1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



27 



until he gets on the stand suddenly becomes 

 stupid and dumb. He does not know any 

 thing, and does not remember any thing. The 

 officers of the law, in some strange and inex- 

 plicable way, declare the evidence is not suffi- 

 cient, or that there was a flaw in the law or 

 town ordinance. If it is before a jury, the 

 jurjmen, who are bright and clear, honest and 

 straight, in handling every crime except the 

 illegal sales of liquors, suddenly become half- 

 hearted or out of sympathy with the temper- 

 ance folks and temperance works. Now, may 

 God forbid that this should be the case in your 

 town, my good friend. I know we have men 

 who stand up unswervingly for the enforce- 

 ment of temperance laws. We have them at 

 our Anti saloon League meetings ; but a great 

 part of them are ministers of the gospel — men 

 who have not any property to be destroyed ; 

 but these faithful servants of a righteous God 

 have several times lost their lives because they 

 waged an uncompromising war against this 

 evil. At the Stillmau Hotel, where we stop- 

 ped, we were offered a reduction providing 

 two of us would occupy the same room. My 

 room-mate was from Vermont. Before we re- 

 tired I found that his dwelling, barns, and 

 stables had all been burned because he pushed 

 ahead in prosecuting the saloon-keepers. His 

 friends told him his property would be de- 

 stroyed, but he said it would have to go — that 

 is, if the conditions under which he kept it 

 were that he should stop meddling with the 

 whisky-dealers. A good many persons had 

 suffered in a like manner ; but, may God be 

 praised, within the last few months, in a good 

 many towns in Ohio at least, it is getting to 

 be the /as/iion to fine and imprison saloon- 

 keepers who violate law. 



The response to Dr. Banks' address of wel- 

 come was made by Rev. E. S. Chapman, of 

 the Northern California Anti saloon League, 

 Oakland, Cal. When Dr. Banks spoke it 

 seemed to me as if there could not be another 

 address equal to it during the whole session ; 

 but Dr. Chapman was not a whit behind ; and 

 I had another of my " happy surprises " when 

 Rev. W. F. Crafts, Ph. D., gave us his ad- 

 dress entitled, " The Saloon in the New Cen- 

 tury." No wonder we had a startling array 

 of talent, energy, and enthusiasm for right- 

 eousness, for we had about the best men that 

 could be picked from each S^ate of the Union. 

 The social interchange of thought during re- 

 cess, at mealtime, at the tables of the Stillman 

 House, and other places, was a very valuable 

 and important feature of the whole gathering. 

 If any one of you, dear friends, have 1 >st 

 heart and courage in this terrible combat, let 

 me advise you to attend the meetings of the 

 Anti-saloon League. Almost every town now, 

 little and big, is having a law-and-order-en- 

 forcement branch of the League. In this way 

 a single person is not called upon to stand be- 

 fore the enemy alone as a target for their spite. 

 It is an organization of good citizens who are 

 in favor of law enforcement. Let me give 

 you a few illustrations of what is being done. 

 Of course, we have to depend a good deal 

 upon detectives ; but the brewers too get hold 

 of the detectives. In one little town in Ohio 



a Cleveland detective was employed to get 

 evidence. He got it very easily. One of the 

 saloon-keepers found out what was in the 

 wind, approached the detective, and offered 

 to pay him more money than the Anti-saloon 

 League could pay. But our League was too 

 sharp for even this game. They shadowed 

 the detective with a good man, and arrested 

 him in the act of receiving $250. He was to 

 receive this money for being off where he 

 could not be found when he was wanted as a 

 witness. That detective is now in the Ohio 

 Penitentiary, where he can be found every 

 time he is wanted, until he pays the penalty 

 of his crime. I did not learn what they are 

 doing with the saloon-keeper. 



Here is another point : In many of the little 

 towns the brewers own the saloon, and they 

 protect the saloon-keeper as a matter of course. 

 But in one place we worried them so badly 

 that they told the saloon-keepers of that town 

 to pack up their furniture and liquors, and 

 ship them back to the Cleveland house. Said 

 house declared they could not stand the 

 " racket." They said they would have to find 

 another town, where the people were not so 

 strongly in favor of temperance, or wait till 

 the thing had blown over a little and the tem- 

 perance craze had quieted down. 



Now, then, ye people of this land of liberty, 

 as we are wont to call it, what shall the future 

 be? Is the rum power to run thirigs accord- 

 ing to its ideas of law and order, or is it to be 

 iu the hands of the good people — those who 

 love righteousness and hate iniquity ? 



A WHEEUtlDE THROUGH SOUTH DAKOTA. 



After the bee-keepers' convention at Omaha 

 had adjourned I made a trip to South Dakota 

 to look after half a square mile of land located 

 within about a mile of the town of Mitchell, 

 Davidson Co. Besides looking after the land 

 I wanted to look after a very good friend of 

 mine, Mr. C. M. Peck, in the employ of the 

 American Sunday-school Union. Friend Peck 

 has been for a good many years locating Sun- 

 day-schools, and exhorting and reviving 

 schools already started through that portion 

 of the State. Let me go back a little. 



Three or four years ago Bro. Peck had a 

 project for holding meetings in a tent as an 

 auxilliary to his Sunday-school work through- 

 out that locality. He thought that, after he 

 had the tent, he could raise, by way of collec- 

 tions and subscriptions, sufficient to pay for 

 it. But somebody would have to advance the 

 purchase money. Now, do not think I wish 

 to boast when I tell jou it was my privilege 

 to furnish the funds. From time to time I 

 had heard good reports of the tent work, and 

 these reports have been accompanied by re- 

 mittances so that the money I advanced had 

 been all paid back some little time before my 



