My fellow-citizens, those who assert that the drug stores have been
transformed into saloons, or that drinking and drunkenness have
increased in Kansas, ought to know that they are not telling the truth.
There is not an intelligent, observing man in Kansas who does not know
that drinking and drunkenness have been enormously diminished in this
State during the past five years. It is no doubt true that liquor is
sold in many places, in violation of law. But no intelligent, truthful
man, who knows what the condition of affairs was six or eight years ago,
and is to-day, will deny that a great reform has already been
accomplished. I have traveled over the State a great deal during the
past two years. I have attended public meetings in a hundred different
towns and cities—political meetings, soldiers’ reunions, fairs and other
gatherings, at which from 3,000 to 50,000 people were assembled—and it
is one of the rarest of things to see a single person under the
influence of liquor. I have heard hundreds of people speak of this
remarkable fact, and always with satisfaction and pride. Wherever the
saloon has been banished, nineteen-twentieths of all the drinking and
drunkenness prevailing have been abolished with it. The social feature
of the drinking habit goes with the saloon, and this social feature—the
American habit of treating—is responsible for nine-tenths of all the
drinking and drunkenness in America. The loafing-place the saloon
afforded, with its crowd of hangers-on, has gone with the saloon. The
bad example set before young boys, the allurements of good-fellowship
which tempted so many, the appetite developed and nurtured by
treating—all these have gone with the saloon. And yet, not to-day, nor
next year, nor for a decade to come, will all the good results of this
abolition of the saloon be realized. The old generation of drinkers
will, many of them, probably continue to get liquor in some way—but
their boys, our boys, all the happy, hopeful, bright-eyed and
rosy-cheeked young fellows who are growing up on the prairies of Kansas,
will grow to manhood untempted by the social allurements of the saloon,
soberer, healthier, happier men than their fathers were.