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ON THE FIRING LINE 
 IN THE BATTLE for SOBRIETY 
 
 By 
 
 JENKIN LLOYD JONES 
 
 /l\ 
 
 (SPECIAL EDITION) 
 
 UNITARIAN TEMPERANCE SOCIETY 
 
 BOSTON. MASS. 
 
 1910 
 

 
 
 

 A Word to Friends of Temperance. 
 
 
 
 This little book* seems to the Executive Board of 
 the Unitarian Temperance Society one of the very 
 best popular handbooks that exists, so simple, so direct, 
 so human, so sober, so full of facts that captivate and 
 convince, equally interesting to old and young, helpful 
 to the advocate of total abstinence, which today is the 
 only rational interpretation of temperance, and also 
 persuasive with the indifferent and the indulgent. 
 
 It ought to be in every library, large and small. 
 Parents and teachers can do no better than to keep a 
 copy in circulation among the young. Preachers will 
 find helpful material here for sermons. No better 
 program for a special temperance service in Sunday 
 schools or for young people^s religious societies could 
 be provided than readings from its pages. Mothers will 
 do well to keep a copy on the table in the living room 
 of the home. It is itself a ‘‘flanking column” (to bor- 
 row one of its striking phrases) of great power in the 
 mighty army that is sweeping on to certain victory 
 for temperance, which means the betterment of human 
 life. May it go far and wide, inspiring and blessing 
 mankind. 
 
 IV e have secured a special edition of this hool^ for practically^ 
 free circulation among librarians^ preachers, teachers and Sunday^ 
 school superintendents, who, on application {sending 5 cents for 
 cost of delivery^), will he sent a copyf on condition that they ^eep 
 it in use among their friends. 
 
 Address, 
 
 REV. DR. JOSEPH H. CROOKER, 
 President Unitarian Temperance Society, 
 
 25 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. 
 
 \ *The original edition (1910) in cloth sold at 50 cents, and 
 r \ can still be had at that price of Unity Publishing Co., Abraham 
 Lincoln Centre, Chicago, 111. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/onfiringlineinbaOOjone 
 
To Thomas, John, James, Enos and Philip, 
 Loyal Brothers. 
 
 Consistent practice is more convincing than preaching. 
 
, i ^ 
 
“For it is precept upon precept, precept upon 
 precept, line upon line, line upon line; here a little, 
 there a little.** 
 
 — Isaiah xxviii:tO 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 A Night in a Saloon 7 
 
 Two Neighbors 43 
 
 The Flanking Columns 81 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A Letter to Saloon-Keepers 117 
 
 A Letter to Workingmen 122 
 
 A Letter to Women 127 
 
 A Letter to a Beer Advocate 131 
 
A 
 
 Night 
 In a 
 Saloon 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 M y good horse Roos and I had 
 stretched our day’s journey beyond 
 the near limits of endurance be- 
 cause the day was so delightful, the ride 
 through the Wisconsin lake country so 
 charming, and because of a desire on my 
 part to spend one more night at the pretty 
 village whose name was intermingled with 
 some of the pleasantest memories of the 
 old log house in the clearing, my child- 
 hood’s home. In those pioneer days the 
 name of this village conjured in my child- 
 ish imagination an aroma of devoutness, a 
 flavor of piety, on account of certain 
 saintly men and women who were wel- 
 comed to our home fireside from its 
 vicinity. 
 
 These childish associations had been 
 enhanced by several subsequent visits in 
 my maturity. Whether I sought it afoot, 
 on horseback, or in wagon, it was the same 
 rural hamlet, undisturbed by the whistle 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
On The Firing L i n ^ 
 
 of the locomotive, uiisoiled by the debris of 
 railway stations, rejoicing in velvety green 
 lawns, basking beside a charming little 
 lake. It was still suggestive of domestic 
 purity, economic simplicity, financial pros- 
 perity and social integrity. 
 
 As might have been expected, on the 
 outskirts of this village there was a suc- 
 cessful boys’ school, an ideal place for 
 such; a place where perplexed city parents 
 might send their boys with minimum anx- 
 iety, for seemingly it was a place far 
 removed from temptations and vicious 
 surroundings. 
 
 But I was not the only one who had 
 yielded to the attractions of the charming 
 village on that beautiful summer night. 
 Although it was yet early, I found the 
 little town full of other visitors who had 
 escaped from the city; the limited accom- 
 modations of the old-fashioned hotel, the 
 one hostelry of the village, were already 
 exhausted, and I was driven to seek shelter 
 for the night in the new saloon on the cor- 
 ner, with a hotel attachment, fresh in its 
 [ 10 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 white paint and green blinds. The pro- 
 prietor was a gentlemanly, intelligent, 
 courteous young Americanized German. 
 The hospitality of his spirit was genuine, 
 and he was sorry to inform me that “the 
 few hotel rooms up stairs” were already 
 occupied. The equally attractive and 
 kindly young wife, with her pretty first- 
 born in her arms, who was called into 
 council, thought she might find a spare 
 room in some one of the adjoining houses; 
 at least she was willing to do “the best 
 she could” for me. A load of fragrant 
 new-mown hay was being unloaded at the 
 fresh new barn in the rear of the premises, 
 and Roos had already settled the question 
 for herself; she was already sampling the 
 goods, and they were palatable; she would 
 literally spend her night in clover, and I 
 was willing to take my chances. 
 
 Fully an hour elapsed before the young 
 
 wife, who was “doing her own work” all 
 
 the way from the bar to the kitchen stove, 
 
 could begin to see what she could do for 
 
 me, and when the private houses in the 
 [ 11 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 neighborhood were canvassed she found to 
 her dismay that every spare room was 
 occupied or spoken for. The case began 
 to grow desperate. Finally it settled down 
 to the only chance of spending my night 
 on the sofa in the “Ladies’ Room” of 
 the saloon, with doors opening from the 
 big drinking-room on the one hand and 
 sliding doors into the dining-room on the 
 other. But the furniture was newly bought 
 and the room tidy, and the little wife 
 assured me she could make me a fairly 
 comfortable bed, that things generally 
 quieted down about eleven o’clock, and 
 that there was no reason why I should not 
 be reasonably comfortable. 
 
 I had already noticed on entering that 
 the sylvan quality of my pretty hamlet 
 was being threatened by the encroachment 
 of an interurban trolley line. A gang of 
 workmen had reached the outskirts of the 
 village, and the laborers, with their big 
 boots, sweaty clothes and soiled hands, 
 were making the evening business at the 
 saloon lively. 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 It was ten o’clock before the tired horse- 
 man could horizontalize on his improvised 
 bed. He had had two hours and a half to 
 watch the business; it was a study in 
 sociology, laboratory work on the temper- 
 ance problem at short range. During the 
 two hours and a half he had seen the room 
 fill up and the atmosphere grow blue with 
 the smoke from stale pipes and all kinds 
 of cigars — and all cigars smelled bad to 
 him. It did seem as though all sorts and 
 conditions of men were gathered there, 
 making the dictum of Mr. Calkings, in a 
 book of which I shall speak later, ring 
 true even in that far-off and clean corner 
 of the world, viz, “The saloon is the most 
 democratic of institutions; it appeals at 
 once to the common humanity of man.” 
 
 First, there came a continuous stream 
 of the common shovelers from the railroad 
 dump; stolid, foreign, ignorant Italians or 
 some other southern European people. 
 They came in groups of threes, fives, or 
 more, and took their beer in the main in 
 glum silence as though it were medicine. 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 If they talked at all it was in a dull under- 
 tone; they took their dose and, for the 
 most part, went away. 
 
 Then came the next higher grade of 
 laborers — the Americanized, English- 
 speaking or American-born teamsters, 
 mechanics, bosses, bridge builders and 
 cement workers. These were more jolly, 
 cordial, boisterous, evidently many of them 
 with homes that were tugging at their 
 heart-strings ; visions of waiting wives and 
 watching children flitted before their 
 eyes. Once in a while the wistful face of 
 wife or child would appear at the door 
 and “Yes, dear, wait, I am coming right 
 along!” sounded like strange music in the 
 place. And these snatches of conversation 
 were overheard by the observing but un- 
 observed “old man” who seemed poring 
 over the newspaper in the corner. 
 
 “Come, let’s go, boys.” 
 
 “Oh, what’s the hurry? Have another 
 glass.” 
 
 “Well, I must go!” 
 
 [ 14 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 ‘‘Aw, cut it out! You’re afraid of that 
 little woman, are you?” 
 
 “Naw, he’s going to see his girl.” 
 
 The drama had become intensely excit- 
 ing to the man behind the newspaper. 
 Was it comedy or tragedy? They 
 slowly thinned out, the jolly crowd leav- 
 ing at last only the daring, perverse, reck- 
 less core that grew hilarious over the 
 cards, boisterous over the dice that were 
 to determine the next treat. 
 
 Later in the evening there came a group 
 of boys, schoolboys, bearing the insignia 
 of “The Academy;” bright boys, steeped 
 in the slang and enthusiasm of the frater- 
 nities and athletics. They came to talk 
 over the excitements of that day’s ball 
 game with the visiting team from a town 
 fifteen miles away. They frankly dis- 
 cussed, in high glee, the way they had 
 been “done up” by their visitors, who 
 
 “played a poor game at first” until 
 
 the stakes were placed heavily against 
 them; then by a planned accident a new 
 
 [ 15 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 boy, an expert, was run in, leaving the 
 home team no show. 
 
 But those “nice” boys, whose confiding 
 parents had placed them beyond the 
 danger of city dissipations, consoled 
 themselves over their defeat with the 
 thought that they “ought not to kick,” 
 for did they not last year make over two 
 hundred dollars out of the chaps over 
 the seventy-five lost this year by sharp 
 tactics on the other side? 
 
 The boys rapidly grew hilarious; a few 
 others joined them, and the conversation 
 of the little group grew coarse and con- 
 fidential. They began to give details one 
 to another of escapades and experiences 
 which would have carried anguish to the 
 hearts of fathers and mothers, if they but 
 knew. They joked and laughed over that 
 which would have ostracized them from 
 the social circles that delighted in them, 
 were the facts known, but they were facts 
 which none of their friends would believe, 
 least of all their doting mothers and 
 
 trusting sisters. All of them would 
 [le] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 stoutly resent such “groundless insinua- 
 tions” of things which those boys openly 
 confessed to one another. Nothing but 
 facts verified in the police courts would 
 establish a credulity in the hairbreadth 
 escapes from publicity which were told 
 with a relish. 
 
 Now the man behind the paper noticed 
 with pain that these were not rough boys, 
 the “toughs” of conventional estimate, 
 but the “nice” boys; they lighted dainty 
 cigarettes, they were choice in their 
 drinks, they handled their glasses with 
 grace, I easily drew them into conversa- 
 tion concerning academic and neighbor- 
 hood matters. Their elegant manners 
 ripened promptly into courtesy as they 
 asked “Uncle” to have a glass of wine 
 with them, and they managed with sus- 
 tained decorum to urge the humorous 
 alternative of a glass of pop. 
 
 As a blot in the background of this 
 refinement, behind these representatives 
 of city boulevards and avenues came a 
 gray-bearded Granger with trousers 
 
 [ 17 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 tucked into his tall muddy boots, who car- 
 ried off in both hands the biggest “schoon- 
 er” on the shelf filled full of beer (no froth 
 for him), to the corner and, with great 
 deliberation and apparent satisfaction, 
 made it go as far as possible and then stole 
 away. Was he the true “temperance 
 man” we hear so much about in some 
 quarters, the man “who can take a drink 
 when he wants it and knows enough to 
 stop when he has had enough”? or was 
 he, as the boys estimated, “an old cur- 
 mudgeon, too stingy to join in a social 
 glass with anybody, too penurious to 
 spare more than a nickel, and determined 
 to get his full money’s worth?” Some of 
 them identified him as a man who had 
 lots of dollars up his sleeve. 
 
 After the boys were gone, there came 
 into my neighborhood at the far end of 
 the counter, the two gentlemen in middle 
 life whom I recognized as having passed 
 me in the afternoon in a great touring 
 car, with ladies. They were from the city, 
 
 fashionably clothed and daintily bar- 
 [ 18 ] 
 
A Night in a Saloon 
 
 bered; they were touring through the 
 lake country. The ladies had long been 
 in bed, resting from the day’s delights, 
 while the eyes of their husbands were 
 assuming that dull, glazed appearance so 
 characteristic of the preliminary stages of 
 inebriation. In low, artificial whisper 
 they contrived with the barkeeper some 
 more refined compound that would give 
 the final blow and send them to their beds 
 “full.” Out of the bottled depths of the 
 refrigerator were fished some bottles of 
 porter, and this black, nasty-looking stuff 
 was compounded with the lighter beer, 
 half-and-half, with a dash of something 
 more fiery. 
 
 But these gentlemen from the city did 
 not forget their manners; they cour- 
 teously solicited “Grandpa” to have some- 
 thing with them, and complimented so old 
 a man who could still enjoy horseback 
 riding. 
 
 At last the kind-hearted little wife in- 
 formed me that my bed was ready. Gladly 
 did I seek the long-needed repose, inter- 
 
 [i»i 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 esting as were the studies in this sociolog- 
 ical laboratory. My soldier habit of 
 sleeping under trying circumstances has 
 never deserted me. I was soon sound 
 asleep, but it was troubled sleep. In my 
 dreams I wandered through burning for- 
 ests of tobacco trees and waded through 
 streets made muddy by sluggish streams 
 of beer. Out of these troubled dreams I 
 was awakened by a chorus of rough voices 
 singing “Annie Laurie,” in the adjoining 
 drinking-room. The throng, which at one 
 time kept two men busy pumping the 
 dirty stuff, had vanished; the respectable 
 and occasional drinkers were gone; the 
 habituals, midnight revelers, alone held 
 possession. There was gaming and bois- 
 terous disputing, mingled with snatches 
 of song, all steeped in profanity and vul- 
 garity, within earshot of my bed ; the 
 musical and gentle voice of mine host, the 
 saloon-keeper, alone was touched with 
 sobriety, courtesy and moderation. 
 
 Again I slept, and again after a season 
 
 I was brought up out of the lower depths 
 [ 20 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 by a bright light streaming in through the 
 dining-room transom. Some of the rev- 
 elers had grown hungry; a post-midnight 
 meal was being served of such cold meats 
 and left-overs as the man might find in the 
 woman’s larder. The pot at last boiled, 
 and the jolly meal was topped off with 
 fragrant coffee. The clock struck one, 
 and I slept again. 
 
 When next I was awakened it was by 
 the noise of the scrubbing broom, the 
 swish of the hose, and the heavy thud of 
 the ice-blocks that were being put into the 
 refrigerator to keep the next day’s supply 
 of beer cold. One day’s work was at last 
 ended and another day’s work had begun. 
 The work of scrubbing and cleaning was 
 on, and the clock struck three. 
 
 Roos and I preferred the early morning 
 
 for travel and midday for rest and sleep. 
 
 By previous arrangement with mine host, 
 
 the night bar-tender was to feed my horse 
 
 at four o’clock and call me at half-past 
 
 four that we might be on the road at five, 
 
 but the full glory of the daylight awak- 
 [ 21 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 ened me unsummoned. The night man 
 was cross and profane; he had forgotten 
 his instructions; he called down maledic- 
 tions upon the “boss” who thought he 
 “could stand everything.” I escaped to 
 the barn, found the oat-bin, fed my own 
 horse, was eager to be away. While Roos 
 was eating her breakfast she was startled 
 by a disturbance overhead; there was a 
 rustle in the mow, a fumbling, rolling, 
 and down into the manger tumbled a man. 
 Which was most scared, the horse, the 
 horse’s owner, or the man himself, I 
 know not. Anyhow, the common fright 
 made us akin. After rubbing the clover 
 dust out of his eyes and brushing the hay- 
 seeds out of his hair and off his clothing, 
 he said: “There are three more bums up 
 there! Four of us chaps belong in Mil- 
 waukee. We came up here to work on 
 the trolley line; there are good jobs await- 
 ing us; I will get three dollars and a half 
 a day running a gang of Dagoes, if I ever 
 
 get sobered up. We have been here 
 122 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 three days and we are getting worse and 
 worse !” 
 
