has more teachers employed in proportion
to the school population than any other State.
“It is stated by Lady Henry Somerset that in one district in Liverpool,
England, in which there is no saloon, there is but one pauper to every
one thousand inhabitants. In another district, in which there are two
hundred saloons, there is one pauper to every twenty-eight inhabitants.
“Abyssinia has prohibition, and the penalty for taking liquors
into that country is death. In the capital of the country only two
murders have been committed in the last forty years. Smoking is also
prohibited.”--_Temperance Torchlights._