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Show LIQUOR LEGISLATION AND THE CLERGY ; By Rev. J. Schwartz, of Temple-Beth-El, Nor folk, Va. SINCE the inception of my career as a clergyman cler-gyman I have often found myself in fundamental fun-damental discord with most American and i British clergymen of my own and other denominations denomi-nations in matters regarding the use and abuse of alcoholic beverages and the legal regulation of their manufacture and sale. My dissent was mostly a tacit one or else limited in utterance to private conversation. I never felt any particular par-ticular desire to vent my views m public and as a matter of fact did not even take the trouble to formulate them definitely before the forum of my consciousness until quite recently, when the patently harmful after-effects of the present prohibition-wave compelled me and no doubt a good many others of the cloth likewise to do a lot of hard thinking and to circumscribe more clearly my objection to the usual stand taken by the average American or British clergyman concerning con-cerning the problems to which alcoholism gives rise. Having pondered the matter for the better bet-ter part of three years, I shall now state publicly pub-licly my conclusions as briefly as may be. Let me first call the reader's attention to a ' fact which the self-sufficient provincialism of English-speaking nations is all too -prone to overlook: the attitude of their clergyman toward the drink-problem is absolutely unique and without with-out a counterpart anywhere within civilization, save perhaps in Norway and Sweden. -The main thesis back of hJ attitude has perhaps never been formulated. In plain language, it may be .summed up in this wise: ', The devil, as supposedly represented by the saloon, is engaged in competitive strife over the soul of man with the Deity as represented by the Church; in a fair contest, with no legislative interference on behalf of either side, the cause of the Church will presumably lose; therefore the secular arm must be invoked, incessantly, obtrusively, ob-trusively, at all times and at all odds, to lend its strength to the Church and to incline" the balance bal-ance of the contest in favor of its cause. This -thesis, with its humiliating confession (by unavoidable inference) of the impotence of spiritual weapons and its somewhat blasphemous blasphem-ous "premise that Divinity cannot shape its ends without recourse to the police power of the State, is absolutely foreign to the clerical concepts, con-cepts, Catholic, Protestant or Jewish, of conti nental Europe. All clergymen of all nations consider It their bounden duty, and very properly prop-erly so, to exhort and inveigh against the abuse of alcohol. A great many European clergymen, alarmed by the spread of national drinking habits, are actively engaged in propoganda to have them ostracized by public opinion, as conducive con-ducive to the abuse of alcohol. But no Continental Conti-nental group of clergymen of any numerical strength worth the mentioning Is striving at present or has ever striven to put the Church into the invidious, illogical and undignified position of most-favored competitor of the saloon. Catholic Catho-lic priests and Protestant pastors, Jewish rabbis and Greek popes are all agreed that their concern con-cern in the matter of alcoholic dangers and abuses lies with the drunkard, or else with the drinker, but in no case with the drinking establishment estab-lishment conducted on orderly lines, or the manufacturer man-ufacturer supplying, it with distilled or fermented liquors. Their moral suasion, assisted by the organized effort of zealous parishoners, very often suffices to keep the liquor consumption of whole communities at a negligible minimum. In case of failure, however, it never enters their mind to turn part of the community, with the help of the secular arm, into a propoganda society of secret vice or lend to alcohol the sinister prestige of a forbidden friut. Not only do the vast majority of the European elergy refuse their sanction to attempts at oppressive excise legislation, legis-lation, but they lend additional respectability to well-conducted inns in all parts of Europe by occasional patronage. If you have traveled in Europe- you cannot but know this. If you haven't, hav-en't, any traveler of your acquaintance will tell you, that the Austrian Pfarrer, the German Herr Pastor, the French cure, the Italian abbate thinks nothing of taking his modest evening potation, po-tation, his half-pint of wine or schoppen of been, In the back-parlor of his favorite inn, and that public opinion everywhere acquisces in the arrangement. Anywhere ' between Lisbon and Moscow a clergyman refusing on conscientious conscien-tious grounds to enter a decent Inn would be considered an eccentric. And the mention of this notorious and indisputable fact leads us right to the core of what is commonly called the American saloon problem. It is asserted by shallow reaaoners, that the American saloon, as contrasted with the European Euro-pean inn, owes its bad reputation to the lack of social club features. It lacks seating accommodations, accom-modations, or, It It has any, very few patrons (Continued on Pago 12.) H CERTAIN LEGISLATION AND THE CLERGY. H 'Continued from Pago 7.) H care to sit down in a place notoriously designed H for" the rapid guzzling of drinks in a standing H posture right next to the bar. The