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45. Tax Revenues Keep Saloons in Business, Says Sunday.
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Closing Distilleries Results Little Change in Grain Price.

     In the course of his Sunday afternoon sermon in the tabernacle, Billy Sunday rapped the sophistry of saloon men and distillers. He said their prediction that there be a surplus of grain if the distilleries were closed is at odds with the facts, and the farmers are not suffering from a reduction in the price of grain on account of a surplus. The only reason the saloons have been in existence so long, he said, is that the government gets a big revenue from them but the loss caused by liquor traffic costs the government many times the revenue it receives.

     I am the sworn, eternal, uncompromising, irrevocable enemy of the liquor traffic. I ask no quarter and I give none. I have drawn the sword in defense of God, home, wife, children and native land, and I will never sheathe it until the undertaker pumps me full of embalming fluid, and if my wife is alive, I think I shall call her to my bedside and say: “Nell, when, I am dead, send for the butcher and skin me, and have my hide tanned and made into drum heads, and hire men to go up and down the land and beat the drums and say, ‘My husband, “Bill” Sunday still lives and gives the whiskey gang a run for its money.’”

     There isn’t a man in American they hate worse than me, or lie about and vilify and slander and do everything under heaven, my friends, that indecency can do. The people that they can’t browbeat, they will hire in every way they can. They set aside a hundred and fifty thousand dollars just to spend fighting me all up and down the land, and I have put my fist under their noses for twenty years, and I expect to keep on doing it as long as I breathe.

     And after all is said that can be said on the open licensed saloon, it has a degrading influence upon business, education, morals and decency, for the saloon hasn’t a decent leg to stand on to bind it to a decent man or woman on the face of this earth. It hasn’t one argument that can be advanced in its favor—not one!

     The time has long since long gone by when there is any room or grounds for arguing the ill-effect upon business and commerce and politics and morals, for that is admitted by all. There is just one prime reason why the saloon hasn’t been knocked into hell long ago, and whisky is all right in its place, but that place is in hell just as quick as you can get it there.

Taxes Are Needed.

     I am doing all in my power to put it back to the place from which it wriggled its infamous carcass, and fastened itself around patient people. The one argument in favor of the saloon is that the taxes from the saloon are needed.

     You show me communities where they have none, where the taxation, my friends, is higher than in communities where they have. Everybody with a scintilla of decency and brains knows that it is the saloon that raises the rate of taxation in the country all over.

     Seventy-five per cent of our idiots came from intemperate parents, and there are more insane people in the United States, made insane by drink, than there are students in the universities and colleges. One out of every three hundred and eighty-three in Pennsylvania in 1911 were either in the insane asylum or the home for feeble-minded, and New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Illinois are the worst whisky-dominated, whisky-damned and whisky-controlled states in the Union; and there is no state in the Union where the liquor interests are more strongly allied and entrenched than they are in the state of New York.

     In Kansas (and they haven’t had saloons for nearly forty years) there were eighty-one counties out of a hundred and five, that did not have an insane man or woman in the county, and there are fifty-four counties that did not have a feeble-minded boy or girl in the county. I have these figures from Governor Capper, who sent them to me. Eighty per cent of our paupers are whiskey-made paupers. In Kansas there is one pauper for every three thousand of the population and there are thirty-two counties in Kansas that have abandoned their poor farms, and they are no inmates.

     There are only eight hundred and ninety-eight in the entire state that are supported by the people in the state. Eighty-two per cent of the crimes committed are by men while under the influence of drink. Ninety per cent of our adult criminals are drinking men.

Good Record In Kansas.

     In Kansas there are sixty-five counties out of a hundred and five counties that did not have a prisoner in the county jail in 1915, and one out of ninety-five in Pennsylvania in 1911, was in prison, some time during the year. There are some counties in Kansas where they haven’t called a grand jury to try a criminal case in ten years and there are ninety-six counties in the state without an inebriate in the counties, and she has two hundred and forty million dollars on deposit in her banks, and during the financial panic, when old New York was on the financial rocks, old backwoods, prohibition Kansas sent fifty-five million dollars down there to keep them out of the poor house.

     Kansas sends more boys and girls to school, proportionate to the population, than any other state in the union, and less than 2 per cent of the population cannot read or write. There are forty counties in the state that didn’t send a prisoner to the penitentiary last year. Logan county jail, for two years, has been empty of prisoners and last year they used it for a corn crib. And there is an automobile for every fourth family in the entire state.

     The prisoners’ rate in Kansas is one per one thousand of the population, and 37 per cent of the prisoners in the penitentiary do not belong in the state of Kansas. They came from other states and committed their crimes and were incarcerated. They were not born in Kansas, and they are not Kansas boys.

     North Dakota is a prohibition state. She came into the union sober, and out of a population of five hundred thousand, she has only one hundred and seventy-five men in her penitentiary.

     Montana, with three hundred and seventy-five thousand population, has over nine hundred men in her penitentiary, whisky-soaked Montana, although they just voted it dry out there, to take effect in 1918.

     In Massachusetts for ten years the yearly average number of criminals was 32,699, and 95 per cent, or 31,978 of them committed the crime while under the influence of liquor.

     The Chicago Tribune kept track of the number of murder committed in saloons in this country in ten years and there were 534,034.

     This is not a religious question I am putting up to you, this is not a political question. It is a question of decency and a question of sobriety—that’s what it is.

The Dry South.

     You go down south. Who put the saloons out of business in the south? The democrats, because the democratic party is in the majority in the south and mot of the anti-saloon men down south are democrats. Most of the anti-saloon men in the north are republicans, because the republican party occupies the same position in the north that the democratic party does in the south. Not all the anti-saloon men in the south are democrats and not all the anti-saloon men in the north are republicans. But I want to say that the democrats have got the republicans skinned to a frazzle on the temperance problem.