 Then there was another fumbling in the 
 mow and another fellow tumbled into the 
 manger. He made short cut of his wants ; 
 “Say, old man, won’t you give us a dime 
 to stiffen up on? We have got to get this 
 dirty brown taste out of our mouths !” 
 
 Number three dropped down and num- 
 ber four followed out of the hay mow, and 
 then there ensued a friendly and con- 
 fidential conference of five of us over the 
 drink problem, the mow-men contributing 
 the teetotal argument and the denuncia- 
 tion of the saloon. The first spokesman, 
 clutching like a drowning man at a pass- 
 ing straw, which straw he called “Elder” 
 at a venture, drew from his pocket a Mil- 
 waukee fireman’s star, which he held vir- 
 tuously as the last link binding him to his 
 better self, the present tie to past respect- 
 ability. “I say. Elder,” he said, “that shows 
 you that I was once away ‘up in G.’ I had 
 a fine position in the Fire Department in 
 Milwaukee; my people are all right; pol- 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 itics did me; the bosses ousted me 
 
 last spring, and I have been going to the 
 devil at a hard gallop ever since, and he 
 alone knows whether I will ever stop until 
 he gets me for good and all. These boys 
 will tell you I have been thinking I better 
 put a stop to this foolishness in the middle 
 of yon lake. Haven’t I, boys?” And 
 there was a gruesome laugh and a “We 
 had better all do it” response. 
 
 I do not try to put in the abundant pro- 
 fanity; I cannot reproduce the frankness 
 which brought us five into such close con- 
 fidences; the horrible sincerity, the grue- 
 some fraternity of that blighted early 
 hour. 
 
 One, two, three of the mow lodgers stole 
 away, one by one, before the conversation 
 ended, to beg first and then demand the 
 “nips” which all regarded as the in- 
 dispensable condition of a successful 
 “straightening up.” Three days ago they 
 came with silver in their pockets, and now 
 they had not a copper left. One of them 
 menacingly said with an oath, YThat man 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
A Night in a Saloon 
 
 has got to help straighten us up; he has 
 taken every cent of our money and he can 
 afford 
 
 The’'1^rst to descend from the mow 
 stayed with me until my horse’s breakfast 
 was finished; he helped me saddle my 
 horse and would fain help me mount. He 
 pledged me with tears in his eyes and a 
 good grip of his shaking right hand that 
 he would get rid of these pals and 
 straighten up and be a sober man before 
 he ever saw his mother again. 
 
 The sun had risen, the barnyards were 
 alive, the gardens were fragrant, farm 
 wives were bestirring themselves ; the 
 ripened harvest fields were inviting the 
 harvesters with abundant promise as I 
 rode away. How the agony of the men 
 from the hay-mow, the disgrace of that 
 quartette of robust, handsome young men 
 from Milwaukee, the gruesome dreams 
 and the more vivid and horrible realities 
 of that night in a saloon, blurred the glory 
 of that radiant morning, jarred on the 
 melody of life, disturbed the serenity of 
 
 [ 25 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 what ought to have been another day’s 
 ride of unclouded beauty! Was that one 
 night’s experience to be taken as a mild, 
 innocent, minimum illustration of the 
 habitual transactions in a saloon? Here 
 was a white saloon in a white country; 
 here was the institution at its best. There 
 had been no cracking of heads, no shoot- 
 ing of pistols, no breaking of noses, no 
 wrecking of fortunes. The gambling, if 
 any, was probably of the mild sort. The 
 one policeman of the village had rested 
 undisturbed, and there were no court 
 scandals for the next day. What, then, is 
 the sociological value of the saloon meas- 
 ured at its best, taken in its most inno- 
 cent form? 
 
 In 1893 the “Committee of Fifty” was 
 organized for the investigation of the 
 liquor problem. It consisted of con- 
 spicuous leaders of thought and action 
 throughout the United States. College 
 presidents, prominent ministers, men 
 identified with great industrial, reforma- 
 tory and legislative activities were on the 
 [26 1 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 Commission, the President of which was 
 Seth Lowe, then President of Columbia 
 College; the Vice-President was the late 
 lamented Charles Dudley Warner of 
 Hartford, the Secretary Prof. Francis G. 
 Peabody of Harvard. President Eliot and 
 Carroll D. Wright, then head of the De- 
 partment of Labor at Washington, were 
 on the executive committee. Other names 
 in the list that attracted the eye were 
 those of Felix Adler, Charles G. Bona- 
 parte, John Graham Brooks, Father 
 Conaty, of the Catholic University of 
 Washington, William E. Dodge of New 
 York, President Ely of Madison, Presi- 
 dent Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Washing- 
 ton Gladden, Doctors Hunger of New 
 Haven and Rainsford of New York, and 
 other names of equal prominence. This 
 committee promptly subdivided itself into 
 small groups to which were assigned spe- 
 cial phases of the problem. The results of 
 these investigations have been given to 
 the public from time to time. At least 
 three important volumes have been pub- 
 
 [ 27 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 lished; the first dealing with the liquor 
 problem in its legislative aspects, compiled 
 by Frederick H. Wines and John Koran 
 under the direction of President Eliot, 
 Seth Lowe and James C. Carter. The 
 second volume dealt with “The Eco- 
 nomic Aspects of the Liquor Problem,” 
 by John Koran, under the direction of 
 Professors Atwater, Farnham, John Gra- 
 ham Brooks, Carroll D. Wright and 
 others. The third was entitled “Substi- 
 tutes for the Saloon,” by Raymond Calk- 
 ings, under the direction of Professors E. 
 R. S. Gould, Francis G. Peabody and 
 William M. Sloane. Some of the chap- 
 ters in this book considered the saloon as 
 a social center and studied the “lunch 
 room and coffee house substitutes,” with 
 special studies of conditions in representa- 
 tive cities — New York, Chicago, St. Paul 
 and San Francisco, 
 
 R. L. Melendy, then a sociological stu- 
 dent at Ann Arbor, under the direction of 
 Graham Taylor of the Chicago Commons, 
 made for this committee a careful study of 
 
 [ 28 ] s 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 the saloons as social centers in Chicago. 
 The results of Mr, Melendy’s study were 
 given wide publicity at the time and made 
 a deep impression. These academic 
 studies were re-enforced by the insistence 
 of labor unions, single taxers, sociologists, 
 settlement workers and other earnest stu- 
 dents of economic problems, that the root 
 of the temperance evil is an economic one; 
 that inebriety is largely brought about by 
 the overstrain, the underfeeding, the de- 
 fective housing of the laboring classes, 
 and that no specific remedy will avail 
 much until our economics are so modified 
 that the conditions of life are more 
 hygienic. 
 
 With this contention I have large sym- 
 pathy, and in my work for temperance I 
 have placed heavy emphasis upon it. The 
 effects of such studies necessarily lead the 
 open mind to at least a generous tolerance 
 of the saloon as it exists under present 
 circumstances. Such studies call for a 
 division of the question, demanding that 
 the worker for temperance should begin 
 
 [ 29 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 further back; they compel the critic to 
 “put himself in the other man’s place” and 
 look at the world from the standpoint of 
 the patron of the saloon, aye, of the victim 
 of the saloon. 
 
 It was with no regret at the time and 
 with much gratitude afterward that this 
 unsolicited emergency gave me an oppor- 
 tunity to study at first hand the social 
 phases of the saloon question under its 
 most harmless conditions. 
 
 I have never gone “slumming;” it is a 
 business which only experts can profit- 
 ably pursue, but I am glad that this 
 chance was thrust upon me to observe 
 the average workings of a saloon under 
 exceptionally wholesome conditions. Here 
 was a saloon doing regular business under 
 fair circumstances, if such words are fit- 
 ting. If the words “legitimate,” “law- 
 abiding,” “respectable,” “decent” are ever 
 applicable to any saloon they would seem 
 to apply to this one, situated under cir- 
 cumstances almost idyllic and managed 
 by a young man and woman whose voices 
 
 I 30 j 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 ring melodiously in my ear and whose 
 courtesies to me and to my horse are 
 graciously enshrined in my heart. 
 
 In the light of Mr, Calkings’ character- 
 ization already referred to, of the saloon 
 as the most democratic of institutions, 
 and of his studies in this direction — and 
 this is a case where a pinch of fact is 
 worth a handful of theory — what is the 
 sociological value of the saloon? Is it a 
 “democratic institution?” Is it a “poor 
 man’s club” that deserves commendation 
 at our hands, or at least commands our 
 patience? Let the would-be scientific 
 man beware lest he be hoisted by his own 
 petard. The last man to be lost in glit- 
 tering generalities is the would-be devotee 
 of science. What are the cold, plain facts 
 in the case? With all due respect to our 
 economists and scientific sociologists, is 
 it not plain that the primal cause of the 
 saloon is not economic but a wanton in- 
 dulgence of an appetite for stimulants, 
 which is as imperious and destructive to 
 the man in the automobile as to the man 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 in the mow? Both parted with their 
 money, their judgment and their self 
 respect for that which did them no good, 
 and they knew that it did them no good. 
 Imperfect environment may and does 
 help feed, but does not create this appe- 
 tite, and still less is the environment of 
 the poor man ameliorated or improved by 
 its indulgence. The inspiration of the 
 saloon is now and always has been the 
 liquor in it; the heart of it is in the bottle; 
 the live serpent in the bottle is the stim- 
 ulant, alcohol; “fire water,” the Indians 
 call it; aqua fortis, the strong water, it 
 was once called. And in the light of 
 experience and the growing conviction of 
 science, this alcohol is an intruder in the 
 body, an enemy of society, a menace to 
 the State. It gratifies a morbid appetite 
 and grows on what it feeds on. Socio- 
 logically, physiologically, ethically, it is 
 bad from A to Z. So far as it goes it is 
 demoralizing, disintegrating and degrad- 
 ing in its influence, and any tendency to 
 be indulgent of its use, to give it the free- 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 dom of the home or the city, is indulgence, 
 not liberality. This tendency to apologize 
 for the saloon because there is something 
 worse than the saloon is not keeping up 
 with the times, but it is harking back to 
 a worse time when the horrible stuff de- 
 bauched life more than it does now, when 
 it was a disturbing element up and down 
 the social ladder to a far greater extent 
 than now. To foster and multiply the 
 saloons is to go back and down toward 
 the time when the old lords proved their 
 hospitality and enjoyed their conviviality 
 by drinking themselves under the table, 
 and the last man up was the best fellow. 
 The practices and indulgences fostered by 
 the American saloon under any conditions 
 have made and still make for the ruin of 
 the individual, the defeat of the school, 
 the disgrace of the church and the burden 
 of the State. The American saloon, per- 
 haps I ought to say the Anglo-Saxon 
 saloon, is an unique institution; it stands 
 apart in its coarseness, its filth, its vul- 
 garity and its damnable alliances. It finds 
 
 [ 33 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 no counterpart in the sunny, music- 
 haunted, truly social centers, the wine and 
 beer cafes and gardens of the continent, 
 where respectable men and women go and 
 carry their children, without taint of dis- 
 grace or suspicion of prurient or debauch- 
 ing intent. 
 
 The protecting ordinances and laws of 
 America preventing the admission of 
 women, children and the unwary to the 
 saloon, the screened doors, the sneaking 
 sense of shame with which one enters, find 
 their European parallel only in the real 
 dens of vice, the confessed homes of 
 debauchery, which are in disgraceful evi- 
 dence in European as well as American 
 cities. 
 
 I submit that the American saloon as a 
 social center is not worthy of our respect 
 or our tolerance so long as it is a place 
 into which a man hesitates to take his 
 wife, or where he would be sorry to see 
 his boys go, so long as it is a place where 
 such vices as profanity, vulgar speech, 
 vicious politics, gambling and the un- 
 
 [ 34 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 blushing cultivation of the lewd imagery 
 and ribald tongue that lead to the degra- 
 dation of women and the defamation of 
 the home, find shelter there. 
 
 Scientifically, economically, politically, 
 ethically, the American saloon at its best, 
 even the white saloon in “Spotless Town 
 by the Lake,” is a place where the appetite 
 for strong drink and its attendant stimu- 
 lants are not only gratified but fostered, 
 and, as such, first, last and all the time, it 
 is a cancer in the body politic and, like all 
 cancers, it has as yet baffied all treatment 
 except that of the surgeon’s knife. The 
 X ray, as claimed by some, may amel- 
 iorate it ; at certain incipient stages it may 
 blight it to its death, but the only sov- 
 ereign treatment for cancer -that as yet 
 commends itself to the honest practitioner, 
 the truly scientific man, is the capital one. 
 There are conditions when life can be 
 saved only by the amputation of the dis- 
 eased parts. 
 
 Consequently I rejoice in the many 
 tokens that the same conviction increas- 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 ingly prevails in regard to the social cancer 
 with men of science and men of business, 
 the true politicians and the real states- 
 men, those who have the well-being of the 
 State really at heart, without the limita- 
 tions of dogmatic narrowness or Puritanic 
 grimness. Slowly but surely the saloon is 
 being eliminated from American life; an 
 ever increasing area is being legislated by 
 a popular, intelligent vote, out of the reach 
 of the saloon, and there are no signs that 
 this elimination is to prove transient ; 
 there are no indications of reactionary ten- 
 dencies where the reform is once achieved. 
 
 Everywhere there are indications that 
 popular intelligence is beginning to accept 
 the slow but sure conclusions of science, 
 the accumulating testimony of history, 
 that alcohol drinking is bad; that the 
 saloon is an unsocial center which vitiates 
 the common life of the community, mili- 
 tates against the harmony of the home 
 and depreciates the vitality of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 [ 86 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 \j 
 
 I am speaking of no particular type of 
 saloon; I am speaking of the bad, degrad- 
 ing influences that gather around all bib- 
 ulous centers, which foster convivial hab- 
 its all the way up and down the social 
 scale, whether it be the club man’s private 
 wine locker, by which he evades the law, 
 or, the alley saloon with its dirty beer mug. 
 {There is an ordinance in the city of San 
 'Francisco which makes illegal the use in 
 the saloon of tumblers with heavy bot- 
 toms because they make too efiicient 
 weapons for cracking skulls. It may be 
 a far cry from the saloon where a heavy 
 glass tumbler is against the law because 
 it is an added menace to life, to the swell 
 elegancies of the club where the wealthy, 
 the prosperous, the masters of abundance, 
 clink their glasses in defiance to law and 
 order, seeking to make lawlessness re- 
 spectable by the elegance of their cloth, 
 the abundance of the silks and satins that 
 rustle around their drinking tables. But 
 all these belong not to the advanced 
 sociology of the twentieth century; they 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 are, rather, belated survivals of the 
 baronial dissipations of mediaeval times ; 
 they are reminiscences of feudalism and 
 the debauchery that was thinly masked 
 by the valor and the courtesies of a chiv- 
 alry made necessary by the coarseness 
 that trampled under foot the rights of the 
 lowly, the purity of women and the honor 
 of children. 
 
