From The Lips Of Neal Dow.

White Ribbon, Volume 7, Issue 79, 1 December 1901, Page 9

From The Lips Of Neal Dow.

“ The liquor traffic earns nothing ; it creates no value; it adds not a d'»liar to the national wealth, nor in any way to the wealth and prosperity of the country. The money obtained by the trade is not earned as honest industrious earn money by giving a valuable return for it. It obtains money from those who earn it by their lal>our, giving in return for it what is not only of no value, but far worse than that—something which leads to poverty, pauperism, wretchedness and crime ; which disinclines men

to honesty industry, and finally unfits them for it. This traffic, like war, wastes the products of industry, and kills the worker, or so mutilates and maims him that he is unfitted for work : and then he and bis family and dependents are pensioned upon the honest ndustries of the country. It is like conflagration; it destroys, leaving only the blackened ruins of all which it attacks. It is like pestilence—ravaging any community where it is tolerated, cutting down the brightest, bravest and l>est. It destroys more than sixty thousand of our people every year, cutting short their lives, upon an average, more than ten years each. It makes wretched lieyond all power of expression, more than five hundred thousand homes, which but for it would be peaceful, prosperous and happy. It threatens the existence of our institutions, which cannot live except among an educated and

viituuus people, liecause, more than all other influences for evil, it reduces men to ignorance, brutality, and savagery.”