Therefore, one of the most promising fields for the social reformer,
for the man who drinks beer and the man who drinks water, for the man
who smokes cigars and the man who washes his teeth before every meal
with charcoal powder and lives on vegetables, is the liquor saloon. It
is always open and you can go in without buying. You can take a seat
free of charge and you can talk. You have as much right to talk as
the bartender, and even if opposed to your principles, good business
judgment, if no other motive, prompts the average saloon keeper to be
tolerant. He cannot afford to drive away any large percentage of his
customers. You have a right, and even in the Republican saloons you
can get permission to declare the gospel of monopoly's downfall in the
back room, in the hall upstairs or in the main saloon, once a week,
without paying anything for heat, light or hall rent. These are already
furnished for the people who now go there. You do not need to advertise
the meeting, for there is always a crowd about the saloon. After you
have held two or three meetings they will grow in size and draw the
frequenters from other resorts.
The average saloon crowd is as open to conviction and as ready to be
taught concerning the moralizing of government and the establishment of
justice in the world as the average church congregation, and they will
treat you as civilly and listen as attentively even though every man
present disagrees with you.
Let the hundreds of saloons throughout our great cities be selected
as a mission field for the new gospel of manliness and brotherhood.
Christ went among publicans and wine-bibbers. We can afford to go among
wine-bibbers, even when they are Republicans. Our crowd may be small
at times but the kind of work that moves the world and builds up
civilization is work that is regular and continuous.
Let the Volunteers organize by twos, and the one, two or three evenings
a week that they can give to the cause, let those who choose this
work go to a saloon and tell the fellows there that under a proper
social system, each one of them can afford to have a home as sociable
and homelike and comfortable as a saloon; that, after they declare
their independence of the party whip, and, instead of obeying parties,
command them to do their bidding, they can soon have such opportunities
that they won't have to drink to forget their troubles, because they
will have no troubles; that they won't have to drink in order to
imagine that they are happy, because they will have real happiness;
that after the gold standard and monopoly are overthrown, there will be
a hundred different pleasures and opportunities opened to them, that
these will produce intoxication just as delicious as that produced
by wine and beer, and that every poor man who wants to drink will be
allowed to drink, not slops and refuse, but the same fluids that now
give the gout and dropsy to die millionaire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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