     Archbishop Ireland said, “I find crime, and I ask what did it? They tell me. “The saloon.’”

     He said, “I find people living in poverty. ‘The saloon.’ I find families broken up. ‘The saloon.’ I go to the jail and I say, ‘What made you a prisoner?’ ‘The saloon.’ I ask the fellow at the scaffold, with a rope around his neck, ‘What made you a murderer?’ ‘The saloon.’”

     He said, “If God would place in my hand a wand with which to dispel the evil of intemperance, I would direct it at the door of every brewery and saloon until the accursed traffic was driven from my fair and beautiful land.”

     Oh, the saloon is the sum of vileness. It is worse than war, pestilence, worse than famine. And it is the parent of crime, it is the mother of sin, it is the appalling source of misery, squalor, want and pauperism. It is the source of three-fourths of all the taxation necessary to prosecute the criminal and then take care of him after you land him behind prison bars.

     I think to license such an incarnate fiend of hell is the lowest, dirtiest, lowdown thing that American people can stoop to do.

     Anti-saloon! Oh, why not anti-grocery store? Why not anti-bank? Why not anti-dry goods store? Why not anti-furniture? Why not anti-bakery? Why not anti-meat shop? Why not anti-coal? Why not anti-iron? Why not anti-steel mill?

     Why single out this one trade? Why single out this one commodity? Why single out this one institution? Why name that as a reason for assembling this vast audience of men and women here?

     Anti-saloon! Who is against it? The church, and if the church ever turns and favors the saloon, by the eternal God I will be against the church. Yes, and I am against any preacher, priest, or creature that will stand up and favor that dirty business. I will put my fist under his nose. I’d like to see how any man can stand for that dirty business and keep his manhood five minutes. I don’t care who he is or where he comes from or whether he buttons his color in front or behind.

People vs. Saloons.

     Now, who is against it? The church is against it. The school is against it. The home is against it. The scientific world is against it. The military world is against it. The laboring world, although the saloon is trying its level best to control every federation of labor in every state in the union. That is their stand last stand and they are trying their best to get the number of men from the breweries and distilleries and their sympathizers and thousands of others so they can vote to control the American Federation of Labor in every state they can and that is their game now. That is what they are up against. That’s the latest thing in the whisky business.

     There are the whisky soaks in the church that are in favor it, but they are not all—don’t forget that. That’s a bum steer, trying to put that over on you.

     Every world-wide interest on earth is against it, except the underworld, except the immoral world, except the world of crime. They cry, “Away with the saloon! Away with these licensed distributing centers of squalor and want and crime and misery and murder and pauperism and all that damns and curses this old world.”

     What is this traffic in rum? “Distilled damnation,” said Robert Hall, and he told the truth. “An artist in human slaughter,” said Lord Chesterfield, and he told the truth.

     “Prisoners General driving men to hell,” said John Wesley, and he told the truth.

     “More destructive than war, pestilence and famine,” said Gladstone, and he told the truth.

     “A cancer in human society, eating out our vitals and threatening the destruction of the nation,” said Abraham Lincoln, and he told the truth.

     [“]The most ruinous and degrading of all human pursuits,” said Wm. McKinley, and he told the truth.

     “The most criminal and artistic method of assassination ever invented by the bravadoes of any age or nation,” said John Ruskin, and he told the truth about it.

     “A business that tends to lawlessness on the part of those who conduct it, and to criminate on the part of those who patronize it,” said Theodore Roosevelt, and he told the truth.

     “That damned stuff called alcohol,” said Bob Ingersoll, and Bob told the truth at that time, thank God.

     The late Lord Chief Justice Algerstone, of England, said: “After 40 years at the bar and 10 years as a judge, I have no hesitancy in declaring that 90 per cent of all the crimes committed are caused by drink.”

     Who Pays?

     Who foots the bills? Oh, the landlord that loses the rent and the baker and the butcher and grocer and coal merchant and dry goods merchants. The charity people who pity the poor children of the drunkards, and they go down in their pockets to keep them from starving. The taxpayers, who are taxed to support penitentiaries and insane asylums and other institutions that the damnable rotten business keeps chuck full of the human derelicts that it curses and that it blights.

     Who makes the money? Oh, the brewers and the distillers, and the saloon keepers, the privileged few, to whom we give the right to fill our land, sir, with poverty and wretchedness and debt, authorized by the sovereign people.

     Oh! somebody says, “A man will get drunk anyway.” Not by my vote, he won’t get a drink.

     “He will murder his child. Not with my consent he won’t murder his child, nor his wife—no sir!

     For every $800 spent in the producing of useful and necessary commodities, the working man receives $149.80 in wages. For every $800 spent in the production of liquor, sir, the working man receives a maximum sum of $9.85.

     Oh, I tell you, the saloon comes as near being a rat hole into which the working man can dump his wages in as anything on the face of the earth. To know what the devil will do, find out what the saloon is doing and the man who voted for the saloon votes for the devil to come dragging his boy, a shrinking devil, to hell. The man who doesn’t believe in a hell, has never seen a drunkard’s home, and the devil and the saloon keepers are always found pulling on the same rope and digging away at our institutions, to overthrow them.

     Last year the farm products in this country were worth, according to the agriculture department, $13,449,000,000, and the brewers and distillers use fourteen one hundredths of 1 per cent of it in making the stuff that produced and caused three-fourths of all the crime, the misery and squalor—that’s what they did.

     A few years ago when we talked about dragging the saloon out of the country, the brewers put up the howl that they used so much of the grain of this country, that if we did there would be a financial panic, for there would be no demand for the farmers’ products and they’d have to sht up and go out of business. Now, the come out in their advertisements in the newspapers and say that 92 per cent of beer is water.

