Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1915 — DR. BANKS MADE ELOQUENT APPEAL [ARTICLE]

DR. BANKS MADE ELOQUENT APPEAL

Temperance Lecturer Was Optimistic and Expects to See the Day When U. S. is “Dry.” Dr. Louis Albert Banks is an optimist. He looks forward with confidence to the time when the United States will be relieved entirely from the saloon business and from the accompanying national evils. , He smiles when he makes the forecast.

In a lecture in the Presbyterian church Tuesday night he started out jy informing his hearers and the church was well filled that he did not ome with an old fashioned temperance lecture and would tell no old stories. He proceeded to handle his subject iv a manner to please his audience anJ to make them think with him that the doom of the liquor traffic is caaled. He said that it was not man., years, back when not a single county or state in the union dared to tin; of getting rid of the saloon evil. Now, however, the challenge of the saloons sweeps the nation and in congress recently on the Hobson resolution the cause of prohibition had an actual majority. Formerly for ‘many years cases in the national capital served liquors and members of congress became drunken right in the capital building but the barrooms had been cleaned out. Reinforcements were coming from sources that seemed a few years ago to be unflinchingly on the side of the saloon. Great corporations now prohibited their employes from entering saloons and the speaker maintained that one of the causes was the employers’ liability laws which had made the action necessary. Sixteen states have already adopted statewide prohibition and a dozen more-are expected to do so within the next year. The congressmen who voted against the Hobson resolution to submit national prohibition for ratification will have to answer to their constituents for their negative votes. There were thirteen congessmen in Indiana who voted against the great effort to make the nation “dry.” Mr. Banks said that some of these would run up against the loss of many votes and that there would be some political funerals throughout the land. At a recent meeting of 500 businessmen to consider means for national safety a resolution was adopted and unanimously supported for national prohibition. There were no preachers in the council but all were hard-headed, money-seeking businessmen who realized that the saloon and the liquor traffic—constituted the greatest national menace and that efficiency could not be maintained when liquor distorted the minds of men. Directors of railroads, of great factories, of mines, of commercial industries, of every avenue of business were more and more coming to the point where they refused to employ men who drank or who visited tlie sa loons. No big business meeting is held that the saloon and its bad influences are not discussed and eyen the saloonkeepers will not employ a bartender who drinks. The breweries at their conventions spend most of the time talking temperance, not for it but to discover some means to head it off. The nations at war had promulgated orders closing the saloons and prohibiting the sales of liquor. Men can not fight, an not shoot and can not be efficient in the prosecution of a war if liquor is used. In Russia where the Czar by ucase had banished the traffic of liquor it has been demonstrated that the increased production on the farms, where-liquor was so much a menace, would make up for the loss of the half billion dollars derived from licenses to the traffic. Dr. Banks told of conditions that existed in Boise, Idaho, when as a young man he preached in that city and saloons were every other door. Now the state has gone dry. He declared the liquor saloon the greatest waster of human worth and efficiency and prophesied that at the next congress there will be a good working majority for prohibition. Four things are necessary to promote the cause, namely, big, intelligent men to talk for temperance, the employment of stenographers to get out the daily messages to the people, plenty of money for postage and plenty of literature. A collection was taken and pledge cards passed asking for monthly subscriptions for the next five years.