While the temperance cause has been going up in character, the drink has been going down in quality.  The old time distiller used to select his site along some crystal stream, that had its fountain-head in the mountains and ran over beds of limestone.  With sound grain and pure water, he made several hundred barrels of whiskey a year, and after five to ten years of ripening, it was sent out with the makers’ brand upon it.  Now the North American of Philadelphia, one of our leading dailies says, rectifiers (and I would prefix one letter and make it w-r-e-c-k-t-i-f-i-e-r-s) take one barrel from the distillery and by a pernicious, poisonous process, make one hundred barrels from one barrel.

It is true the sting of the adder and the bite of the serpent were in the old-time whiskey, but it was as pure as it could be made.  Doctor Wiley, Ex-Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says:  “Eighty-five per cent. of all the whiskey sold in the saloons, hotels and club-rooms is not whiskey at all but a cheap base imitation.”  In the different concoctions made are found aconite, acquiamonia, angelica root, arsenic, alum, benzine, belladonna, beet-root juice, bitter almond, coculus-indicus, sulphuric acid, prussic acid, wood alcohol, boot soles and tobacco stems.  No wonder we have more murders in this republic than in any civilized land beneath the sky in proportion to population.

Along with this adulteration of the drink has gone the degeneracy of the saloon and the seller.  The day was when officers in churches could sell liquor and retain their membership.  Today the saloonkeeper is barred from the protestant churches, barred from Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Woodmen, Maccabees and nearly every other fraternal organization of the world.

The saloon itself has become such a vicious resort, that when the police look for a murderer they go to the saloon.  When any vile character is sought for, the saloon is searched.  When anarchists meet to plan for a Hay-market murder in Chicago, they meet in the saloon.  When an assassin plans to shoot down our President at an exposition, he goes from the saloon.  When a fire breaks out in Chicago or Boston the first order is, close the saloons.  Don’t close any other business house, but close the saloon.  If a mob threatens Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or Atlanta, close the saloons.  If an earthquake strikes San Francisco, close the saloons.  In our large cities gambling rooms are attached to the saloons with wine rooms above for women, and while our boys are being ruined downstairs, girls are destroyed upstairs.

There are many thousands of women in painted shame, who would now be safe inside life’s Eden of purity but for the saloon.  The South Side Club of Chicago said in 1914:  “The back rooms of four hundred and forty-five saloons on only three streets of this city contribute to the delinquency of fourteen thousand girls every twenty-four hours.”  Is it any wonder the saloons hide behind green blinds or stained glass windows?