719
BUSINESS I hate it for the malice it plants in the hearts of men ; for its poison ; for its bitter ness, for the dead sea fruit which starves their souls. I hate it for the grief it causes: woman hood, for the scalding tears, 'the hope de-, ferred, the strangled aspirations/ Its burden of want and care. I hate it for its heartless cruelty to the aged, the infirm and the helpless ; for the shadows it throws upon the lives of chil dren ; for its monstrous injustice to blame less little ones. I hate it as virtue hates vice, as truth hates error, as righteousness .hates sin, as justice hates wrong, as liberty hates tyranny, as freedom hates oppression. I hate it as Abraham Lincoln hated slav ery. A-nd as he'sómétfmes saw in prophetic vision the end of slavery; and thè coming of the time when the sun shall shine and the rain shall fall upon no slave in all the republic, so I ' sometimes seem to see the' end. of this unholy traffic,'the coming of the time when, if it does nòt_wholly cease to be, it shall find no safe habitation anywhere beneath Old Glory’s stainless, stars. Ex- Gov. J. Frank Hanley, in “ The Amethyst." Just going on' a little way, We might be able all along To keep quite strong. Should all the weight of life Be laid across our shoulder, and the future, rife' With woe and struggle, meet us face to face At just one place We could not go; *■' Our feet would stop'; and so God lays a little on us every day, And never, I believe, on all the way Will burdens bear so deep, Or. pathways lie so threatening and so steep, But we can go, if by God’s power We only bear the burden of the hour.” “ G od broke our years to hours and days, that-hour by hour' and day by day
THE KING’S million hells, each one more of an Inferno than the other.” ' “ The enamel has been cracked, underneath we are all savages, and all with the blood Instinct.” “If It took us two thousand years and more to acquire this veneer of civilization, which even then was so thin it cracked over night, can we rescue ourselves at once or must it be a long process? Can we debrutal- ize ourselves in a short time? Can we res urrect the ideals that are shattered? Can we come hack? Will reconstruction predi cate regeneration?” And what if we did “come back” soon or late ? Would the veneer be any- thicker, or the enamel less liable to crack? “Recon struction” would not “predicate regenera tion,” and regeneration in the strictest theo logical sense can alone take the brute out of us. I bear - no malice toward those engaged in . the liquor business, but I hate the traffic. - I hate its every phase. I hate it for its intolerance, v I hate it for ‘its arrogance. I hate it for its hypocrisy, for its cant and graft and false pretense and sordid love of gain at any price. / hate it for its domination in politics; for its corrupting influence in civic affairs, for its incessant effort to debauch the suffrage of the country, for the cowards it makes of- public men. I hate if for its utter disregard of law; for its ruthless trampling of the solemn com pacts of state constitutions. I hate it for the load it straps to labor’s back; for the palsied hands it gives to toil; for the tragedies of its might-have-beens. / hate it for the human wrecks it has caused. / hate it for the almshouses it peoples; for the prisons it fills; for the insanity it begets; for its countless graves in potters’ fields. I hate it for the mental'ruin it imposes upon its victims; for its spiritual blight; for its moral degradation. I hate it for the crime it commits; for the homes it destroys; for the hearts it breaks.
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online