* * Miss Booth represents only one section of opinion,
but the work of the Salvation Army in the slums of American cities entitles her to a hearing. This is what she says :- " It is unthinkable that the country will ever return to the deadly saloon system and a resumption of liquor vending. Surely it will be conceded that the Salvation Army knows something about the evils of strong drink. From the day my father founded the organization in England to combat the degradation and vice that are inevitable consequences of liquor drinking the Salvation Army has held rigidly to its purpose, and feels that it had a great deal to do with the enactment of Prohibition in America. . . . Why try to tell the Salvation Army that the park benches are crowded with drunken men as they were before Prohibition when we used to gather them in on Thanksgiving Day, for example, and fight to salvage them ? They are gone. The benches still remain, but the occupants are not drunk any more ; they are climbing upward to better things while the public rushes by all un- heeding. Why try to tell us that working men spend their wages before their families can get the money for food, and that men beat their wives and children as in the old days ? It simply is not the case." TANTUM.
Previous page
