. The burdens of the
fray, both of toil and of expense, are always upon a relatively small
number of men. In a State rocked and racked by a war upon the saloon, it
was recently shown, for example, that but five per cent. of the members
of the Puritan denominations contributed to the war-chest. And yet the
Anti-Saloon League of that State was so sure of support from below that
it presumed to stand as the spokesman of the whole Christian community,
and even ventured to launch excommunications upon contumacious
Christians, both lay and clerical, who objected to its methods.
Moreover, the great majority of the persons included in the contributing
five per cent. gave no more than a few cents a year. The whole support
of the League devolved upon a dozen men, all of them rich and all of
them Puritans of purest ray serene. These men supported a costly
organization for their private entertainment and stimulation. It was
their means of recreation, their sporting club. They were willing to
spend a lot of money to procure good sport for themselves--_i.e._, to
procure the best crusading talent available--and they were so successful
in that endeavour that they enchanted the populace too, and so shook the
State.

Naturally enough, this organization of Puritanism upon a business and
sporting basis has had a tendency to attract and create a type of
"expert" crusader whose determination to give his employers a good show
is uncontaminated by any consideration for the public welfare. The
result has been a steady increase of scandals, a constant collapse of
moral organizations, a frequent unveiling of whited sepulchres. Various
observers have sought to direct the public attention to this significant
corruption of the new Puritanism. The New York _Sun_, for example, in
the course of a protest against the appointment of a vice commission for
New York, has denounced the paid agents of private reform organizations
as "notoriously corrupt, undependable and dishonest," and the Rev. Dr.
W. S. Rainsford, supporting the charge, has borne testimony out of his
own wide experience to their lawlessness, their absurd pretensions to
special knowledge, their habit of manufacturing evidence, and their
devious methods of shutting off criticism. But so far, at all events,
no organized war upon them has been undertaken, and they seem to
flourish more luxuriantly year after year. The individual whose common
rights are invaded by such persons has little chance o