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The Commoner"
VOL. 17, NO. 3
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The Challenge of Prohibition to
College Students
' By WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
"Young men and women, forgot yourselvea
and attach yourselves to a great cause among
the greatest causes of this generation is the
crUBado against ,the saloon, against alcohol the
greatest enemy man has today."
The address by Hon. Wpi. J. Bryan was the
opening address of the convention on the after
noon of Thursday the 28th. The great audience
which packed the auditorium to tho limit ac
cepted for themselves and for the college stu
dents of America tho challenge of tho present
national prohibition movement which Mr. Bryan
brought in his stirring address. Intercollegiate
Statesman.
The college man exerts far more than an aver
ago influence upon tho thought of the country.
If you doubt it examine a list of the college
graduates and compare the percentage of prom
inent men among them 'with the percentage of
those who do not avail themselves of the op
portunities offered by our colleges and univer
sities. Any gathering of college men and wo
mqn is, therefore, worth attending if one has a
message to deliver.
MEANING OF THIS CONVENTION
But this convention is made up of a select
group of college students men and women who
by r dedicating themselVes to tho work which
your association has in hand has given proof
of their freedom from an evil influence which
can destroy the mind as well as the body. The
delegates in attendance here are bound together
by a strong and growing interest in an "issue
that is soon to be tho dominant political issue
In 'the nation tho prohibition issue.
I esteem it a privilege, therefore, to appear
before you, to encourage you and to co-operate
wih you in your work.
It would bo difficult to overestimate the infiu-
"-ence which you delegates will be ablo to exert,
first through the colleges from which you come,
and then in that largo sphere in which each of
you will bo a center of activity.
TWO PHASES OP LIQUOR QUESTION
There are two phases of the liquor question.
One deals with the habits of the individual and
the other with legislation. I shall ask your at
tention to both phases, and we shall take up the
most fundamental first, namely, the question of
total abstinence.
I am more and more grateful as tho years go
by that I had impressed upon me in my youth
a belief in total abstinence and in the signing
of the pledge. I began signing when I was so
young I can not remember my first pledge, and
I have been signing ever since, and while I live
I shall stand ready to sign with any one, at any
time, and anywhere, a promise never to use in
toxicating liquor as a beverage. If-any of you
doubt the value of a pledge, let me give you a
part of the history of one pledge only little more
than two years old.
RESULT OF A PLEDGE
When I went home to vote at the election of
1914 I found that a neighbor had been drinking
to excess. J asked him to sign the pledge with
me and he consented to do so. I prepared the
pledge in duplicate and we signed it together.
It read:
"We, the undersigned, promise, God help us,
never to use intoxicating liquor as a beverage."
I gave one copy to his wife and took the other
with me back to Washington. As I approached
Chicago I met a man who came out from Mich
igan with an invitation from tho high school
boys to address them at a meeting to be held
near the end of the month at Ann. Arbor. When
I read the invitation I found that it began, 'We,
the undersigned. The fact that the fitst three
words of the invitation were Identical with tho
words used in the beginning of tho pledge which
I had in my pocket reminded me of the pledge,
s, and I asked. him whether there was any objec
tion to my asking, the boys ito sign -the pledge
c with me. .Heapproved. of the plan-and I pre
sented tho pledge at the 'meeting. When a
largo number of the boys indicated a willing
ness to sign it we circulated slips of paper con
taining the pledge and the boys took the slips
homo and obtained signatures. In a few weeks
I received a book, one of the moBt precious ones
in my library. It contains the names, ages "and
addresses of 8,200 high school boys in Michigan
who signed the pledge with me. . I learned soon
afterward that these boys helped to make sev
eral , counties dry, arid last month they helped
to make Michigan dry.
MULTIPLIED 14,000 TIMES
Thus within three months'.. time that pledge
had been multiplied 8,200 times. In the March
following the pledge was presented at a great
meeting in Philadelphia where 6,000 signed.
Within six months the pledge had been multi
plied more than 14,000 times. Soon after, this
Philadelphia meeting a lawyer of that city called
to explain how in carrying out the pledge . he
found that his first convert was his own son, a
student in the University of Pennsylvania.
CASE AGAINST ALCOHOL
The case against alcohol is conclusive. "The
experience of the human race is all on one side.
From the time when Daniel demanded a test,
and when, the test being made, he established
the superiority of water over wine, the evidence
has been accumulating. You can take a hun
dred young men of equal promise in any country
in the world, divide them into two. groups and
let fifty use alcohol and fifty abstain, and the
fifty who do not use alcohol will take the prizes
in the colleges and on the athletic field.
The government does not allow young men at
Annapolis and at West Point to use alcohol
while students there. Why? Because the gov
ernment is interested in raising these young
men to the maximum of efficiency, and alcohol
Impairs efficiency. How can any parent be less
interested in a son than the government is in
its wards?
