"The greatest enemy of man is not death; it is selfishness. It sits on the throne of the entire world. This very disaster which has filled the town with sorrow was due to selfishness. Let us see if that is not so. It has been proved by investigation already made that the drunkenness of a track inspector was the cause of the accident. What was the cause of that drunkenness? The drinking habits of that inspector. How did he acquire them? In a saloon which we taxpayers allow to run on payment of a certain sum of money into our town treasury. So, then, it was the greed or selfishness of the men of this town which lies at the bottom of this dreadful disaster. Who was to blame for the disaster? The track inspector? No. The saloon keeper who sold him the liquor? No. Who, then? We ourselves, my brothers; we who licensed the selling of the stuff which turned a man's brain into liquid fire, and smote his judgment and reason with a brand from out the burning pit. If I had stumbled upon the three corpses of my own children night before last, I could have exclaimed in justice before the face of God: 'I have murdered my own children,' for I was one of the men of Barton to vote for the license which made possible the drunkenness of the man in whose care were placed hundreds of lives. "For what is the history of this case? Who was this wretched track inspector? A man who, to my own knowledge, trembled before temptation; who, on the testimony of the foreman at the shops, was, and always had been, a sober man up to the time when we as a municipality voted to replace the system of no license with the saloon, for the sake of what we thought was a necessary revenue. This man had no great temptation to drink while the saloon was out of the way. Its very absence was his salvation. But its public open return confronted his appetite once more, and he yielded and fell. Who says he was to blame? Who are the real criminals in the case? We ourselves, citizens; we who, for the greed of gain, for the saving of that which has destroyed more souls in hell than any other one thing, made possible the causes, which led to the grief and trouble of this hour. Would we not shrink in terror from the thought of lying in wait to kill a man? Would we not repel with holy horror the idea of murdering and maiming seventy-five people? We would say 'Impossible!' Yet, when I am ushered at last into the majestic presence of Almighty God, I feel convinced I shall see in His righteous countenance the sentence of our condemnation just as certainly as if we had gone out in a body and by wicked craft had torn out the supporting timbers of that bridge just before the train thundered upon it. For did we not sanction by law a business which we know tempts men to break all the laws; which fills our jails and poorhouses, our reformatories and asylums; which breaks women's hearts and beggars blessed homes and sends innocent children to tread the