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6 CLINTON HOWARD’S CLUSTER OE GEMS “AN INDICTMENT OF THE CRIMINAL AND A REMEDY FOR THE CRIME.” BRILLIANT BLISTERING ARRAIGNMENT OF THE SALOON BY THE LITTLE GIANT FROM ROCHESTER, DELIVERED AT THE BIENNAL CONVENTION OF THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE OF AMERICA, COLUMBUS, OHIO, NOVEMBER 13, 1913. NTI-SALOON League! Why Anti-Saloon? Why not anti-grocery, anti-dry goods league? Why not anti-furniture, anti-bread, anti-meat, anti coal and iron league? Why single out this one trait, this one commodity, this one institution and name that as the reason for the assembling of this national convention? Anti-saloon! Who is against it? The Church is against it. The school is against it, the home is against it; the scientific world, the industrial world, the civic world, the military world, every world-wide interest on earth except the underworld, the immoral world, the world of sin and crime, cries “Away with alcohol! Away, away with these licensed distributing centers of sin. Down with the saloon.” Why the saloon? What is a saloon? By a saloon, I mean the saloon, by the saloon I mean the brewery and distillery, by the brewery and distillery I mean the organized traffic in rum, wholesale, retail and cocktail; the pocket peddler, the blind tiger, the blind pig, the speak-easy, the joint, the saloon, the hotel bar, the high-toned case, the swell club buffet, the bishop’s subway, brewer and beelzebub, distiller and devil; in one word —the saloon! What is this traffic in rum? “The devil in solu tion,” said Sir Wilfred Lawson, and he was right. “Distilled damnation,” said Robert Hall, and he was right. “Artist in human slaughter,” said Lord Ches terfield, and he was right. “Poisoner’s General, driv ing men to hell like sheep,” said John Wesley, and he was right. “More destructive than war, pestilence and famine,” said Wm. E. Gladstone, and he was right. “Cancer in human society, eating out its vi tals and threatening its destruction,” said Abraham Lincoln, and he was right. • Ruinous and Degrading. “The most ruinous and degrading of all human pur suits,” said William McKinley, and he was right. “The most criminal and artistic method of assassi nation ever invented by the bravoes of any age or nation,” said John Ruskin, and he was right. “The most prolific hotbeds of anarchy, vile politics, pro fane ribaldry, and unspeakable sensuality,” said Dr. Chas. H. Parkhurst, and he was right. “A public, permanent and übiquitous agency of degradation,” said Cardinal Manning, and he was right. “A busi ness that tends to lawlessness on the part of the one who conducts it and to criminality on the part of those who patronize it,” said Theodore Roosevelt, and he was right. “A business that tends to produce idle ness, disease, pauperism and crime,” said the United States Supreme Court, and it is right.'- “That damn ed stuff, called alcohol,” said Robt. G. Ingersoll, and he was right. “Hell perpetuator and hell-populator,” said Henry Ostrom, and he was right. This is not very fragrant, but you can not expect the perfume of roses when a pole-cat is on the dis secting table. It is the universal verdict of humanity against the liquor traffic. This is the indictment, the saloon is the criminal, the people are the victims, God is the judge, science, reason, religion, experience and motherhood are the jury, and the verdict is guilty in every unprejudiced, unpurchasable and just court. The public verdict has been made up. The saloon stands condemned to death by the American people. All that is now required to lay the licensed liquor traffic in the grave that knows no wakening, as eter nally dead as is humane bondage under the flag of liberty, is that its enemies shall become united and agree upon the method of its execution. The character and scope of the remedy must de pend altogether upon the nature and extent of the disease. If it is a local evil, affecting some part of the body, whether human or politic, then let us have a local remedy; but if it is an organic evil, if it pol lutes the blood, rots the heart, paralyzes the nerve centers and deranges the mind; if, as Abraham Lin coln said, “It is a cancer in human society, eating out its vitals and threatening its destruction,” then THE GOLDEN AGE FOR WEEK OF DEC. 18, 1913 the surgeon’s knife, instead of the powder puff, dyna mite instead of a game of dominence crowning God or devil king, according to the shift of the game; radium instead of rose water. A Constitutional Evil. A constitutional evil requires a constitutional rem edy. Away then with powders and pills, pepper mint and pipiseway; for this physical leprosy, moral meii.ngitis, mental hydrophobia and criminal civic exerescence all in one, conceived in sin, shaped in iniquity, bom in bastardy, nurtured upon impurity, wedded to harlotry and mother of anarchy, give us the surgeon’s knife. We must cut this cancer out. No matter what has been our methods of warfare in the past, we can no longer be content with trimming here and there a branch, of closing here and there a saloon, of casting it out of this ward and out of that town and county, where the people do not want it, a bare majority of the most ignorant, immoral and and consent to leave it for another two years where criminal men, part of the people, do. From that school of conflict we graduate in this national convention. To let the saloon live anywhere, on any condition, at any price, whether by license, regulation, substitution, local