74 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



suffering which I so often see would be abolished, if 

 we could get rid of the distilled beverages at once. 

 There would be little danger of shipping enough pure 

 wine or pure beer to make any farm laborer spend the 

 whole of his week's wages and be unfit for work for a 

 third of the next week. I said to my foreman, who 

 had had experience with a number of week-end drunk- 

 ards, " When next you are hiring a hand, make par- 

 ticular inquiry if he uses distilled spirits in any form 

 or manner, and if he does, do not hire him to work on 

 my place." The railroads are now enforcing a rule 

 which forbids them to employ or keep in their employ 

 any man who frequents a saloon or uses intoxicating 

 beverages. The farm is as much in danger as the rail- 

 way train. It would have an excellent influence upon 

 agriculture in general if farmers would band together 

 and refuse to employ any laborer who is even partially 

 a drunkard. When those who drink intoxicating 

 liquors find that there are no avenues of employment 

 left open to them, there will be established an argument 

 for sobriety which is powerful and efficient. 



I was greatly surprised, as well as delighted, a year 

 ago when the State of West Virginia, composed as it 

 is largely of a foreign population engaged in mining, 

 voted by a large majority for state-wide prohibition. 

 When I inquired of a citizen in regard to the matter, 

 saying I thought that the miners to a man would vote 

 against this amendment, he replied, " The miners al- 

 most to a man voted in favor of it." And when I said, 

 " Do they not use beer and wine ? " " Yes," he said, 

 " they do, and if these were the only things on sale in 

 the State they probably would have voted the other 

 way, but the miners themselves realized that the great- 

 est danger which threatened them was the use of dis- 



