John
L. Sullivan, once noted for his prowess as a prize fighter, and a champion of the
ring so long as he lived a temperate life, was interviewed the other day in New
York by a newspaper reporter, and among other things he said was : “Booze was
the only thing that put me out of the fighting game. Booze always was and
always will be champion. If you have a lad at home, tell him that booze can
meet any weight, concede any handicap, and win hands down. It’s a cinch that
booze will beat you.” John L. is not the only man who could give that
experience. Some of the brightest intellects, men capable of managing the
largest industries, have been wrecked by too frequent indulgence in
intoxicating liquors. The successful men of business are those who drink
sparingly, if at all. Take the heads of all the great enterprises in the city
of Hamilton and you will find them men of moderate habits. John D. Rockefeller,
the millionaire of the Standard Oil Company, who less than thirty years ago was
a man of moderate means, says that it was by keeping a clear head, free from
the fumes of wine, that he was enabled to work out his road to wealth. More
than one bright Hamilton man, who stood head and shoulders above his fellows in
the management of business affairs, has gone down to obscurity and poverty
through the free indulgence of strong drink. Many years ago, an intellectual
Scotsman, who had been brought down through drink to become almost a barroom
loafer, would occasionally exclaim in front of a saloon, as he saw a young man
enter, “Stop, you sinner, stop and think, before you further go!” It was a
terrible warning from one who had run down the scale of respectability till he
had become so low that even the bartender would not tolerate him unless he
entered with some old-time acquaintance to get a drink. There are everyday
evidences in the streets of this city of what strong drink will do. The men you
see in rags and poverty were once like you, young man, who could take a drink
and leave it alone.
Last Saturday afternoon, a
respectably-dressed man, of sixty years of age, or more, was forcibly ejected
from a prominent hotel in this city somewhat the worse for liquor. Even in his
degradation, he was a gentleman in manners and it was a sad sight to see him
roughly-handled by a young man connected with the hotel office. Probably the
old man was an acceptable visitor while his money lasted, even though it was a
Sunday. Unfortunately such sights are too common in city life. There was a time
when that old man boasted in his strength to drink a glass of liquor or leave
it alone.
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It did not turn out so badly after
all, yet for a time the people were exited at the thought that they would have
uncomfortable homes during the winter, or spend all their money in soft coal or
wood, both of which became suddenly inflated in value, although they cost not a
cent more to produce than in ordinary times. We have become so accustomed to
hard coal and furnaces and base burners, they are necessaries instead of
luxuries. Every room in the house has to be heated up to seventy degrees to be
comfortable in wintertime, and even the poorest family can enjoy the luxury of
a warm house when hard coal is only $6 a ton. Indeed one need come under the
class of the oldest inhabitant to remember the time when only the well-to-do
could afford to have more than one stove in the house besides the kitchen
range, and the parlor stove was rarely fired up except on Sundays and holidays.
Such a thing as a furnace, except in the house of a nabob, was unknown. Go back
half a century or more and the majority of houses in Hamilton were built with a
large fireplace in the kitchen, with an iron crane to hang the pots and kettles
on. Cooking stoves were a luxury, and the average citizen enjoyed the open
fire, piled high with wood, and the mothers of those days baked the family’s
salt-rising bread in round iron pots covered and surrounded by red-hot coals;
and when they indulged in the extravagance of roast beef or turkeys or geese at
Christmas times, the meat was suspended by a string or wire in front of the
wood fire and browned to a turn. It makes one’s mouth water even now to think
of the delicious roasts of the olden times. If mother was busy, one of the
children was put in charge of the roast to keep it properly basted so that the
beef or turkey or goose would not bake dry or be burned. Ah, what a flavor that
meat had! But let us get back to the heating question. Wood was cheap in those
days, the best dry maple and beech selling for $1.50 a cord. The men who
chopped the wood and hauled it to town were not making a fortune at the price
they charged, but they had to clear up the farms and better get $1.50 a cord
than burn it with the brush to get rid of it.
Even with wood as cheap as it was
then, the people in town were saving of it, and when nine o’clock at night came,
except on rare occasions, the fire on the hearth or in the stove was carefully
covered up with ashes, and within an hour, the kitchen or sitting room was as
cold as a barn. No one thought of having a fire in a bedroom, that would not
only have been extravagance but very unhealthy. Old-fashioned people were great
sticklers for cold rooms to sleep in, but they would bury themselves under a
mountain of blankets and quilts, have the windows and the doors closed tight,
and not a breath of fresh air was allowed in those rooms during the night.
People have learned better now, and heat their bedrooms, while they let the
window down from the top for ventilation.
But this is all digression. How one
rambles when the memories of the days of yore come back! The coal strike turned
out at last to be more of a scare to consumers of coal than anything else. Of
course, the owners of the coal mines and the local coal dealers took advantage
of it and reaped a golden harvest while the strike lasted. And the men who had
wood to sell, both in town and country, squeezed the poor consumers till the
Queen’s head on the five cent pieces groaned in agony at the extortion. It is
all over now, however, and it will not be long before hard coal will be so
plentiful that even the poorest person will have it to burn. The price may be a
little stiff for awhile, but buy it in small quantities till the dealers are
compelled to get back to the old figures. Providence has tempered the wind to the
shorn coal bins, and thus far in November, the houses have been kept
comfortable with but little expenditure of fuel.
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