The "Baxter Law"--Its injustice--Appetite is not controlled by
legislation--Indictments--What they amount to--"Not guilty"--The
Indianapolis police--The Rushville grand jury--Start home afoot--Fear--The
coming head-light--A desire to end my miserable existence--"Now is the
time"--A struggle in which life wins--Flight across the fields--Bathing in
dew--Hiding from the officers--My condition--Prayer--My unimaginable
sufferings--Advised to lecture--The time I began to lecture.
It has been but a few years since the Legislature of Indiana passed what is
known as the "Baxter Liquor Law." Among the provisions of that law was one
which declared that "any person found drunk in a public place should be
fined five dollars for every such offense, and be compelled to tell where
he got his liquor." It was further declared that if the drunkard failed to
pay his fine, etc., he should be imprisoned for a certain number of days or
weeks. This had no effect on the drunkard, unless it was to make his
condition worse. Appetite is a thing which can not be controlled by a law.
It may be restrained through fear, so long as it is not stronger than a
man's will, but where it controls and subordinates every other faculty it
would be useless to try to eradicate or restrain it by legislation. When a
man's appetite is stronger than he is, it will lead him, and if it demands
liquor it will get it, no matter if five hundred Baxter laws threatened the
drunkard. Man, powerless to resist, gives way to appetite; he gets drunk;
he is poor and has no money to pay his fine; the court tells him to go to
jail until an outraged law is vindicated. In the meantime the man has a
wife and (it may be) children; they suffer for bread. The poor wife still
clings to her husband and works like a slave to get money to pay his fine.
She starves herself and children in order to buy his freedom. You will say:
"The man had no business to get drunk." But that is not the point. He needs
something very different from a Baxter law to save him from the power of
his appetite. Besides, the law is unjust. The rich man may get just as
drunk as the poor man, and may be fined the same, but what of that? Five
dollars is a trifle to him, so he pays it and goes on his way, while his
less fortunate brother is kicked into a loathsome cell. There never has
been, never can, and never will be a law enacted that prevent men from
drinking liquor, especially those in whom there is a dominant appetite for
it. The idea of licensing men to sell liquor and punishing men for drinking
it is monstrous. To be sure, they are not punished for drinking it in
moderation, but no man can be moderate who has such an appetite as I have.
Why license men to sell liquor, and then punish others for drinking it?
What sort of sense or justice is there in it, anyhow? There is a double
punishment for the drunkard, and none for the liquor-seller. The sufferings
consequent on drinking are extreme, and no punishment that the law can
inflict will prevent the drunkard from indulging in strong drink if his own
far greater and self-inflicted punishment is of no avail.
When a man has become a drunkard his punishment is complete. Think of law
makers enacting and making it lawful, in consideration of a certain amount
of money paid to the State, for dealers in liquors to sell that which
carries darkness, crime, and desolation with it wherever it goes! The
silver pieces received by Judas for betraying his master were honestly
gotten gain compared with the blood money which the license law drops
into the State's treasury--license money. What money can weigh in the
balance and not be found wanting where starved and innocent children,
broken-hearted mothers and sisters, and deserted, weeping wives are in the
scale against it? Mothers, look on this law licensing this traffic, and
then if you do not like it cease to bring forth children with human
passions and appetites, and let only angels be born.
After the passage of this law making drunkenness an offense to be fined, I
had all the law practice I could attend to in keeping myself out of its
meshes and penalties. It kept me busy to avoid imprisonment--for I was
drunk nearly all the time. I was indicted twenty-two times. But it is fair
to say that in a majority of cases these indictments were found by men in
sympathy with me, and whose chief object in having me arrested was to
punish the men who sold me liquor. Another mistake! It is next to
impossible to get a drunkard to tell where he got his liquor. Half the time
he himself does not know where he got it. I never indicted a saloon keeper
in my life. The sale of liquor has been legalized, and so long as that is
the case I would blame no man for refusing to tell where he got his liquor.
A law that permits an appetite for whisky to be formed, and then punishes
its victim after money, health, and reputation are all gone, is a barbarous
injustice. Instead of making a law that liquor shall not be sold to
drunkards, better enact a law that it shall be sold only to drunkards. Then
when the present generation of drunkards has passed away, there will be no
more. I succeeded in escaping from the penalty of the indictments found
against me. I plead, in most instances, my own case, and once or twice,
when so drunk that I could not stand up without a chair to support me, I
succeeded by resorting to some of the many tricks known to the legal
fraternity, in wringing from the jury a verdict of "not guilty."
But all this was anything but amusing. I have never made my sides sore
laughing about it. The memory of it does not wreath my face in smiles. It
is madness to think of it. I lived in a state of perpetual dread. When in
Indianapolis the sight of the police filled me with fear. And here a word
concerning the Indianapolis police. There are, doubtless, in the force some
strictly honorable, true, and kind-hearted men--and these deserve all
praise. But, if accounts speak true, there are others who are more
deserving the lash of correction than many whom they so brutally arrest.
