ld seem incredible were it not too sadly familiar. The saloon keeper
got his share of what was left, and rewarded his customer by posing as
the "friend of the poor man" whenever his business was under scrutiny; I
have yet in my office the record of a single week during the hottest of
the fight between Roosevelt and the saloons, as showing of what kind
that friendship is. It embraces the destruction of eight homes by the
demon of drunkenness; the suicide of four wives, the murder of two
others by drunken husbands, the killing of a policeman in the street,
and the torture of an aged woman by her rascal son, who "used to be a
good boy till he took to liquor, when he became a perfect devil." In
that role he finally beat her to death for giving shelter to some
evicted fellow-tenants who else would have had to sleep in the street.
Nice friendly turn, wasn't it?

And yet there was something to be said for the saloon keeper. He gave
the man the refuge from his tenement which he needed. I say needed,
purposely. There has been a good deal of talk in our day about the
saloon as a social necessity. About all there is to that is that the
saloon is there, and the necessity too. Man is a social animal, whether
he lives in a tenement or in a palace. But the palace has resources; the
tenement has not. It is a good place to get away from at all times. The
saloon is cheery and bright, and never far away. The man craving human
companionship finds it there. He finds, too, in the saloon keeper one
who understands his wants much better than the reformer who talks civil
service in the meetings. "Civil service" to him and his kind means yet a
contrivance for keeping them out of a job. The saloon keeper knows the
boss, if he is not himself the boss or his lieutenant, and can steer him
to the man who will spend all day at the City Hall, if need be, to get a
job for a friend, and all night pulling wires to keep him in it, if
trouble is brewing. Mr. Beecher used to say, when pleading for bright
hymn tunes, that he didn't want the devil to have the monopoly of all
the good music in the world. The saloon has had the monopoly up to date
of all the cheer in the tenements. If its owner has made it pan out to
his own advantage and the boss's, we at least have no just cause of
complaint. We let him have the field all to himself.

It is good to know that the day is coming when he will have a rival.
Model saloons may never be more than a dream in New York,