Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, October 31, 1916, Page 6

sinas . X £ ROLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT. POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT, THE BEE: OMAHA, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT. POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT. 191 POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT. POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT. POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT. “Sane Government and Sound Business” Address delivered 5}7 Congressman Jacob E. Meeker, at Boyd Theater, Omaha, Neb., Friday Evening, October 27th, 1916 - Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen: I am glad that the chairman called your attention to fact that I had an acci- dent, but that it has not injured by back- bone. That little. debate that we are to have next Tuesday night a rather peculiarly rigged-up affair, inasmuch the negative has to speak first, but that right, afternoon if I would be arrangement, and I said, y way you ples Just s0 we get at it; that is all T w The truth is the truth whether you tell it last or it Now in my address tonight, which will probably run until well to morning (laughter), as it sometimes does, I am go- ing to say what I have said from every platform, as I have gone about the country. am asked to talk with you people to- night; to confer with you. 1 am here to discuss one of the most important and probably the most imports fssue that your state has confronted since it was a state. I want the ladies and gentlemen of this audience to feel perfectly free, at any time, to come in with any question which you wish to ask, if you are looking for informa- tion. If T ean mnswer your question 1 will do it, and be glad to give you the wuthority for it. If I cannot answer it, I will tell you so. 1 don’t pretend to know everything, And I have little use for a man who does. llA:lhtfl.) But you are not to make & lmh,‘ under the pretense of asking a quest I will make the speech. And if there is somebody who wants to say something really funny and cute, and make a monkey of the speak wade in, but you will have to take what you get. I am going to eall a am not going to mince t! sume those preparations, I am going to tell you that the Hostetter Bitters and Peruna user is just as much of an alcoholic #s an Old Crow drinker;: and they get more aleohol with every doll worth, Now I am going to say what I have said in & great many places throughout the country. There is a Bible; perfectly good Bible There is every reference in the Bible to wine, and strong drink, and dMnkenness. there is a perfectly good ten-dol Now any time while' I am speaking or :lhr I am :.hnu'h.";r Fhu:lml "nn hh rol on Y, again, af ‘ontenelle hotel or When T 5 hadk. Reralon Taseien. s the man or woman who ‘will eome and get ‘that Bible, and these references, an me where, when you take the full pa not just a line, but a full passage of Scrip. ture anywhere, and show me that the Bible is for prohibition, you keep the ten and st return the Bible. (Laughter.) Now, gentlemen, don't all rush down at -‘g‘(huhhr.) Bible is against intemperance. The is against gluttony. & man drinks himself to death; if he & rich man, there is nothing said about If he is a r man, the news 'fi" have it, and the preachers all talk about Laughter.) is death we say, whereas, an all- providence has seen fit e from midst our beloved brother, therefore, resolved. (Laughter.) That is a cour- which we-show to the glutton. (Laugh- Bibid is against lying, too; although ‘l;h':f ;irn bave not yet discovered ughter. is opposed to and against beari witness against thy neighbor. It nl' it covetous: . It s st a lot - other things that we will not have time And one of the things that J Nazareth never overlook mfln‘fiy.‘ sermon he preached, was hypocrisy, t Is just as much a sin of society’ to- FE;F'HE E. of in K hen He was here. it 18 the man who pretends to be good; a reformer; to be righteous; but who e other way, referred to ‘“wets" and & popular expression: mean- was dlflonnthlll’ ween are going to vote for license lation and those who are going et ot & 87, v0 fur as I or a dry, so far as liquer Tine is d the is i 4 the % mi:-"l'a-‘:} b A of &m t th that Emer- , You are #o loud are now buying 'l‘:“;" the '~ WO "h, the water wagon? llnl water-wagon man to me, him u) the fellow who denounel men who buy in the , and he puts in amendment that he can have (Laughter.) going to call a spade & spade. strong. for ‘nn and m, But when T hove 6ot 1o B ve o et my mi ! .),Yn ’hypocritieal old’-uw- the matter with you? X A atralght line for x fow min: Seceme ot ‘everything pou 'ou liquor by -gn you iote here tonight, T am 1 want you in Ma is the first time ha anything said on this side of the ‘ou are novices ylrt. 3 per cunt o 48 5 aleohol: per cent of aleohol y is W. ou are rnlflln. tih:r men tires, while _ou complain of the man ho sells your husband 3% per cent alcohol T 4 nouncing men are go- 1 0 country talking in favor and light wins, while you have medicine chest a'booze drug whieh ve times a® much alcohol as your at the bar. (Laughter.) up a prohibition paper on th so-called prohibition pape: rertisements advising women concoctions that were advertised, one of three wou'd run from three the aleohol that any man ecan f beer. hat is the maf ladi In the first place, you h:Ld that before. Many of you _you hive heard of Lyfia Pinkh ) Well, Lydia seems to. be known heard of Lydia with hi heard You 'h.lvnu t enty years & 't.hl'h lb H #s _anything but booze. (Laughter.) A:d to death. That . i 0 tell how much aleonl e =.:"‘ but aside from that it is & 7, frequently, are s how it affect you? atter o giass of Lydin ter) And as a rule they make such poor| And are also frequently divorce court—I guess not. (Laugh- ter.) | Some time I am_ going to go and make | an investigation of all the divorce cases | where the women use tes and coffee and ( where they use bcer and wine, and it will make somebody think. Did you ever hear of a woman being told to quit using beer because it made her nervous? 1 never did. (Applause.) Did you ever hear of a lady being ad- vised to cut out tea and coffee because it made her nervous? I have. You good mothers who are here tonight, when the physician came to you, and you and the little baby were not doing very well, which did he recommend? _Tes or coffee, or Hostetter’s, or malt nutririe? Think it over. 1 am just trying to get you to use horse sense, that is all. That is enough on this question. Now I want to give you ladies some- thing else to take home, talk over and think_about. (Disturbance in rear part of the theater.) Voices: Keep quiet; keep quiet; put him out; keep quiet or get out. The Speaker: Let him alone; he will go fast enough when it gets a little hotter. (Laughter.) You will see him get a move after n while. I will tell you, my friends, here is one thing about it: I have attended a great many-of these.meetings on both sides of this question, and heard some of the great speakers on both sides of the and some way or other it is the fellow on the other side to take hot shot from us than it is for us The difference is, if we disturb eting e are drunk. (Laughter.) A; they disturb a meeting, it is for the /glory of God, (Laughter.) (Disturbance continues.) The Speal Leg him alone. He's all right. Look here now. !am not talking about the women of Omaha. 