"It pays!!!" : This is the national apology for legalizing great sins / by Frank T. Bayley.

  • Bayley, Frank T.
Date:
[between 1800 and 1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: "It pays!!!" : This is the national apology for legalizing great sins / by Frank T. Bayley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hearing that nothing saved the state from its control but the indignant fury of a great popular uprising. Said a member of that legislature during the discus¬ sion of the lottery bill, “ It is a necessary evil, and why should not the state derive some benefit from the traffic? With this amount of money placed at our disposal, we could relieve all destitution, pay a large amount of our annual expenses for running the gov¬ ernment, and derive financial profit from the evil which we are powerless to prevent.” The vision of a possible “ profit ” has wondrous power to make men bend before wickedness and vice, under the easy plea that “ it is a necessary evil.” I had a friend who was prominent in temperance work throughout his state. I once learned to my amaze¬ ment that he had rented a property of his to be used as a saloon in the town where we both lived. Calling upon him to express my surprise and grief, I heard from his lips this humiliating confession: “Yes, I knowingly rented the place to be used as a saloon. But I knew that the saloon would find some place, and I thought I might as well have the money as any¬ body.” Let these contemptible words stand in con¬ trast with the message of Geo. Dix to an agent who had charge of a piece of his property in Chicago, and who wrote to ask if he should rent it for saloon pur¬ poses. “ Yo,” replied the general, “let it rot first! ’ INTOXICATING DRINK THE CHIEF DEVIL. But there is no demon of them all more fit to come from hell, or surer to drag his victims into the pit with himself, than the demon of strong drink. I shall attempt no description beyond the suggestiveness of the picture of Galara. Drunkenness is surely an