Saloon Sophistry.

     Now, you big fool, what do you want to pay 5 cents for a glass of water for? And they say that 4 per cent of it is alcohol and the rest is nourishment, so-called. They also say now that in the manufacture of beer, they extract from the grain, that part of it which the animals do not like and then when they sell it back to the farmer, that part of it they did not like in the raw state, has been eliminated and it is more nutritious to the animal. So they make it into beer and let us drink what the animals won’t eat. Take that!

     They are the limit. Now, wait a minute and I will help you. Last year the corn crop in this country was valued at $2,296,000,000 and the brewers used less than 2 per cent of it. I will say they used 2 per cent. I will be generous with the dirty bunch. 2 per cent would be $45,929,000—all right.

     And they howled and said, as I told you: “If you vote the saloons out of business, you’ll have to close up the breweries and distilleries, there won’t be any demand for the farmer’s products and you’ll see the biggest financial panic you ever heard of.”

     And they are the biggest pack of liars this side of hell, and they know it!

     If you shut up every brewery and every distillery and saloon in America, it wouldn’t affect the price of corn 2 cents a bushel. Furthermore, the children of the drunkards, that haven’t had a square meal for a year, they’d eat up that extra amount in flapjacks and corn-pones in forty-eight hours.

     Last year the entire income from the United States government, every state and every county and city in license, my friends, and revenue was $338,000,000. I will be generous. I will say three hundred and fifty millions, and that will be enough to pay Uncle Sam’s revenue officers, so he won’t have to pay them to collect the money. I will pay them and I will lay the cash down.

     All right. $350,000,000. You say: “Gentlemen, that’s a lot of money.”

Revenue and Expense.

     Last year the working men in this country spent $2,290,500,000 for drink. Last year it cost $1,200,000,000 to cover our judicial expenses, pay our lawyers, police etc., and then put the criminals behind the prison bars. In other words the whisky business cost the taxpayers last year, in cold money—I am not talking about any reduced efficiency or moral proposition or crime—it cost us $3,490,500,000. Subtract from that the income of three hundred and fifty millions and I have $3,140,500,000 in favor of knocking the saloon into hell and keeping on a monetary basis while I am putting it there.

     You hold a dollar in front of some fellows’ eyes and he is blind to everything that is decent in the neighborhood. Any man that will weigh in the scales human misery, squalor, want, degradation, drunkenness, crime, murder, outrage, pandering, tremens, and all that that dirty business causes, insanity, feeble-mindedness in the scales by the side of a few dirty, rotten, whisky, beer-soaked dollars, which are a revenue and a license from that business, he is so low down I wouldn’t spit on him, and he’d need an airship to get into hell.

     If I’d take the money that the whisky business cost us last year and coin it into twenty dollar gold pieces and pile them one on top of another, it would make a monument one hundred and thirty-six miles high. Money—you wait a minute, that isn’t all! And if I could coin it into silver dollars and lay them side by side, they would reach from New York city to San Francisco and back again to Salt Lake City, my friends, three thousand six hundred and twenty miles, just lying that way.

     The money that went into the till for the whisky business, last year, to go country, if made into dimes, would make a ribbon that would wrap this old world twelve times around. With the money that the working men spend for drink in this country, and it costs us in eight years, I could build an automobile path to the moon sixteen feet wide and three inches thick out of silver. There’s where our money is going.

     That isn’t all. Working men here need it. I am fighting your battles too, sir. I can take the money that you dumped into the whisky hole, last year, and I can build 1,570,250 houses and pay two thousand dollars for each house. In other words, I can take 1,570,250 working men and put them into a house with a family, also, that will cost two thousand dollars, and give them a quit-claim deed for the house.

     I read the other day of a million-dollar loss in Milwaukee. I said, “Gentlemen, did they have a fire?” Then I began to read. In some communities where they had voted out the saloon, where they used to sell beer made in Milwaukee, they say the Milwaukee brewers lost a million dollars by it. If the Milwaukee brewers lost a million dollars because they didn’t sell their beer, then the communities that voted the saloons out, made a million dollars. They can’t both lose on a proposition like that.

Saloon Immoral.

     I tell you it is immoral. And all the rivers of the universe flowing through the whisky sections couldn’t wash away the filth and dissesion that exist there. They are the blackest spots on the American nation today. I wish to God I could arouse all the people in an uncompromising fight against the liquor traffic, and by the grace and providence of God, take it from me, I am going to live long enough to preach the funeral sermon of the whisky business in America.

     God has honored me to preach funeral sermons of the whisky business in five states in this Union and drive them out and I am going to help put the King down here, if I can. I promise to perpetuate this feud against the liquor traffic, my friends, until in the providence of God. I hope to live long enough to see the white-winged dove of prohibition build her nest upon the dome of the capitol at Washington and spread her bright pinions of peace and prosperity over our land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, while we wave our flag and sing praise to God.

     Whenever cities get out literature booming the city, which is sent around the country, I never find one that has on it pictures of the breweries and saloons and distilleries. I never had them call attention to the fact that the saloon dominates and curses a community, but I have seen advertisements, where it said a city of churches, homes and all that.

     Why? Oh, they know that will drive decent people away and keep people out of it, if is damned by that infamous business.

     Oh, I have, personally, never known of a movement for good government that was not opposed to the saloon. And if you believe in a better community, if you’d rather see men sober than drunk, if you’d rather hear men pray than curse, if you’d rather see a man kiss his wife than lie, if you’d rather see homes of comfort, my friends, than of squalor and of want, then, sir, there to only one thing to do, and that is, when we get a chance, to put that business into perdition.