option or nullification, is the remedy of perdition; to kill it is the divine remedy for sin. Only One Solution. Since the world began, prohibition is the one so lution. Prohibition in the Garden of Eden, against rich Satan beguiled the first man to sin; Prohibi tion at Mt. Sinai, when God wrote with his finger upon the tables of stone the eternal “Thou shalt nots” that are the foundation of all criminal juris prudence; Prohibition when the Christ was manifest ed the works of the devil; Prohibition in the tem ple when he drove them out with the scourge of cords, Prohibition when Satan was cast out of heav en, not on the installment plan, but in one grand division, like lightening; Prohibition is the divine plan. Confirmed by the Christ when he said, “If thine hand or thine foot offend thee, cut it off.” Not the corn upon the toe, but the foot; not the wart upon the finger but the hand. “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Not the wild winkers, but the eye.” Every plant which my heavenly father hath not plant ed, shall be rooted up.” “And now also is the ax laid at the root of the tree;” not the twig or the branch, but the root. “An evil tree is hewn down and cast into the fire.” “Go ye, and tell that fox; behold, 1 cast out devils.” It is the divine plan. The only solution that will work in operation, is national extermination. In saying this, we can say with Paul, “For I know and I am persuaded;” and we can say with the Christ, “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen.” We have seen (>verv other pl in in operation, license and regulation. f|||| HON. CLINTON N. HOWARD A wizard of eloquence and oratory. restriction, and state dispensary, and knowledge founded upon experience has eliminated them from the plans of practicable men. We are now ready for the one solution; an exten sion of the battle line to the last entrenchment of the enemy; Constitutional Prohibition for the Nation. This is no criticism upon the workers and methods of the past. Every experiment to curb the saloon,, actuated by sincere and honest endeavor, has been a step in the direction of its final dissolution. It has cleared the field for the final charge. We are the children of experience; every fall teaches a child to stand; every step backward is a step forward; out of the darkness came the light; out of chaos came creation; out of sin came redemption; and out of low license and high license, regulation, substitution ? subway and local option, will come Prohibition for the nation. This is our remedy for the crime. What shall we say then ? Shall we continue in sire that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we who are dead to sin continue any longer therein? There is no excuse for falling after we have learned to stand: there is no excuse for our going back wards after we have learned to walk forward; there is no excuse for continuing the walk in darkness after we have once obtained the light; and there care be no excuse for our consenting to the saloon any where in the hope that by so doing we may hasten its abolition everywhere. Therefore, w y e can consent to no solution for the saloon that will consent to the saloon, on any terms,, on any condition, at any price, at any time, in any place, by the will of the minority or the will of the majority. We deny the right of the majority of the men, ire opposition to the almost united protest of the wo men, and nearly one half of the men, to plant a sa loon on the block where we have built the house that shelters our children. We deny the right of the majority of the men to put such an institution in our ward, or in our city, county or state. We deny the right of the majority anywhere to do wrong. The only option for which we can stand is the option to wipe the saloon out, with the understand ing that once out, it is forever to remain out. We can never consent to the right of the saloon to come back or the right of the majority of men to* vote the saloon back, after it once has been cast out. Abraham Lincoln denied the right of the majority to put a slave where there was no slaves; we deny the right of the majority to put a saloon where there 1 is no saloon. We go further than that; we deny the right of the majority to keep a saloon where there is a saloon. It is wrong for the majority to> keep a saloon where there is a saloon. We are living over again in the battle against the saloon the same situation that faced our fathers in the contest against slavery. The slave power de manded the right to enslave a black man wherever a majority of white men wanted to enslave him; the Abolitionists denied the right of the majority of the white men to enslave a black man anywhere.. That was the contention fought out in the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglass. Mr. Lincoln said, “Judge Douglass declares that if any community wants slaves, they have a right to have it. He can say that logically if there is no wrong in slavery. But if you admit there is wrong in slavery, he cannot logically say that the majority has a right to do a wrong.” That is exactly our po sition. The saloon is wrong and we deny the right to impose it upon any community. Edmund Burke says, “Not even by a unanimous popular vote can that which is morally wrong be made legally right.” The saloon is wrong; there fore, we not only deny the right of the majority to put a saloon where there is no saloon, or to keep a saloon where there is a saloon; but we deny the- (Continued on Page 13)