The cause of temperance is one that has been close to my heart for twenty years. Taken from the logical standpoint of protection to the home, sound saneness, improvement in morals, an enhancement of citizenship, it is the second paramount issue of the age. Take away liquor, stop the traffic entirely, and you reduce seventy-five per cent of crime. The empty whisky-bottle is the greatest curse that ever existed. When it is standing filled in front of some bar-room mirror, it is harmless, but when it is empty it signifies that it has been drank by somebody and has been the direct cause for all that has followed.

Trace it up and you will find sorrow, misery, heartaches, remorse, disgrace, shame, humiliation, want, poverty, destroyed homes, cruelty, hatred, anger, revenge, and murder. Rags, vulgarity, dishonor, wasted lives, and deceit. Ruined sweethearts, broken-hearted wives, disgraced parents, and hungry, shoeless children. Disease, filth, white slavery, prize fights, tangoes, rottenness, and shame. Keeley cures, jails, penitentiaries, poorhouses, brothels, cabarets, and insane asylums. Thieves, robbers, safe blowers, beggars, pick-pockets, delirium tremors, and death. Leave it alone!

Some people say there is no harm in it; there isn’t if you leave it alone. You can take a loaded revolver and lay it alongside of a well-filled whisky bottle and they will get along side by side peacefully as long as time exists. Each one separate and apart are harmless; but let a sane man come along and drink the whisky, pick up the revolver, and what happens? Every nationality without distinction to race or color, Irishmen included, will run for safety.

A well-educated young man with brilliant prospects, neatly attired, attractive, and of fine, honorable parentage, was passing a saloon one day when a friend standing in the doorway invited him in. He had never been in a place of this kind in his life. His parents had taught him, friends advised him, and a sweet faced girl had warned him. Conscience told him to decline and go on, but, like millions of others, he heeded the invitation and stepped in. “Come up and take something,” the tempter said. “No,” he said, “I never drink.” “Come on,” urged the tempter. “It won’t hurt you.” “NO,” he said; “it’s beneath the dignity of a true gentleman and it would break my mother’s heart.” “Ah, come on, don’t be a kid,” he urged, and still the boy said no. After continued and repeated solicitation he finally yielded and drank his first glass.

Alas, the fatal mistake was made. Years of careful training were swept aside. Hopeful aspirations of his mother when she looked on his innocent face in the cradle were all for naught. Solemn advice from a kind father was lost sight of, and the deed was done. That first drink fired his brain. Others were taken and his eyes shone, the house treated, and the once quiet, manly lad was loud and boisterous. Self-respect was cast aside and foul utterances flew fast and thick from a once clean mouth. The end came. He reeled in drunkenness and fell to the floor in a gibbering drunken stupor. He was put to bed and when sober he felt the shame and remorse so keenly that he was at the point of self destruction. He thought of his mother, his father, the dear little sweetheart, and his friends. He was so afraid they would all hear of his ignominy that he kept secluded. He couldn’t bear to face them, tell all and start anew.

The humiliation was more than he could stand and he slipped farther and farther down the steep and rapid descent to hell. Back in his cheerful and once comfortable home a dear old mother sat waiting and watching year after year the lamp was kept burning. A kind old father sat with bowed head thinking and thinking. A dear little girl was weeping and weeping, and still he didn’t come. Where, O where was he and why didn’t he come? Alas! how sad as he sank lower and lower. Drunken brawls were common, nights spent in revelry very often; the dissipation was telling, his once clean countenance was haggard. His step was languid, lethargy was settling upon him, and his whole being was repulsive. His character was no longer clean and a thing of beauty. Brothels caught him and God’s penalties were discernible for the violation of his laws. Decent men shunned him and pure women scorned him, but still the light was kept burning. The mother watched, the father waited, the sweetheart prayed, and the friends yearned; but down, down, down he went. Even dogs hurried by him, the filth and disease was nauseating.

The years sped quickly and there he is clear down at the bottom, an object of disgust and scorn. Behold him, beneath the mass of stale and putrid slime, a castoff, friendless and penniless vagabond. Beneath the most loathsome and foul degeneracy conceivable; even beneath the filthy sewer. He lay on a bundle of rags in a drunkard’s hut. As he moaned and groaned, an old friend passing by heard him, stepped in and stood looking at him. With tears streaming down his cheeks the boy looked up and said, “my life is ebbing, I am at the border line, my career is wasted; I am a drunken, despised and worthless sot, friendless and alone. I can see nothing ahead but the blackest despair. Oh my poor old mother, my poor old father, my dear little sweetheart, My Sav—oh—oh.” Another spell grasped him and as he tossed and shrieked and moaned, grappling with the demon, writhing in mental anguish, terror clouded his countenance, his eyes rolled, his limbs jerked, the mouth dropped open, the tongue protruded, he clutched until the blood trickled from the torn flesh, a loud, gurgling, terrifying scream, and he was dead. Died with the delirium tremens caused by the rum demon. As the old friend wiped away the tears and stood looking at his pitiful form he noticed in one of his torn and ragged pockets a slip of paper. He pulled it out and read:

How can America, the foremost nation of the world, that has long boasted of liberty and advancement, allow the liquor traffic to continue when the condition it causes are so critical. It is stealing away her brains, increasing her crime, lowering her moral standing, demoralizing her citizenship, and giving to posterity a weaker race and causing such poverty, misery and unhumanitarian distress. Can this enlightened nation afford its continuance and let it remain when it has a grasp so powerful that it is endangering its very vitals? Can America, with her unsurpassed institutions of learning, her brilliant and scholarly statesmen, her great mineral and agricultural wealth yet unfound and developed, allow a traffic so alarmingly demoralizing as to let her constitutional principles decline? Can she sit still, under her broad and world famed methods of progress, and allow such a traffic, that devastates from every source, for a revenue wrung from women’s tears, that is so rapidly depreciating her citizenship. Is she prudent? Is she applying the Christian principles of her constitution to obtain revenue from a traffic so nefarious and debauching? If she realizes the danger ahead why delay an amendment that enhances citizenship and principle.