1 want you to stand that from the start. 1 am discussing the women of Council Bluffs (Laughter), that great and prosper- ous city of which Omaha is sbout to be- come & competitor. (La Wh estate Is lower and lower, ting lower every di You good ladie: like many of yc.. ted yo Ifes in be worked up into who have been hypnotized by lurid statements that have been made to you from ind that have eom;.lo ou through emy of your sona you belivee it, and you your nigl in fear in prayer trying :f do something to el ate that institu- on. Now 1 want you to keep in good humor for ten minutes and I am going to talk to you right ht from the shoulder a you ha en talked to before. We can al 0od time her®, but we begin to look the truth in l.W have been flim-flamming our- h wrecked 1 \You good asked, it was stated in the letter that was referred to by our chairman, do you want your son to runkard, or your daughter to inkard, or go into a place where wreiked ? at I am about to tell you w A 8go_out of an e this. 1 was mal 3 I referred to Against women, but 1 did not have the facts. And after it was over, a gentleman at the hotel said to me: Mr. Meeker, do know what the percentages of women are, as related to their oceupa- tion? I waid I did not. I had never thought of it in thst way before. 1 n an investigation and when I dis- uonm what 1 am going hc tell you, I was un as much shocked as you are going to in the next four minutes. You e shed many tears over the girl that goes on the stage to play, You have shed many tears over the girl that is forced into the factory or the department store; or out into the world to associate with us men, (Laughter.) Where are the criminal women 1 1 am not asking you, where is your wan- ‘rlln:“b'oy tonight. 1 am talking about the ghter. In the year in which this census Was it was gath 1 ry eriminal in Ame: the saloon; nd your days and | eriminal - nd vor and re- geived sentence. And these women came from the following places’: Musicians and music teachers furnished two-tenths of 1 per cent The school teachers one-tenth of 1 per nt. The stenographers “and the typewriters one-tenth of 1 per cent. The :‘»‘nmn and the copyists three- Per cent. . bhfvrl and I-:rdlll house keepers one- cent. s A six-tenths of 1 per cent. ) The artificia) flower and paper box work- ers, one-tenth of 1 per cent. o oigar worker and th irls, two-tenths of 1 per cent. £ einehe T‘I‘m mill and factory girls, 4 7-10 per cen The milliners, two-tenths of 1 per cent. he telegraph and telephone gir - tenths of 1 per cent. Y All other occupations, § per cent. And servant girls, per it And you thought it was the saloon, To put it in other words, out every 100 women who went before the’ courts this country to accept sentence for some mmitted, 76.6 per cent of them w in erime breakfast in some woman's kitchen fore they went to jail, And ask n girl, and Think it over. Think it o yourselves, if you were a kitel treated like the kitchen girls that you know uh?‘lll, v‘v:'uld ijll‘l& D ‘Q" or not. ow s ju nl 3 ) nth:‘-lul X 8! n: a nlnomnt Let am not going ta e - AR ::nil'h. say where is your wan ere ia your hired You don't know an less you want $ ;lrl rll:t n‘ow. you don't ca - to get her to march In~th pa low think a minute. ~The girls that h; «mentioned in these tra slons can dress when their worl out on the exc come down the ront walk and go in the house 3 A lhl Ry Huhen‘dur e fce man and the coal wan, and you D the back stairs to the poorest room and you will keep your place. ins it. 1 ey find tl panions? Through the motherly interest of lhom‘;nmln that nliployl }M i you ever hear of s servant ' I'Ig:dlfldll' I 3% you ever ¥ of a Young Women' Christlan aasoclation reception to kite mechanics ? " That girl loves companionship just as well as ,gu. and she loves men Jlllt‘ll well as you_do. If she chances to find some man on the street she may strike it all right, but she is taking every chance in the world. hen he comes to call upon her she ean entertain him in the kitchen and if don’ want to sit on the table he can sit in the sink. (Laugher.) But hl.. lnlllI: no:! c:o"\l).k lntodn rl:om with a carpet on it an s and pianos and brlfiht light and home things. . e s only the guy that comes to see the Huh:n lnelc. l&lc. L A ere e lady that is running the house? She has gone to the reform meeting. (Laughter.) \ ‘They are {:lnl To have an election to see who will secrettiry of the Blue Seven society, and she must be there If that girl and that young fellow don’t enjoy the odor of the kitchen and its charm- ing surroundings, they can go out the back door and around the back way and walk n: and down the sidewalk, and if they don't like that they can go to the dance halk| Thy ve got those three places. 'r‘n is the way you protect your hired girl. 1 1 am not talking the ladies of Omaha. (Laughter.) A ‘That girl {s the first one up in the morn- . She must get breakfast for dad and keep on getting breakfast until finally they are all down. She is last one to finish work at night. She has one Thurs afternoon a week (pronounced awfternoon), in which she ean make her social calls, But she must not come into the front part of my house and read my books, or look at my pictures. I might bave Mrs. Diamond Dust this awfter- noon. And although Mrs. Diame Du was & lfl;‘nu‘r Ju Ju ‘b’finn [ .d.‘ she is up in sasslef now and we cawnt have Mary in there reading, (Laugh- ter.) And you don't know and don't care whe: that girl goes, or what she does, just so she 0u | th ir gentlemen ‘som- | ¢y, is there in time to get breakfast, and don't steal the silverware. (Laughter. Now, my-good lady friends, I want to say something to you, in all seriousness. You good women, yes, you admit the truth of what I have just said, but you didn’t know fit. Did you ever see a woman working her fingernails off to train her daughter to go into some other woman's kitchen? (Laugh- ter.) 1 never did. I know of plenty of mothers who are go- ing without the clothes that they should have to put their daughters through school, to study bookkeeptng or neno;nvhy. to put her in some man’s office at $4 a week, when as a girl in a kitchen she could get $5 and room and board. And why is that? Because you don’t want your daughter treated as you treat the other woman's- daughter. (Applause.) And until you reduce that percentage, until you bring that percentage down to at least u par with the factory girls, don’t go around any