1909 



GLEANINGS IN bEE CULTURE. 



213 



Our Homes 



By a. L Root 



As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. — Josh. 24:15. 

 Woe un'o him that civeth his neighbor drink; that puttest thy 

 bottle to him, and makest him drunken also. — Had. 2: 15. 



Dear friends of Gleanings and friends of tem- 

 perance, I am praying that the great Father will 

 send his Holy Spirit along with this Home paper 

 in such a way that it shall do a great work; and 

 this great work rests on the shoulders of you who 

 have been reading my Home talks as much as or 

 more than my own. This talk is mainly to the 

 editors of the periodicals that go into the homes 

 of our land daily, weekly, and monthly; and I 

 am depending on you to get it before them, ei- 

 ther by a personal call or by cutting it out and 

 mailing it to them, if the same editor or pub- 

 lisher should have his attention called to it more 

 than once, all the better. Now may God speed 

 you in your part of the crusade to redeem the 

 press of our land from the thralldom of the rum 

 traffic. The following kind letter will open up 

 the matter: 



Drar Brclher Root: — 1 am a bee-keeper in a small way; and in 

 the twelve or tifteen years that I have been a regular reader of 

 Gleanings I have received much benefit therefrom, and in no 

 department have I received more than from Our Homes, edited by 

 yourself. May God bless you, and give you wisdom to fight the 

 evils you have attacked all along the line. 



In the March 1st issue I 6nd a letter written to you by Frank 

 L. Piatt in which he states that " the brewers and whisky retail- 

 ers have cut the Toledo Blade (weekly) off their list because the 

 said paper does not accept brewery or whisky advertising." Now, 

 I should be much pleased if Mr. Piatt's assertion were literally 

 true; but I know he is mistaken or misinformed. My wife has 

 taken the Blade a number of years, and it (with two or three oth- 

 ers out of the dozen or so we take, including one daily) still ca- 

 ters to the brewery and whisky trade. 



I send you a copy of the weekly Blade, dated March 4, in 

 which you will find no less than tour advertisements in the line 

 referred to. As to the political part of the paper, I will make no 

 statement, as the paper will show for itself. I am truly glad to 

 know that Editor Piatt is " trying to play the square game," and 

 would to God there many more such editors. 



Greenville. 111., .March 9. J. T. Buchanan. 



With the above letter came a copy of the Blade, 

 and, sure enough, there are /our whisky adver- 

 tisements. I give below an extract from one of 

 the four as a sample: 



TAELVE-BOTTLE CASE FINEST WHISKY FOR ONLY 

 $5.00— EXPRESS PREPAID. 

 Send lis $5.00 and we will send you a case of extra special dis- 

 tillation whisky in 12 large full 16-onnce bottles, all charges pre- 

 paid to your nearest express station without marks to betray the 

 contents. 



By the way, does not the closing sentence of 

 the above furnish a sufficient reason why any re- 

 spectable home paper should reject such an ad- 

 vertisement? " Without marks to betray," sure 

 enough! To betray what? The hellishness of 

 their business. I confess I am surprised to find 

 such things in the Blade. It has for years had the 

 reputation of being not only "keen and sharp," 

 but of "hewing to the line," not only regardless 

 of party, but for righteousness and truth. I don't 

 like to take back what I said about the "Lord 

 being praised." Can't the management of the 

 Blade help us out? Are not such advertisements 

 " putting the bottle to our neighbor's lips "? Is 

 it too much to exppct that the Blade may turn 

 over a new leaf, and stand out, like Joshua, and 

 say, "As for me and my house," etc.? How 

 many besides myself will undertake to write 

 to the Blade in rega'd to the matter? Clip 



this whole aiticle from your journal and mail it 

 to them, telling them respectfully your views 

 about whisky advertisements. It doesn't take 

 many such letters to bring about an innjestigation 

 (if nothing more), as I know full well. 



I s'.opped a Cleveland daily a while ago, and 

 told our newsdealer I wanted a daily that would 

 not advertise Duffy's malt whisky. About the 

 third issue, there it was, right before my face and 

 eyes again. If the Duffy people with their big 

 pictures of aged people, whom they claim lived 

 so long because of the daily drinking of Duffy 

 whisky are not putting the bottle to their neigh- 

 bor's lips then I don't know who are. 



A few weeks ago the National Superintendent 

 of the Anti-saloon League came down here to 

 Southern Florida and made an address at St. Pe- 

 tersburg. He told us how Lincoln protested 

 when he gave his consent to the tax on liquor. 

 Said he, "Gentlemen, this thing you propose 

 may prove a worse curse to our nation than the 

 war that is now upon us;" but the financiers of 

 the nation urged, and he finally consented, with 

 the understanding it was only as a temporary ex- 

 pedient at that terrible crisis, and had the faiiest 

 assurance that it should be stopped promptly 

 when the war was over. When the war was over, 

 Lincoln had died by the hand of an assassin, and 

 the whisky men and brewers were getting so rich 

 it was put off and put off, until this present time. 

 Are there not good men and women enough liv- 

 ing now to demand that the sacred promise given 

 our beloved president be, even at this late day, re- 

 membered and religiously kept? 



Mr. Baker, during his talk, asked if any one 

 could tell exactly who started the present tremen- 

 dous wave of reform. Then he told us of the 

 temperance literature and text-books the W. C. 

 T. U. women put into our schools years ago. 

 Said he, "The seed sown by these godly women 

 has just now commenced to bear fruit by giving 

 our nation a new generation of men and women 

 who learned the truth in childhood from their 

 schoolbooks. " I wanted to add, "In spite of 

 what we read about Duffy's malt whisky in the 

 daily papers." He closed his address by saying 

 that, right in that audience, sat a man who years 

 ago had faith in Howard H. Russell and the An- 

 ti-saloon League. He then asked the man to 

 stand up so the great audience could take a look 

 at him. When I came to that very pretty little 

 Florida city that night I felt like a stranger in a 

 strange land; but before the audience had all left 

 the church I felt almost as I do at the close of a 

 bee-keepers' convention. 



Florida has 46 counties, and 37 of them are all 

 dry. There are saloons in only 15 towns and 

 cities in the whole State. A map of the wet and 

 dry portions can be had of the Florida Anti-sa- 

 loon League. Jacksonville, Fla. , since the map 

 was made, and one town at least (Carrabelle), 

 have gone dry. As a recent summing-up of 

 what has been done in Ohio and Indiana, I give 

 below a letter from Ernest and a portion of one 

 from Wayne B. Wheeler. 



Dear Father: — I inclose you the annual report from Wheeler. 

 I think you will be glad to read it through on account of the fact 

 that you are one of the officers of the State League, and, further, 

 for the good news which it contains. This report, as you will 

 remember, was written in January. The legislature has all but 

 adjourned, and, as you will see, Wheeler's predictions that out 

 county-option law would not be repealed have been made good. 



