Secret Records Of The Anti Saloon League Exposed PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... The Birth of the Anti-Saloon League THE year 1893 marked an epoch in the history of the temperance reform in the United States. For a century and a half before that time the liquor traffic had been growing by leaps and bounds. For almost one hundred years temperance societies and organizations by the score had spent themselves in a long series of unsuccessful efforts to stem the tide of intemperance. Hundreds of consecrated men and women, devoted to the temperance cause, had given their lives as living sacrifices upon the altar of the temperance reform, seemingly without adequate results. The annual tribute paid by the American people to the Moloch of rum had grown to the vast sum of almost $1,500,000,000. The hands of the officers of the law in the cities and towns of the nation were tied, all too often, by the cords of graft woven in the saloon. State legislatures were submissive to the supreme authority of this monster liquor machine, with its undisputed ability to make or to unmake politicians. And the federal government itself, hushed by the cold bribe of a one hundred and eighty million dollar annual federal tax, had grown deaf and dumb on all questions affecting this institution, which, by a presumed divine right, held the throne in the world of finance and trade. On the other hand, in spite of the church's magnificent record of temperance sentiment building, apathy and indifference seemed to hold the balance of power among the Christian hosts. There were temperance organizations, some of which, to all appearances, possessed a hatred of other similar organizations stronger by far than their hatred of the saloon. There were even church adherents whose denominationally prejudiced eyes looked upon the followers of other creeds as the...