 This is not necessarily a discussion of 
 the question of total abstinence, though I 
 have convictions on this question based on 
 a life-long practice. The question of the 
 saloon is not even the question of pro- 
 hibition. If any considerable number 
 desire to drink the stuff, even to their 
 degradation and death, they may be per- 
 mitted so to do if they can get their 
 “drinkables” in the same way as they get 
 their eatables — in portable packages with 
 no provision made for the consumption of 
 the same on the premises. The dispensary 
 system, which I have studied at short 
 range in South Carolina, where it has been 
 more thoroughly tried than anywhere 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 else in this country, was ethically and 
 economically a vast improvement on the 
 saloon system, but it broke down because 
 of the simple fact that the humanity of 
 South Carolina was not sufficiently ethical 
 to stand the financial temptations involved 
 therein. The opportunities for boodling 
 and the temptations for graft proved too 
 great for the office-holders of that State. 
 It was the greed for money, not the greed 
 for drink, that made scandalous the law 
 and necessitated its repeal. 
 
 What can we do about it? What ought 
 to be done about it? Obviously we must 
 put ourselves in line with the more ad- 
 vanced thought and the more lofty prac- 
 tices in this direction. The lessons of the 
 laboratory must be heeded and the dictum 
 of science enforced. Children must be 
 educated to feel the awful physiological 
 and economic waste in this matter. It 
 becomes every good citizen to stand out 
 with the men and movements that look 
 toward the abolition of the blighting curse 
 of the nasty stuff. It becomes us to stand 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 up to be counted whenever opportunity 
 offers; to cast off the leading strings of 
 effete parties and their bosses and to take 
 hold of this most practical reform in the 
 most practical way. 
 
 And next, so far as possible, it is for 
 such to exploit all the substitutes for the 
 saloon that are available. The churches 
 of the land are already equipped with the 
 high outfit for this high competition. 
 Where there is an opportunity for a glass 
 of beer with a biscuit and a slice of 
 bologna thrown in for five cents, let the 
 church forces of the community see to it 
 that in as close proximity as possible to 
 this saloon there is a chance to get a cup 
 of coffee for a cent, a doughnut for 
 another, a sandwich for two cents. Where 
 the saloons offer a stool let the churches 
 offer a chair, plus cheerful lights, checker 
 boards, pool tables, cards — anything ex- 
 cept the insidious intoxicants that tempt 
 the boys, the young men, the homeless, 
 and the bums who frequent the corners. 
 Let these waifs be wooed into the benign 
 
 [ 40 ] 
 
 X 
 
A Night In a Saloon 
 
 havens, away from the malign lairs of vice 
 and crime. 
 
 Would such coffee houses, lunch count- 
 ers and buttermilk saloons pay expenses? 
 At first, no; decidedly no! But the ex- 
 pense of one jail deliverance would pay 
 the cost of one such experiment for a 
 month. Said Horace Mann, “No price is 
 too high to save a boy, if that boy is my 
 boy.” 
 
 Would these experiments succeed? 
 Would they draw? Probably not at first. 
 They certainly never have succeeded, be- 
 cause they have never been tried in any 
 forceful, persistent fashion. All the great 
 triumphs of the laboratory have been born 
 out of repeated, costly, tiresome, dis- 
 couraging failures, and the triumphs of 
 the social laboratory can come in no other 
 way and at no cheaper price. 
 
 But a truce to all these incidental dis- 
 cussions. Eliminate the preachments, the 
 prescriptions and the prophecies, if you 
 please, but do not dismiss with flippancy 
 this story of a night in a saloon. Believe 
 
 [ 41 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 me to be an honest reporter, and you will 
 readily see what I realize, that I have 
 failed to put adequate color into my story. 
 I did not and could not do justice to the 
 horrible revealments. 
 
 Do not forget that I have presented you 
 the saloon in its most innocent aspect, a 
 feeble type of the seven thousand or more 
 such places that are open every night in 
 the week in the city of Chicago alone, en- 
 ticing boys, husbands, brothers, neighbors. 
 
 Is it not worth while, then, to try in 
 any way, in every way possible, to bring 
 ourselves and the community up and for- 
 ward to the front lines of the twentieth 
 century civilization rather than hark back 
 to the weaknesses, the indulgences of a 
 more ignorant past and a less developed 
 intelligence? 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
Two 
 
 Neighbors 
 

Two Neighbors 
 
 I WANT to tell of two neighbors with 
 whom my acquaintance extended over 
 half a century, during all of which 
 
 V. 
 
 time I enjoyed their confidence and, to a 
 large degree, their companionship and 
 comradeship. They were real neighbors — 
 kind, accommodating, willing, helpful and 
 courteous. They were humble, modest 
 neighbors, to whom no toil was mean or 
 unwelcome. Though always needing a 
 day’s work and glad of the money in- 
 volved, they ever put a touch of neighborly 
 kindness, disinterested comradeship, a 
 desire to oblige, into their tasks. In every 
 such exchange I think there was on both 
 sides an unestimated quantity of good will 
 which was never rendered in the account- 
 ing. 
 
 The lives of these neighbors were hum- 
 ble, rural, retiring and obscure. My rela- 
 
 [ 45 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 tion to them was necessarily intermittent, 
 uneventful, commonplace, and so unim- 
 portant to the big world outside that it is 
 almost a breach of confidence, an offense 
 to the proprieties to think, much less 
 speak of them to the busy, bustling world 
 far removed from the beautiful, quiet, 
 homelike little country graveyard where 
 now the dust of my two neighbors rests 
 in peace. The snows of winters, the flow- 
 ers of summers, have rested on their 
 tombs. And still my love for them pleads 
 for a memorial word, demands a funeral 
 sermon that has not been preached. 
 
 The full lesson of their lives, rendered 
 plain by death, could not of course have 
 been spoken in that country-side, but now, 
 with the neighborhood courtesy, family 
 sensitiveness and personal acquaintance 
 all eliminated, I can, without breach of 
 confidence, divulge as much of the story 
 of “Bob” and “Billy” as will enable them 
 through it to speak the words they often 
 whisper in my ear to a brotherhood far 
 
 [ 46 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 beyond their wildest dreams or furthest 
 ken when alive. 
 
 While I would shield them with silence 
 and shroud them with the courtesies of 
 love and respect, the voice of conscience, 
 an accusing voice, like that in the story of 
 old, says to me, “Where are thy broth- 
 ers?” I must speak, then, for “The voice 
 of their blood crieth unto me from the 
 ground.” And I am sure I shall be par- 
 doned by their spirits and their friends for 
 lifting the curtain just a little that through 
 me they may minister to the solemn truth 
 to which their sad experiences witness. 
 
 “Bob” was a harmless citizen, a kindly 
 neighbor, handy around the house ; one of 
 those men who had a woman’s touch; he 
 could wash, iron, mop the floor, put the 
 kitchen in order and, at need, prepare a 
 palatable meal. He was a man to help in 
 time of strain, whether the strain was in 
 the farmhouse, garden or harvest field. 
 He was ready to piece out the widow’s 
 strength in her little garden plot, to mow 
 her lawn and trim her trees, and equally 
 
 [ 47 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 willing to take his pitchfork at the straw- 
 pile and work at the dusty end of the 
 threshing machine. Through many years 
 of our midsummer life at Tower Hill, 
 “Bob” was the handy man who set the 
 cottages in order, who prepared the Pa- 
 vilion for the big Sunday rallies and 
 cleared the debris on the Monday follow- 
 ing. Children loved “Bob;” women 
 trusted him; men, who came with their 
 culture, their diplomas and degrees for a 
 rest under the trees, recognized that 
 “Bob” was something more than a hired 
 “hand” to help them out by the hour or by 
 the day. 
 
 “Bob” had a vigorous, though a tainted, 
 inheritance. “Old Pete,” the father, was a 
 jolly, robust, cheerful, competent Welsh 
 pioneer who came into the lead regions of 
 Wisconsin in the early days. He was one 
 of the best known and most indispensable 
 hands in the shot-tower industries of pre- 
 railroad days at “Old Helena,” which, by 
 the strange mutations of western life, were 
 long since translated into the comforts and 
 
 [ 48 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 non-material industries of the Tower Hill 
 Encampment. The shaft down which “Old 
 Pete” used to drop the molten lead as 
 death-dealing shot now yields the life-giv- 
 ing water which the winds lift to the top 
 of the hill that it may be distributed to the 
 summer cottages of Tower Hill. 
 
 But “Old Pete” was a notorious, boister- 
 ous drinking man in the later years of his 
 life, only out of his cups when they were 
 out of reach. And poor “Bob,” the son, 
 weaker in body, gentler in spirit, more cul- 
 tured in manner, inherited the appetite 
 and walked in the footsteps of his father. 
 I cannot remember when “Bob’s” weak- 
 ness was not understood and accepted as 
 inevitable by his sympathetic neighbors. 
 “Bob” enlisted in the same artillery com- 
 pany in which I served, but he was dis- 
 charged before we ever left the State. 
 Whatever the reason may have been that 
 was entered upon the roll, the real cause 
 was this infirmity, which rendered him 
 useless to the government. But “Bob” 
 meant well; he was a loyal citizen. In 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 after years he prized the comradeship and 
 cherished the comrades. In early years he 
 faithfully started to the annual reunions, 
 but seldom was able to answer to his 
 name at roll call, for poor “Bob” was out 
 of the service before the bugle sounded, 
 and in later years he gave up the attempt 
 altogether. 
 
 In due time “Bob” married and built 
 himself a comfortable home. He was 
 good to his wife and children, who dearly 
 loved him. He was respected by all his 
 neighbors. But year by year he went on 
 earning and drinking; a large part of the 
 result of one day’s industry would 
 promptly find its way on the next day 
 into the tills of the saloon-keepers in the 
 village three miles away. The farmers 
 around accepted it as a neighborly obliga- 
 tion to bring poor “Bob” home at night, 
 helpless, over the road which a few hours 
 before he had traveled with alert and sup- 
 ple step. Year by year his life grew more 
 pathetic. Men smiled, women pitied, chil- 
 dren joked, but nobody interfered. While 
 
 [ 50 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 the temptation and the opportunity re- 
 mained any interference would seem use- 
 less; until at last, many years ago now, 
 the heart, weary of its persistent fight 
 against a deadly poison, gave it up, and 
 poor “Bob,” dear “Bob,” was found in a 
 village haymow, into which he had crept 
 to sleep away his helplessness, dead. The 
 redeeming sleep had indeed come, the 
 sleep that knew no waking. Quietly and 
 benignantly the imprisoned spirit was re- 
 leased from the nagging fetters ; the 
 tyrannical leash of the flesh was at last 
 broken. 
 
 They said it was one of the largest 
 funerals known for many years in that 
 country-side, and everybody said, and felt 
 it too, “Poor Bob! he had no enemy save 
 the one fell enemy that undid him.” The 
 helpful offices of this kind and gentle man 
 were testified to on every side. “Bob” 
 had passed beyond the tempter’s reach. 
 Everybody pitied, and few blamed. His 
 memory in that country-side is as green 
 as the grass that grows on his grave. His 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 record, with the exception of this weak- 
 ness, is pure as the winter snows that en- 
 shroud him. 
 
 “Billy,” my other neighbor, had perhaps 
 a more promising inheritance. His father 
 was an aggressive, efficient, inventive 
 Yankee, with a mechanical ingenuity that 
 amounted almost to genius. He was the 
 last Director of the shot-tower at Old 
 Helena, under whose skillful management 
 the manufacture of shot was brought to 
 what, in the ante-bellum days, was a sur- 
 prising state of perfection. “Billy” inher- 
 ited much of his father’s ingenuity and 
 mechanical skill. He was wonderfully 
 handy with tools of every kind. He was 
 “Jack of all trades” for Tower Hill; could 
 build a stone wall, patch a roof, paint a 
 house, or lay a carpet. The neighbors 
 would accept as accurate “Billy’s” esti- 
 mate of a wood lot or a plowed field when 
 he had paced it. He was full of wood- 
 craft; he knew the haunts and habits of 
 
 the wild animals; he was the last of the 
 [ 62 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 trappers in that country-side. He was the 
 lone fisherman, and the fish diet of Tower 
 Hill ran low when “Billy” forgot or 
 neglected to set his lines. 
 
 Nature meant “Billy” to be a hand- 
 some, well-bodied, efficient man, but some 
 untoward accident in babyhood marred 
 the delicate mechanism, and the splendid 
 column that would have lifted the hand- 
 some curly head into the full proportions 
 of a man doubled in upon itself, making 
 of “Billy” a human interrogation point, 
 a grotesque little hunchback. But the 
 clear blue eye, the melodious and winning 
 voice, the self-respecting soul, gave an 
 astonishing degree of muscular vigor and, 
 as I have already hinted, of manual 
 efficiency to the thwarted body. 
 
 In due time “Billy” married and made 
 for himself a valley home. He had the 
 best garden in the neighborhood; he mar- 
 keted the earliest melons; he might have 
 had a comfortable and happy home, but 
 he became an “habitual.” I cannot re- 
 member when “Billy’s” regular visits to 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 the village were not taken as a matter of 
 course. He could earn money easily. He 
 did earn much, but most of it went to the 
 unsavory and unattractive, nasty little 
 saloons in the village, and everybody took 
 it for granted that it was “Billy’s” right 
 to waste himself, to jeopardize the future 
 of his children, to darken his little home- 
 stead with the blight that hangs over a 
 drunkard’s home, and that it was the right 
 of these saloon-keepers to take from his 
 helpless hands his hard-earned money, to 
 send out of their doors a maudlin, quar- 
 relsome, helpless man who had come in 
 bright, intelligent, self-reliant, a genial 
 citizen. 
 
 The neighbors were kind to “Billy” as 
 they were to “Bob.” They would pick him 
 up along the roadside in his imbecility and 
 give him a lift in his helplessness. But 
 “Billy’s” splendid inheritance, his clear 
 spirit, his otherwise strong will and supe- 
 rior intelligence, were no match for the fell 
 poison which sooner or later makes sure of 
 its victim, and at last, in the early gray of 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 life, “Billy” sickened. He flattered him- 
 self, or concealed his humiliation in the 
 thought that he had been poisoned by 
 some unwholesome milk drank during an 
 absence from home. But the doctor 
 knew and all the neighbors surmised what 
 “Billy” knew better than any of them, that 
 the organs were worn out and were giving 
 up the fight; and in the springtime of his 
 old age, as of his garden, he slept, and the 
 dust of the little body rests in the beautiful 
 little cemetery that overlooks the winding, 
 unwearying, unhasting river. Here in the 
 same quiet “God’s Acre” rest the bodies 
 of “Bob” and “Billy,” the two “drunk- 
 ards” of that country-side. It pains me 
 to write the word. How it grates upon 
 the ear, particularly of those who knew 
 and through it all loved and respected 
 “Bob” and “Billy!” Through all the long 
 years of dissipation, neither of them lost 
 the fine sense of honor, the business integ- 
 rity, the purity of life and, except when 
 maddened by drink, the purity of speech 
 and the courteous demeanor. Spite of all 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 that has been said, the fact must be em- 
 phatically stated that “Bob” and “Billy” 
 were gentlemen, respected by their neigh- 
 bors, and when I return to my old haunts 
 I miss their cordial greeting and their 
 hearty welcome. They have a place in the 
 line of the absentees whose shadows rise 
 benignly before me as I walk or drive 
 along those quiet country ways, in the 
 shade of those benignant trees and the 
 shelter of the protecting blufifs that have 
 been and will be my comfort and strength 
 from boyhood to the end. 
 
 Because I loved and respected them I 
 lay this tribute upon their graves, hoping 
 that it will add a touch of sincerity to the 
 painful confession I must make. 
 