     Oh, the liquor interests of this country—they are still fat, and they are sleek, and they are smooth and they are powerful, with many a city and state and national government fawning at their feet, and they are reaching out with their damnable, dirty clutches and they are trying to choke and trying to throttle and trying to assassinate the characters of men.

     Oh, but I say to them, that their doom is sealed. If the people of this country are fit for self-government, if the people of this country are fit for liberty, their wrath will never be quelled until the putrid carcasses of the liquor traffic lie in the grave of public shame, and that’s going to be the case as sure as you live and breathe.

     Last year it cost $600,000,000 to run the public schools of this country. We paid in pensions to old soldiers $154,000,000. It cost to run the postoffice department $332,000,000. The army and navy, $310,000,000. The wheat crop at $1 a bushel, $1,000,000,000. Gold and silver coined last year, $34,000,000. It cost to run the universities and colleges $101,000,000. All of those item make $2,531,000,000, and you subtract that from what the whisky business cost you and I can pay all of those bills; I can run the government.

     I can pay all of those bills with the money that the whisky business cost us last year and I will have $826,000,000 left. Almost enough to give every man, woman and child in the United States of America a ten dollar gold piece.

     I feel a good deal like the Irishman. They were talking in a community where they were going to vote the saloon down. They said, “You know we use the money from the saloons to run our schools, and if we close the saloons, we’ve got to close the schools. Pat, you must vote for the saloons!”

     He said, “By golly, I won’t.” He said, “I’d rather have my boy learn his A, B, C’s in heaven than to read Latin in hell.”

     Last year the corn crop was worth $2,296,000,000. The wheat crop $1,026,000,000. The cotton crop $1,406,000,000, that’s including lint and seed. And last year we spent the prices of two cotton crops for booze, the price of two wheat crops for drink, and we spent the price of one corn crop.

Revenue for Roads.

     We are all interested in good roads. The office of the public roads and the agricultural department at Washington tell me it costs $6,500 per mile, on an average, to make a mile of public highway, sixteen foot wide and seven inches thick. I will say it costs you $17,000 for a little over eight miles. $2,500,000,000 would make three hundred thousand miles of highway. Allowing the distance from New York to San Francisco at three thousand miles, it would build one hundred paved highways from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

     Allowing the distance from New Orleans to Duluth to be twelve hundred miles, it would build a paved highway at each twelve miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so that nobody would live over six miles from a highway that would take him from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I can do that with the money that went into the whisky hole last year in this country.

     The railroads are capitalized at $20,247,300,000, and in eight years the working men of this country spend enough to reproduce the railroads, as they stand, in America, depots, roadbeds and all, just as they are today. We spend money enough in eight years to reproduce the railroads in this country, just as they are, with money dumped into the whisky hole.

     But what we really have got back from it is nothing but a lot of insane, feeble-minded people, my friends, that are in the penitentiaries and insane asylums, and the states can’t contribute enough to build jails, penitentiaries and asylums to take care of the human derelicts.

     We built the Panama canal and we haven’t got done talking about the engineering feat. It cost us four hundred million dollars. I can build six Panama canals every year and pay cash for them with the money that the working men dump into the whisky hole every twelve months—I can build six of them.

     There are 7,581 national banks in the United States, according to the last figures I got (I haven’t been advised for a year), with a capital and surplus of $1,792,887,260. This is a report from the treasury department.

     The money spent for whisky in one year will reproduce the capital and surplus of every national bank in the United States and leave me a balance of seven billion dollars in cash.

     There are 18,240 other banks with a capital and surplus of $2,100,000,000 and the money spent for liquor in one year, will represent their capital and their surplus and leave me four hundred million dollars in cash. The amount of money spent for drink in America in two years will represent the capital and surplus of every bank in the United States and leave me one billion dollars in cash, in my hand. That’s where the warfare comes. I am fighting for decency, sobriety and men, against their dirty money and they know it.

     Now if you want to excel in crime, if you want something to rob you physically, mentally and morally, if you want to consort with thieves, thugs, blacklegs, panderers, degenerates and prostitutes, go to the saloon. That’s the stem around which they all cluster, in every community on earth. And it is my personal opinion, that the man who sells strong drink is a worse citizen than a thief or a murderer. I think he is worse than a thief, because a thief simply steals your money, while the saloon robs you of your health, robs you of your ambition, robs you of your character, robs you of everything that is noble and leaves nothing in return but a blear-eyed, bloated face, a jabbering, muttering drunkard, incapable of supporting his family and, sir, reducing his money earning capacity and disqualifying him for being an American citizen or a father or a husband.

Taxes the Future.

     I believe it is worse than a murderer, because a murderer destroys your body, while the saloon will damn your soul, scar your offspring for generations; and if every saloon in America were stamped out tomorrow, it would take us fifty years to get rid of the dwarfs, feeble-minded, the insane, the drunkards and the criminals, that that dirty business has already left on our hands. We’d be picking the pockets of the American people by taxing them to support it for the next fifty years. That’s how much it does for us and how it curses our land.

     Oh, furthermore, my friends, hear me, there are fifty-six pounds in a bushel of corn. Let me tell you something. The United States government law requires that every distillery make four and one-half gallons of wine or whisky from one bushel of corn.

     Whisky in its original state is white colored. Then they put it in barrels, oak barrels, that have been burned on the inside. Then they put the government seal on it and put in the warehouse. The government doesn’t allow them to keep it there longer than eight years, and it takes forty-eight hours for the charred barrels to change the whisky from its water color to the brown or amber as you see it when you buy it in the bottle. And there are a lot of men in the United States who go to the United States government and by paying $100 a year tax, they can go to a distillery and pay the $1.10 government tax on a gallon of whisky and then take that whisky from the bonded warehouse over to a rectifying establishment, and they can mix, blend, sweeten, add oils and all sorts of things like that and then put it up in bottles with fine labels on them and sell it under high-sounding names. A hundred dollars of your money gives you the privilege of doing that, until 80 per cent of the whisky you buy on the market is a blended article, not bottled in at all, not a particle.

