ic and
strychnine, and typhoid and tuberculosis germs lying around for our
children to be destroyed by. Treat John Barleycorn the same way. Stop
him. Don't let him lie around, licensed and legal, to pounce upon our
youth. Not of alcoholics nor for alcoholics do I write, but for our
youths, for those who possess no more than the adventure-stings and the
genial predispositions, the social man-impulses, which are twisted all
awry by our barbarian civilisation which feeds them poison on all the
corners. It is the healthy, normal boys, now born or being born, for
whom I write.
It was for this reason, more than any other, and more ardently than any
other, that I rode down into the Valley of the Moon, all a-jingle, and
voted for equal suffrage. I voted that women might vote, because I knew
that they, the wives and mothers of the race, would vote John Barleycorn
out of existence and back into the historical limbo of our vanished
customs of savagery. If I thus seem to cry out as one hurt, please
remember that I have been sorely bruised and that I do dislike the
thought that any son or daughter of mine or yours should be similarly
bruised.
The women are the true conservators of the race. The men are the
wastrels, the adventure-lovers and gamblers, and in the end it is by
their women that they are saved. About man's first experiment in
chemistry was the making of alcohol, and down all the generations to this
day man has continued to manufacture and drink it. And there has never
been a day when the women have not resented man's use of alcohol, though
they have never had the power to give weight to their resentment. The
moment women get the vote in any community, the first thing they proceed
to do is to close the saloons. In a thousand generations to come men of
themselves will not close the saloons. As well expect the morphine
victims to legislate the sale of morphine out of existence.
The women know. They have paid an incalculable price of sweat and tears
for man's use of alcohol. Ever jealous for the race, they will legislate
for the babes of boys yet to be born; and for the babes of girls, too,
for they must be the mothers, wives, and sisters of these boys.
And it will be easy. The only ones that will be hurt will be the topers
and seasoned drinkers of a single generation. I am one of these, and I
make solemn assurance, based upon long traffic with John Barleycorn, that
it won't hurt me very much to stop
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