more looking for the wandering boy. (Laughter and applause.) Just through the kitchen door; just ex- actly 3% inches, between the dining roam and the kitchen, is the socia) line drawn be- tween women. They send 76 per cent of them into jail and into prison, and you think you would save her by marching in a dry parade. (Laughter. ) Now, shy time it gets too hot you are at perfect liberty to go. (Laughter.) I know this talk makes you fidgetty. (Laugh- ter.) 1 am not concerned in what you think of me. I am concerned in telling you the plain, blunt truth, and see if I can't get you to recover from this fit you have been having. You go home tonight— However, I am not talking, to the women of Omaha, but Council Bluffs. Let the American housewife go home to- night and apologize to her hired girl be- cause she has treated her like a dog, and open to her the hand of womanly comrade- IKIn and companionship, and the heart of that poor girl will burst with joy that she has found a friend of her sex, under the roof where she is. SOUND GOVERNMENT AND SOUND BUSINESS, ~ % Ladies and gentlemen, I have been making in your state and in the state of Michigan a study of the popular mind, so far as gov- ernment is concerned. A few years ago there came a great cry- ing demand that we should have government by the people. ‘Gertaln Individuals, who ‘are well known in this state, were leaders in that mo ‘What was called the initiative and T dum began to be written into the laws of th,r different states. norant, or too crooked, to pass laws that were right; so they said, we will take it and do it ourselves. They got the initiative and A bout this state and ried with me this nt which have asked that nt who have read it would hold hands. e not found an audience yet where up, L I h r cent had . gl.w hi read it here? y And yet you say you know something about government. 1 want to say to you that, to one of the serious things in this popular government is the indiff people to their government. hy, you are tonight, so ing you would like to tak speaker and choke him, beca ing again he s talk- d you don't know yoursell excited about, Think of it. b per t of men and women of this state have read that amendmen d il they, some of them, have gone into a hysterlcal fit in fayor of it. Now I am for anything that is genuine, I belie: honest money as against coun- lHeve in honest men as against And I believe in honest pro- tead of counterfeit. If you are going to have prohibition, have prohibition, How an _honest prohibitionist ex- pect to advance his cause by voting for a frau That is the thing that sticks me and absolutely makes me wonder when I find "ll h)o preachers ‘are this thing. (Ap- plause. fi And that is just ly why I'sent the invitation to Dr. Lowe to come on the platform and fell, it to the e ere Is no reason why thinking men, who are equally interested in the moral welfare of the community and the state, should be divided on that thing. If you want real prohibition, why did you And if y 't want prohibition, why don’t you regulation? Why do you try to exeuse yourselves by hiding behind & word and talking about the semblance rather than the substance? You are getting ready to pass a law which, when it goes into the courts of raska, if it becomes a part of the or- o law of this state, will absolutely tie the hands of every honest prohibi- t|onln‘ who ever would hope to see day- light in N ka. (Applause.) d not a man be honést enough, to his own cause, to down a ne But instead of that a lot of these gentle- men—and I am not unwilling to suggest that that langusge was written that way for a purpose. I think any man who has Rot sense enough to read English would know that that language would not pro- hibit anybody from getting liquor. But here you are, swept away with a hysteria about a word; two words; one is prohibition and the other is dry. I do not differentiate between the men think in strajght lines and those who r think, You make your differentiation to whether the fellow s for that language or not, and you have not read it. 1 defy lw man in this audience or in this state of ka to read that proposed conatitutional amendment as published and say that he believes, as God is his {\Idll. that there will be one pint less of liquor used in Nebraska when that becomes a law than' there {s now. I demand that he shall state why he be- leves it. 1 ' This thing of simply cavorting around somewhere, in a sequestered spot and throw- ing brickbats and mud at men who do mot agree with you, when you have no reason to back it up, is a thing of the past with me. It don't matter if the man has a REV. in front of his name or two D's back of it. It d not make any difference when it col to a question of the sound sense of the proposed law. This is not a matter of waving the Amer- fcan eagle in your faces and working up a cry over something that you never saw in_your life. That is past. Never you let any other man, be you ™ 1 or woman; never let him put it acrosa on you again that the saloon is to blame for the the wreck of most of our girls. Y‘0\| :ot it straight tonight, Now cut at ouf ow does it come that W. C. T. U, folks never quote Frances Willard any more? She their president for forty years. Or- started the movement. But you ee Frances Willard in the literatuze, see her pletur-@ the nnhlbifla you wh‘v: use Francis illard, at the end of that forty years, stood up before the world, and she said, I was mistaken. I am now an old woman, said she, but if 1 had my life to live over, I would mot give it to fight liquor, for I have discovered that men are not poor because they dri but THAT THEY DRINK BECAUSE THEY ARE POOR. (Applause.) That declaration of Frances E. Willard at the close of her great career shut her out of dry literature, But she stands in the Hall of Fame at lWl::h\mn. the only American woman who s there. . Why? Because she spent forty years in that. work ? But because, at the end of it, sl big enough to stand up and admit she was wrong. (Applause.) SOUND GOVERNMENT. What is it? It is that system of government wheih leaves those who must live under it the hlrn’l t, the best contented, the least re- bellious and the most proaperous. That is all the function government has. And it applies to the home, to the com- . to the state and to the nation. and tlemen, the peril of this over-lawmaking. P €=state legislatures of the ited States have enacted sixty thousand new laws; the federal government has enact- ed over thi thousand, and the state of Kansas, since it wrote prohibition in its con- atitution, has enacted 1,609 separate laws to enforce prohibition. o8 When Jesus of Nazareth eame to "this earth he found religio moral legalism broken down. It was a failure. so declared it. And He was against it then and He is against it now. And any man who undertakes to save society by the policeman’s billy has left lhh-fihod that Jesus adopted. e said, change the man's heart and e solved