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BARTON BLISTERS “BOOZING” BANKERS
BREEZY STORY OF LIQUOR FIGHT IN WEST POINT, MISS.—STALWART PREACHER-CITIZEN TURNS HIS “GUNS OF THUN
DER” ON PROPOSITION TO HAVE INTOXICANTS AT STATE BANKERS’ CONVENTION.
'a| wIT it well known as the purpose and the
Si*. practice of The Golden Age to crown
noral heroes everywhere—especially
in campaigns where sober manhood
fights the insidious encroachment of the liquor
business. We are glad to have from “A Dry
Traveling Man” the following racy story of
how Rev. L. E. Barton, of West Point, Miss.,
the brilliant younger brother of the great na
tional prohibition leader, Dr. A. J. Barton, of
Texas, unlimbered his pulpit artillery at the
whiskeyized inclinations and mathinations of
some West Point citizens. The editor of The
Golden Age knows West Point, Miss., to be like
West Point. Ga. —a mighty fine town —and we
hope to record next week the good news that
“booze” was banished from the bankers’ ban
quet.
The Bankers’ Banquet and the Flowery Bowl.
On Sunday night, May 11, Dr. L. E. Barton,
of West Point, Miss., preached on the subject
above. Thereby hangs a tale. The Mississippi
State Bankers’ Association meets in West
Point on May 20, and Barton, who is always
“nosing around” to see what John Barleycorn
has up his sleeve, experienced a terrible shock
to his olfactory nerves, for he learned that
the local committee on arrangements had plan
ned to serve, at the banquet to be given by
the bankers, various and sundry hot and
juicy portions of the “mountain dew” variety.
Dr. Barton is well known in Virginia, Georgia
and Mississippi, where he has labored as a
pastor for the constructive and sanely conser
vative character of his ministry. But when
a great moral issue arises, when a question of
civic righteousness, social purity, or political
purification needs a friend, business picks up
immediately in those parts where Barton oc
cupies. “Taint no use” to expect him to keep
silent. His mouth “just will stay open wide,”
like a city restaurant all night long. So when
that committee on arrangements, headed and
dominated by a gentleman of the Abrahamic
persuasion, who, unlike Abraham, is not too
careful about the Almighty’s will, began to pro
vide for the bibulous occasion, Barton wills, he
“writ” a line, he did, for the local daily, and
told the folks he would make a few feeble
remarks Sunday night on the tame and dry
subject, “The Bankers’ Banquet and the Flow
ery Bowl” Knowing how The Golden Age
HUSKS.
Continued from page 7.)
His father had smiled ironically. Alaric felt
he was amused over the contrast between his
words and the sight of his light, boyish form.
“I can do it,” he cried hotly. “Father, it would
kill me to do as you wish.”
The smile was still in his father’s eyes, al
though it had left his mouth. “Very well,”
he said calmly.
Alaric had fifty dollars in money a,nd a
suit case full of clothes, not such a bad be
ginning for an eighteen year old boy. He
had, too, a greater stock of determination than
his face or figure showed.
He found quite easily a position as Merk in
an art store, and he filled it satisfactorily; but
it left an unexpectedly small margin for his
own individual work. He was too sleepy to
do his evening art class justice, and at the
end of six months he felt that he had really
The Golden Age for May 22, 1913.
stands bravely for clean citizenship and al
ways delights to deal a blow to all forms of
liquor devilment. I asked Barton for an ab
stract of the sermon for your plucky paper and
he lias permitted me to send you the following
as part of what was said:
Banks, Banking and “Boozing.”
“Tn speaking concerning banks and banking,
one would to wish to be thought unfriendly
to what is probably the greatest financial in
terest of our country. The word bank comes
from the German “bank” which signifies a
“bench.” It was formerly the custom to have
a bench on which money was counted and ex
changed. “Bankrupt” signifies the breaking
of the bench. No authority has come into my
hands which gives the origin of banking. But
our Saviour, when speaking to an unfaithful
servant, in one of his parables, said: “Thou
ought therefore to have put my money to the
exchangers and then at my coming I should
have received mine own with usury,” or with
interest as the word signifies.
