14 GET ON THE WATER WAGON. I tell you, gentlemen, the American home is the dearest heritage of the people, for the people, and by the people, and when a man can go from home in the morning with the kisses of wife and children on his lips, and come back at night with an empty dinner bucket to a happy home, that man is a better man, whether white or black. Whatever takes away the comforts of home—whatever degrades that man or woman— whatever invades the sanctity of the home, is the deadliest foe to the home, to church, to state and school, and the saloon is the deadliest foe to the home, the church and the state, on top of God Almighty’s dirt. And if all the combined forces of Hell should assemble in conclave, and with them all the men on earth that hate and despise God, and purity, and virtue—if all the scum of the earth could mingle with the denizens of Hell to try to think of the deadliest institution to home, to church and state, I tell you, sir, the combined hellish intelligence could not conceive of or bring forth an institution that could touch the hem of the garment of the open licensed saloon to damn the home and manhood, and womanhood and business and every other good thing on God’s earth. In the Island of Jamaica, the rats increased so that~they destroyed the crops, and they introduced the mongoose, which is a species of the coon. They nave three breeding seasons a year and there are twelve to fifteen in each brood, and they are deadly enemies of the rats. The result was that the rats disappeared and there was nothing more for the mongoose to feed upon, so they attacked the snakes, and the frogs, and the lizards that fed upon the insects, with the result that the insects increased and they stripped the gardens, eating up the onions and the lettuce, and then the mongoose attacked the sheep, and the cats, and the puppies, and the calves, and the (geese. Now Jamaica is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of the mongoose. The American mongoose is the open licensed saloon. It eats the carpets off the floor, and the clothes from off your back, your money out of the bank, and it eats up character, and it goes on until at last It leaves a stranded wreck in the home, a skeleton of what was once brightness and happiness.
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