your reform. you_hi The legal reformer savs, beat it into e put him, if you have to kill him to do it. Put a private charter, says to the officer, “You | him ig jail to make him good. Send him to the penitentiary to convert him into a saint. That js your theory. I sait it applies at home. I am not talking about Omaha. But did you ever go into a home any- where, where everything that oceurred was— now, did you do that; sit down; go up and wash your face; shut up; if I catch you do- ing that again I will break your back; don't stay out after 7 o'clock, I will be hunting you. Every second of every child's life in that home was government. ‘What happened? One of two things: The boys in that home either grew up up be milksops or anarchists. One of the two. The surest way to get a boy to learn to be an expert at cards is to tell him if you catch him at it you will break his back. (Laughter.) And the surest way to get a girl to marry the fellow you hate is to tell her if you ever catch her out with him, she can’t come home again. Why is it that in the prisons and the penitentiaries, when you take a religious census, you find that a large per cent of the inmates were Sunday school boys? And some of them are sons that were raised in these blue law homes. Isn't that a delightful home in which to visit? Don't you always love to go where somebody is swinging the big stick every minute? (Laughter.) Everything is perfectly correct and in its lace; not a thing out of order; and if any ittle urchin should chance to be found looking crosswise at a book he knows he would be skinned in a minute. Oh, the painfulness of such a life! The un- happiness in such a home! And you have gone into other homes where they did not seem to have any pi ticular rules. Children sat down and talked it over with the father; they sat up to the table and ate; they had fun while they were doing it; they would play pranks on one anothe: sometimes tear out the whole side of a shir the father and mother might h and, oh, what a home it was or other those boys grew up to be good, stalwart fellows, who could go out and take care of themselves anywhere in the game, and the girls were jolly and attractive; they were social favorites, and “everybody was happy. Now what was the difference? It was the difference in the amount of government they had. One home was gov- erned to death, and the other home controlled by on and affection. You good folks here tomight go around church once in a while and sing that old song, “Where is my wandering boy to- night?” and how you sob it out, and how your heart strings are pulled as you wonder where he is. the song you go on home and never take time to look him up. You fust put your wondering in the tune and the boy can wander. Now you wonder why you cannot keep your boy at home. Did you ever go and lht;nk1 at the place where you try to keep im You know a boy is just an animal. He likes to fight and scuffle and run. detests soap and water; they are against his nature. Did you ever look around the boy's room; oh, you good mothe od bless yow. You want to fix up everyhting jast nice for that boy. And what do you do. You fix it up to suit your femirine ‘'mind. You turn that animal in there and expect him to stay. (Laughter.) ' Lace curtains on the windows, pretty lit- tle white bed, a little spindle legged stand, a chiffonier and a doily on the table, a lit- tle pink cherry blossom wall paper. A doily in a boy's room. And you dress him up in white and curl his hair and say, “Now, Honey, don't you go out and play with those boys next door,” and when he does, you say, “Oh, Willie, oh, Willie,” and Willie comes back again. And you wonder why that boy goes ay from you and your heart breaks, and you sob out, *‘Oh, why, is it that I could not keep him " You eduld if you had stopped to under- m. You say, “I loved him to_death.” Yes but you did not understand him. 1 would rather have a boy understand five minutes than to have him loved all day. Now why didn't you let the boy fix it and let him have it on his own plan and say, “Now, my son, how would you like to bave this room.” And the first thing that would come down would be the curtains and the next thing that would come up would.be the doily. ~Give that to sister, He takes that little spindle legged chair and he shoots it off as far as he can. Cleans everything out of there; rips off the wall paper with the pink violets and ex- changes it for some with hunting scenes, hills and mountains; puts a leather curtain up; takes that carpet off the floor; throw out the chiffonier, nad put in an old bu- reau that makes a good fort, and he gets some good, square, stout-legged tables and chaira that can be used for sliding down bill, a pitched battle or anything else, and he paints the floor and ruh in a rug, just big enough to keep his feet warm ‘while he dresse¥ in the morning, and he has some bows and arrows and some wild west pic- tures and some country magazine and some war story books and a ball bat and a catch- er's mitt and some boxing gloves and dumb bells and three or four rusty old guns and a leather spread for the bed and if you will let him alone he will take care of it and everything will be always right in ite place, right smack down in the center of the floor. Oh, God bless you: you could not drive that ‘boy away from there with a club. That is his den; that is-the place where the animal likes' to live, and every other kid in the neighborhod will be in there with him, unless you lock the front door, eve y that has not that kind of says, “Oh, how I wish I had a real mother.” wilt ill” spoi the furniture o little 3 it will save your boy. He will not grow up to be any Willie. He will be Bill. And when you come to that place in your life where husband is gone and you must on some strong support, where ou- wollld have a Willie boy, with weakly Jungs, Bill will take e of mother, and the only one that will ever take him away from you—it will not be any dance hall, nor any pool hall, nor any club, nog. n, nor any card game, nor anything else of that nature—the only power that will ever take Bill out from there will be some bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, brown-haired loving girl, that has got a head full of aens her along he s “Al going to start there will al Say! 1f trine into the cal woman would be God bles: all excited outside h: teen years e could only beat that doc- head of the averagé hysteri- Ilnedkulrltl. the boy problem ved. you: you have got yourselves nd worked up that something got your boy and you had fif- tart of everybody. Now it is just as true in community life as in home life. ‘Exactly the same. I want to you tonight—the stran boy who comes into the city. of Omaha, the strange young man who comes into the city of Omaha, how many of you.people gver, open. the door of your home {o that Y Where would he go tonight if hewere & atranger in this city to have compan- ionship ? Think it over. The churches are all el has talked about starting club hall there, and_they for the worship of God; 79U, pen ip about three hours a_week, and what do you do then? Stick him down in a tellow a pool ly, “Oh, this is pew and a s up in the pulpit and makes him rohibition speech. f he can come into Omaha and find him- self a room and submerge himself lally and stru _through for a while, some- ‘I:lod.y' will begin to think there is something m. You didn’t think of that, did you? Where does that boy go when he is hun- gry? To the parsonage or to the back end of a bar? 