     Now here are some figures. There are fifty-six pounds to a bushel of corn. From that fifty-six pounds the distillers take what is equal to about thirty-five. From that they extract water, equal to twelve. From that they make the liquor. Four and a half gallons of whisky out of a bushel of corn. They can make as much more, but the government law requires that.

     Now, let’s see. Every distillery keeps cattle and hogs on hand to feed on the waste matter. Eighty per cent of the food value of the corn is used in making whisky and the other is fed to the cattle and hogs, and they are then put on the market.

     Distillery fed cattle and hogs command a lower price than dry-fed cattle and hogs. Hence, the farmer has got to sell his cattle and hogs for lower prices to compete. The farmer, for his own protection, goes to the distillery and buys this stuff to feed to his cattle and hogs when you take the amount of money, my friends, that they pay the distilleries for this refuse matter and then you add to that the difference in price for which the farmer has to sell his dry-fed cattle and hogs to compete with the distillery, I will be horn-swoggled if that gang doesn’t pick his pockets of ten million dollars more than they paid him for the original corn, to make the stuff out of to begin with.

A Bushel of Corn.

     Wait a minute! I will see if it is a good proposition. Here I am, a farmer, and I drive up to a distillery, and I sell a bushel of corn. I’ve got his dollar. He takes my bushel of com. He makes four and one-half gallons of whisky out of it. See if it is a paying proposition.

     Out of that thirty-six pints, four and one-half gallons, thirty-six pints, see how you will come out. A fellow, a young tough, got up in Chicago, one morning and went across to an open saloon. He drank and drank until the saloon keeper refused to give him any more booze without money. He swore he’d have more booze and walked off. His mother pleaded with him, but he spit in her face. His sister came and he doubled up his fist and shot it into her face and knocked her to the sidewalk. A man who had known him since he was a baby came out and added his entreaties to the mother’s and sister’s. He whirled around and sent two bullets crashing through the man.

     He was sentenced to life in the penitentiary at Joliet and when his old mother heard the sentence pronounced in the criminal court building in Chicago, she threw her hands to her head, screamed and fell dead at his feet.

     That’s one pint.

     You’ve got a dollar for your bushel of corn. He made thirty-six pints out of that. Now, in Freeport, Ill., where I preached, a young fellow had been down to a house of ill fame, got into a quarrel with a gang, and threatened to clean the bunch out. He went back home and got his revolver and started down the street.

     He met a woman on Stevenson street, opposite the courthouse, with a little girl, and he shot her. The woman fell to the sidewalk with her child in her arms. He was arrested, tried and convicted. In sentencing him, the judge made these remarks:

     “You are the seventh young man I have sentenced in this court room to the penitentiary at Joliet for life in the past two years who has committed murder while under the influence of drink.”

     I will take up another instance. Down in Anderson, Ind., a young follow went into a saloon, got drunk, his money was gone and he wanted more money. He went home and demanded money from his mother. She wouldn’t give it to him. She was cooking his supper, frying beefsteak. He took a stick of stove wood, hit her on the head and knocked her to the floor. Then he pounded her body and head to a pulp. He took off her necklace from around her neck, took her diamonds from her ears, slipped her rings from her fingers and went and gave them to a prostitute in the house of ill fame.

     He then got on the interurban and went out to Fort Wayne. The officers got track of him, he was arrested and brought back and Judge McClure sentenced him to the penitentiary at Michigan City, for life.

     I went to Springfield, Ill., to hold a series of meetings and a great, big, burly fellow, Joe Janes, went down the street cursing and flourishing a gun and a razor. He saw a gate open, he went in and a girl seventeen years of age was cooking her father’s dinner, who was spading out in the garden.

     He seized the girl and sought to outrage the sacredness of womanhood. She screamed and her father ran to see what was the matter, but the burly negro jumped up and grabbed him and with one swoop of the razor, he cut his head from his shoulders. It was held only by the skin and muscles and ligaments. Then he disemboweled him, ran his hand in and tore out his vital organs and threw them on the floor. He tramped them beneath his feet. They arrested him, tried him, convicted him and sentenced him to be hanged, and on Friday morning, at 10:46, Joe dropped through the scaffold with a rope around his neck and I opened the campaign on Sunday morning.

     Now I have followed probably four of the thirty-six pints of the farmer’s product of a bushel of corn and the four of them have struck down nine lives, the four boys who committed the murders, the four persons who were killed and the little mother who dies of a broken heart. And now, I want to know, my farmer friend, if this has been a good commercial transaction for you? You sold a bushel of corn; you found a market; you got 50 cents; but a fraction of this product struck down nine lives, all of whom would have been consumers of your products for their life expectancy. And do you mean to say that is a good economic transaction to you? That disposes of the market question until it is answered, let no man argue further.

     If ever there was a jubilee in hell it was when lager beer was invented.

The Sober Man.

     Hold on, I believe another thing. The American home is a true heritage of the people, for the people, and by the people, and when a man goes away from home in the morning with his dinner bucket to work and labor until the whistle blows him out at night, if he can return home a sober man to a happy wife and children waiting on the threshold, I say to you, he is a better man, whether he is white or black, native or foreign born, than the man who comes homes drunk.

     And whatever breaks up the home, whatever invades its sanctity, whatever can take with it the comforts is the deadliest foe to the home, church, state, morals, decency and prosperity, and if all the demons in hell tonight should assemble in conclave, if they’d try and conceive and bring forth the dealiest institution to man, they could nothing worse than the saloon.

