24 GET ON THE WATER WAGON, “Hello, John, what did you bring home?” “A quart.” What will a quart do? It will burn up my happiness and my home and fill my home with squalor and want. So there is the dollar. The saloon-keeper has it. Here is my quart. I have that. There you get the whisky end of it. Here you get the workingman’s home end of the saloon. But come on; I will go to a store and spend the dollar for a pair of shoes. I want them for my son, and he puts them on his feet, and with the shoes to protect his feet he goes out and earns another dollar, and my dollar becomes a silver thread in the woof and warp of happiness and joy, and the man that owns the building gets some, and the clerk that sold the shoes gets some, and the merchant, and the travelingman, and the wholesale house gets some, and the factory, and the man that made the shoes, and the man that tanned the hide, and the butcher that bought the calf, and- the farmer that raised the calf, and the little colored fellow that shined the shoes, and my dollar spread itself and nobody is made worse for spending the money. I join the Booster Club for business and prosperity. A man said: “I will tell you what is the matter with the country, it’s over-production.” You lie; it is under-consumption. Say, wife, the bread that ought to be in your stomach to satisfy the cravings of hunger, is down yonder in the grocery store, and your husband hasn’t money enough to carry it home. The meat that ought to satisfy your hunger hangs in the butcher shop. <~Your husband hasn’t money to buy it. The cloth for a dress is lying on a shelf in the store, but your husband hasn’t the money to buy it. The whisky gang has his money. What is the matter with our country? I would like to do like this. I would like to see every booze-fighter get on the water wagon. I would like to summon all the drunkards in America and say: “Boys’ let’s cut her out and spend the money for flour, meat and calico: what do you say?” Say! $500,000,000 will buy all the flour in the United States; $500,000,000 will buy all the beef cattle, and $500,000,000
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