'Who feeds him? The church or aloon What right have you got to renounce a man who is doing every day what you won't do _at all? “1 say to you that when you people will bette! itution, that will id more genuine fellow. ideal of life and companion- ship than the saloon does, you won't have to vote on the saloon. It will die. You are trying to create a social vacuum in society. And you think that when you destroy the only social center that the ave "T young man has that he is just going to hang by his tumb-nails on moral plati- tudes” and dry speeches. Now you go away from here and talk that hat are you proposing tonight to put in place of the saloon? You never thought of that. You just thought you were goin; to kick a hole into space and that it woul remain a hole. hl :fll tell you what you are getting ready o, You are going to destroy the open, public places, where men gather together, and, in- wtead, Omaha will have, in thirty days after the saloons ciose, Omaha will have ¢nough clubs, that are barricaded by locked doors, with a bigger membership than the saloon customers are now. What are you going to do about it than? The saloon is the only club that has a Jublie charter, into whi ers of the ich w and_th blic I But' the private clubr”that ‘Hves “behind A warmer welcome ship, a higl But when you have finished ; He | stay out, and everybody else.” In the city of St. Louis, in the year 1909, I made a canvass of the city. 1 did not taki horn with me and blow it every time going down the street. That is. the of those fellows work. I had tance of the plainclothes men on the police force for two years. We found 87 clubs, Sunday clubs, that had a membership of 26,000. Now, God bless you, good people; you don’t think sixteenth inches ahead of your nose. You got mad at that saloon and you don’t know why. But those fellows have told you that is where all the hell comes from. And you never asked yourself the question, “Well, after the saloon, what?" That never struck you. After the saloon, what ? After the saloon, the open, public, regu- lated place, comes the secfet drinking place. And everything that goes behind a barred door generally gets worse than better. I had my way about it, not a saloon in America would have a screen in the front or on the door any more than a res- it is right to takem drink of beer or wine .in church at the ‘Lord’s table, it is not wrong to take it right on top of that table right there. To allow people to get themselves so worked up about a man taking a drink of wine in a saloon or at home and go to the Lord's table and take it, I cannot figure it out; that is just honest; I can’t under- stand it. But you do. The way to reduce drunkenness is to have more_publie drinking. OUCH!!l Did you ever attend a German pienic? I have. Where the beer is free? Did you ever see anyone intoxicated there? I never did. But when you put the lid on, and there is a barrel of it down behind the sign-board, at 25 cents a bottle, the first fellows to it will never give up, until they have got every drop that is there. I am speaking only as a student of con- ditions; I don't want any offense taken at anything I am saying, Why do you find #0 few drunkards amongst the Jewish peo- ple? They have carried their wine from the time you meet them in history. And there is a lower percentage of drunkenness amongst the Hebrews than any of the older races. What has happened to the Mohammedan in the same period of time; the Turk, who is & prohibitionist, by religion? ~Where s his_race as compared with the chosen of God? Why don't you use your common_ sens Is there anything particularly defectivi morally, with the German nation? (A plause.) 1 got you back there. And yet you poor, misguided people have worked yourself into such a frenzy when #Ome blatherskite would get up and say that drinking reduced the morality of the people you believe it. i I defy any man in this audience, or any man that may come to this platform, to stand up and say that because he don't drink’ anything stronger than grape juice, he is morally better than millions of men who use wine and beer and whisky every ay. That is the doctrine of the Pharisee, and nothing else; and simply because you call it Dry, instead of Pharisseeism, as Jesus Christ did, does not change the fact of the thing The bigotry of religious fanaticism would make the devil lsugh. Sane government. Why is it that these men who come here from Kansas have to twist their state- to make them seem plausible. Don't you worry: that Governor Capper lad will be taken care of before this eam- paign closes. If Capper told the truth that time, it is the first time since he has been governor that he ever did tell the tyuth when he was talking outside of Kansas/ And you can send him a telegram tonight that Meeker said so and.invite him over here and I will stand pat. / Now why is it that these people, coming from these places, are compelled absolutely to_apologite, as the man who spoke from this platform last night said, right within fifteen feet of where I am, “I have not got any facts with me; I have not got my stuff along, and the man who presided said, ‘What the hell is the differences; tell them anything.” "Too much government breaks down of its own weight. Now then suppose that we were going to propose & law here for this state that we would do away with all reguiations in re; gard to the selling of Al kinds of liquori would you stand for it? Why, you_ would think it was idiotic. Suppose we were going to pass a law here to destroy all regulations in regard/ to the selling of any commodity in this state except liquor, you would think it was idiotic. | And yet you say that liquor is the most dangerous of all things that men use, and you still provide that they can have all they want. You don't want to control in any way the dispensing of it; just let it take its own chances. Now, my friends, this is only the begin- ning of your legislation. You will have to pass a law for the purpose of enforeing it. And you will have to direct yourselves to this question: Why is it that with 25 years of re- form, so-called reform, when we have been passing reform laws by the thousands, and we get more people in jail than we ever had in the reform territory; we have got more penitentiaries filled than we ever had, and we have more law violation than we ever had, in the