     Oh! You go in with your pockets full of money and with a good character, a good position, and desirous you stagger out, money gone, character gone, job gone, and all they ever pay back, sir, is disgrace, degradation, disease, and they will give you an extra dividend in delirium tremens to old boozers, and they will give you a free pass to hell when you die. They will bury you in a potato field and then send your children to the orphan institution to be supported by the sober tax payers of the community.

     “But,” you say, “we will regulate it by high license.” Regulate what by high license? You might as well try and regulate a powder mill in hell.

     Like a fellow, he gave a kid an example and he said, “Figure it out, kid. If a frog crawls out of a well one foot a day and slides back two feet every night, how long will it take him to get out?”

     He figured for two weeks and came around and said, “I’ve got that frog within a mile and a half of hell and he is sliding yet.”

     And we’ve tried everything under heaven and they’ve got the United States so close to hell, we can smell sulphur fumes.

     In some insane asylums they have a queer way of testing the sanity of a man who wants a parole. They have a room where they put the candidate for parole and then turn on the water from a faucet and tell him to mop that floor dry. If he tries to mop the floor dry with the faucet running, then he is nuts.

     Gosh! We must be a bughouse gang. Why, we are trying to mop up the products of that business with jails, penitentiaries, Y.M.C.A.’s and Y.W.C.A.’s, and I say there is only one thing to do. Shut off the supply, then we can clean house. I believe it is almost impossible to maintain a clean, economical administration on a saloon license policy. Why? I will tell you why I think so. Because ill-gotten gains invariably breed strife, graft and immorality.

     There have been, and still are men, who are honest in their belief that it’s the way it can be done, and they are sincere, but however sincere and honest they may be, they are all forced to admit that they are wrong if they will investigate.

Saloon a Sneak.

     The saloon is a coward. It will count its ill-gotten gains behind stained glass windows and sneak its customers in through a blind door. It will hire sentinels to watch for the approach of a set of officers, sworn to enforce the law against it. It strikes under the cover of darkness and it will stab unarmed. It will assassinate characters. It will tax defenseless women and children.

     The saloon is a thief. I don’t mean a court offender who steals your money. Oh, the saloon robs you of your manhood, clothes you in rags, takes away your friends, takes away your health, takes away your occupation, burglarizes your home, robs your family, impoverishes your children, brings suicide and insanity, furnishes victims for the scaffold and electric chair, it excites the father to butcher his helpless children, it will rip the shirt off the back of a shivering man, it will take the coat from a deaf and dumb man, it will take the last drop of milk from the breast of a nursing mother.

     It will rob your daughter of her virtue, it will take the last basket of coal out of the cellar, it is the blood sucker of a community, and never in the history of a nation has there been equalled an institution as rotten and low down and vile and destructive as the saloon—no, no!

     The saloon is an infidel. It is an infidel. Oh! it has no faith in God! It would close every church, Catholic or Protestant, where the preacher or the priest is brave enough to put his fist under their dirty nose. And it would hang, my friends, its whisky-soaked, beer-soaked rag from the abandoned altar. It despises heaven. Oh, it respects the thief. It esteems the blasphemer, it hates love, it scorns virtue, it assassinates innocence. It builds its temples and prisons in insane asylums and reformatories for the feeble-minded. Its music is a parody on religion and it wraps the mantle of crepe about every home in this world or every home in the world to come. Its tables are full of the vilest literature, it ministers to the basest, lowest passions of men and women; it is the clearing house for all the moral sewage and filth and degradation and rot that curses and blights this old world.

     The saloon is a liar. It promises you good cheer, it sends you sorrow. It promises you health, it gives you disease. It promises your prosperity, it picks your pockets. It promises you happiness, it gives you misery. It sends the husband home with a lie on his lips to his wife. It sends that boy home with a lie on his lips to his mother. It sends the working man with a lie on his lips to the factory. It defiles the jury box and bribes the witnesses. It stains the judicial ermine, it’s God’s worst enemy and hell’s best friend. The groggery with all its vileness and rot and damnation!

The saloon is a murderer. It spares neither youth, old age, infancy, or decrepitude.

It’s got a dirty blanket waiting for every child that creeps into this world and then, when they become old, enough, takes them down to their hell-holes of debauchery, where they will fill them up with their damnable potions. They will keep them there until they are blear-eyed, with the dew of youth on their brow, then they send them reeling and staggering and vomiting home into the arms of a broken-hearted mother.

And when she takes that boy on her lap to kiss away the stains of sin, to kiss away the misery that that dirty bunch have put on him, then when she stands on the platform, or pins a white ribbon on her breast in defense of her home and of her children, they will curse her and say, “Go home, bring forth more children, we’ve got to have two million boys from every generation, or we’ll have to shut up shop.”

Old whisky-soaks, old topers will soon die and if they can’t create the appetite in boys to take their places, it won’t be long until their dirty business will be on the rocks. They’ve got to have two million boys. By the grace of God, they can’t have them!

Whisky a Murderer.

     It cocks the highway’s pistol. It puts the rope in the hands of the mob. It is the anarchist of the world and its dirty red flag is dyed with the blood of women and children, and it sent the bullet through the body of Lincoln; it nerved the arm that sent the bullet through Garfield and William McKinley. Yes it is a murderer. Every plot that has ever been hatched against our flag and every anarchist plot against the government and law was born and bred and crawled out of the grog-shop to damn this country.

     Oh, the curse of God is on the sa1oon! Legislatures are against it. Societies are against it. Fraternal bodies are against it. There are sixty-four fraternal bodies in this country and fifty-six of them refuse to admit saloon keepers to membership. The Masons say, “Stay out! Stay out!”