THE ECONOMIC WRONG
If alcohol injures the individual who uses it;
if it reduces his capacity as a producer, and in
addition menaces his morals, how carihwiy com
munity afford to permit the establishment of a
saloon, that can not exiBt except as it lowers the
physical, intellectual and moral standards of the
community? We do not license men to spread
disease among hogs. Why license them to
spread disease among human beings? Why not
raise man up to the hog level, and show as much
interest in his welfare as we do in the health of
our swine? Why license a saloon to make men
drunk and then fine men for getting drunk?
And why, when a saloon has made a man drunk,
do we shut the victim up in the calaboose and
leave the saloonkeeper free to intoxicate some
one else? Why not compel the saloon to keep
its drunkards in a cage behind a' plate glass win
dow until they sober up, so that the public can
examine their handiwork and judge by the fin
ished product the work that the saloon does?
Why do we not compel the saloon to take care
of the paupers, the criminals and the insane that
graduate from it, as we compel stamp mills to
take care of their tailings after they have ex
tracted precious metal from the. ore-bearing
rock?
THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
But tho saloon is not only an economic wrong
It is a moral responsibility. Who is willing to
become a partner with the liquor dealer, and
share with him moral responsibility for the
harm that he does? The saloon needs three
things besides customers: First, capital to run
tho business; second, the liquor to sell, and
third, the votes that permit the saloon to exist.
And the -votes are just as necessary as the cap
ital or the liquor. The man who furnishes the
capital receives a dividend or Interest on liis
investment. The-man -who. furnishes the liquor
receives a profit on his product. Wha't does
the voter receive? He is a silent partner in4he
business. He draws no dividend, he receives n6
profits; ho simply has the disgrace of heinin
to create a business with which he is ashaS
to have his name connected. a
In addition to the knowledge that we imvn
gained from science arid from experience in III
own country, we have the evidence furnished hv
the countries now at war. They have found
that alcohol impairs their power to carry on
war. Patriotism, that sentiment intangible in
visible, but eternal, which has led countless mil"
lions to offer themselves upon their country's al"
tar, is no match for the appetite for alcohol"
Allegiance to Bacchus and Barleycorn has been
found superior to loyalty to King, Kaiser or
Czar. The nations have been compelled to turn
aside from war to fight a foe at home scarcely
less deadly than the foe they meet upon the bat
tlefield. Why not profit by their experience?
THE COMING ISSUE
In a country like ours every issue becomes a
party issue when It is ready for political action,
because the value of the support of a party or
ganization is everywhere recognized. A very
considerable nuniber of voters follow the party
and support the platform. It is impossible,
therefore, to keep the prohibition question out
of politics when it really becomes an issue, and
it has now become an issue. The question is not
whether prohibition will .enter politics. It is al
ready in politics. The only question remaining
is, which side will the parties take? Jl'here is
only' one side to a moral issue, and that is the
moral side. No party can afford to champion
the immoral side of any moral question.
Let me, therefore, adyis you, young men, to
take up the work in your respective parties. If
you are democrats make it your business to use
your influence within your party to put your
party on the prohibition side in county, in state
and in nation. If you are republicans, work in
the republican party along the same line. I
need not advise those who belong to the pro
hibition party, "because with them prohibition is
the central and controlling plank.
You will find that the politicians will dodge
while dodging is good, but the same instinct of
self-preservation that makes them dodge when
they think dodging advantageous will make them
take the prohibition side when the opponents of
the saloon becomes as much in earnest as the
representatives -of the liquor traffic have always
been.
From time to time crises arise in the political
Wgrld, and these are the times when young men
have an opportunity to come to the front. Old
men are more apt to be timid than young men,
and successful politicians are more apt to be
timid than young men who are without en
tangling alliances.
. For this reason every crisis brings into the
arena of politics a new group of young and
courageous men who are willing to risk their
future on the righteousness of their cause. The
prohibition question has already brought many
new men into the arena of politics, and it will
bring more.
Christ gave the world a great truth when He
saidi "He that saveth his life shall lose it, and
he that loseth his life, for my sake, shall find
it." This is an epitome of history. Those who
think only of themselves lead little lives but
those who stand ready to give themselves for
causes greater than themselves find a larger Hie
than the life that theywould have surrenders.
Wendell Phillips presented the same thought in
a little different language when he said: How
prudently most men sink into nameless graves,
while now and then a few forget themselves ro-
to immortality."
Young men and women, forget yourselves,
and attach yourselves to 'a great cause. Among
the great causes of this generation the greatest
.is the crusade against the saloon against al
cohol, the greatest enemy that mankind has to
day. The objection is made to the plan of l)ermIt:
ting the people to vote on the question o
whether a nation shall enter war is that a
swoop suddenly down upon nations and a""
matters that loom so Xar- ahead that uenDenu
action thereon can be taken. The Inct "
there has not been a war in centuries y
this is true, ot course, does not enter into i
..discussion. Facts that- interfere with j b
. consideration do -not - .enter . into discussion
.where jingoes tako.p&rt.
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