 I who witnessed the struggle, saw the 
 inevitable decline, realized the helpless- 
 ness of the victims in the bonds of an 
 appetite which had long, long since passed 
 beyond their control, felt the hopelessness 
 of the situation, stood by with listless 
 hands with the community of that coun- 
 try-side, consenting to the earthly damna- 
 
 [ 56 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 tion of my two neighbors. I had no vote 
 there, but I neighbored with the intelli- 
 gent men who affected public spirit, and 
 who did have votes, and who for forty 
 years or more issued official warrant and 
 public license, sometimes to four or more 
 men in that little rural village of less than 
 a thousand souls, to lay their snares and 
 bait their traps for “Bob” and “Billy.” 
 These four or more men, like all the voters 
 of that town and the taxpayers of that 
 community, knew that “Bob” and “Billy” 
 were as helpless in the presence of their 
 temptations as is the lamb in the jaws of 
 the wolf. The saloon-keepers, as well as 
 all the men who licensed them, knew 
 perfectly well that day by day, week by 
 week, month by month, year by year, 
 through a long lifetime, the hard won 
 earnings of these two men went into the 
 tills of those who gave in return what 
 they knew and everybody knew would 
 promptly craze the brain, confuse the 
 judgment, stun the senses, bring partial 
 paralysis to muscle and nerve, so they 
 
 [ 57 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 could not walk or talk straight. The 
 saloon-keepers, as well as the men who 
 legalized their business, knew also that 
 “Bob” and “Billy” were no sociological 
 freaks, no exceptional men, unrelated, 
 standing alone, but that they were only 
 two individual conspicuous types of an 
 ever-lengthening line of men in that com- 
 munity, some of them mere boys, who 
 were in training for the same imbecility, 
 on the road to the same helplessness. 
 “Bob” and “Billy” simply stood at the 
 head, perchance, of a staggering proces- 
 sion, and when the blessed release came 
 and the prison gates were thrown open 
 and the enslaved went free, there were 
 plenty to keep up the business, to close up 
 the file, to make “Bob’s” and “Billy’s” 
 places good. Those saloon-keepers knew 
 and all the voters knew that “Bob” and 
 “Billy” had children who suffered from 
 the humiliations, who were threatened by 
 the gruesome inheritance, and who were 
 liable to pass the blighting plague down 
 through unborn generations. They knew 
 
 [ 58 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 that “Bob” and “Billy” had wives who 
 were being humiliated, who were break- 
 ing their hearts and wearing out their 
 lives under the relentless tyranny. 
 
 When the storm gullies a country road 
 and pitfalls menace the safety of man or 
 beast that travels thereon, the town is 
 prompt in repairing the damage; at least, 
 knowing its responsibility in the case, it 
 hastens to post a danger signal and put a 
 fence around the menace while the danger 
 lasts. When a bridge is built the town is 
 required by law to safeguard it with ade- 
 quate railing, and in default of these pro- 
 visions the town is responsible for any 
 damages incurred. 
 
 I know the perplexities of the temper- 
 ance problem; I know the difficulty of 
 drawing lines between the responsibility 
 and the dependence of the individual, but 
 here there can be no doubt that the public 
 not only consented to but created the pit- 
 falls in the roads over which “Bob” and 
 “Billy” traveled. There is no shadow of 
 a doubt that for over a quarter of a cen- 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 tury these men were maimed with defect- 
 ive organisms. The rickets that deformed 
 the body of ‘'Billy” was no more real, 
 actual, demonstrable a physical defect 
 than the rickets of the will, so closely 
 allied thereto, which m^de it impossible 
 for him to go straight by the open door of 
 the saloon, or to take that boasted “first” 
 glass and then stop, of which the average 
 man in his conceit is so proud. The great 
 God alone can answer the question, 
 “Who did sin, this man or his parents?” 
 in regard to our “Bob,” but one thing is 
 sure — that all the benign forces in his na- 
 ture (and they were many), all the re- 
 straining and helpful forces in his envi- 
 ronment, including loyal wife, loving chil- 
 dren and kind neighbors, were inadequate 
 to carry him over the bridge to which 
 there were no railings. There is no dis- 
 puting the fact that for many years those 
 two neighbors of mine were moral crip- 
 ples, defectives, unable to care for them- 
 selves unaided ; much more so than if they 
 
 had been blind, deaf, or wanting in legs 
 [ 60 1 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 or arms. And there is no disputing the 
 further fact that had their defects been 
 of this latter kind, the community, not 
 only by private beneficences but by civic 
 forethought, would have pieced out their 
 deficiencies, shielded them from danger, 
 and helped them through the mazes of the 
 world. 
 
 It is with pain and humiliation, then, 
 that I confess that I as a neighbor failed 
 in my neighborly obligations, and still 
 more guilty would I have been if I had 
 had the rights of a citizen neighbor and 
 had still not persistently and continuously 
 interposed a helping, guiding and prevent- 
 ing hand. I believe that the voters of that 
 little hamlet egregiously failed in their 
 duty when they failed to shield and direct 
 those crippled neighbors of theirs and 
 mine. 
 
 Here, then, we have the saloon problem 
 in a nutshell, a concrete illustration of the 
 general situation. The saloons, which 
 so mar the beauty, sanity and respectabil- 
 ity of that village, helped debauch and 
 [ 61 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 continued to pauperize my two neighbors, 
 and they were permitted to continue their 
 fell work until they had secured the last 
 nickel, drained to the dregs the cup of 
 life of “Bob” and “Billy,” which dregs 
 indeed they helped make bitter as gall and 
 wormwood. 
 
 Now these little tragedies of the coun- 
 tryside, this spiritual calamity that befell 
 two innocent farm neighbors of mine, 
 that steeped in woe two little homes in 
 obscure little valleys of Wisconsin, three 
 miles away from no place, is typical. The 
 story of “Bob” and “Billy” is duplicated in 
 every hamlet, multiplied by ten in every 
 small city, and by tens of thousands in 
 every great metropolis. The saloons every- 
 where, in the big city as well as in the 
 rural railway station, are in the man-de- 
 stroying business, and the very attempt to 
 hedge them about with license and police 
 regulation arraigns their business as dan- 
 gerous, classes the saloon-keepers as traf- 
 fickers in poison, as men who menace the 
 
 well-being of the community. We do not 
 [ 62 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 have to license the selling of cheese or of 
 bread, but we do have to circumscribe in 
 every way possible the trade in prussic 
 acid, morphine, calomel, nitro-glycerin 
 and alcoholic compounds of every descrip- 
 tion. 
 
 Now the licenses, which are really de- 
 signed to circumscribe the power of the 
 saloons for evil, to limit their nefarious 
 influence, but which actually contribute 
 to the indifference and complacency of 
 conscience on behalf of the voter and the 
 taxpayer, are justified only on one or 
 more of these three possible counts, viz: 
 
 1. That the license money is a civic 
 convenience, perchance a corporate neces- 
 sity; without it the modern city could not 
 sustain its police systems or adequately 
 support its schools. 
 
 2. The drink habit is so persistent, the 
 appetite for stimulants so universal, the 
 demand for grog so imperative, that it 
 cannot be suppressed, hence must be con- 
 trolled. The saloons are licensed that 
 
 [ 63 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 they may be held in leash; they are listed 
 that they may be watched, curbed and 
 controlled. 
 
 3. The state must not interfere with 
 the liberty of choice. We have no right 
 to make men sober or virtuous by law, we 
 are told. This is the Personal Liberty 
 claim. 
 
 These three defenses, studied in the 
 light of recent developments, analyzed by 
 the help of latest science and the growing 
 experience of communities, seem to render 
 something like the following conclusions: 
 
 First, the revenue argument. To state 
 it is to condemn and refute it. What, 
 license a saloon in order to get money to 
 pay for the police force and courts neces- 
 sary to handle the petty crimes which the 
 saloons have chiefly created ? The ex- 
 pensiveness of the constabulary, jails, 
 prisons, fire departments, which every- 
 body knows are largely made necessary 
 by the fell work of the saloon, has been 
 presented so often that our ears have 
 grown dull to it. I am sure there are well- 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 meaning saloon-keepers, possibly decent 
 saloons, but none are more willing than 
 those saloon-keepers who believe in a de- 
 cent saloon to admit that their business is 
 allied to lawlessness, coarseness and 
 crime. And no one knows better than 
 those saloon-keepers that a saloon busi- 
 ness kept within the limits of decency, as 
 they themselves understand it, is a losing 
 business. A law-abiding saloon-keeper is 
 foreordained to bankruptcy. The time 
 was when honest business men were solic- 
 itous for the prosperity of the town that 
 was bereft of its saloons. They looked 
 upon an anti-saloon agitation as a menace 
 to trade; but that much-threatened 
 “green grass” that used to grow in the 
 streets in the “Dry” town has withered 
 long ago. A thousand towns in the Mis- 
 sissippi valley have disproved the foolish 
 theory. Villages and cities without num- 
 ber are growing prosperous, happy and 
 jolly on every hand without the saloon 
 and confessedly on account of its absence. 
 
 The second justification of the license, 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 on the ground that it is the only practical 
 thing to do, that saloons must be, that 
 drink habits are incurable and must be 
 controlled, is also negatived with wonder- 
 ful efficiency by the most recent studies in 
 sociology, founded upon and justified by 
 the growing “Dry” territory of the United 
 States. Not much longer can a man lay 
 claim to intelligence or honesty who in- 
 sists that a community, large or small, 
 must necessarily cater to vice, and that the 
 standards of purity and sobriety which the 
 individual believes in must be lowered by 
 the ordinances of that community. No 
 laws are wholly effective; no regulations 
 are adequately enforced, but not on that 
 account does the wise statesman urge their 
 elimination from the statute books. 
 
 The better elements of the community 
 have too long truckled to the vicious and 
 the dissipated. Politicians have assumed 
 that good causes must make friends with 
 vice; that even high-minded men must 
 sometimes appeal to the saloon and estab- 
 lish their headquarters in the back rooms 
 [ 66 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 of the same if they are to win. But that 
 time is fast going by. Fortunately, this 
 is no longer a question to be settled by 
 arguments. There are facts in the case to 
 demonstrate that there are more sober 
 than dissipated voters in the community; 
 that the right-minded can outvote the 
 wrong-minded; that the worthy can to a 
 degree control and that they should do so 
 in the affairs of the community. Just as 
 fast as this principle is recognized the 
 drunkard-making mill, the insinuating 
 pitfalls for our ‘‘Bobs” and our “Billys” 
 must go, and they will go independently 
 of the question of ultimate teetotal ab- 
 stinence. If one must gratify a lamen- 
 table love of stimulants, if one’s nerves are 
 so debauched that he cannot live the 
 temperate and sober life, let him secure his 
 alcoholic poisons as he does his arsenic 
 and other drugs — under the direction of 
 his doctor, in packages, to be consumed 
 in solitude, reducing thereby their power 
 for evil to others and circumscribing their 
 dangers to himself to the minimum. 
 
 [ 97 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 The times are ripe for experimentation 
 on these lines; the call is for sociological 
 laboratory work on a large scale. The 
 demands of science, of statesmanship, as 
 well as of religion, enforce the old sum- 
 mons of the Bible legend; we are our 
 “brothers’ keepers,” and the blood of the 
 fallen calls to us from the ground. The 
 case is not so hopeless as it seems; the situ- 
 ation is not so desperate as is urged. The 
 city is not always to be a carbuncle on the 
 neck of the body politic, a place where de- 
 generate tissue is inflamed by the precipita- 
 tion of impurities, but it is to be the flower- 
 ing of the social organism, the efflorescence 
 and fruitage, the finest output on the upper 
 branches of the tree of life. We can not 
 only do much more than we are now doing 
 to save our “Bobs” and our “Billys,” but 
 we can greatly decrease the manufacture 
 of such. We can put the nefarious busi- 
 ness in its right light and let it be seen 
 that the poor victims of this business are, 
 in the last analysis at least, moral crip- 
 ples, spiritual dwarfs, diseased victims, 
 [ 68 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 broken men, appealing to us for pity and 
 demanding of us remedial treatment. 
 
 The third justification of the saloon — 
 the “Personal Liberty” cry, the right of a 
 m2vti to debauch himself if he will, also 
 demands and is receiving attention. 
 
 What of this? The cry of “Liberty” is 
 a popular one in America, and justly so. 
 Freedom is a precious achievement, 
 bought with a great price. I yield to no 
 man in my loyalty to the sacred rights of 
 the soul to carve out its own destiny; to 
 win its translation through mistakes; to 
 rise by virtue of its blunders. The only 
 heaven I believe in and hope for is reached 
 by the road which passes the entrances to 
 hell. Salvation comes only to the soul 
 that has escaped damnation. But Liberty 
 is no longer a thing of the individual. Per- 
 sonal liberty ends where public weal be- 
 gins. My rights stop when they encroach 
 upon the rights of the community. De- 
 mocracy may be not inaptly defined as 
 the curbing of the individual’s liberty for 
 the sake of the public good. It is the mis- 
 
 [ 69 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 sion of the State to defend the diseased 
 and the defective from the arrogant en- 
 croachment of the strong and the ade- 
 quate; to protect the unwary from the 
 subtle exploitations of the competent. ;No 
 liberty must be granted to the New Or- 
 leans householder to leave uncovered his 
 cisterns, that breed the deadly mosquito 
 in yellow fever time. The multi-million- 
 aire has no more right than the junk man 
 to dump his garbage into the back yard 
 that it may breed pestilence. The prince 
 and the beggar, the philosopher and the 
 fool must respect the ethics of the road, 
 the safeguards of the street and the time 
 limits. The automobile and the push-cart 
 alike must “keep to the right,” as the law 
 directs. In this way only can the freedom 
 of the road be secured. The freedom of 
 the locomotive is found on the track, not 
 in the ditch. It must keep to the rails if it 
 is to know the liberty of action. 
 
 Thus it is that slowly but surely the 
 logic of the situation is clearing. The 
 problem of personal liberty is being 
 
 [ 70 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 changed, or rather deepened, into personal 
 obligation. The shallow and selfish man 
 prates about his “rights;” the profound 
 and altruistic man is concerned about his 
 duties. The “boss” uses the public; the 
 patriot serves the public. We are our 
 “brothers’ keepers.” The supposed private 
 interests, the still more insinuating claims 
 of party and prejudices of sect, must give 
 way and the community rise in its cor- 
 porate might and vindicate its freedom, 
 which is found only in the sanity of the 
 body politic. The whole cannot be un- 
 mindful of the parts. The foot cannot say 
 to the head, “I have no need of thee !” 
 
 A Supreme Judge of the State of Illinois 
 has recently been telling the citizens of 
 Illinois that they have as good laws as 
 they deserve, as wise an administration as 
 they have a right to ask for, as noble a 
 government as they can enforce. This is 
 only half the truth. The other half is 
 equally patent. The good people of this 
 commonwealth have not expressed them- 
 selves in their full might, and under pres- 
 
 [ 71 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 ent management they cannot thus express 
 themselves. The noblest elements of so- 
 ciety have not yet been adequately con- 
 sulted, either in the legislative or execu- 
 tive departments of our country. There 
 have been disturbing elements in our civic 
 life that have divided the competent, con- 
 fused the sober, and defeated the worthy. 
 Of these disturbing elements I venture to 
 mention three. 
 
 1. The sordid anxiety for prosperity; 
 the love of gain; the eagerness for profit; 
 the horrible debauching of the dollar. 
 This induces even church members to 
 build and rent houses to debauching in- 
 dustries; it has inspired mighty combina- 
 tions of capital to embark in body-destroy- 
 ing and soul-crippling enterprises. So the 
 inspirations that multiply and protect the 
 saloon spring chiefly not out of the love of 
 stimulants, not even out of the passion for 
 society, the commendable need for com- 
 munion and companionship, but out of the 
 love of the dollar. It is not the appetite 
 
 [ 72 ] 
 
Two Neighbor^ 
 
 for drink, but the appetite for wealth that 
 we have to cope with primarily. 
 
 2. The tyranny of party politics, the 
 humiliating slavery of the voter to his 
 clique and his clan. The central issue in 
 the life of the municipality today is never 
 decided on its merits. We are never able 
 to rally the forces of sobriety on the one 
 hand and of inebriety on the other. The 
 would-be friends of temperance, the guar- 
 dians of the weak and the unwary, are 
 constantly found casting their votes for a 
 liquor-soaked saloon-keeper in his filth 
 and his debauchery, if he belongs to their 
 own party, rather than joining issues with 
 the noble and the sober in the interest of 
 a creditable candidate who belongs to the 
 other party, though there be no possible 
 party issue at stake. 
 