face of 25 years of re- form Did you ever think of that? Did you ever see one of those cadaver faced chaps come around and tell you how the world is going to hell, to the demni- tion bow wows? And what does he do? He refers you to the criminal record of the country. He says, “There she goes.” Now at the same time that our jails filling up and our penitentiaries, there wr never a time in_the history of the world when there had been many great move- ments, nationally speaking, for the amelior: tion of the sufferings of the unfortunate now. Never. Now I am talking of the currents of aec- tivity; not the thermometer. Why? Th things that are before our n: tional legislature; before our state legisl tures; looking for shorter hours for women; looking for the saving of ing ground up in factories, ! ing for pensions and compensations to those who are injured in the train service; all of these things. Dou you find the drys boosting these movements ? I defy you to show where the Anti-Saloon League of America yet ever, in one state in this nation, or at the.national capital, has gone to the front for a single shorter hours or child labor or for any of those things that make the conditions of man better. Now let us consider this for a moment. Here we are tonight, a society, iment, community. Now we as good We are or we are t we are, individually, regardl that the government might ; now these twelve rules are to regul his society, and we go about our business. Every time we violate one of these twelve ordi- nances they grab us add fine us or put us in jail and turn us loose again. Well, we g0 _along with these twelve for a while and we have another meeting, and we enact twelve more; we have another meeting and we enact twelve more; and at the end of ten years, where we started with twelve we now have one hundred. That means there are one hundrd chances to grab every man in the crowd where there were twelve in the beginning; he has one hundred rules to keep where he had only twelve. The chances are that no man can obey all these rules; he breaks one of them; he is grabbed and taken into court, ground through the mill and marked a criminal. You remember what Jes Christ when he was here that whoever viol the least of these is guilty of all. What does that mean? It means that if you fail in society to do what? To take care of that fellow that has heen yanke into court for a violation of any city ordi- mance when he comes out again and wants to start in the fight for life.: You \ have you been in jail? Ile says, You never asked him why. You say, I don't want you. He had just as well he guilty.of robbery as exceeding the speed limil. In the eyes of society he is a eriminal when he had no criminal instinets whatever. I want to say to you tonight, the difference between the doctrine of the man who would save. society by law and the doctrine of Jesus Christ, who would save man by love, is just this: - On the Sabbath day, when the Master went through the flelds, his disciples gath- ered the &uln. rubbing it out, and ea lot of these snoop committees, tHat day, were looking after it, and they said, this is a violation of the law, ah, ah! Shant labor on the Sabbath, no, sir; that is against the law; that man talks about bein; the Son of God, and look what he did. An then He said to them, don't you know that the Sabbath was made for man: not man for the Sabbath. Did_you ever get that straight through your head? They figure that the law was made and then God made man to keep it. Men talk about the dignity of the law. If there is to e any dignity to the law, it must be a dignified law. If you want men to respect law, pass re- speetable laws, and they will. Now these fellows on the other side ‘ant ® maximum of law with a minimum of free- dom. Ths side wants a maximum of lib- eng and a minimum law. o {ou get me? (Long continued ap- plause. SANE GOVERNMENT means to take rea- sonable contrd] in the directing of all social activities. Now as long as you are going to permit me to bring it in by the jugfull, or by the barrel, or by the automobile, or the earload, or the trainload, as your proposed law will permit them to do, and you are going to permit them to keep it anywhere the; choose, and to use all their hides will hold, does it not seem to you, using just ordi- nary horse sense, that you should keep control of the distribution of it? If T was going to monkey with a rattle- snaoke, I would rather have it in a gl box where I could see it than have it in a hole or running around in the grass where I never know where it was going to strike me or when it was was goink to strike me. And everything you say against liquor, as long as you say that men can have it to use; the very argument you put up as to the danger of it, is just that much stronger argument for keeping control of the distribution of it. Why, I can't see how a man who uses his head for anything, or keeps his back: bone behind from unraveling, can't see that, Now, some of these good dry fellows are afraid that they will be accused of standing up f:r the saloon if they stand for govern- ment. Well, after the saloon, what? The next thing that comes —. You have got about how many voters here in this town? About 30,000 men. If you have 80,000 men in this town, you have 25,000 drinkers. That is the lowest. You won't find 5,000 teetotallers in the town. Now, then, that being true, suppose that the state of Nebraska out-votes the people of these cities; while this city will vote from two to three to five to one against this law. (Applause. How, in the name of common sense, do you ‘expect to enforce that law when the men here are five to one against it? What are you putting up to the police force of this town? What are you putting up to the whole governmental system of this town? I will tell you what will happen: Just exactly’ what has occurred in Maine, and in every other state where they have had this for any length of time. In the state of Maine, the sheriffs of counties are elected on a platform of en forcement or nonenforcement of the law. there are people who believe they can get a law and ram it down the throats of men and make them stand for it. o next fellows? The organization of your whole pody politic to create a system of corruption and for the defeat of your law. That Is what you get. You don’t need to tell me that the ex- governors and the governors of Kansas have not had their frame-ups with the boot- leggers of Kansas. You don't need to tell me if they never wanted to enforce that law over there the governor of the state would not know about t. Look at the record of Oklahoma! The most shameful and disgraceful of any new Atate in America. Corruption without men- tion and without shame, The bootleggers of Oklahoma are the m powerful political organization in Oklahoma. What is the resuit? Nebraska has sent twenty men to the asylums with alcoholic psychosis; Kansas b sent seventy, and Oklahoma has sent