The question is often asked how it is that society tolerates such a confessed violator of law and order as the saloon has demonstrated itself to be. If an individual defied the law as a large number of the saloon keepers do, he would be quickly punished. Nay, more, if a poor, starving man steals a loaf of bread to appease his gnawing hunger, or to save the life of his starving family, he is sent to prison, _that the majesty of the law may be vindicated_. But when a saloon-keeper breaks the law in keeping open on Sunday in selling liquor to minors, or in making his saloon a rendezvous for women of bad repute, nothing is said because (1) of the moral apathy throughout the web and woof of Christian society; (2) professing Christians are more loyal to party-hacks and demagogues than they are to their own homes and their country, (3) the saloon is a unit in its voting strength, loyal to its tools and relentless to its foes, and the voting power of the saloon element in any great city when united with the voting strength of the Christian element in either of the great parties, turns the scales for the minions of the rum power. Let me illustrate. In Chicago there is about 5,600 saloons. These saloons will average not less than two voters to the saloon, the proprietor and the bar-keeper; as a matter of fact, I expect four votes would come nearer the correct figures, as numbers of saloons have several bar-tenders. But placing the number at two, we have a voting strength of 11,200. Now each one in this army can surely influence _four persons_, many can influence from six to ten votes, but placing the figures at four, we have the enormous total of 44,800 voters to be added to the 11,200 engaged in the traffic, giving a startling aggregate of 56,000 voters, which the saloon power can count on with reasonable certainty, when any measure affecting its interests is to be acted upon, or when persons are to be elected who can enforce or ignore laws enacted to restrict the liquor evil. This argument presented to the political parties is usually irresistible; they simply permit the saloon element to dictate its policy and its candidates. And against this army of home destroyers, this solid battalion of evil, this power which prostitutes political integrity, destroys virtue, breeds crime, fills prisons with victims and homes with misery, and requires the expenditure on the part of the government of millions of dollars in punishing the criminals and the paupers it annually makes,--I say against this army engaged under the banner of the rum traffic, what counteracting opposition is springing from the home loving, the upright and pure-minded citizens of our great cities? What concerted action is the church with her tens of thousands of communicants putting forth? It would be an easy matter to thwart the allied power of rum, if a few persons in every church and every society for ethical improvement were ablaze with moral