Need they be told that they have no right to kick, or jerk, or otherwise
abuse an unresisting victim? Are they aware of the fact that the fallen are
still human, and that, as guardians of the peace, they are bound to yet be
merciful while discharging their duties? I have heard of more than one
instance where men, and even women, were treated on and before arriving at
the station house as no decent man would treat a dog. Such policemen are
decidedly more interested in the extra pay they get on each arrest than in
serving the best interests of the community. Many a poor man has been
arrested when slightly intoxicated, and driven to desperation by the
brutality of the police, that, under charitable and kind treatment, would
have been saved. And I wish to ask a civilized and Christian people, if it
is just the thing to take a man afflicted with the terrible disease of
drunkenness, and thrust him into a loathsome, dirty cell? Would it not be
not only more human, but also more in accord with the spirit of our
intelligent and liberal age, to convey him to a hospital? I leave the
discussion of this subject to other and abler hands.
At one time the grand jury at Rushville met and found a number of
indictments against me. I was drunk at the time, but by some means learned
that an officer had a writ to arrest me. I started at once to go to my
father's. I was without means to get a conveyance, and so I started afoot
out the Jeffersonville railroad. I had then been drunk about one month, and
was bordering on delirium tremens. After walking a mile or more, my boot
rubbed my foot so that I drew it off and walked on barefooted. My feelings
can not be imagined. Fear and terror froze my blood. The night came on dark
and dismal, and a flood of bitter, wretched thoughts swept over me,
crushing me to the earth. Before me in the distance appeared the head-light
of an engine. It seemed to look at me like a demon's eye, and beckon me on
to destruction. I heard voices which whispered in my ears--"now is the
time." A shudder crept over me. Should I end my miserable existence? I knew
that a train of cars was coming. I could lie down on the track, and no one
would ever know but I had been accidentally killed. Then I thought of my
father, and brothers, and sisters, and as a glimpse of their suffering
entered my mind, I felt myself held back. A great struggle went on between
life and death. It ended in favor of life, and I fled from the railroad. I
soon lost my way and wandered blindly over the fields and through the woods
all that night. I was perishing for liquor when daylight came. In order to
assuage my burning appetite I climbed over a fence, and, picking up a
dirty, rusty wash-pan which had been thrown away, I drank a quart of water
which I dipped from a horse-trough. My skin was dry and parched, and my
blood was in a blaze. When I came to grassy plots I lay down and bathed my
face in the cold dew, and also bared my arms and moistened them in the
cool, damp grass.
When the sun came up over the eastern tree-tops I found that I was about
ten miles from Rushville. After stumbling on for some time longer I found
my way to Henry Lord's, a farmer with whom I was acquainted. He gave me a
room in which I lay hidden from the officers for two days and nights. From
this place I went to my father's, and although the officers came there two
or three times, I escaped arrest. It is impossible to give the reader the
faintest idea of my condition. Without money, clothes, or friends, an
outcast, hunted like a wild beast, I had only one thing left--my horrible
appetite, at all times fierce and now maddening in the extreme. My hands
trembled, my face was bloated, and my eyes were bloodshot. I had almost
ceased to look like a human. Hope had flown from me, and I was in complete
despair. I moved about over my father's farm like one walking in sleep, the
veriest wretch on the face of the earth. My real condition not unfrequently
pressed upon me until, in an agony of desperation, I would put my swollen
hands over my worse than bloated face and groan aloud, while tears scalding
hot streamed down over my fingers and arms. I staid at home a number of
days. At first I had no thought of quitting drink. I was too crazed in mind
to think clearly on any subject. After two or three days, I became very
nervous for lack of my accustomed stimulants; then I got so restless that I
could not sleep, and for nights together I scarcely closed my aching eyes.
Long as the days seemed, the nights were longer still. At the end of two
weeks I began to have a more clear or less muddied conception of my
condition, and a faint hope came to me that I might yet conquer the
appetite which was taking me through utter ruin of body, to the eternal
death of body and soul. The reader must not think that I thought I could by
my own strength save myself. I prayed often and fervently. However strange
it may sound it is nevertheless true, that, notwithstanding the degraded
life I have lived, I have covered it with prayer as with a garment, and
with as sincere prayer, too, as ever rose from the lips of pain and sin. My
unimaginable sufferings have impelled me to seek earnestly for an escape
from the torments which go out beyond the grave. None can ever be made to
realize how much pain and agony I experienced during these first weeks I
spent at home and abstained from liquor, nor can any know how much I
resisted. At that time I had not the least thought of lecturing. Many
times, when getting over a spree, I had, in the presence of people, given
expression to the agonies that were consuming me, and at such times I did
not fail to pay my respects to alcohol in a way (the only way) it deserves.
My friends advised me to lecture on temperance, and I now began to think of
their words. Was it my duty to go forth and tell the world of the horrors
of intemperance, and warn all people to rise against this great enemy? If
so, I would gladly do it. I began to prepare a lecture. It would help me to
pass away the time, if nothing more came of it. It has been nearly four
years since I delivered that lecture. I will give a history of my first
effort and succeeding ones, with what was said about me, in the next
chapter.