Miss Frances Willard, who is doing more successful temperance work than any man who is in the same field at present, states the case as earnestly as Bishop Warren, and with the extra force which figures always give--figures which no one contradicts because no one can. She says: “No man of the smallest intelligence can be ignorant of the fact that the saloon is to-day the chief destructive force in society; that the cumulative testimony of judge, jury, and executive officers of the law declares that fifty per cent. of the idiocy and lunacy, eighty per cent. of the crimes, and ninety per cent. of the pauperism come from strong drink; that the saloon holds the balance of power in almost every city of ten thousand inhabitants; that it is the curse of workingmen and the sworn foe of home.”
It isn’t necessary, either, to call attention to the harm done free institutions at election times by the influence of rum. The late “Petroleum” Nasby, whom all of us knew for a lovable fellow and an able editor, once consumed a gallon of whiskey a day on the average. When he stopped drinking he wrote a series of temperance editorials, concluding with the words “Paralyze the rum power.” “Pete” had been in politics himself: he knew what the “power” of rum was, and how it was used.
The demoralizing effect of plenty of liquor is so well known that the first duty of a local campaign manager, no matter of which party, is to make proper arrangements with rum-shops for supplying free drinks for the purpose of changing voters’ views. The man who has opinions, no matter what they may be, is quite likely to modify them if asked when he is under the influence of a few drinks; and if his liquid consolation is to be supplied at the expense of some other man, the opinions of the two are likely to be in entire accord before the transaction is concluded. Votes are easier purchased with rum than with money, no matter how large the sum that may be at the disposal of any political boss or ward committee. The public heard, a few years ago, to its horror, that an important State had been carried for the victorious party by a general distribution of new two-dollar bills. The truth is, as any one can learn by visiting the districts which then were close in the State alluded to, that a great deal more money than the entire number of two-dollar bills amounted to had previously been expended in rum-shops to which men who were willing to listen to what was called “a fair presentation of conflicting views” could be persuaded to come. Liquor is cheaper in the western States than in large cities. It is worse, too. A little of it goes a long way, and the man who will spend an evening in a rum-shop in a rural locality, is equal to any enormity, compared with which an apparent change of sentiment on political subjects is a mere trifle. As Channing used to say, “Rum outwits alike the teacher, the man of business, the patriot, and the legislator.”