     The Odd Fellows, “Stay out.”

     The Woodmen, “Stay out.”

     The Tribe of Ben Hur, “Stay out.”

     The Tribe of Malta, “Stay out.”

     Knights of Pythias, “Stay out.”

     Junior Order of American Mechanics, “Stay out. Stay out.”

     Catholic Benevolent societies, “Stay out.”

     Oh, hear me! There are 218,233 saloons on this country, 70,000 wholesale houses, 1624 breweries, 742 distilleries, 2,343 rectifying establishments, enough to make a solid street, allowing fifty feet frontage, from New York city to Denver, Colo.

Army of Drinkers.

     Five million men, women and children today go to the groggeries for drink. Marching five abreast, they’d reach 590 miles. Marching thirty miles a day they’d be thirty days passing this tabernacle. On the first day of January, sir, 500,000 young men of our nation enter the groggeries to begin their public careers as drinkers. You let that dirty, God-forsaken grist grind for twelve months. You let that hellish old macerator chew up and spit out the brawn and the blood and the bone of American manhood and on the 31st day of December I will go in and I will summon brewers and distillers and liquor dealers and their damnable henchmen, whoever they may be, and I will say,

     “On the 1st day of January I gave you 500,000 of the brain, brawn and young manhood of our land; you have had them one year. What have you to show for their twelve months in your keeping? I want them back and have come in the name of father, mother, sister, brother, sweetheart, home, God and native land. Give me back what you have had. March out![”]

     I look around me and see 100,000 of them have lost their appetites, quit, and they have gone down and there they are with their filth and squalor and I say:

     “Hey, what’s that music I hear?”

     Ah, ha! A funeral dirge. Yonder goes a funeral procession, 3,000 miles long. From New York to Seattle. Six hundred thousand hearses in this procession, and in each hearse the body of a man that died a drunkard last year in America, or a disease in which drinking was the predisposing cause.

     There they go. Hear me a minute will you. One leaps in front of a train, oh, eighty every hour, two thousand every day, stumble into drunkards’ graves in America. In America! In America! One man cries, “Mother,” and his life goes out like a burnt match. Another man leaps into the lake, the sea or the river. Another man in front of a train, and br-r, br-r, he is ground to a pulp. On goes the damnable train of misery, murder, suicide, assassination and death.

     Did you ever hear of anybody that died young, because he did not drink whisky? Ever hear of anybody that committed suicide because he drank too much water? Ever hear of a man who killed his wife because he drank too much coffee? Ever hear of a man being sent to the penitentiary because he drank too much buttermilk? Lemonade? Oh, the saloon is a murder mill and a poison factory.

     “Oh!” said a fellow o me, “Bill, the saloon you talk of and the one I patronize are different. I attend a high-toned saloon.”

     The only difference between a high-toned saloon and one that is low-down, is that one stinks and the other smells bad. The only business that a saloon helps is the revenue.

     No man can pray the Lord’s prayer, who comes from the front of a saloon. God Almighty, Himself, can’t give an individual or institution the right to do wrong—never! And if there is a heaven for fools, the fellow who thinks the saloon is a good thing, will be there on the front seat. God may let you out because you are an idiot.

     Another thing, they say, “Well, prohibition doesn’t pay.”

     Wait a minute! Since they closed the saloons in Denver (I helped to put them dry, they dumped nearly a million dollars in Colorado, just to fight me.) One thousand two hundred and fifty washerwomen in Denver quit washing, send their laundry to the laundries now, and the laundry advertises, “Let us do your dirty work.”

Less Booze, More Milk.

     And the milk business. The dairy business has increased sixty-two per cent in Denver. One dairy has increased five thousand dollars in its sales in the first three months after the saloon went out of business. Daddy spent the money for milk instead of spending it down town for booze.

     That isn’t all. In Colorado, in the last ten weeks they only sent thirty-six people to the penitentiary and in the same ten weeks, under the wet rgime (the saloons went out the first day of January, 1917), and in the last six weeks they sent one hundred and forty-six to the penitentiary. In July, 1916, with Colorado dry, they only sent three to the penitentiary.

     One of the wardens of the penitentiary in Canyon City said, “At the present ratio, for every one that comes in, there are ten going out—in ten years there won’t be anybody there but life men.”

     And that isn’t all, they had twenty-four thousand new depositors in the savings banks they didn’t have when they had saloons.

     And the bank deposits in Denver, my friends, increased ten million dollars in the first thirty days, after the saloon went out of it. Why was it? Oh, they had no place to spend it down there but in a bank. That shows what it did.

     Wait a minute. Let me give you something from New York. Forty-six thousand boys and girls, it is said, leave, the three highest grammar grades each year in that state, because of drink. Forty thousand must leave the high school. These are from the statistics gotten up by Attorney Brown, who has investigated this matter down to perfection, and forty thousand must leave high school and go to work each year.

     One hundred and eighty-six boys begin to drink every day in New York. One hundred and ten boys are committed to prison each day in New York. From Albany to Buffalo, three hundred miles, the saloons in New York would make a solid wall on one side, and on the other a solid wall of dependents and human derelicts, caused by the saloon and the money spent for drink in a year, would build a railroad one hundred and thirty-eight times across the state of New York. And for every mile from Buffalo to Albany a house of ill-fame with sixty girls in each. For every mile, there would be a jail with two hundred and seventy-five whisky prisoners in it. For every one hundred and twenty feet, there is a grave dug, my friends, every year for drunkards. Fifty thousand people died in New York last year and thirty-four thousand of them from drink, directly, and it cost the people of New York state twenty million, one hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars last year in taxes to support the products of the saloon in state institutions.