Tn this reference he reveals the antiquity of
the custom and indicates his approval of the
institution. According to the statistics of 1905,
there were, in the United States, more than
sixteen thousand banking and trust compan
ies, with an invested capital of about one and
a half billion dollars. The national banks alone
paid from Sept. 1, 1904, to March 1, 1905, (six
months) thirty-seven millions in dividends, and
showed net earnings for the same time of fifty
seven millions. These figures easily show that
banking is one of the greatest interests of our
country.
We want the bankers to come to our city.
We want to entertain them in away that
will be creditable to our town and pleasant
to them, but they shall not be entertained
over the flowing bowl without my moral pro
test being entered.
I urge that all intoxicating drinks ought to
be eliminated from that banquet for the fol
lowing reasons:
1. It violates, at least, the spirit of our
statewide prohibition law. We are a prohibi
tion people by the overwhelming will of the
majority.
2. It violates the spirit if not the letter
of the Webb law, which makes intoxicants
gained very little. It took all his wages to
live and even then his boarding place was gal
lingly prossaic. His clothes were growing
shabby and ambition did not seem to thrive
on shabbiness. He decided he must find some
thing that would pay better than his first sit
uation.
He congratulated himself that, almost with
out seeking, what he wished for came to him—
a position in which he could earn more, rise
more quickly, give more time to his beloved art.
Alas, for unsophisticated ideal loving youth!
He was plunged, unwarned, into new expenses,
new desires, new temptations.
It was hard to refuse to borrow money when
so many willing hands seemed holding it out
to him to be borrowed. He had tried to be
good, to be true to himself, but the situation
had seemed to prove itself too much for him to
cope with. He knew tonight, he had not been
good. It was five years since he had left his
subject to state enactment in prohibition ter
ritory.
«/
3. It will misrepresent the great majority
of the members of the Bankers’ Association.
Those when who come as our guests are in the
main law-abiding, sober, God-fearing men.
They do not drink liquor or indorse the drink
ing of it
4. It misrepresents our local bankers, who
are nearly all church members and prohibi
tionists in sentiment.
5. It will misrepresent and traduce our
noble community, which, both in dominant
public sentiment ,and in the person of its mayor
and selectmen, is prohibition to the core.
6. It will set a shameful and shameless ex
ample before our boys.
7. It will misrepresent the homes from
which these bankers come, homes where wives
and mothers work and pray for temperance,
homes whose wives and mothers wear over
their heaving hearts white ribbon bows that
stand for the destruction of the liquor traffic,
the purity of the state, the preservation of the
home, and the salvation of the boys from the
curse of rum, and the saving of our girls from
the lot of being drunkards’ wives.
At the close of the sermon Dr. Barton vol
unteered to go with a committee of citizens
to present a protest to the committee. Vol
unteers came from the laymen, and Monday
morning these laymen met with the pastors at
the city hall and a hearing before the com
mittee was arranged for Monday afternoon.
At that meeting, Barton and the other pas
tors, and all the laymen putt it up to the
committee “good and stout.” They took it
under advisement to report later
But in the meantime, the “council of war”
appointed various committees to ascertain the
sentiments of the local bankers and the Mer
chants’ Association, and also to look into the
legal side of the case. A circuit judge at
Hattiesburg has recently notified the “booze”
crowd in a similar case that he would instruct
the grand jury to indict every one of them
if they served intoxicants in a banquet of like
kind, and that terminated the flowing bowl.
The citizens of West Point do not intend that
a careless and conscienceless minority shall
humiliate their law-abiding community by
public drinking and carousing.”
father’s house; he had grown into a mediocre
artist, and an undisciplined, dissipated man;
had his father been right? Still like a will
o’ the wisp, a Fata Morgana, the hand of his
genius beckoned. Why had be never succeed
ed in touching her, why had he even failed to
keep upon her path? She always eluded him,
and still she beckoned. Suppose he should drop
into that peaceful water and dispel the vision?
‘ He had drifted westward, hundreds of miles
now from his father’s home; was his father
living? Where was little sister Lucy? She
must be a woman now. Had all the members
of his old world forgotten him? Would any
body care if he dropped out? If he kept on.
would he do what he had seen other artists do,
cast aside all vestige of their young manhood’s
dreams, bury them for mete physical satisfac
tion in eating, drinking and being merry, for
tomorrow we—
(Continued on page 16.)