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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 15. 



When they found they could not get any beer 

 the whole lot of them swarmed over on to our 

 premises and into our lumber-yard ; got hold 

 of one of our trucks used to move lumber on, 

 and piled on to it right at the top of a steep 

 down grade ; and without looking for a brake, 

 or providing themselves with any thing to 

 stop the car, in their drunken frolic the car- 

 load of human beings went down the incline. 

 It struck a sort of barricade fastened to the 

 ends of the rails at the bottom of the incline, 

 and then the car with its load of human freight 

 careened over and went down into a deep cut 

 where our east and west railway passes under 

 the north and south road. One of their num- 

 ber was so badly injured he had to be carried 

 up to the restaurant where they had been try- 

 ing to get in, and I have been told he will 

 probably die. 



Now, even this did not sober them. An- 

 other gang got hold of another car and started 

 to repeat the same reckless and dangerous 

 performance. One of our men, however, 

 appeared about this time and ordered them off 

 the premises. They turned upon him and 

 refused to move. After he had provided him- 

 self with a revolver, however, he managed to 

 get them to let the cars alone. 



Now, then, friends, what sort of civilization 

 have we when a lot of drunken rowdies like 

 these deliberately go on another man's prem- 

 ises, appropriate his tools and machinery, and 

 refuse to leave when ordered to do so ? Why, 

 it is just the sort of work you may expect and 

 always should expect when you get up an 

 excursion to go off to a pleasure-resort on 

 God's holy day. 



I have many times spoken of Silver Lake, 

 Summit Co., Ohio, where our good friend 

 Lodge has entertained people summer after 

 summer for the last eighteen years ; and in all 

 that time no visitor has ever been permitted 

 to go on the grounds on Sunday. In fact, 

 friend Lodge was offered $1000 by a single 

 railroad company if he would open his grounds 

 on Sunday for just one summer. By keeping 

 out the Sunday traffic he finds it an easy mat- 

 ter to keep out all traffic in intoxicating drinks. 

 A pleasure-ground near by is a temperance 

 place, usually, during week days ; but on 

 Sundays the class of people who always choose 

 Sunday for such an outing will bring in 

 liquors in spite of any thing that can be done. 

 And why shouldn't they? The man who has 

 no respect for the Sabbath can hardly be ex- 

 pected to bother himself with any conscien- 

 tious scruples in the matter of temperance. 



There is no help, no hope, no prospect of 

 any thing better unless we turn to the teaching 

 of our text. We must be God's people, and 

 he must be our God. When our fathers land- 

 ed in America they kept the Sabbath sacred 

 and holy, and at times, too, when there was 

 need of working every day in the week if there 

 ever was such a time. Not only is land in 

 some places becoming waste because of Sab- 

 b ith-breaking and intemperance, but factories 

 are standing idle while the people are out on 

 a strike. The Lord, and he only, can build 

 these ruined places, and restore activity where 

 every thing is desolate. I believe the leading 



papers of our cities are in favor of law and 

 order, and they have given us some excellent 

 exhortations along that line. They counsel 

 Sabbath closing of saloons and at midnight ; 

 and, by the way, if I am correct, the first start 

 in the city of Cleveland toward trampling 

 down law was when saloon- keepers with their 

 whisky-league lawyers proceeded to break our 

 temperance laws as fast as they could be 

 enacted. The police, too, seemed to get an 

 idea — at least some of them did — that their 

 business was to screen the saloon-keepers 

 rather than to punish them ; and numerous 

 cases were reported where policemen would 

 say to a saloon-keeper, " Why, here ! there is 

 an ordinance to the effect that you are to close 

 up at midnight. What are you doing wide 

 open ? " 



Then the saloon keeper would say he had 

 not heard of it ; and then both the saloon- 

 keeper and the policeman would laugh, think- 

 ing it was a good joke on the temperance 

 people. This thing was allowed to pass ; and 

 a month or two later, when it came to forbid- 

 ding the strikers and their sympathizers from 

 molesting the officers of the street cars and 

 their passengers, the great city was astonished 

 because there did not seem to be any method 

 of enforcing law or of preserving order. If 

 the bombs 1 have mentioned had resulted in 

 destroying human life, I do not know but the 

 police would have found themselves equally 

 helpless. 



It is not the large cities alone that are 

 guilty. In fact, many of the country papers 

 seem to be even worse than the city papers. 

 A few weeks ago I visited a relative in an ad- 

 joining city. We were talking about temper- 

 ance work in this town, and he was congratu- 

 lating us on having a temperance county 

 paper. The speaker and his pastor had been 

 trying to enforce law against the saloon-keep- 

 ers, and had succeeded to some extent. He 

 made a remark something like this: "Mr. 

 Root, you have no idea how much harder it is 

 to secure arrest and conviction while the 

 papers in the town are in league with the 

 saloon." He then reached out his hand and 

 took up the latest copy of one of the principal 

 papers of the town. Said he, " Listen while I 

 give you a sample of the helps (?) we get, in 

 the way of an editorial." Then he read from 

 the paper as follows, as nearly as I can re- 

 member : 



"The Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock 

 years ago. They have recently landed in the 

 town of Fostoria with both feet. You may 

 have heard of it." Now, the above is brief, 

 and it is simply a hint ; yet the more you look 

 it over the more you will feel sure that it 

 emanated from the evil one himself. A cru- 

 sade had been going on for law and order. 

 A little encouragement from the town paper 

 would have helped the thing in the way of 

 creating public influence. Perhaps few people 

 know how the town paper can shape public 

 opinion, even by way of suggestion. First 

 the editor makes a brief slur on the Puritans, 

 who laid the foundation of our great republic. 

 In the same breath he suggests it was a long 

 while ago. These Puritans had peculiar old- 



