There is a fish in the sea known as the “Devil Fish.”  It lies on its back with open mouth and covers itself with sea moss.  Over its open mouth is a bait.  When an unsuspecting fish nibbles at the bait, with a quick snap it is caught and devoured.  Do you see any analogy between this fish and a certain business that hides itself behind painted windows or green blinds and hangs out a bait of “free lunch” or “Turtle Soup”?  A fish that sets a trap for its kind is called a “Devil Fish;” a business that does the like is recognized as a legitimate trade and permitted for the sake of revenue.

Every other recognized business has improved in quality with the years.  The saloon has grown worse and worse, until it is bad and only bad; bad in the beginning, bad in the middle, bad in the end, bad inside, outside, upside, downside.  It is so bad, the liquor dealers are the only business men who are ashamed to put on exhibition their finished products.  In great expositions other trades present finished wares.  They do not display the tools used in making what they present for exhibition but the finished goods.  Not so with the liquor dealers; they put on exhibition the tools with which they work, but not a single specimen of the finished product of their trade do they present for inspection.

“That’s a fine fit of clothes you have, sir.”  “Yes,” says the tailor, “I put up that job; glad you like my work.”

“That’s a fine building across the way.”  “Yes,” says the architect, “that’s my job and I am quite proud of it.”

“That’s a handsome bonnet you wear, madam.”  “Yes,” says the milliner, “that’s my creation of style and I am rather proud of my work.”

Yonder is a man intoxicated.  He staggers and falls; his head strikes the curb-stone; the blood besmears his face; the police lift him up and start with him to the station house.  Did you hear a saloon keeper say:  “That’s my creation; I put up that job and I’m proud of my work.”

Some one said recently in defense of the business:  “The saloon keeper deserves more consideration.”  This writer should know that consideration has been the source of its undoing.  Lord Chesterfield considered it and said:  “Drink sellers are artists in human slaughter.”  Senator Morrill, of Maine, considered and pronounced it “the gigantic crime of all crimes.”  Senator Long, of Massachusetts considered it and called it “the dynamite of modern civilization.”  Henry W. Grady, our brilliant southerner, considered it and said:  “It is the destroyer of men, the terror of women and the shadow on the face of childhood.  It has dug more graves and sent more souls to judgment than all the pestilences since Egypt’s plague, or all the wars since Joshua stood before the walls of Jericho.”  The New York Tribune considered it and said:  “It’s the clog upon the wheels of American progress.”  The Bible considered it and compares its influence to the bite of serpents, the sting of adders, the poison of asps, and heaps the woes of God’s will upon it.