very obvious H truth, however, is, that men do not care to sit H down in a place factiously and uncharitably de- H cried as wicked by a considerable section of H their fellow-citizens. They gulp down their H drinks and get out as quickly as may be, so as H to minimize the chance they run of being seen by H the holier-than-thou element of the town a fact H which queerly illustrates how a social taboo H upon the saloon will instantly turn its potential H dangers into real ones. That the American su- loon was first stigmatized, by silly malice and then, as a consequence of its stigma, became a mere 1 dram-shop, is a fact susceptible of proof. There H are considerable city quarters in Milwaukee, New H York, St. Louis, and other large towns where practically the entire, population has lifted the B ban of social disrepute from the saloon. As an H immediate consequence, it acquired all the fea- B tures of an open club, closed only against drunk- H ards and disorderly persons. a club where well- H behaved citizens, not infrequently in company B with their wives and grown-up children, after the work and worry of the day discuss the newspaper newspa-per or indulge in neighborly gossip over a glass of beer. To sum up: the American saloon is first made disreputable by an unfair and dishonest misrepresentation mis-representation of its potentialities and then put under oppressive regulations on account of its disrepute. The first step in the national conspiracy against the saloon is to make its patrons feel that they would rather abuse it hurriedly and without being seen than use it in an orderly fashion, in the sight and with the foreknowledge of all, and to develop de-velop its social possibilities. This first step evolves in many cases a really vicious type of saloon. The next step is to make the vicious saloon a favored competitor In the struggle for survival by the monstrous iniquity in-iquity of high-license. If every saloon has io furnish for the treasury three or four dollars every day in the year, before being allowed to take down its shutters in the morning, it is manifest that the trysting place of rapid-transit guzzlers and "human tanks' will in the end put out of business the Liederkranz parlor where people drink a little between songs and the Citizens' Citi-zens' Bowling Club, where staid business-men refresh themselves after their game of nine-pins. It is likewise manifest to everyone save idiots or devotees of sanctimoniously vengeful politics, that under the frightfully extortionate levy of four dollars a day the seller of poor beer, other things being equal, will ultimately triumph over the seller of good beer and the vender of fusel-oils fusel-oils over the vender of real whisky. Again, it is manifest that the state, in collecting this enormous enor-mous toll, is practically putting itself into the position, not only of partner in, but of instigator and abbettor of every wickedness or dishonesty to which the individual saloon-keeper may have to resort in order to maintain himself against these fearful odds. If the Liederkranz or the Sick Benefit society moves out of the saloonkeeper's saloon-keeper's back parlor and the painted harpies of the street move in, what shall we think of a rich and powerful state not ashamed to bring about in many cases such a change for the worse by its inexorable levy of blood-money? And what shall we think, I ask of a well-meaning well-meaning but purblind clergy which exerts its power and prestige in favor of such glaring iniquities? in-iquities? After high-license, there is still one last step left In the downward course oi folly: prohibition. prohibi-tion. Under prohibition the open extortion of the State gives way to the "secret extortion of the local police. The authorities having decreed away the front-bar, are at the same time decreeing decree-ing a well-nigh universal appetite into the dark retreat of the "speak-easy" for its satisfaction. And since very few men will stay for any length of time in compromising localities, the quickest and most deadly of all intoxicants outcrowds all others. Hush-money paid to the police is taken out of the quality of the spirits consumed. Espial, delation, and all the devils of defamatory gossip are rampant. All the lawless elements in town are morally supported in their stand against society so-ciety by the one form of lawbreaking that is endemic and clearly countenanced by bribe-tak- ing officials. Respectable liquor-dealers withdraw with-draw in fear of legal consequences and leave the field to desperate characters. The patrolman learns to despise his grafting captain; the captain knows things about the district-attorney; the bully of a sporting-house keeper with a strong political backing "keeps tab" on the "blind tigers" for future reference in case of a collision with the police; the whisky supply houses, mindful of the outlawed status of their patrons send liquid death on thirty days credit; and the social good standing of almost eveiy i one in town Including possibly some thirsty 1 souls among the zealots for somebody else's en- I forced abstinence is merely provisory, pending lr some compromising disclosures. If there are , i . any clergymen in the United States so fatuous i as to bring about such a state of affairs, think- I ing thereby to further the ends of Salvation, I I herewith beg to go publicly on record as not h being one of their number. The International. : |