 Thus at the polls we constantly find 
 good men, believers in the home, friends 
 of chastity and sobriety, lending them- 
 selves to the fell task of lifting lecherous 
 men into high offices, trusting the lives of 
 innocent lambs to the keeping of lascivious 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 and debauching wolves who have not even 
 the decency to hide their hideousness with 
 a cloak of sheepskin. 
 
 3. The wasteful distractions of the 
 ethical and religious forces by the secta- 
 rian spirit have greatly weakened the cor- 
 porate life of the community, divided the 
 high interests of the municipality. The 
 commonwealth suffers pitiably from the 
 distractions and dissipations of the sects, 
 the lack of harmony and co-operation 
 among the churches. I do not charge the 
 churches with aggressive bigotry and low 
 rivalries. Happily the day of sectarian 
 bitternesses is largely gone or going. In 
 the main, deacons and pastors have quit 
 fighting one another, but they have not 
 yet learned how to work together heroic- 
 ally for great civic causes. Their preoccu- 
 pations in the interest of denominational 
 propaganda crowd out the high combina- 
 tions that would inspire them with cour- 
 age to save the state and serve the nation. 
 There are temperate, sane and saintly peo- 
 ple enough to make even the greatest 
 
 [ 74 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 metropolis go “Dry” in some wise fashion 
 in the next five years, if they will only 
 have faith enough in themselves and their 
 neighbors to trust the inspirations of 
 purity, to work together and live together 
 for the redemption of the community. 
 
 But I have gone far afield from the two 
 graves on the beautiful heights above the 
 river in a far-olf country-side. I have ven- 
 tured my tribute of love and respect to my 
 two unfortunate neighbors, hoping that it 
 might prepare the minds and quicken the 
 hearts of a few for more heroic grappling 
 with the questions that are concerned with 
 the well-being of those still living. In 
 comparatively prosperous times, at the 
 very heart of the great Mississippi valley, 
 when its granaries were overcrowded, the 
 products of the field and garden begging 
 for purchasers, at a time when market 
 prices were low from overproduction, 
 when the manufacturers and bankers were 
 gleefully predicting a prompt return of 
 prosperity and boastfully exhibiting the 
 figures of increasing deposits and expand- 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 ing exchanges, a calm and critical commis- 
 sion reported five thousand hungry and 
 ten thousand underfed children attending 
 the public schools of Chicago. And the 
 major causes of this suffering were trace- 
 able to the seductions of the nasty, un- 
 wholesome, unsocial saloon. 
 
 What is to be done under such circum- 
 stances? There is great danger that the 
 weakest, wickedest thing possible will be 
 done because it is the easiest thing to do, 
 viz, that the lazy, overfed, underworked, 
 indulgent children of prosperity, pricked 
 into temporary shame, will be allowed to 
 pour out their soup-house charities in cer- 
 tain congested and hungry districts. 
 Could the sufferers be thus reached it 
 would be mediaeval benevolence, blight- 
 ing both receiver and giver, bargaining for 
 greater wretchedness than ever. Give five 
 thousand children their breakfasts for a 
 month, either from private or public char- 
 ity, and there will be eight thousand clam- 
 oring for the breakfasts next month, and 
 many of the breakfasted children will be 
 
 [T6] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 asking for a dinner also; and before a 
 winter season is over long lines of fathers 
 and mothers, as well as children, will be 
 waiting for the gruesome bread-wagon to 
 appear. 
 
 Chicago, in this emergency just spoken 
 of, did the wiser thing. No bread was 
 given to a hungry child until its case had 
 been investigated by a competent repre- 
 sentative of the commonwealth, and when 
 by such investigation the cause was dis- 
 covered it was largely remedied. It was 
 easily demonstrated that a painful number 
 of these children were hungry because 
 their bread-money had been converted into 
 beer-money. The brewers and distillers of 
 Chicago had deposited in the banks the 
 money that should have nourished the 
 pale, pathetic school children. 
 
 But another percentage of these chil- 
 dren were traced into homes where there 
 was no money either for beer or bread, for 
 the earning capacity of one or both par- 
 ents was gone. They were the children 
 of the “Bobs” and the “Billys” of Chi- 
 
 [ 77 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 cago; those who had been debauched by 
 the mug and the pipe, twin poisons that 
 debilitate the nerves, weaken the wills, 
 and make men old before their time. 
 
 There was still another percentage of 
 these ten thousand underfed children who 
 were discovered to be the victims of eco- 
 nomic injustice; children of hard-working 
 men and women who were under-paid, 
 honest factors in the industrial life of Chi- 
 cago, or who had been thrown out of their 
 jobs by the emergencies of vicious finan- 
 ciering and plunging capitalists. These 
 capitalists had perhaps saved their bank 
 deposits by shutting down the mill or 
 reducing the wages, regardless of the 
 moral claim of their unrecognized partners 
 in the business, those who had built 
 homes, reared children, invested their 
 lives; skilled laborers, indispensable fac- 
 tors in the business in whose control they 
 had no voice, and who in dire crises must 
 look elsewhere for relief. 
 
 Now, by whatever means this hunger 
 has come about, whether by misuse of 
 
 [ 78 ] 
 
Two Neighbors 
 
 wages, incapacity to work from debauch- 
 ery, or a lack of opportunity to exchange 
 honest sweat for honest bread, there is but 
 one course of action worthy a civilized 
 community, and that is to trace the hunger 
 to its fell source and bring to bear the 
 cleansing, renovating stream of civic 
 power as well as private benevolence, the 
 redeeming enthusiasms of religion. Here 
 the highest liberty which can be accorded 
 is the liberty to deny one’s self in the in- 
 terest of the well-being of the weakest. 
 
 Let the story of “Bob” and “Billy” give 
 us courage. Let no one be paralyzed by 
 the magnitude of the job. Do not tell me 
 it is too big an undertaking to save such 
 good men; that there is not time, money 
 or skill enough for such thorough and 
 radical work, and that consequently there 
 is nothing left but to do a little emergency 
 work and order out the sandwich wagon. 
 
 This task would be too great for a city 
 of barbarians, or a nation of unorganized, 
 segregated, disintegrated, detached indi- 
 viduals, distrustful of one another, unac-^ 
 
 [ 79 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 customed to co-operative action, dull to 
 public interest, jealous of their individual 
 rights, careless of common weal, but it is 
 an easy task to a civilized community, to 
 an organized brotherhood, to Citizens who 
 are through with the Cain-like evasions of 
 responsibility, who have learned that they 
 are their “brothers’ keepers,” who are will- 
 ing to take up the task of brotherly serv- 
 ice, to bend the line of their individual 
 rights into the circle of their common re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 Such Citizens will not always hear the 
 taunt that comes up from the ground; 
 they will become voters from whose brows 
 has been removed the mark of Cain. 
 
 C 80 ] 
 
The 
 
 Flanking 
 Columns 
 In the War 
 for Sobriety 
 
 Q 
 

 / 
 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 O N AN early morning in November, 
 1863, General Braxton Bragg, Com- 
 mander of the Confederate forces, 
 and the lady at whose house he had estab 
 lished his headquarters, were looking down 
 from the crest of Missionary Ridge upon 
 the beleaguered city of Chattanooga, where 
 the half-starved Union army under Gen- 
 eral Thomas was apparently hopelessly 
 besieged. Their nearest post of supplies 
 was thirty miles away; the banks of the 
 Tennessee river between Chattanooga 
 and Bridgeport were so infested by gueril- 
 las and scouts of the enemy that it was 
 unavailable for transportation purposes, 
 and the road of bottomless mud was cor- 
 duroyed with the dead bodies of the 
 patient mules that had fallen in their 
 tracks, unable to go further. The luckless 
 
 [ 83 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 army was enclosed by a bristling horse- 
 shoe of batteries, reaching from Lookout 
 Mountain on the river to the west, to the 
 end of Missionary Ridge at the mouth of 
 Chickamauga Creek on the east. 
 
 The Confederate army was in comfort- 
 able winter quarters on the well fortified 
 heights, with ample stores in the immedi- 
 ate rear, unmenaced railroad connections 
 into the heart of the Confederacy and un- 
 broken telegraphic connection with the 
 capital city of Richmond. Said the lady: 
 
 “General, what would you want me to 
 do if some day we were to see those Union 
 soldiers down there climbing this Ridge 
 to the crest and putting your army to 
 flight?” 
 
 “Take no alarm, madam,” replied the 
 confident general, jauntily. “There is no 
 danger; we have got the Yanks bottled; 
 they are starving down there now. 
 Thomas’ army is discouraged; mine is 
 well fed, comfortable, enthusiastic. We 
 have got them. General Sherman’s army 
 
 [ 84 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 that marched across the state of Tennes- 
 see from Memphis to the relief of Thomas, 
 whose camp fires made the Wahatchie 
 valley west of Lookout Mountain brilliant 
 a few nights ago, has given it up. He is 
 too good a general to add his army to the 
 starving forces of Thomas. He has 
 crossed the Tennessee River and is now on 
 his way to the relief of Knoxville. Do not 
 disturb yourself in imagining the impos- 
 sible.” 
 
 In some such words as these it is re- 
 ported did the gallant and dauntless 
 Bragg comfort his hostess; and, in jus- 
 tice to the brave commander, let it be 
 said that these words were no idle boast ; 
 circumstances seemed to justify his con- 
 fidence; for Chattanooga at this crisis was 
 one of the few points where the Confed- 
 erate forces had clearly the advantage in 
 numbers, military supplies and strategic 
 position. It was one of the few times 
 when the Union army was successfully 
 besieged. If ever a general was justified 
 in assuming his position invulnerable, 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 General Bragg was so justified at Chatta- 
 nooga. His army had already measured 
 forces with the enemy; he had outwitted 
 and outfought him; he had him where he 
 wanted him and had good reason to be- 
 lieve that he could starve him or crush 
 him, as he chose. 
 
 But how little can the wisest know of 
 the nature and character of his foes ! How 
 fallible is the keenest sagacity, how in- 
 adequate the most prudent foresight, for — 
 
 ‘The best laid plans o' mice and men 
 Gang aft agley." 
 
 At that very moment, when the words 
 of the General were so reassuring to the 
 widow. Hooker was marshaling his charg- 
 ing column at the foot of Lookout Moun- 
 tain, and Sherman’s forces, which General 
 Bragg thought moving rapidly toward 
 Knoxville, a hundred or more miles away, 
 to meet which he had detached some of 
 his best fighting men under Longstreet 
 some days before, were in fact hidden 
 away just north of Waldron Ridge, within 
 
 earshot of Bragg’s picket posts and within 
 [ 86 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 sight of the bivouac fires that gleamed on 
 Missionary Ridge. 
 
 What transpired is now world-famous 
 history. Very soon, Hooker’s well-fed, 
 well - clothed, well - directed re-enforce- 
 ments were fighting among the clouds, 
 above which at last the stars and stripes 
 were seen floating, soon to be planted on 
 the boldest crest of Lookout Mountain. 
 The “impregnable” had been taken. Mean- 
 while, in the still midnight hours, Sher- 
 man was throwing his pontoon bridge 
 across the river to Bragg’s right, and the 
 rebel pickets, sleeping in a sense of perfect 
 security, awoke to find themselves pris- 
 oners before they had fired a shot, and 
 Bragg discovered the startling fact that 
 Sherman’s forces, toughened by the mili- 
 tary campaigns in Mississippi and disci- 
 plined by the siege of Vicksburg, had 
 flanked his army on the right as Hooker 
 had flanked it on the left. 
 
 Meanwhile the beleaguered Thomas 
 had not moved. His starving army was 
 watching in breathless anxiety; the 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 psychological moment had not yet arrived; 
 but when it did, the hungry men arose, 
 and that historic charge, unordered and 
 unled by officers, transpired. With unex- 
 pected prowess the men climbed the bris- 
 tling front of Missionary Ridge and, per- 
 haps as much to the surprise of their own 
 generals as that of the opposing leaders, 
 found themselves in possession of the 
 enemy’s rifle pits. The courage displayed 
 in this charge of Thomas’ army was 
 psychological, not physical, for the files 
 of Bragg had already been thinned into a 
 skirmish line in order to meet the unex- 
 pected flanking columns of Sherman and 
 Hooker. 
 
 Happily, the clash of arms is heard no 
 more among the mountains of Tennessee. 
 These United States no longer agonize 
 over a cruel fratricidal war. Thank 
 heaven, the scouting, raiding, charging 
 and flanking, on the low levels of physical 
 force, are over ! God grant that they may 
 be forever over. Lookout Mountain and 
 
 Missionary Ridge now constitute a na- 
 [ 88 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 tion’s playground, a beautiful sanitarium 
 for invalids. Little children play among 
 the crumbling embrasures and birds build 
 their nests and rear their young in the 
 mouths of the neglected cannon. The 
 stars and stripes are saluted lovingly and 
 loyally by the children of the South and 
 the North. The rusty remnants of the 
 regiments of Bragg and “Pap” Thomas 
 meet in genial reunion on what were once 
 the rampired heights. Shoulder to 
 shoulder the wearers of the gray and of 
 the blue keep time to the one band which 
 now plays “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” and 
 anon plays “Dixie.” 
 
 And still, this is no time to cry “Peace, 
 peace — for there is no peace!” The citi- 
 zens of these United States are again en- 
 gaged in a mighty war. Larger, more 
 determined, more valorous armies are 
 being marshaled today than those that 
 wore the blue and the gray from ’61 to ’65. 
 More lives are being sacrificed, more 
 homes devastated, more property de- 
 stroyed, more fortunes wrecked, more 
 
 [ 89 ] 
 
O n kT h e Firing Line 
 
 individual careers ruined, and the issues 
 are more profound in this v^ar for sobriety 
 than were ever involved in the War of the 
 Rebellion. The figures of inebriety that 
 represent the wastefulness of the saloon, 
 the weakness and wickedness of drunk- 
 ards, the wretchedness of their homes, the 
 misery of their children, the humiliation 
 of their wives, are simply beyond com- 
 parison with the gruesome figures of the 
 most gigantic and wicked of wars. 
 
 This battle-ground is not sectional; the 
 weapons are not bullets and bayonets, but 
 arguments and ballots. None the less, it 
 is war, war to the hilt. An unrelenting, 
 unyielding, irreconcilable battle is on be- 
 tween the forces of temperance and intem- 
 perance, the army of the sane and the 
 sober fighting against the army of the dis- 
 solute and those who would profit from 
 dissipation by bartering in the stuff that 
 dissipates. More and more clearly is the 
 issue drawn; more and more inevitable is 
 the battle. 
 
 Today the commanders of the drink 
 
 [ 90 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 army, like Bragg on Missionary Ridge, 
 may look down complacently, perhaps 
 contemptuously, upon what they deem the 
 dirty starvelings in the grim army of re- 
 formers. They may look with confidence 
 upon that invulnerable line of saloon-keep- 
 ers, seven thousand or more in Chicago 
 alone, backed by the well-fed hosts who 
 are engaged in the liquor industries in one 
 way or another. The complacency of 
 these whiskey Braggs, the Generals in the 
 army, may seem altogether justifiable in 
 view of the exhaustless resources back of 
 them, the abundant capital, the mountain- 
 ous aggregations of the brewing and dis- 
 tilling interests of the United States, the 
 expert legal skill, the subtleties of poli- 
 ticians who have for so long maintained 
 efficient back-door connections with the 
 saloons of the country. , According to the 
 official figures for the fiscal year ending 
 June 30, 1909, the drink bill of the United 
 States amounted to $1,745,300,385, almost 
 twice as much as the United States debt. 
 During the same time the government 
 
 [ 91 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 returns showed that 133,450,755 gallons 
 of distilled liquors were produced in the 
 United States, and 56,303,497 barrels of 
 beer. In view of the mighty combinations 
 of capital, the humble and faithful armies 
 of private laborers who are shedding hon- 
 est sweat in the business, and the appetites 
 pandered and developed, to satisfy which 
 required in 1907 twenty-three gallons of 
 stimulants of one kind or another per 
 capita, well may the General Bragg of 
 these inebriating armies look down with 
 complacent derision on the beleaguered 
 hosts in front, made up of poorly fed and 
 inadequately disciplined regiments of 
 reformers and agitators, impecunious 
 preachers, impractical idealists, well- 
 meaning rhapsodists and disfranchised 
 women, whom they suspect of forgetting 
 that this is earth and not heaven, and that 
 consequently one must needs deal with 
 men, fallible men, and not with angels. 
 
