DOES PROHIBITION PROHIBIT?
LET CANADA GIVE
IT AN HONEST TRIAL
“Throw out the life line, someone
is drifting away!” Mother, it may be your husband, your son, your father or
your brother; or it may be some other mother’s loved ones. On Monday next, you
can answer that question, and may your mother’s heart send back the glad
response. “By the help of God, here goes my ballot as the life line that will
help some weak husband, father or son from drifting down to a drunkard’s
grave.” The Liberty league and the men who are interested in the open bar and
the sale of intoxicating liquors say that there is as much liquor sold in
Hamilton today as when every saloon in town was running wide open: but they
camouflage this statement by saying that it is all sold and drunk after night,
and that is the reason Chief Whatley is able to present such glowing reports of
the decreasing number of arrests for drunkenness in the streets.
Don’t believe a word of it! Use
your own eyes and common sense, and ask yourself the question, “What has become
of the large number f men and boys that I used to meet in the streets
staggering drunk?” In the year 1918, Chief Whatley reports that there were
1,667 arrests for drunkenness; and in the first nine months of 1916, while the
city was still under the licence system, and three months under partial
prohibition, there were 1,368 arrests, showing a falling off to the credit of
prohibition of 299. In 1917, when every drunken man in the streets was liable to
arrest, there were but 469 arrests for drunkenness. What better proof is needed
of the efficacy of the Ontario Temperance act than the honest report made by
Chief Whatley ? Cut off the bootleggers from their accursed violation of the
law, and the doctors from their assistance as bartenders by their
prescriptions, and Hamilton would have made even a better showing as to the
power of prohibition to prohibit.
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Vote four NO’S when you mark your
referendum ballot on Monday, and you will at least have done your part toward
making a sober Canada. If the partial prohibition that has been in force in the
years 1917 and 1918 has decreased drunkenness in the streets of Hamilton down
to 469 in 1917 and 414 in 1918, what glorious results may be accomplished when
a new act is enacted, backed by the legislation of the Dominion parliament! The
unfortunate drunkard is not altogether responsible for the gratification of his
appetite for strong liquor; the responsibility must rest on the moderate
drinker who demands his beer and wine, and has control of his appetite. They
ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Are we still not all depending upon one
another for our happiness and comfort in this life? The old-timer who laughed
when anybody suggested that some day Canada would have woman suffrage and
prohibition, now is willing to believe we will dry up the ocean or go visiting
to the moon in the next few years. If prohibition does come next Monday, and
there is every indication that it will, Premier Hearst and his cabinet will
deserve a large share of the credit for the stand taken by the party in giving
to the women of Ontario the right to vote. We are not going to rob the Dominion
parliament of its part, nor take from Sir Robert Borden the most important
share in progressive legislation. But let us get down to bedrock and give the
acclaim of victory to the wives, mothers and daughters of Canada who, by their
votes next Monday, will throw out the life line to this grand old Canada that
will save some poor unfortunate from drifting away.
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Only here and there can be found
an Ontario newspaper that is defending the stand taken by the so-called Liberty
league, though they all publish its advertisements. There are a few of the
leading papers that will not publish the advertisement of the sale of liquor
under any circumstances, and they are doing stalwart work for prohibition. We
call to mind one leading Canadian paper whose owner and manager was killed by
one of his employees while the latter was under the influence of liquor. The
murdered editor and owner was kind and generous to the men under his employ,
but during a strike in the general trade for an increase of wages, the
unfortunate drunkard could not discriminate between his employer who was ready
to pay the scale demanded, and those inclined toward arbitration. Since that
time, the influence of that paper has been on the side of prohibition, and is
today doing grand service in its advocacy of the referendum that is to be voted
on next Monday.
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Talk about personal liberty and
the taking away the rights of a man to use intoxicating liquors. The history of
self-governing freemen abounds in the denial of just such privileges as are now
pronounced inalienable by the leaders of the Liberty league. They speak
feelingly of enslavement and the taking away of their rights, but nobody is
going to enslave them. If Chief Whatley’s guardians of the city find a drunken
man in the street and arrest him, they promptly take away his liberty by
marching him down to the police station, and hailing him the next morning
before Magistrate Jelfs for trial for his drunkenness. No person who may walk
the streets without infringing the rights of others is interfered with by the
police. The enforcement of law guarantees the liberty of peaceful citizens;
while at the same time it deprives the law-breakers of his liberty. Every
constitution, every contract, every law, every police regulation, involves the
relinquishment by sections, interests or individuals of some assumed right once
enjoyed. If that is taking away the rights of a man to have his beer, then we
are all in bondage – only to law and order and the best interests of society as
a whole. The law is right in preventing a man from bringing poverty and
unhappiness to his wife and children, and the persistent use of intoxicating
liquors is sure to bring such results.
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MAKING THE OLD YOUNG AGAIN
That was an interesting topic the
New York Evening Mail selected for one of its bright editorials the other day, especially
to the writer of these musings, who has just passed his eighty-fifth birthday.
