with its poisonous breath every soul that enters it, which ruins young
manhood, which kills more citizens in times of peace than the most
bloody war ever slew in times of revolution; an institution that has not
one good thing to commend it; an institution that is established for the
open and declared purpose of getting money from the people by the sale
of stuff that creates criminals; an institution that robs the honest
workingman of his savings, and looks with indifference on the tears of
the wife, the sobs of the mother; an institution that never gives one
cent of its enormous wealth to build churches, colleges, or homes for
the needy; an institution that has the brand of the murderer, the
harlot, the gambler burned into it with a brand of the Devil's own
forging in the furnace of his hottest hell--this institution so rules
and governs this town of Milton to-day that honest citizens tremble
before it, business men dare not oppose it for fear of losing money,
church-members fawn before it in order to gain place in politics, and
ministers of the gospel confront its hideous influence and say nothing!
It is high time we faced this monster of iniquity and drove it out of
the stronghold it has occupied so long.

"I wish you could have gone with me this past week and witnessed some of
the sights I have seen. No! I retract that statement. I would not wish
that any father or mother had had the heartache that I have felt as I
contemplated the ruins of young lives crumbling into the decay of
premature debility, mocking the manhood that God gave them, in the
intoxicating curse of debauchery. What have I seen? Oh ye fathers! O ye
mothers! Do you know what is going on in this place of sixty saloons
licensed by your own act and made legal by your own will? You, madam,
and you, sir, who have covenanted together in the fellowship and
discipleship of the purest institution of God on earth, who have sat
here in front of this pulpit and partaken of the emblems which remind