 The attacking army in front seems to 
 be an inadequate one; it appears to be 
 fighting in a losing battle, a well-nigh 
 
 192 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 hopeless one. Surely the past and, appar- 
 ently, the plain, prosaic business present, 
 seem to be against them. But lo! un- 
 looked for flanking forces are swinging 
 into line. The Hooker of science is climb- 
 ing Lookout Mountain; his men are now 
 fighting above the clouds, but their feet 
 are on solid ground; they are going to 
 hold the rugged heights they have 
 achieved. The laws of hygiene, sanitary 
 science, the white-robed nurses in the 
 hospital, the testimony of clear-eyed 
 physicians are flanking the saloon-keep- 
 ing army. More and more clear, nearer 
 and nearer to unanimity, is the testimony 
 of the flanking army of science that alco- 
 hol is an intruder in the physical organ- 
 ism; that whiskey is a poison, and that 
 whatever of value or nutriment there may 
 be in beer, that infinitesimal quantity 
 lurks there in spite of, not on account of, 
 the two per cent or more of alcohol, for 
 the sake of which most men drink the 
 dirty stuff. According to the over- 
 whelming consensus of the competent in 
 [ 93 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 science, the economy of alcohol in the 
 healthy body is, to say the least, extremely 
 doubtful, and its function in the diseased 
 body is a delicate, subtle problem which 
 only such experts as are competent to 
 pronounce on medicines and the medicinal 
 values of poisons can decide. 
 
 The saloon-keeping and saloon-patfon- 
 izing army is loath to take issue with the 
 physician. They have been content thus 
 far to ignore him; they either underesti- 
 mate or wholly ignore the existence of 
 this flanking army. They know that no 
 physician who cares a straw for his repu- 
 tation will undertake to justify the bibu- 
 lous habits which alone make the saloon 
 business profitable. The man who wants 
 his one glass of beer with his dinner, or 
 who is contented with a five-cent lunch- 
 eon, has little or nothing in common with 
 the man who joins with his three or more 
 pals in the hospitalities of the saloon, 
 which require that before their luncheon 
 is over four glasses be poured into the 
 stomach, making the luncheon cost not 
 
 [MJ 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 five, but twenty cents. The saloon has 
 no more effective enemy than the solitary 
 one-glass-of-beer luncher. The proprietor 
 loses money on him, and were all of 
 his patrons to come within hailing dis- 
 tance of the scientific minimum, it would 
 soon break up the saloon business, which 
 cannot live on the physician’s prescription. 
 Science, even of the most conservative 
 and reactionary kind, is flanking the 
 drinking forces of the United States, and 
 with its aid the temperance forces that 
 are now fighting above the clouds are 
 destined to rout the enemy. 
 
 Dr. George W. Webster, President of 
 the Illinois State Board of Health, is a 
 man to compel a hearing, and when, in 
 a public address recently given before the 
 critical audience which makes up the 
 Chicago Medical Society, he said that 
 the death rate from alcohol is greater 
 than that from tuberculosis, which aggre- 
 gates 140,000 a year; when he said that 
 ten per cent of all the deaths in the United 
 States are caused, directly or indirectly, 
 
 [ 96 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 by the use of alcoholic stimulants; that 
 twenty per cent of our insane owe their 
 condition to its use; that it costs the 
 United States twelve billions a year to 
 maintain its asylums and its institutions 
 peopled largely by the victims of alcohol; 
 when he said that the death rate of alco- 
 holics from pneumonia is fifty per cent; 
 and, further, when he testified that both 
 mental and physical work can be done 
 more efficiently, with fewer mistakes and 
 less danger to the individual, without alco- 
 hol; that in infectious diseases the ab- 
 stainer has a better chance for recovery; 
 that alcohol always destroys the resisting 
 power of the body and lowers the vitality, 
 he compelled the profession and the laity 
 alike to take notice. 
 
 And Doctor Webster is only one of 
 thousands. The same testimony comes 
 from over the sea; academic Germany has 
 served notice on the Kaiser that the 
 bibulous habit which has menaced his 
 health and power is undermining the 
 virility of the German army, and heroic 
 
 [ 96 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 steps are being taken to put even the 
 fighting Germans on a temperance basis. 
 
 Now, lo and behold! the somber, grim 
 William Tecumseh Sherman, head of the 
 economic forces, field marshal of the 
 business men, has crossed the Tennessee 
 and is moving his solid but quiet indus- 
 trial columns up the Chickamauga valley. 
 He is surprising General Bragg; he leads 
 another flanking column on the enemy’s 
 right. The great captains of industry 
 are learning more and more the waste- 
 fulness of the drink habit, the deteriorat- 
 ing influence of the saloon upon their 
 employes. They can estimate in dollars 
 and cents the wretchedness that might 
 be avoided, aye, that is being avoided 
 largely when communities go “Dry.” 
 The business wisdom of this economic 
 army is demoralizing the whole line; 
 it is sweeping the country in the rear 
 of the enemy. First it took possession of 
 the rural regions, then of the villages, and 
 now city after city is surrendering, not 
 
 C97J 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 through the action of the army in front 
 but through the irresistible movements of 
 this flanking army of common sense, 
 financial thrift and business wisdom. The 
 political boss, with his “What will you 
 have?” is losing his power in the presence 
 of the business boss, who says to the voter 
 as to the toiler, “Don’t make a fool of 
 yourself !” 
 
 Nine States of the Union have already 
 become prohibition States, four of them 
 made such by constitutional amendment. 
 They represent a population of fifteen 
 million or more people. Thirty-three 
 States of the Union have local option pro- 
 vision; sixteen of these have county units. 
 Already it is estimated that about two- 
 thirds of the area of the United States is 
 “Dry” territory, in which the saloon busi- 
 ness, as a business, is illicit. This is 
 chiefly the result of a flanking army whose 
 movements are as irresistible, as rapid, 
 and fraught with as much danger as were 
 the movements of Sherman’s columns up 
 Tunnel Hill. 
 
 ( 98 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 In 1909 there was a decrease in the 
 production of beer of 2,444,183 barrels in 
 the United States. The per capita con- 
 sumption of spirits of all kinds reached its 
 maximum in the United States in 1907, 
 twenty-three gallons as already stated; 
 1909 saw a reduction of two gallons per 
 head throughout the United States. This 
 decrease is obviously largely the result of 
 the flanking army of economists, and this 
 General Bragg’s army is most amenable 
 to the dollars-and-cents argument. It is 
 economic sense building on the economic 
 necessity that is winning the undemon- 
 strative, silent voter; this is doing the 
 business. The political boss, whose de- 
 pendence is upon the “bhoys” rather than 
 upon the men in this war, and the un- 
 scrupulous speculators in the weakness of 
 men and the virtue of women, are losing 
 their power in the presence of the awak- 
 ened and enlightened taxpayer. It does 
 not follow that all this flanking army of 
 voters are teetotalers, either in theory or 
 in practice; they certainly are not all 
 
 [ 09 ] 
 
On The Firing L i n ^ 
 
 political prohibitionists; they may have 
 arrived at no conclusive creed concerning 
 the drink question ; they do not know what 
 the final social adjustment is to be. The 
 vast majority see with perfect clearness 
 that there must be more and not less pro- 
 vision made for the social amenities, for 
 the pastimes, the reunions of men and 
 women. All workingmen, whether they 
 work with the pick, the file, the pen, or the 
 tireless activity of the brain, are simply 
 tired of seeing the substance of the com- 
 munity wasted, disgusted with the cost of 
 policemen and courts that are kept busy 
 handling vulgar drunks and are made in- 
 efficient by the subtle demoralizations of 
 their seducers. The most effective tem- 
 perance organizations in America today 
 are the great industrial plants, and their 
 leaders are the captains of industry. Their 
 conclusions are based upon the unerring 
 and consequently overwhelming testi- 
 mony of the ledger. It is another case 
 where “figures will not lie.” They have 
 
 discovered the persistent foe to pros- 
 [ 100 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 perity, the insidious enemy of efficient 
 labor, the sources of danger in places of 
 trust and responsibility. In this great 
 flanking army of business perhaps the 
 mighty railway systems of America are 
 the most effective corps. Rule ‘‘Eight,” 
 published for the government and infor- 
 mation of employes, on the working card 
 of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul 
 Railway System, in force on all the divi- 
 sions of that road, runs as follows: 
 
 The use of intoxicating drinks has proven a most 
 fruitful source of trouble to railways as well as to 
 individuals. The company will exercise the most rigid 
 scrutiny in reference to the habits of employes in this 
 respect, and any employe who has been dismissed on 
 this account will not be re-employed. Drinking when 
 on duty or frequenting saloons will not be tolerated, 
 and preference will be given to those who do not drink 
 at all. 
 
 This represents in substance the regula- 
 tions enforced by all the leading railway 
 systems of the United States and Canada. 
 Thirty-two railroad companies furnished 
 such information to the Anti-Saloon 
 League Year Book for 1909, the reports 
 
 on which may be consulted on pages 143- 
 [ 101 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 147 of said book. Similar information 
 has been courteously given me by many 
 of the officials representing the leading 
 trunk lines centering in Chicago. The 
 Burlington System, in their general rules, 
 prohibit the use of intoxicants while on 
 duty, and further state that the habitual 
 use or the frequenting of places where in- 
 toxicants are sold is sufficient cause for 
 dismissal. 
 
 The General Manager of another great 
 system centering in Chicago writes me: 
 
 While we have no printed matter on the subject, these 
 unwritten rules are thoroughly understood. The drink- 
 ing of liquor is not tolerated among employes, particu- 
 larly those in train and engine service; and frequenters 
 of saloons are arbitrarily dismissed whether ever seen 
 in an intoxicated condition or not. 
 
 The following from a general notice 
 issued by the Third Vice-President of the 
 Baltimore & Ohio Railway System, Jan- 
 uary 1st, 1908, is taken from the Year 
 Book alluded to above: 
 
 Officers and employes will take notice that there will 
 not be employed, nor permitted to remain in the service, 
 in the capacity of trainmaster, dispatcher, operator, en- 
 gineer, fireman or trainman, yardman, block or other 
 [ 102 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 signalman, watchman, or in other positions in any way 
 charged with the direction or operation of trains, per- 
 sons who use intoxicants, either while on duty or off 
 duty. Under no circumstances will exceptions be made. 
 
 The Pere Marquette Railroad Com- 
 pany, in Rule Twenty-three, provides that 
 employes in any capacity who frequent 
 places where liquor is sold will not be 
 retained in the service. 
 
 The laws of Michigan provide that 
 
 No person shall be employed as engineer, train dis- 
 patcher, fireman, baggage master, conductor, brakeman, 
 or other servant, upon any railroad in any of its oper- 
 ating departments, who uses intoxicating drinks as a 
 beverage. 
 
 A gigantic^ temperance movement has 
 been organized among the employes of the 
 Northwestern Railway System by their 
 own initiative. When it was known that 
 it was the settled policy of the road to 
 retain the non-drinking men in dull sea- 
 sons, a pledge signed by over 25,000 
 employes, which had been circulated 
 throughout the 7,000 miles of their sys- 
 tem, was forwarded to the President of 
 the road. 
 
 [ 103 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 But the railroad companies are not 
 alone in discovering the economic value 
 of sobriety and the business necessity of 
 enforcing temperance habits. The follow- 
 ing carefully prepared statement, which 
 shows what one business firm can do and 
 has done in Chicago in the way of flanking 
 the drinking army, was furnished me by 
 one high in the employ of a great mail 
 order firm of this city: 
 
 Several tracts adjacent to the forty-acre lot pur- 
 chased by us in 1904 for our new plant are prohibition 
 by local option. As soon as we began building 
 operations, saloons grew up around us like mushrooms. 
 We had to do something to protect our female help 
 and prevent bad conditions generally, so we passed 
 the eight-block rule, which makes it a ‘^capital offense” 
 for any employe to enter a saloon at any time (in busi- 
 ness hours or out of them) within eight blocks of our 
 plant. 
 
 Regarding the effect on real estate: I find there is a 
 widespread objection to industrial establishments in 
 residence districts, based on actual experience of de- 
 creasing real estate values. A neighborhood is said 
 to be ^'killed” for residence purposes as soon as busi- 
 ness enters it. This, I find, is not due to factory noises, 
 traffic, smoke, smell, or other essential symptoms of 
 industry; but to a certain amount of disorder and dis- 
 turbance on the street after business hours in factory 
 districts. Here is where the saloon is .directly at fault. 
 
 [ 104 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 By attracting the worker’s attention before he goes 
 home, the saloon gets a much larger share of his earn- 
 ings than it possibly could under other conditions. 
 Our plant has not injured real estate values in the 
 least; neither have the adjacent plants of makers of 
 baking powder, machinery, etc. Residences and flats 
 of better class are being built around our forty acres 
 in a solid wall. Several hundred of our own employes 
 live within four blocks of the plant. 
 
 Viewed from the employers’ standpoint, the saloon 
 is an absolutely unmitigated nuisance. Assuming that 
 one man has as much right to drink beer with his 
 dinner as another has to drink coffee, the fact remains 
 that no bar or saloon could make a profit on drinks so 
 served. The real profit in the liquor business in this 
 country comes from the drinker, and a drinker is not 
 one who takes a glass of beer with a meal, but one 
 who drinks generally without eating and always to 
 excess. ^ 
 
 The saloon can never prove to the employer of labor 
 that it is anything but his enemy. Look at our list of male 
 absentees on a Monday morning and you see the work 
 of the saloon. Add to the money actually spent over 
 the bar the amount lost through inability to work the 
 following day, or the reduction in capacity in case of 
 a piece worker, and you have in a nutshell the worker’s 
 curse and the employer’s problem — both the product of 
 the saloon. 
 
 All authorities agree that the American saloon is the 
 nastiest public institution on earth. Foreigners who 
 were harmless drinkers of beer in Germany or of light 
 wines in France or Italy, come here and are promptly 
 converted to viciousness by the foodless drinking and 
 treating habits here prevailing. 
 
 If the ‘‘personal liberty” folks are sincere in their 
 [ 105 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 ideas of saving to the foreigneis their leisurely Euro- 
 pean glass, let them organize something different from 
 the American saloon as a means of serving the drinks 
 they call harmless. 
 
 Business and the saloon have come to a final parting 
 of the ways. The doors of progress and promotion 
 are closed to any man who finds his associates or 
 recreation in the barroom. 
 
 Another corps in the flanking in this bat- 
 tle against intoxicants is the well discip- 
 plined, clear-eyed, aggressive column of 
 the unenfranchised women who have got 
 tired of merely weeping and only praying, 
 either to man or to God. They have 
 wearied of waiting or of waging a personal 
 and unorganized guerrilla warfare against 
 their great enemy; they are drilling their 
 recruits ; they are hitching their prayers to 
 the gun carriages; they are moving the 
 artillery of reason. Today they are voting 
 by proxy; tomorrow they will be voting in 
 their own God-given rights, assuming the 
 full stature of living souls. 
 