Why? Because the people of Nebr: liquor anywhere; getting away from the harder drinks, they turned to beers and wines, to the lighter drinks. But when it has to be sneaked In, in Bibles, and sult cases and hearses and caskets and oil tanks and box car and twine pack and canes and everything they will always get the stuff that has the most kick in it for the least amount of Laughter.) Bootleeggers' paradise! and Okla- homa. That is what you will get in your govern- ment system, Now, why can't you enforce the law? Oh_ somebody says, of course we have a law against killing, but then men go and }flll each other, and we do not change the aw. You do not change the I you do not put in a constitutional amendment that ft can be used for medicinal purposes or sac- ramental; you do not say that it can be used for mechanical or industrial purposes. Now, what is the trouble with that law? Affer all, it Is public sentiment that po- lices a community, and the police with a club in his hand only reflects public sen- timent. Some men around here say, Well, look at the saloon conditions in Omaha! Well, they are just what you want them to be. They are just what Omaha is sat- istied with. A I want to tell you that three nights' in- vestigation by certain beloved gentlemen, in the right spot, with a good sfiff spine, will do more to 8! ':}( the Omaha saloons than seventy-five ons when there is nobqdy there. And the cancellation of mbout three waloon licenses will make the rest of these fellows see daylight guicker than all the elections than you c&n hold. You do not want to enforce the law. It might get you in bad. You just want to vote. Nothing more. Just vote. This law is different from the other laws In regard to theft and murder and crimes of that kind, In that its jurisdiction {s limited to the community that passes on it, A man, in this state, could steal an au. tomoblle and go to New York and you could bring the man and the car and the fellow that bought it all back together, if he knew it was a stolen car, and send them all to prison® and return the car to the owner. And the fellow in the bootleg business, when you start after him_he hears you com. ing and he just steps over the line into Towa and he says good night, and the’ Jowa sheriff can't send him back, nor you can't get him. And In the next place the fellow, that bought his goods don’t have to llv{ them up. That is the difference between him and the automobile fellow. He keeps the goods and don't have to appear against him either. Now let. me tell you, If you would put a law on the statute books that if a man would purchase an automobile and didn't know it was a stolen car, It you put it on the books that he could keep it in case he bought it without knowing that it was stolen, everybody In Nebraska would have a car inside of thirty days. Well, of course, everybody but the preachers. (Laughter.) The fault of this law is this, you are endeavoring to make one side of a trans- action right, and the other wrong and you cannot do it. This is what this law proposes to do, and I will use this just as an {llustyation: ¢ On this side of the bar you Rave 20,000 men; 25,000 in Omaha, In this city on this side of the bar; and they are not all drunken bums; you have merchants and bankers and lawyers, all.coming up to this side of the bar, and drys; the dry walks up and lays down his dollar, and the man on this side of the bar puts down a quart of the goods hat the dry wishes. You say by your amend- ment that the dry can do that and keep it up_ and he is violating no law; but the man who puts down the quart and fakes up the dollar, you are going to make a criminal out of him. Buying liquor will continue to be fashionable and preper, but selling it under rggulations will be a crime. You have g0t 26,000 on that side of the bar and 350 on this side. You are voting on the 350; why ddn't you tackle the 25,0007 It is just as much a violation of law to purchase a stolen automobile as it is to steal it or sell it, but it is no violation of low to buy of a bootlegger all the stuff you can ship in here. Now, why can't you reduce that to com- man sense. Sound businecss. What Is it that makes a city? How does this city come to be as bIg as it is with all these saloons hete? And look at Topeka! Look at Kansas City, Kan.! DId you ever notice what a pecullar thing has occurred in- the development of the west ? Along the Missourl river; coming up, you strike Kansas City. Kansas City, Mo, some way or other, has sort of made a back door out of Kansas City, Kan. Wpen you get to Omaha, the big dity i on the other side of the river. WondeP why it is that you can buy property so cheaply in_Council Bluffs? ¢ Did you ever ses the drys go to a town that had adopted prohibition and leave the oao that had not? Did you ever see them do_the other thing? How far I8 It from Omaha to Council Diuffs? What is the faro? Ten cents from hell to heaven. Not a soul golng. Nobody goea. Ten cents from Council Bluffs to hell and everybody golng. (Laughter.) That ought to be enough to give you a hunch? (Laughter.) a got their Think of how they long for you overthere Now, here in Omaha, ever since low: adopted prohibition are there any Omahi reople going over there to attend the! heaters and stop at their hotels and buy shoes ? - {ell; not soas you could notice it. the Councll Bluffs people, and all that part of Iowa, are coming here; and you are getting ready to glve them a kick right squarg/in the face. Isn't the ‘money of the man who comes to get a stein of beer, too, generally as good and as ready for shoes as the fellow that don't? Name one hundred teetotallers that are rich and you can find that many beer users that will cap them one better. You stand up here and say that the peo- ple who use beer and wine don't pay their bills as good as the. fellows who don't. You stand up here and say that you know any of these dry fellows whose notes you would rather have then men who drink. Whose credit is better? Who are any great- er business asset to the town? Ah; get right down to brass tacks; get over your fit. Now; look here, $352,000 fn the treasury. 