Another well-taken point is the _lawlessness of the saloon power_. It is essentially a law-defying, crime-breeding, and disorder-producing element, a terrible arraignment, yet no one can question the truth of the last two charges, while its lawless character is seen in the facts set forth in this volume wherein it is shown, (1) that the Brewer's Association pays the costs of all the suits and defends all of its members, _whether they have violated the laws or not_. (2) The saloons are required to close on Sunday, yet a large number totally ignore the law, running every Sunday. (3) They are required not to sell to minors without a written order from parents or guardian, and yet there are thousands of saloons which pay no attention to this requirement. (4) They are forbidden to harbor women of bad repute, and yet we are informed that one saloon in Chicago keeps from twenty-five to forty harlots, while in hosts of other saloons special arrangements are made for the gratifying of all forms of nameless immorality which springs from lust fed and inflamed by rum. The influence of the saloon on the young is one of the most serious phases of the many-sided evils of the liquor traffic. All persons who know anything about the effect of strong drink freely indulged in, know that like opium, it weakens when it does not destroy the moral nature; it wipes out the line of moral rectitude from mental discernment; it feeds the fires of animal passion as coal feeds a furnace; it drys up the soul and shrivels the higher impulses and nobler aspirations of its victims. Yet we are told that in a saloon under one of the newspaper offices in Chicago one night, _fourteen boys and girls from fourteen to seventeen years of age_ were seen to enter; and to show that this is an evil by no means confined to Chicago, facts gathered from other reliable sources are cited from which we find that nine hundred and eighty-three young men and boys were seen to enter nineteen saloons in Albany, Indiana, one evening _within one hour and a half_. On a certain evening in Milwaukee _four hundred sixty-eight persons were seen to enter a single saloon, most of whom were young men and boys_.