 When this flanking army, directed by 
 judgment, inspired by conscience and 
 armed with the ballot, gets fairly into line, 
 it is bound to win. 
 
 [ 106 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 There is another unexpected source of 
 re-enforcement. The entrenched army is 
 itself weakening. Colonels are deserting 
 their colors and taking to the other side. 
 The self-respecting elements in the saloon 
 army, and there are such, are beginning 
 to see a great light. Saloon-keepers 
 themselves are beginning to be ashamed 
 of their business. They are not willing 
 that their wives should be permanently 
 humiliated and their children publicly dis- 
 graced. This movement among saloon- 
 keepers for law-abiding saloons I believe 
 to be, in the main, sincere and of immense 
 significance, but as American society is 
 now constituted, with the growing intelli- 
 gence and thrift of the American citizen, 
 a “law-abiding saloon,” wherein no row- 
 dyism, intoxication or law-breaking is 
 permitted, is a financial fallacy. It means 
 inevitable bankruptcy to an overwhelming 
 percentage of the present retail dealers in 
 intoxicants throughout our land. 
 
 The result of a recent careful survey 
 made under the direction of James K. 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 Shields, State Superintendent of the Anti- 
 Saloon League of Illinois, disclosed the 
 fact that there are 11,338 feet of saloon 
 frontage in the Loop District of Chicago, 
 a territory bounded on the north by the 
 river, on the east by the lake, on the south 
 by Harrison street, and on the west by the 
 river. In other words, over two miles of 
 saloons intrude upon the business centers 
 of Chicago. From the same source we 
 learn that on North Clark street, from the 
 river to Lincoln Park, the street of retail 
 business on the North Side, there are 77 
 saloons, of which 52 have wine rooms, 42 
 are connected with houses of ill fame, and 
 nearly all of them have “family entrances” 
 and pianos. 
 
 The workers of the Abraham Lincoln 
 Centre, at my request, made a similar 
 survey of the adjoining territory, bounded 
 on the north by Thirty-fifth street, on the 
 east by Ellis avenue, on the south by Thir- 
 ty-ninth street, on the west by Grand 
 Boulevard. They found there were 49 
 
 saloons, 14 of them corner saloons, nearly 
 [ 108 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 all of them having “ladies’ entrances,” 
 many of them having gambling places and 
 bawdy houses in connection therewith. 
 Here are 1,196 feet, nearly one-quarter of ^ 
 a mile, of saloons in a territory that con- 
 tains but one schoolhouse and three 
 churches. In the same territory there are 
 but 19 groceries, 9 meat markets, 13 res- 
 taurants, 6 bakeries and 8 drug stores, 
 making but 55 stands to cater to the neces- 
 sities of life against 49 places of dissipa- 
 tion. The total frontage of these legiti- 
 mate dispensaries of physical needs is 
 about 1,405 feet, or only 209 feet in excess 
 of the debauching frontage. Under any 
 attempt to bring the trade of beer and 
 whiskey down to the limits of legality, 
 decency, and the boasted sanity of mod- 
 erate drinkers, it is obvious that much of 
 this “business” would go to the wall. 
 
 When the flanking armies were closing 
 in on Bragg’s forces and his lines broke 
 on Missionary Ridge, General Thomas’ 
 hungry boys were surprised to find that 
 no inconsiderable number of their sup- 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 posed enemies had thrown away their 
 guns and were running, not away from, 
 but toward the victorious column. They 
 had had enough of rebellion. Their sober 
 second thought had been at work and, an- 
 ticipating their great General, the hero of 
 Appomattox, they were brave enough to 
 change their minds; to see the next right 
 thing to do. Acknowledging his defeat, 
 General Lee turned to lead the boys who 
 had followed him to the death line, up the 
 academic heights of life. Under his lead 
 they were now ready to guard the honor 
 of the flag which, under the same lead, 
 they once riddled with bullets. 
 
 So will it be; so is it now, with the en- 
 trenched hosts of inebriety. Already the 
 rank and file are beginning to suspect that 
 the organized brewers and distillers of 
 America are false champions of liberty. 
 Their real inspiration, of which they them- 
 selves are only half conscious, is the hope 
 of a golden harvest. Business men are in 
 the liquor trade, as in other trades, for the 
 
 money there is in it. Gold and not liberty, 
 [ 110 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 greed and not patriotism, inspires them, 
 and when they find their capital menaced 
 and begin to realize that there is no profit 
 in the business, the manufacturers, the 
 brewers and distillers, the dealers, 
 whether wholesale or retail, are going to 
 throw away their guns and join the vic- 
 torious army. 
 
 But let not the temperance phalanxes 
 be lured with the hope that the war is over. 
 The victory is not yet won, because the 
 vision is not yet clear. 
 
 I was a part of Sherman’s flanking 
 army; I watched the stealthy, silent, mid- 
 night construction of the pontoon bridge; 
 our battery was the first to venture upon 
 the floating structure ; we were at the far- 
 ther end as soon as the last planks were 
 laid, and our guns were among the first 
 to be drawn, by human hands, up heights 
 too steep and through thickets too dense 
 for the horses to travel. I was in the des- 
 perate battle; I saw the battering of the 
 
 column and the mangled lines, and heard 
 ( 111 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 the midnight groans of the uncared for. 
 I was part of the pursuing column. But 
 two weeks after Braxton Bragg’s head- 
 quarters had been captured we had to turn 
 our horses out that they might perchance 
 save their lives by browsing the naked 
 trees in midwinter; and one morning as 
 the sun arose upon hungry boys, the com- 
 manding officer said: 
 
 Boys, there is nothing for you to eat. As you went 
 to bed last night supperless, you must start out this 
 morning breakfastless. There are provisions at Bridge- 
 port; thirty miles of mud between you and your dinner; 
 get there any way you can, as you can. There will be 
 roll call of those who survive the march after you have 
 had something to eat at Bridgeport. 
 
 Thus will it be in this war for sobriety, 
 this battle for soul-liberty, this triumph 
 of judgment over appetite. O, there are 
 many hardships, privations, dangers, mis- 
 takes, temporary defeats, local dismay 
 and panics ahead of us ! 
 
 But it is a glorious war. Science, re- 
 ligion, education and patriotism, the 
 saints and the sages, our mothers, wives 
 
 and sisters, are in the ranks with us. 
 
 [ 112 ] 
 
The Flanking Columns 
 
 The reserve corps is moving up ! 
 
 The flanking columns are sv^inging into 
 line! 
 
 The bugle sounds the “Assembly!” 
 Friends of Purity, Sobriety, Liberty — 
 Fall in! 
 
 Touch elbows I Right, dress! Forward, 
 march ! 
 
 Q 
 
 [ 113 ] 
 

Appendix 
 
A Letter to the Saloon-Keepers of 
 Chicago 
 
 Friends and Fellow Citizens: 
 
 Such we certainly are, or ought to be, for deep below 
 our contentions our interests are one. We all want to 
 conserve the home, honor our city and serve our coun- 
 try. We have a common interest in our wives and our 
 children and a common desire to provide for them in 
 honorable ways and to earn for ourselves an honest 
 living. 
 
 Let me hasten to assure you that I am interested in 
 an anti-saloon movement and not in an anti-saloon 
 keepers’ movement. As a friend, then, I beg you to 
 consider with me the changing times, the trend of 
 thought shaped by the growing science and enlarging 
 experiences of our day. Things are not as they used 
 to be. The conditions of the Old World, from which 
 many of us came, cannot be reproduced here. The 
 American saloon is not identical with the beer gardens 
 and wine rooms of Europe and cannot be made so. 
 Recent action taken by your own representatives in 
 many cities shows that you recognize many things con- 
 nected with your business tending toward the disagree- 
 able, the illegal, the indecent and the immoral, and 
 that you are tr3dng to lift the business into respectabil- 
 ity and law-abiding conditions. No one can know as 
 well as yourselves that your customers often over 
 drink and that you are compelled to witness boisterous 
 [ 117 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 brawls and listen to coarse, profane, violent speech. 
 You know that a great deal too much liquor is drunk 
 by your own customers. You know how your business 
 often comes in competition with that of the butcher, 
 the grocer and the baker, whose business it is to supply 
 the essential needs of the family. You know, better 
 than anybody else, that much money passes over 
 your counter which is needed by the families of your 
 customers for shoes, bread, clothing and fuel. You 
 must know also that the verdict of the medical profes- 
 sion in all lines is clearly in the direction of greater 
 abstinence from malt and spirituous liquors; that the 
 overwhelming testimony of physicians is that alcohol 
 is a poison, that its presence in the body acts as such, 
 and that, except under conditions which they alone are 
 competent to determine, its presence in the body is a 
 menace to health. 
 
 I further beg of you to note that the growth of the 
 ‘‘Dry Territory’’ in all parts of our country is not the 
 result of the efforts of fanatical agitators, of extreme 
 moralists and narrow fanatics, but of the growing sense 
 and prudence of business men, industrial corporations, 
 railroad managements, etc., etc. It is the economic 
 argument that prevails. Cities, large and small, are 
 finding that business is not injured by the abolition of the 
 saloon, but that the cost of the police courts, jails, and 
 all departments that seek to enforce the law and pro- 
 tect property is greatly reduced. You know that 
 already the liquor business is in a bad way, that it is 
 harder and harder to make a saloon pay. Your repre- 
 sentatives have often urged that under the existing 
 conditions of city regulations and state law, the saloon- 
 keeper finds it harder and harder to make a living, and 
 it requires only cool, impartial business judgment on 
 your part to see that these restrictions are to grow 
 [ 118 ] 
 
A Letter to Saloon-Keepers 
 
 more exacting and not less. Whatever may be the 
 result of the vote at the next election, the educational 
 cam.paign that leads up to it will make the lot of the 
 saloon-keeper immensely harder; it will be more and 
 more difficult for you to make it a business that 
 will be pronounced legitimate by law and that will 
 be considered respectable by right-minded people in 
 all walks of life. A business from which your own 
 sense of fitness as well as the city ordinance excludes 
 respectable women and innocent children, your own 
 included, a business so directly allied with the degrada- 
 tions of the brothel, with gambling and corruption, with 
 grafters and politicians, is a business in which a self- 
 respecting man who wants his wife and children to 
 grow up without shame, cannot choose long to remain. 
 With the temperance agitators trusting more and more 
 to economical, scientific and social principles against 
 you on the one hand, and the mighty combination of 
 capital, the bloodless trusts represented by the brewer 
 and distiller on the other, your lot is a hard one. Why 
 not plan to get out of the business before it gets worse? 
 
 I do not forget that many of you believe that your 
 business can be made honorable. We do not forget 
 the innocent social elements that enter into the saloon. 
 We know that these ought to be perpetuated in some 
 better way. Your training and experiences qualify 
 you to find a better way. Help us to experiment in 
 this direction. One coffee and buttermilk saloon in 
 Chicago would be a joke; ten such would probably soon 
 die for want of support; but a hundred such would 
 begin to make money, and a thousand such, conducted 
 by expert saloon-keepers, with innocent accessories, 
 without the dangerous tippling and treating habit, 
 would surprise our civilization, solve many perplexing 
 problems, bring light and joy into thousands of homes, 
 [ 119 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 prosper business, and bring increasing self-respect to 
 the thousand saloon-keepers engaged in this enterprise. 
 Is it possible to preserve the good elements of the 
 saloon after the treating habit that leads to drunken- 
 ness is abolished? We are up to this experiment. 
 Will you help us? 
 
 In conclusion we ask you to remember that this is 
 not a prohibition campaign, or even a total abstinence 
 campaign. Those who still think that alcoholic drinks 
 are necessary to their health or their pleasure might 
 still seek them as they seek their milk, their cheese 
 and their bread, in packages, not to be eaten and 
 drunken on the premises. It is the retail places where 
 liquor is sold by the drinks, and its use is stimulated 
 by the vicious treating habit of the American saloon — 
 places where drunkards congregate and where drunk- 
 ards are made, places from which your wives and chil- 
 dren are excluded — that are condemned by the Amer- 
 ican public, not alone by American fanatics. Liberty 
 is not lawlessness, and the most rampant '^personal 
 liberty” man will admit that his liberty ends where the 
 liberty of the other party begins. All government is 
 a surrender of personal liberties for the sake of the 
 larger liberties which come only in law-abiding and 
 law-enforcing governments, made possible by order. 
 
 Will you think of these things calmly in the quiet 
 hours of the night? Will you talk these matters over 
 frankly with your wives and children and your self- 
 respecting, self-controlling patrons? Is it not possible 
 for us in some way to talk over these things without 
 the bitterness and extravagance of public debate? 
 
 The American platform is unfortunately given to 
 extravagant statements, oftentimes to bitter denuncia- 
 tion and unkind insinuations; doubtless there will be 
 much sinning on both sides during the struggle yet 
 [ 120 ] 
 
A Letter to Saloon-Keepers 
 
 before us. Let us forget and forgive in this direction 
 and try to remember that honest and earnest men on 
 both sides are trying to spell out a difficult problem, to 
 find the better way. Let us remember that 
 
 “New occasions teach new duties; 
 
 Time makes ancient good uncouth. 
 
 They must ever up and onward 
 Who would keep abreast of Truth.” 
 
 Fraternally yours. 
 
 Q 
 
 imi 
 
A Letter to the Workingmen of 
 Chicago 
 
 Dear Fellow IVorJ^ers: 
 
 For such we are. The vast majority of the citizens 
 of this great city are, like yourselves, workingmen, born 
 of working parents, reared to work for wages of one 
 kind or another. Many of us, like yourselves, were 
 born across the seas, were carried here by our parents, 
 or came later through our own choice, that we might 
 have a better chance to labor, expecting nothing better 
 than an opportunity to earn our bread and a better 
 chance to care for our loved ones and give to our wives 
 and children more comforts and higher privileges. I 
 wish, then, to protest earnestly against recent attempts 
 in some quarters to force an ignominious class distinc- 
 tion upon us by trying to justify and defend the 
 saloons on the score that they are the ‘Vorking- 
 men’s clubs,” and the ‘^poor people’s social centers.” 
 Those of us who are wage earners know that this is a 
 false insinuation, a vulgar attempt to cast a stigma 
 upon our poverty and to differentiate the ‘"workingman” 
 from the superior and favored capitalist “employer” 
 and leisure class, who seem to say, “We do not need 
 the saloon,” and, by implication, “We do not patronize 
 it.” You know well enough that it is not the day 
 laborers, the craftsmen or members of the Labor 
 Unions that keep alive the seven thousand and more 
 saloons in Chicago alone. I believe that, in proportion 
 [ 122 ] 
 
A Letter to Workingmen 
 
 to the population represented by the “employer” and 
 “employe” classes, a vastly larger proportion of the 
 former class patronizes the saloon than of the latter; 
 and we know that much of the present capitalist com- 
 bine, representing the brewing and distilling industries, 
 would go to the wall if they were dependent chiefly 
 upon the patronage of the toiling classes. Most of the 
 drunkenness, the dissipation, and the crime connected 
 therewith comes frorg the leisure classes and not from 
 the toiling classes. ^The laboring men know full well 
 that the frequenter of the saloon holds his job by an 
 uncertain tenure, and that the most effective temper- 
 ance organizations are the Labor Unions, who guard 
 their members as best they can from the debaucheries 
 of the saloon and are using more and more effectively 
 their instrumentalities to protect the wives and children 
 of their members from the hardship and humiliations 
 that belong to the family of him who makes the saloon 
 his “club house.” Laboring men also know that, next 
 to the Labor Unions, the great industrial plants, the far- 
 seeing and effective “captains of industry,” and the great 
 railroad corporations are the most effective temperance 
 organizations in the country. In many of these best 
 managed organizations of labor, to be found frequenting 
 the saloons in any systematic and regular fashion is to 
 find oneself automatically dropped out of the service. 
 