It is the story of an eminent surgeon in Paris, who as been enabled to make a
man eighty years old – and pretty far gone on the road to senile decrepitude –
young again, and comparatively frisky, by grafting into his system an interstitial
gland from a young and vigorous chimpanzee. Webster tells us that an
“interstitial gland is a gland situated between the tissues of an organ or
part,” and is, therefore, a very small affair. We give our authority for the
gland, and leave it to the doctors of Hamilton to thresh it out when next they
meet in solemn conclave. In reporting the results of his experiments before the
French congress of surgery the other day, Dr. Voronoff thus describes the
effects of the grafting upon his venerable and decrepit patient : “After
several moths convalescence, the patient showed a complete change. His
shoulders became upright, he walked straighter, and seemed to enjoy the
physical and mental powers of a man only thirty years old.” The transmission of
the chimpanzee’s ebullient youth to the old man of eighty is explained in the
theory that the intestinal gland used in the grafting appears to contain a
chemical secretion like strychnine, and is a veritable reservoir of energy,
which, when placed in the old, extends life.
You remember Ponce de Leon, who
once started for the source of perpetual youth. The old boy was disappointed,
although he persevered faithfully, but it is probable he had not learned of the
effects of the incorporation of a monkey’s gland into the system. The editorial
writer in the New York Evening Mail suggests that if the chimpanzee’s youth had
been communicated to the old man by the operation, why should not some of the
other characteristics of the simian tribe be communicated to him along with the
element of youth? Now, would it not jar you if some day you happened out in
Dundurn park, over where the monkeys are all the time cutting up their cute
pranks, and some old man should suddenly develop a desire to shin up the
nearest tree adjoining the monkey cages and evince a sudden desire to perch on
a swinging bar and go through the regular monkey exercises. When Hamilton’s
learned sawbones get monkeying with the transmission of the interstitial gland,
who is going to be responsible for the results? Dr. Roberts should give this
subject his prayerful consideration, and if there is any hope in the discovery
of the French surgeon, let him try it gently upon a few of Hamilton’s grand old
men. Then, if success follows the experiments, Hamilton can add the monkey to
other inducements in inviting Yankee manufacturing industries to settle in this
blessed city. In the meantime, the average man and woman who do well not to
rely upon any chance of surgical renewal of youth, but to conserve it carefully
by right living, by voting for prohibition of the liquor traffic on next
Monday, taking plenty of exercise, and as sunny and youthful an outlook upon
life may be possible. We may fool nature part of the time, but, as President
Lincoln used to tell the people, you can’t fool her all the time.
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THE BOYS WHO WEAR THE ARMY BUTTON
Canada has not forgotten the
heroism of the grand army of brave boys who fought during the past four years
as men never fought before. Hamilton will never forget its twelve or fifteen
thousand young and old patriots who answered the bugle call to arms. Take a
walk along King street almost any hour of the day and see the stalwart young
heroes, with heads erect, shoulders thrown back and proudly wearing the button
denoting that they have been across the seas when it would have been much
pleasanter to be back here in the old home with father and mother, or with wife
and children. The young men who were deaf to the bugle call will never know the
inspiration that fired the hearts and souls of the boys who carried a musket,
stood for hours in the trenches, or of the long and weary marches by day and by
night. The writer of these musings passed through it all in the days of the
American civil war, and we never see that button that we don’t look with pride
on the young fellow who proudly sports it. You can tell a soldier boy as far as
you can see him, for he steps out erect and as proudly as if he owned the
earth.
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There is a comradeship existing
between old soldiers that will never be forgotten be forgotten? Did they not
tent together for four long years, and fight shoulder to shoulder the same
common enemy? That button they so proudly wear is their countersign of
recognition and wherever they meet a warm clasp of the hand is the comrade’s
greeting. Next Monday this will be put to the test when the soldiers candidates
are to be voted for in nearly every constituency in Ontario. Let politics stand
aside for the time being and give your old comrades the benefit of your vote
and influence. Here in Hamilton there are two soldier candidates for the
legislature, which is unfortunate for both of them, for a divided vote always
helps the opposition. The soldier cannot vote for both of them, but he can make
choice and help the soldier candidate who has the best prospects for election.
Captain Fitzgerald and Lieutenant Landers both heard the bugle call, and they
promptly answered “Here!” They left home and family and did their bit, and now
that the war is over, they have answered the roll call of their friends and
next Monday they are in the hands of their comrades. Which shall it be, Sam
Landers or Comrade Fitzgerald? It is a mighty ticklish question to decide, but
if they divide the soldier vote and the vote of all the dear mothers and wives
and sisters of the soldier boys, is there not a danger of the man who stayed at
home enjoying the emoluments of office while they were in the trenches, being
elected?
The writer does not know Comrade
Fitzgerald, but has known Sam Landers for the past twenty years, and remembers Sam’s
soapbox oratory in the interests of labor. We have always found him true to
principle. When he came to Hamilton, he had a cash capital of thirty-two cents,
which a kind-hearted boarding house lady refused to take after she had filled
his empty stomach with a hot dinner. There was not a lazy bone in Sam’s body,
for he started into work that afternoon on a city stone pile, finding nothing
better to tackle. Later he got a job in the W. E. Sanford clothing factory, and
held it for seventeen years, when he became a representative of labor in the
garment workers’ union. But what is the use of going over over the history? Sam
has made good in everything he has been called to. The best thing he ever did
was to marry a native girl of Hamilton, and she has been a tower of strength to
Sam. Now he is a candidate for office, and hunt as they may his opponents
cannot find anything real mean to say about him, although some of them are
trying hard to knock him. The soldier boys and a majority of the labor union
men, and every woman in the east end will vote for Sam Landers next Monday, and
mark their ballots with four No's ’n the referendum question.
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