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About The Reason. (Savannah, GA.) 1908-19?? | View Entire Issue (June 27, 1908)
4 England’s greatest men, are strongly advocating a complete revolution in the handling of the liquor traffic so as to bring about changes which will en courage the manufacture of the milder beverages and curtail the use of strong spirits. Many years ago Holland, “the land of gin.’' was cursed with saloons and drunkenness but all this has been changed by the establishment of coffee houses where mild beverages have the right of way. The coffee house is regulated by law. and woe to the proprietor who permits drunkenness, gambling, etc., in his place. He would not only forfeit his license, Imt find himself quickly placed behind prison bars, 'file most stringent regulations are thrown about the dispensing of alcoholic drinks, inebriates are promptly sent to asylums, ami the Holland system is unquestionably the most perfect which states men and reformers can devise. Time was. and that not so very long ago, when people throughout the world were under the erron eous impression that the Southern gentleman always had a whiskey bottle at his <dbow or in his hand, and there was. of course, some slight foundation for this popular misconception of the habits of Southern ' men. As time passed, however, the more enlighten ed and cultured people of our fair Southland awoke to the realization of Hie fact that over indulgence i in alcoholic beverages was injurious and injudicious, and today, no more moderate drinkers can be found anywhere. Hut the negroes and the more ignorant whiles do not seem to have learned this lesson and still drink the strongest liquors they can get. Let us follow the example of the great European thinkers and economists and supply the people with ' a mild and harmless beverage l which will save them i from disaster ami degeneration. Moral and Industrial Reform Opposed. By Albert J. Beverage in Saturday Evening Bost. Aside from the temporary impairment of busi ness which the powerful ones have been able to bring about is a certain inevitable but transient slowing down of business caused by this change from abnormal business conditions to normal busi ness conditions. This is necessarily so in everything. It is so in the ease of a man's health; so in any change of human conditions. It is a period of re adjustment. We are getting everything “on the level. as the masons say. And when once they are gotten on the level, as they soon will be, everybody will be more prosperous and far happier than ever before. This is proved by the fact that English. German and French business is universally conceded to be the soundest ami most conservative in the world, ami yet we have not done nearly so much toward legislating business honesty into law as England has done, and far. very far, less than either France or Germany. And the business of those countries proceeds smoothly, safely and prosperously—far I more prosperously than ours, when we contrast our enormous resources with their comparatively meagre resources. For tin* last year there has been a determined effort not only Io check, but also to turn back this mighty movement for common honesty in trade and righteousness in business upon which the American people have entered. Great forces—the greatest financial forces in history—are determined that it shall be turned back. Master minds —bv far the THE REASON most resourceful in the Republic or in the world have been planing and are planing now to turn it back. Unlimited wealth is at their disposal; the craftiest minds in politics are at work—for the people should know that many men in both parties who are held up to them as models of public ser vants and skillfully portrayed as statesmen are in reality the enemies of this movement, and so the bet ravers of the people. I do not mean that all of them are consciously so. Many of them, raised in the old school of poli tics. really believe that this whole movement is noth ing more than a form of popular insanity. They say privately that “we art 1 in a period of hysteria.’’ They honestly think that this era of reform is a fantastic, wicked nightmare. Who has not heard these men earnestly (but privately always private ly) denounce Roosevelt as a harlequin and a dema gogue. though on the stump and before the people they will praise Roosevelt and Roosevelt's policies? Xow and then a man like Chancellor Day, of Syra cuse ( Diversity, has tin l courage to say quite openly , what these others say quite privately. Other courag eous men like ex-Governor Black, of Xew York, sneak with contempt about “the man on the barrel head.’’ But these bold ones are not so dangerous to reform as the (‘rattier and more cowardly ones who confine their criticism to private utterance and in public declare themselves “in line with the move ment,” and who. concealing their real opinions, await the day when they can turn back the hands of the clock of time. All these men the kings of finance who respect not the rights of the* great mass of ordinary and honest business men; tin* great interests that refuse Io recognize the new ethics of business which com mand them to consider the welfare of the people; their paid lawyers, who invent cunning arguments to show that all the laws we propose are unconsti tutional; and most dangerous of all. the politician of the old school who believes the whole movement to be nothing more than a spasm—all these are uniting to fight the movement. Sometimes they voice their purpose publicly in most plausible phrase. For example, we hear it said that “we should do no more until we see how that which we have already dom* will work.” But what would you think of a. man who, when you were building a house, would tell you to stop and live in it and see how you liked it before the plaster was on the walls, the win dows in their frames or the roof shingled? I do not think that this historic movement will be turned back. It has been checked, it is true; for the moment it is almost at a standstill; but it will gather new force again and sweep forward till it is done. There were times during the Civil War when the best of men grew faint of heart and said: “Let the erring sisters go;” and in the midst of that con flict a great national party actually adopted a plat form which declared that the war was a failure. There were times, such as the winter at Valley Forge, when our war for independence seemed cer tain of failure. Indeed, a whole paper might be written showing how in every movement like the present, in this and other countries, it seems that the end had come before the move had accomplished its work, but always the people themselves were renewed from On High, their hearts were strength ened. and they went forward tdl their work was done.
