Newspaper Page Text
legs, but there are plenty of old red
nosed demijohns walking around At¬
lanta. Ain’t you sorry for a poor
woman who, every time she goes to
church has to put her tender arm in
the handle of a demijohn ? I put it
in this way: The liquor traffic ought
to be made so odious that nobody
but an infernal scoundrel will sell it,
and nobody but an infernal fool will
drink it. Seperate these liquor deal¬
ers from their liquor and they will be
all right. The Church that will
house a man who sells whiskey is a
detestable fraud. The Church that
will house a man who rents a house
to sell liquor in is a hateful hypocrite.
Some of these Churches in Atlanta
are doing just that thing. If there is
in this vast audience one man or
woman who never had a relative or
a loved one hurt or ruined by whis¬
key, I want him or her to stand up
right now. You have all had a
brother, or a son, or a father, or a
son-in-law, ruined by whiskey. My
goodness, these sons in-law ! I’d
rather have a boa constrictor around
my neck than to have a drunken
son-in law. The devil can’t do any
worse than that. Some of you old
hypocrites that are dilly-dallying with
the whiskey question are going to be
caught just that way. The devil is
going to slip up on you with a drunk¬
en son -in-law, and I’ll bet he will
make you a prohibitionist with a
vengeance.
I look around your village and see
the bar-rooms as thick as the stars in
the heavens. Each one of the three
hundred bars in Atlanta represents at
least ten confirmed drunkards. Three
thousand men in Atlanta across the
line and gone to ruin ! You can
stop it if you want to. Theie are
church members enough in this town
to turn out any day and vote liquor
out of it. You are afraid to do it.
You will let some bar-keeper with an
old rusty pistol cuss and rare around
the polls and scare you home. You
don’t want to have a fuss. Well, I’ll
tell you every good man dreads
fuss, but he don’t fear anything that
walks on the earth. The Church
lays back on the idea that it must
have peace. Old Joshua went out
one day and fought all day long. He
was crowding the enemy when he
looked up and saw the sun going
down. He said: ‘Lord, if you will
just give me three or four more hours
of sunshine I’ll clean these fellows
up off of the face of the earth.’ And
the Lord just made that old sun rack
back on the dial, an I Joshua won a
victory, the fame of which has lasted
until this day. God despises a cow¬
ard. I had rather die at the mouth
of a cannon doing my duty than to
run away from it because I was afraid.
God entrusts all noble causes on this
earth to men who are game.
One enthusiastic, brave man in
each county can carry prohibition in
Georgia. If you haven’t got one in
your county, import one. Talk about
high license for whiskey! I’d as
soon try high license to Iceep small¬
pox off. I don’t want liquor at any
price. If you fathers have sons who
are your pride and your country’s
hope, will give your enthusiasm, your
brains, and your money into this
cause, the day will soon come when
a mother can kiss her boy when he
leaves her side in the morning and
know that he is safe. I want to see
the good people of Atlanta go to the
polls and work like they did in Car
tersville, and this blighting curse will
be lifted from your fair city.”
LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE
WORLD.
Bill Nye Talks About the
Bronze Goddess.
When Patrick Henry put his old
cast-iron spectables back on the top
of his head and whooped for liberty,
he did not know that some day we
would have more of it than we knew
what to do with. He little dreamed
that the time would come when we
would have more liberty than we
could pay for. When Mr. Henry
sawed the air and shouted for liberty
or death, I do not believe that he
knew the time would one day come
when Liberty would stand knee deep
in the mud of Bedioe’s Island and
yearn for a solid place to stand upon
It seems to me that we have too
much liberty in this country in some
ways. We have more liberty than
we have money. We guarantee that
every man in America shall fill him-
self up full of liberty at our expense,
and the less American he is the more
liberty he can have. If he desires to
enjoy himself, all he needs is a slight
foreign accent and a willingness to
mix up with politics as soon as he
can get his baggage off the steamer.
The more I study American institu¬
tions the more I regret that I was
not born a foreigner so that I could
have something to say about the
management of our great land. If I
could not be a foreigner, I believe I
would prefer to be a Mormon or an
Indian not taxed.
I am often led to ask, in the lan¬
guage of the poet, “Is the Caucasian
played out?” Most everybody can
have a good deal of fun m this coun¬
try except an American. He seems
to be so busy paying his taxes all
the time that he has very little time
to mingle in the giddy whirl with the
alien. That is the reason that the
alien who rides across the United
States on the “Limited Mail” and
writes a book about us before break¬
fast wonders why we are always in a
hurry. That is the reason we have
to throw our meals into ourselves
with a dull thud, and hardly have
time to maintain a warm personal
friendship with our families.
We do not care much for wealth
but we must have freedom, and free¬
dom costs money. We have adver
tised to furnish a bunch of freedom
to every man, woman and child who
comes to our shores, and we are go
ing to deliver the goods, whether we
have any left for ourselves or not.
What would the great world beyond
the seas say to us if some day the
blue-eyed Mormon, with his heart
full of love for our female seminaries
and our old women’s homes, should
land upon our coasts and find that we
were using all the liberty ourselves?
Therefore, I am in favor of a stat¬
ute of Liberty Enlightening the World
bacause it will show that we keep it
on tap winter and summer. We want
the whole broad world to remember
that when it gets tired of oppression
it can come here to America and op
press us. We are used to it, and we
can get on the steamer and go abroad,
where we can visit the effete monar¬
chies and have a high old time.