GET ON THE WATER WAGON. 6 as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land. The Democratic party of Florida has put a temperance plank in its platform, and the Republican party of every state would nail that plank in their platform if they thought it would carry the election. It is simply a matter of decency and manhood, irrespective of politics. It is prosperity against poverty, sobriety against drunkenness, honesty against thieving, Heaven against Hell. Don’t you want to see men sober? Brutal, staggering men transformed into respectable citizens? “No,” said a saloon-keeper, “to Hell with men.” We are interested in our business, we have no interest in humanity.” After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world. For the time has long gone by when there is any ground for arguments of its ill effects. All are agreed on that point. There is just one prime reason why the saloon has not been knocked into Hell, and that is the false statement, “that the saloons are needed to help lighten the taxes.” The saloon business has never paid, and it has cost fifty times more for the saloon than the revenue derived from it. I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church morals or anything we hold dear. You listen today, and if I can’t peel the bark off that damnable fallacy, I will pack my trunk and leave. I say that is the biggest lie ever belched out. The wholesale and retail trade in Iowa pays every year at least $500,000 in licenses. Then if there were no drawback, it ought to reduce the taxation twenty-five per cent per capita. If the saloon is necessary to pay the taxes, and if they pay $500,000 in taxes, It ought to reduce them twenty-five cents a head. But no, the whisky business has Increased taxes $1,900,000 Instead of reducing them, and I defy any whisky man on God’s dirt to show one town that has the saloon, where the taxes are lower than where they do not have the saloon. I defy you to show me an instance. Listen! Seventy-five per cent of our idiots come from in
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=