1t it was going to make your town better off, soclally or morally, you could do with- out that money. But you are making con- ditions worse, soclally and morally; just ltke every other prohibition city on earth has done and always will. Because you are try- Ing to enforce a law that you don't want to enforce. Now_ then, you wipe that out of your treasury; $350,000 is 5 per cent of $7,000,000, ind nupposs thit you have fo increase the uation of your property enough to make the $360,000. Where Is it going to carry you? Or let us take it another way. Suppose that the merchants of this town; and let the drys lead off with this, and I would like to see the list in the paper befora T leave; the merchants of this town would agree to give 6 per cent of the gross re- ceipts from their sales to make up that deficit? That would take $7,000,000 worth of business. Where are you golag to get 1t? Where is it coming from? Suppose that this clty, or this state rather adopts the Idiotic dea that Kansas has and that Iowa has, do you suppose that these men who now come here with thelr cattle and their shipments and bring their families to speng a vacation time; do you suppose they will stop here? That beautiful new hotel that you have got standing over yonder; a credit to any city in America, anywhere, that new hotel would not be worth 40 cents on the dollar. You say you don't want saloohs. Don't you? Well, when you take your wife and start from here to New York to do your buying, and take her along for a little vacation trip, where do you and she fignre on going? To the ten cent stores and the cafeterias? Do you take her around and show her the feed yourself restaurants; nickel in the slot? Oh, no. You say, “Honey I have got $500 In my hip pocket and we are going to have a good time in New York. We are going to Rector's, and we are going to Cavanaugh's, and we will go from there up to the Astorla, and we will go down td the theater'; but you don't say anything about going over to hear a prohibition sermon .(Laughter.) And the people of the United States carry 42,600,000 a day into New York City, just to have a good time. Now, what do you do from Omaha to New York when you take $500 or $1,000 when you go there to do your purchasing; thous- ands of men all over this section of the west do when they come to Omaha. And they bring their families. But do you suppose a man who can af- ford that will come here, when he comes into the Fontenelle, or any of these other hotels, and finds out that if he wants a stein of beer, or a glass of beer for his wife or himself, he has got to get from the bellhop and sneak it up the back way? Do you know that more than 50 per cent of the money that goes over the bars in your town comes from the outside? It is velvet. And the fellow who comes to buy beer Is generally a pretty good spender at the store. The liberal-minded man Is a liberal-handed man, And no city has been bullt up yet that had contraction of the heart and palms. (Laughter and applause.) Suppose you should hear that Kansas City, Mo., was going to close down and no longer sell beers and .wines, wouldn't you usiness men in this town whistle? I should say you would. Des Moines and Council Bluffs and these other places over here have got behind commercially and it has meant hundreds of thousands dollars a month to you in trade. Why, & Ford automoblle can be run out into the road half way between u_ prohibi- tion town and a licensed town, and even if it has got a dry deacon at the wheel, it knows which way to go. (Applause and laughter.) And all that your prohibition town gets from that little Ford is the odor of the departing gasoline. (Laughter.) NoWw, here you are, a great, big, splendid clty of the west. You have some saloon- Keepers who should be in the penitentiary instead of in Omaha. You may have some bankers in the same.class. I'will not go any further in citing other groups. But there are others. Now, why don’t you use the law that you have instead of destyoying all the law? Now, here s the other points is this that you fellows have not thought about. You would have to have $7,000 000 increass to just balance the books at § per cent, and on top of that do you suppose that if you were to adopt prohibition that these 25,000 men and their families would quit using these wet goods. Why, not at all. I soe these ladles here tonight. Suppose we were going to prohibit the sale of cor- sets in this state, would you quit wearing corsets? Not S0 as you could notice it, (Laughter.) What would you do? God bless your hearts, you would do the sensible think, You would get your mail order catalokue, or your Modern Priscilla, or your Ladiel' Home Journal gnd find the style and shape you wanted, and send a $10 bill In an envelope and buy two and wear them both at the same time. You would defy that prohibition and you ‘would say “You attend to your own business, will "you?” You would be right. And it would be the samo ‘thing with beer. That is where you'are misled in this thing. Now, then, the things that would occur would be three: One would be your drugglist trade; under this medicinal the Peruna drinkers, and the Hostetter drinkers and the Lydia Pinkham's, and the group, would get their's just the pame. (Laughter.) There would be a great many alcohoics added to that class. But keep in good humor, drinking Peruna and your h Ing beer, you have got hi death. (Laughter.) You don't like that. Nobody likes Peruna. But you use it and get the habit. Now then_you will have the men storing 1t here for medicinal, mechanical, scientifio and sacramental purposes; and under the conatitution they can keep It for these four purposes. There is not one word there which says you cannot give it away. That is not pro- hibited. Not a thing abont it. I don't know what that was unless some of the drys were afrald they could not get a free drink. (Laughter.) Now, then; that money which s now spent In Omaha, by the people who come here from the outside, would not come here: that is lost on your outside business. In the second place, the money that is spent here by_these people would be sent away. You spend $1 in Omaha, and whatever is left after you pay the wh goods, the remainder of it goes to others; a3 800n a5 the saloonkeeper gets it he gives It to the grocer and the baker and the butcher and the candlestick maker; and so it goes. Some of thess dry people would make you think that when a saloonkeeper got a nickel he swallowed it. (Laughter.) The saloon- keepers are the best spenders In your Tity, according to their income, b And the brewers of Omaha, and the liquor men of Omaha, put up more money for pub- lic charity than any other group of men in Omaha, ’ 1 want to say, Mr. Churchman, before you say one more word in deunclation 9f these men and call their money blood money, you glve back what they gave to you® Now, then; this money goes out of the city and goes away. You spend a dollar in Omaha and you will see it in & few days coming around again; but you Chicago, and walt tili you see it, and you will make Methuselah look like he dled young. (Laughter.) You are preparing to send a stream of trade out from your city; pleasure-seekers a stream, 10 Invite in their place secret drinking places and centers where men and women may sather beyond the arm of the law, You are preparing, in the second place, to pauperize your treasury; to force an in- crease in thesofficers of the law and to bring about a moral breakdown in your community and your state. Think it over.” Look it square in the 1 If you are and fs drink- skinned to Why don't you good people who don't like a licensed ln\‘vn move to Council Blutts? eye. Use your sober, best judgment. And ff you do we have no fear on the results, I thank you.