is wretched track
inspector? A man who, to my own knowledge, trembled before temptation;
who, on the testimony of the foreman at the shops, was, and always had
been, a sober man up to the time when we as a municipality voted to
replace the system of no license with the saloon, for the sake of what
we thought was a necessary revenue. This man had no great temptation
to drink while the saloon was out of the way. Its very absence was his
salvation. But its public open return confronted his appetite once
more, and he yielded and fell. Who says he was to blame? Who are the
real criminals in the case? We ourselves, citizens; we who, for the
greed of gain, for the saving of that which has destroyed more souls in
hell than any other one thing, made possible the causes, which led to
the grief and trouble of this hour. Would we not shrink in terror from
the thought of lying in wait to kill a man? Would we not repel with
holy horror the idea of murdering and maiming seventy-five people? We
would say 'Impossible!' Yet, when I am ushered at last into the
majestic presence of Almighty God, I feel convinced I shall see in His
righteous countenance the sentence of our condemnation just as
certainly as if we had gone out in a body and by wicked craft had torn
out the supporting timbers of that bridge just before the train
thundered upon it. For did we not sanction by law a business which we
know tempts men to break all the laws; which fills our jails and
poorhouses, our reformatories and asylums; which breaks women's hearts
and beggars blessed homes and sends innocent children to tread the
paths of shame and vagrancy; which brings pallor into the face of the
wife and tosses with the devil's own glee a thousand victims into
perdition with every revolution of this great planet!

"Men of Barton, say what we will, we are the authors of this dreadful
disaster. If we sorrow as a community, we sorrow in reality for our
own selfish act. And oh, the selfishness of it! That clamouring greed
for money! That burning thirst for more, and more, and more, at the
expense of every godlike quality, at the ruin of all that our mothers
once prayed might belong to us as men and women! What is it, ye
merchants, ye business men, here to-night, that ye struggle most over?
The one great aim of your lives is to buy for as little as possible and
sell for as much as possible. What care have ye for the poor who work
at worse than starvation wages,