Of the various outside activities of our United members, none is more deserving of sincere commendation and respect than the campaign for temperance and reform now being conducted by Mr. Andrew Francis Lockhart of Milbank, S.D. His little professional magazine, Chain Lightning, last April succeeded in ridding the city of Milbank of its licenced saloons, and in securing the conviction of illicit retailers and resort proprietors. Not even a dastardly and cowardly physical assault from behind his back, committed in the office of The Milbank News by a disreputable fellow whom Mr. Lockhart had exposed, has deterred our fearless amateur associate Irons his noble and necessary work. Since most United members have probably seen Chain Lightning, it appears rather extraordinary that the amateur papers have made so little endeavour to assist in combating the menace of strong drink and kindred evils; wherefore the writer feels constrained to urge some concerted action by our publishers in supporting Mr. Lock-hart’s campaign for decency, and in attacking any remaining phases of the liquor problem which Chain Lightning has not yet struck.

Chief among these hitherto neglected phases is one for which the professional press is largely to blame, and which, therefore, the amateur press can oppose with a particularly poetic justice; the advertising of beer and whiskey, and especially that disgustingly insidious type of advertising which deliberately seeks to create a false moral sentiment in favour of drink, at the same time placing the prohibitionists in the light of tyrannical meddlers.

A notorious beer-brewing corporation of St. Louis, sustained by an enormous capital which extends high into the millions, and therefore capable of buying the servile sentiment of the prostituted press, has during the past few months been issuing a series of infamous advertisements which constitute an insult to the greatest men this nation ever produced, and which for its pernicious tendencies should have been suppressed at its very inception. The general plan of this contemptible series is to present a brief biography of some eminent American statesman such as Washington, Jefferson, Carroll, or Morris, who lived before science had demonstrated the overwhelmingly deleterious properties of alcoholic beverages, and therefore before the moral necessity of total abstinence was emphasised. After justly lauding the virtues of each statesman, the scheming biographer mentions the fact, of course inevitable on account of the early period, that the subject of the essay was a moderate drinker of liquor, and, now departing utterly from reasonable probability, asserts that “if the great man were living today, he would be opposed to prohibition, which limits the rights of the individual” (etc., etc., ad nauseam). What comment is necessary upon such a flagrant abuse of the liberty of the press? This series, entitled “Framers of the Constitution”, is published in practically every current American daily, reaching and tainting the primitive mind of the labourer, and perverting the impressionable intellect of the child. It is poison of the vilest kind, distributed for hire by supposedly respectable newspapers, including those of the very highest class, such as the Providence Daily Journal and Evening Bulletin. The intelligent reader can discern with ease the despicable hypocrisy and falsity of these miserable advertisements. He realises keenly the fact that our serious, virtuous forefathers would have been not only participators, but active leaders in the temperance movement, had it existed in their time. As to the “personal liberty”, “rights of man”, and other popular phrases similarly misused, there are few indeed who can fail to perceive that the “liberty” and “right” of a man voluntarily to transform himself to a beast, and in the end to degrade himself and his descendants permanently in the scale of evolution, is equivalent to his “liberty” and “right” to rob and murder at will. If the law may justly suppress theft and homicide, it may certainly with equal justice suppress the manufacture, sale, and consumption of that liquid evil which incites most of the world’s theft and homicide. As to “moderate drinking”, we might on similar ethics condone “moderate larceny” or “moderate manslaughter”. Human nature admits of no exact middle course in drinking. He who usually drinks “a little”, will always on occasion drink “a little too much”, wherefore the only sane course is absolutely total abstinence. The practical difficulty in enforcing Prohibition is admittedly great, but no man of virtue can do otherwise than work toward the final downfall of Runs. To distinguish between beer and ardent spirits is to quibble. The poison is different only in degree, and the use of one inevitably encourages the use of the other.

But though these facts are perfectly evident to the enlightened reader, they are but vaguely comprehended by the masses, who therefore fall an easy prey to the alluring advertisements of the brewer and distiller. Such evil propaganda deserves no place in modern civilisation, though it perhaps reveals to the prohibitionist the essential unnaturalness of the craving for drink, and the increasing power of reform; the advertisements are obviously designed both to arouse the liquorish desires of the public, and to nullify the good effect of prohibition work.

As Mr. Lockhart has regretfully asserted in a letter to the writer, a moral or legal appeal to the wealthy brewing class would be fruitless. Dulled in the first place to ethical impressions, their tainted money protects them from the law. The professional press, therefore, is the vulnerable spot, and the logical point for our attacks. No method should be spared to decrease the circulation and popularity of every journal, high or low in its cultural appeal, which sells itself and its pages to the daemon Runs. Remonstrant letters to some of the less offensive of these papers might serve well as a beginning, whilst every amateur publisher should be willing to give space to the intelligent denunciation of the liquor interests. Extra copies of these amateur journals, judiciously distributed to professional editors who tolerate advertisements of whiskey and beer, might do more good than the majority now believe.

Print and publicity, declares Mr. Lockhart, are the only effective weapons against corruption, wherefore the members of the United may find in temperance work a splendid opportunity to demonstrate their energy and ability.