 I call upon you, workingmen, to resent this attempt 
 at forcing an ignoble class distinction upon the wage- 
 earning population of this country under the guise of 
 Personal Liberty Plea. This insinuation is all the 
 more galling and unjust because it has about it the 
 air of patronage from the kid-gloved frequenters of the 
 wealthy men’s clubs, with their amply supplied side- 
 boards and their cut glass decanters filled with the most 
 fiery of liquors. 
 
 [ 123 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 The contentions of the Labor Unions, more clearly, 
 perhaps, than any other organization in the United 
 States, set forth the limitations of personal liberty. 
 They teach that the personal liberty of one man ends 
 where the rights of another are encroached upon. All 
 organizations imply the surrender of individual rights 
 to public good. In proportion as governments are 
 benign and democratic, they protect the weak from the 
 strong, the virtuous from the vicious, the noble im- 
 pulses of the community from the greed of the ignoble 
 and selfish scheming of the few. 
 
 You know that the saloons, as now managed, are 
 the workingman’s worst enemy. Go find the work- 
 ingman’s children who are poorly shod, and the work- 
 ingman’s wife who is shabbily dressed, and the work- 
 ingman’s home that is poorly furnished with fuel and 
 provisions, and you will know where to find the drink- 
 ing man. Go find the workingman who is in debt, who 
 is borrowing small sums of money and trying to save 
 his financial face, and you will know who his largest 
 creditor is. 
 
 We all know that there is great need of more social 
 privileges for working people, more places for inno- 
 cent amusement, more centers for social gatherings, 
 where neighbors may meet neighbors and take their 
 wives and children along. The saloon is the worst 
 place to offer such privileges. It is not a place where 
 you can take your wives and children; so unfitting 
 is this that it is prevented by city ordinance, and you 
 know that the hospitalities of these places, even to men, 
 are conditioned upon the amount of money spent at 
 the bar. The free lunches that tempt you are not given 
 you in charity, but from shrewd speculation — the givers 
 get their money back. 
 
 If the money spent by workingmen over the bars of 
 [ 124 ] 
 
A Letter to Workingmen 
 
 the saloons could be saved, and if the workingmen 
 received just wages and their employers bore their 
 rightful share of expenses in sustaining the city 
 government and enforcing its ordinances concerning 
 wholesome tenements, the social centers, the “poor 
 men^s clubs” that our wealthy men are so solicitous 
 about would be realized. The issue now presented 
 is not one of total abstinence or prohibition, though 
 many of us believe that life is made sweeter, healthier 
 and happier by total abstinence from all intoxicants, 
 but the fight is against the saloon as a tippling place 
 and a treating place, an unsocial place from which your 
 wives and children are excluded and where the patrons 
 are bound together by no common social tie of race, 
 religious preference, conviction or social taste. A relish 
 for whiskey is a poor platform on which neighbors can 
 come together. The beer and wine places of the old 
 world, where men, women and children of common 
 taste, a common language and a common religion 
 come together to enjoy music and conversation, to 
 sing and dance together with the sanctions of their 
 religion and in the presence of their teachers and 
 their priests, find no analogy in the American saloon, 
 where the jargon of many languages is heard at once 
 and where the tramp, the hobo, the petty criminal, 
 the grafter and the big political boss are at home 
 and are oftentimes most welcomed because they 
 are the best patrons of the man behind the bar. 
 If when this saloon nuisance is abated there is no way 
 possible by which a workingman can furnish himself 
 with his beers and his liquors at his home, or use them 
 in the same way that his rich employer does on his own 
 table and for his own guests, it is quite legitimate that 
 we should all try to make his “privilege” possible and 
 legal to the poor man, or else impossible and illegal 
 [ 125 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 to the rich man. However the liquor question is set- 
 tled, it is not a class question, and the capitalist and 
 leisure man who are now so solicitous about the rights 
 of the workingman, may well be suspected of hypocrisy. 
 While speaking one word for the poor ‘laborer,” are 
 they not speaking two for themselves? 
 
 If, as I fear is still the case with many lodges, your 
 Lodge Rooms have vicious connections with saloon's, 
 it will be all the better chance for you to do missionary 
 work, and this movement will hasten the day so desired 
 by your leaders, when the old time back door connec- 
 tion between the Labor Unions and the saloons shall 
 be no longer possible. Let us work together to get rid 
 of the saloon; then we will work together to install 
 something better that is so much needed, and for which 
 we are so nearly ready. In getting into the dry terri- 
 tory, we are getting in line with advanced science, en- 
 lightening economics, progressive labor and intelligent 
 and effective labor unions. 
 
 Very cordially yours, 
 
 [ 126 ] 
 
A Letter to Women 
 
 Dear Friends : 
 
 The “Anti-Saloon Movement’' may well be consid- 
 ered national; it is no longer in the experimental 
 or sensational stage, nor is it longer to be confined to 
 the rural districts and the smaller towns. It is fast 
 extending its boundaries from the gulf to the lakes and 
 from ocean to ocean. It has already taken possession 
 of many prosperous cities and industrial centers and, if 
 all the indications are not deceptive, the territory 
 gained is to be held and steadily and surely enlarged. 
 
 Here, if anywhere, woman’s interest enters into the 
 civic life. Here, if nowhere else, woman may well 
 grieve over the fact that she has no vote to cast in 
 behalf of a tempted son, a fallen brother, a debauched 
 husband, or, under the safest conditions, a menaced 
 manhood all about her. Woman, in her universally 
 acknowledged and often vaunted “rights” as a home- 
 maker and a homekeeper, here finds herself denied 
 the privilege of being heard and counted in the supreme 
 test of the ballot box. 
 
 No one can more deeply regret this unjust denial of 
 power than myself, but this withholding of the suffrage 
 right on the part of the alleged “lords of creation” 
 does not leave you powerless and consequently without 
 grave responsibilities and high opportunities in this 
 contention. 
 
 The “last ditch” in wdiich the tippling habit has en- 
 [ 127 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 trenched itself is that of the ‘^social function.” Wine 
 and its more plebeian companion, beer, are supposed 
 to be essential counters of good will, gracious attend- 
 ants upon conviviality, a necessary decoration to a 
 society event, and their absence is supposed to be a 
 reflection upon the hospitality, or at least an accent of 
 some kind of Puritanic unsociability. Hence it is 
 that thousands of gentle ladies, representing the refine- 
 ment of the community, are found toying with the wine 
 glass in the presence of their hosts, or, on more 
 Bohemian occasions, tinkling their beer mugs and 
 joking about the same. 
 
 Well may such women pray with Robert Burns for 
 the gift 
 
 ‘‘To see oursel’s as ithers see us.” 
 
 In the light of modern science as well as of social 
 ethics, woman, trying to grace her table and her home 
 with that which she discards in her own practice, is 
 simply aping a bygone age; she is posing in the guise 
 of the mediaeval “ladye” whose banquet logically ended 
 in debauchery. No more essential to a respectable, in- 
 telligent, sensible, sober, modern dinner party is the 
 mediaeval fool with cap and bells than are the decanter 
 and the beer bottle. 
 
 Sisters, the day is at hand or soon will be when this 
 condescension on the part of women to an outlived 
 appetite and an obsolete or obsolescent practice will be 
 considered, as it deserves to be, a vulgar flirtation with 
 vice, a silly dallying with temptation, a laying of snares 
 which may entangle the innocent feet of one^s own boys 
 and the boys of her neighbors — if not her own sons, 
 husband and brothers, then somebody else's sons, hus- 
 bands and brothers. 
 
 But this appeal to women should go much further 
 than to the “favored” and the “safe.” Only the unin- 
 [ 128 ] 
 
A Letter to Women 
 
 formed women and the socially hardened can be ob- 
 livious to the awful burden which the drink habit foists 
 upon their sisters. Go study the statistics of the 
 workingwomen; follow your washerwoman, your dress- 
 maker or your shop girl to her home; trace the sources 
 of her poverty; analyze the meagerness of the cup- 
 board, the raggedness of the wardrobe, and you will 
 promptly come upon this as one of the fundamental 
 sources of the woman and child problem in the indus- 
 trial life of today. Not only are these working girls, 
 widows and mothers driven to the loom, the stores 
 and the wash tub by man’s love of drink, but under the 
 same fell inspiration men lie in wait for these victims 
 and in ways known only to those inspired by the 
 degradations of the cup, trap them to disgrace and 
 death. There is an evil designated as the “social evil.” 
 Separate that from the “drink evil” and the “social evil,” 
 as now understood, as a municipal problem largely 
 ceases to be. Human passions will remain to bless or 
 to curse individuals, but lust as an asset in business, as 
 a commercial commodity, an investment for capital, will 
 pass away with the passing of drinking, because as a 
 business it will not pay without the drinking accessories. 
 
 This is the age of woman’s clubs. Woman is in the 
 forefront of every agitation for the advancement of 
 civilization. It is high time that women in their or- 
 ganized capacity, in their most successful and fashion- 
 able organizations, should recommit themselves to this 
 cause, free themselves from the traditional trammels, 
 take hold with twentieth century courage of this move- 
 ment that seeks to eliminate from modern American 
 life the nasty degrading places, so unfit for them and 
 their children that they are excluded from them by city 
 ordinance. 
 
 Sisters, you may not vote yet, but you can do im- 
 [ 129 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 measurably more than has yet been clone by women in 
 the interest of children and the home, morality and 
 the State, by taking the twentieth century stand against 
 that which science, economics, and, at the present time, 
 the municipal experience of a growing number of cities 
 prove to be unnecessary to the joyous, progressive life 
 of men and women, whether they be at their toil or at 
 their amusements. It is as little necessary to promote 
 play as it is to promote work. Alcohol is a poison; its 
 place in the human economy must be determined by 
 the men of science; it is a medicine and not a food, and 
 if it is given only such functions as are decreed for it 
 by the physicians the problem will be solved. The trade 
 in it will cease to be profitable and no lady will care to 
 drug her guests according to a physician’s prescription. 
 
 It is unworthy the modern woman to parry with a 
 smile an appeal to conscience or to dismiss with a joke 
 a call of reason or a cry of the helpless. Sisters, take 
 this question seriously; think it over in the privacy of 
 your own chamber; lay it upon the altar of your con- 
 science; consider it as in the presence of the ever- 
 living God and the everlasting interests of His children. 
 
 Very fraternally yours. 
 
 [ 130 ] 
 
A Letter to an Advoeate of Beer as 
 a Temperanee Drink 
 
 Dear Friend: 
 
 Our conversation the other day provoked much 
 thinking on my part and compelled me to go over 
 again the whole situation with as much care as I am 
 capable of, and I am moved to write you some of the 
 results of this thinking. 
 
 First, let me assure you that your acts as well as your 
 teaching prove that you are as sincere a friend of 
 sobriety and as honest a foe as I am of the dissipation, 
 vulgarity and low morality, personal and political, that 
 gather around the typical American saloon. I believe 
 that you desire to eliminate those obnoxious elements 
 out of the community as sincerely as I do, and that you 
 have no interest in common with the selfish commercial 
 and speculative interests of the great capitalistic com- 
 bines represented by the brewers and distillers of 
 America. 
 
 I admit also, without argument, your contention that 
 on account of the low percentage of alcohol contained 
 a glass of beer is comparatively innocent when com- 
 pared with a glass of whiskey; I accept also your state- 
 ment, based on better information than I am possessed 
 of, that fewer villainous compounds, substitutes and 
 adulterations enter into the composition of the beer 
 than into that of the whiskey that is passed over the 
 average saloon bar. I am inclined to think that you 
 are right also in the statement that the toxic effect of 
 [ 131 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 beer is less than that of coffee, or perhaps tea, when 
 drunk in the same quantities. I also agree with you 
 perfectly that the social element represented by the 
 saloon must be conserved, and that even with the 
 seven thousand or more saloons in Chicago, for ex- 
 ample, the social opportunities, the chances for neigh- 
 bors to get together for innocent communion and 
 amusement are deplorably inadequate. 
 
 Having made these concessions, the following facts 
 remain and have important bearing upon the question 
 at issue. It is true, is it not, that both beer and 
 whiskey are seductive drinks on account of the alcohol 
 they contain? Repeated experiments show that any 
 non-alcoholic compound, on beer or other lines, is a 
 business failure because people will not drink more 
 than is needful of such compounds to satisfy the craving 
 for food or nourishment; the profit always comes from 
 the over-drinking. But is not the low percentage of 
 alcohol in beer more than compensated by the larger 
 quantities imbibed? My druggist estimates that two 
 glasses of average saloon beer contain as much alcohol 
 as one glass of whisky. I suppose that eight glasses 
 of beer per day would be considered very moderate beer 
 drinking, and I am told that twenty glasses represent 
 the easy accomplishment of the habitual beer drinker, 
 who still insists that he is strictly temperate and never 
 intoxicated. ;; Render this equivalent into whiskey .and 
 you have the minimum of four glasses of whiskey per 
 day, which certainly exceeds the claim of the whiskey 
 drinker who insists that he never takes too much, and a 
 maximum of ten glasses of whiskey a day, which clear- 
 ly puts a man into the class of over-drinkers. The ex- 
 tended girth and the blossoming nose, the familiar 
 characteristics of the beer guzzler, testify to the fact 
 that there is something about the beer mug that leads 
 [ 132 ] 
 
A Letter to a Beer Advocate 
 
 to over-drinking. And as a matter of fact, if my drug- 
 gist is correct, is not beer drinking always accompanied, 
 not only with alcoholic temptations, but with actual 
 tendencies to alcoholic excesses? 
 
 Your picture of the delightful domestic felicities of 
 the German beer garden and the French and Italian 
 wine cafes is certainly attractive, and I am not in a 
 position to deny the accuracy of your endorsement. 
 But are the sociological, to say nothing of the climatic 
 conditions of the United States such as to make a re- 
 production of these European conditions possible? 
 The homogeneous character of the population, the less 
 strenuous life, the simpler and purer drinks, the ab- 
 sence of the get-rich-quick madness of the dealers and 
 manufacturers of Europe, do not obtain in our Amer- 
 ican cities. The mixed population, the sharp distinc- 
 tions between the rich and the poor in their bibulous 
 habits, between employers and employes, and the damn- 
 able distinction of sex which excludes all self-respecting 
 women from the companionship of all self-respecting 
 men in their hours of recreation and social amenities, 
 are factors in the American saloon not known in the 
 European resorts which you admire. 
 
 From your own standpoint, when you have made a 
 decent drinking place where only beer and light wines 
 are indulged in, and those only in such quantities as 
 wait on digestion and good companionship, a place 
 where women and children are welcome and may go 
 with impunity, have we not come to something very 
 different from the great majority of the seven thousand 
 saloons now infesting our city? And is there any hope 
 of arriving at these social centers, recreation parks, etc., 
 that you and I both work for, until we have broken the 
 power of the god Mammon who has so enlisted the co- 
 operation of King Gambrinus? In other words, such 
 [ 133 ] 
 
On The Firing Line 
 
 a saloon as you want is possible only when such saloons 
 as we have are abolished, root and branch. 
 
 Thus you see the process of reasoning by which I 
 arrive at the conclusion that you, your misgivings not- 
 withstanding, as well as I, belong to the anti-saloon 
 league, and that we go but a little way in our prac- 
 tical effort at reform until we come together and stand 
 shoulder to shoulder in the tasks of abating the saloon 
 nuisance and eliminating the poisons out of our food 
 and our drink, one of which poisons is alcohol, whose 
 economy in the physical organism of man, if it has any, 
 is medicinal, and the time and quantity of whose use are 
 to be determined by the expert physician and not by 
 the deceptive itch of the palate that is perverted by a 
 dangerous habit. Cordially yours. 
 
 [ 134 ]