     Oh! Why not put the damnable saloons out of business, and then vote this $20,193,000 in pensions to the worthy people of the state who can’t earn money because of age or decrepitude? Why not give them the money?

     The whisky business costs the people of New York $640,000,000 a year. Some people say that is a plain case of stealing, but I guess it isn’t, because the saloon pays back $20,000,000 a year of that $640,000,000. Ha! Ha!

     Since the Rank law went into effect that Tom Platt put though in 1896, which disfranchised nearly eight million voters in New York state and never allowed the people the right to vote on it, the state has raised, since 1896, since the Rank law went into effect, $288,000,000 in license from the saloon. That’s according to the brewers’ year-book, page 48. Now, wait a minute, so that’s the stuff they try hand out to the folks of New York, but why don’t they tell them what it cost the tax-payers since 1896? It cost them twelve billion dollars more than the amount of $288,000,000, which they gave back in license. It’s costing twelve billions more than that and for every dollar they paid back in license, they took forty dollars to support their products. Forty cold dollars.

     That’s the proposition all over the country, and wherever they are going. It costs, it is said, in Watertown, N.Y., $5,000 a day; Syracuse, $20,000; Buffalo, $100,000; New York, $1,000,000.

Insanity in New York.

     October 1, 1915, there were 36,663 insane people in the state of New York. One to every 266 of the population. One out of every 266 in New York state is crazy. One out of every 266—all right. And one out of every four of that number was made insane by drink and its curse and blight and infamy.

     Oh! read the names, will you? Read the names over the breweries, of those foreign booze-makers in our land. Eighty per cent of the brewers in this country are, according to the United States census in 1910, 80 per cent of the brewers of this country were either foreign-born or born of foreign parents and so on. I am an American!

     And so, as John Mitchell, of the American Federation of Labor, and my friend, W. S. Stone, grand chief justice of the locomotive engineers, said, the engineers of this country and other organizations are not only all temperate, but they all favor nation-wide prohibition all over the country. He said that at their last convention they voted unanimously for nation-wide prohibition, all over the land.

     Now you will find John Mitchell, of the American Federation of Labor. John said, “I am not impressed with the arguments of the liquor traffic.” He said, “You shut up a distillery, up goes a factory. You close a saloon and you install a grocery store.”

     I believe as the labor movement grows, so will the temperance movement. The labor movement was not started simply to give a man more labor or shorter hours, but to give man better living conditions and make him happier.

     The railroads of the country are against it. The New York Central, Lackawana, the Pennsylvania, Erie, Baltimore and Ohio, Rock Island, Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Milwaukee, Northwestern, Burlington, all of them against it. The Michigan state law doesn’t allow a man to have anything to do with the operating of trains who isn’t a total abstainer. Why doesn’t the church get busy and vote her out?

     I will tell you, whenever every man, Catholic and Protestant, votes against the saloon, that day the saloons will go to hell. I will tell you, I’d rather be a devil in hell than to be a man on earth with my name on the church records, standing sponsor for that dirty business. I’ll tell you, hell will be so full of that kind of church members, their feet will stick out of the windows, take it from me.

     Now, I am going show you something. Look here. Here’s a silver dollar. The whole question is money, money, money! I am going to show you how we are burning it up. Why don’t the churches and the legislatures wipe the whisky bunch off the boards; it’s because they are afraid to peep.

     Now, so here’s a dollar. All right, listen to me. I am a hard working man and I work hard all week. I get my pay on Saturday night; I’ve got a wife and six children—(thank God it’s all a lie, I’ve got a wife and four children).

     But here I am for the argument, I am John, a drunkard. ’rve a wife and six children. I get my pay, and I go down to a saloon. I throw down my dollar. My dollar buys a quart of whisky over the bar. Ten cents a drink will bring about four dollars, but when they get through mixing, blending, sweetening, adding oils and such, as rectifying fellows are allowed to do by paying Uncle Sam one hundred bones a year, it will bring nearer seventeen dollars then four. Just for the argument, I throw down my dollar and I say, “Give me a quart.”

Men and Money.

     All right. Here’s the saloon end of the whole proposition we are up against. The nation, everybody—money! That is all. They don’t give a rap. As a saloonkeeper said to me, “I don’t give a damn for men and women, all I want is their money.”

     All right, here’s their proposition, so I throw down my dollar. I’ve got his quart of whiskey.

     Here’s the working man’s end of the deal. Yonder are my wife and children waiting for a drunken husband and father to come home. What good will that whisky do? Reduce my earning capacity, burn up my manhood, take the roses from the cheeks of my wife, send my little ones to bed hungry and disfranchise me and reduce my ability as a citizen and father.

All right, there is the whole argument, the money end of the deal, that’s the saloon end of it. Here’s the working man, the consumer’s end of it. There’s the home end of it.

     Now, suppose I could get all the drunkards to cut out the booze. Suppose I could get the people to vote the saloon out of business in my country and drive them away. Then, sir, I’ll show you the happiest, most prosperous nation on earth. I will show you the biggest revival of business in the universe.

     So, here I am, a drunkard, staggering and reeling home with a quart of booze, to my wife and kids.

     But I’ve cut it out. Oh! the water wagon. We voted the saloons out of business. Now let me get them all lined up here. I’d like to line all the drunkards up and say:

     “Come on, boys, cut out the booze and let’s get into line. Come on, what do you say? Come on!”

     I go up in front of a butcher shop, the butcher thinks I am still old John, the drunkard, and he says:

     “Hello, John, I suppose you want a piece of neck or liver?”

     I say, “You’ve got another guess coming. How much do I owe this joint?”

     “Five bones.”

     “There is your dough.”

     “Where in the devil did you get all that money?”

     “I went up to the tabernacle and I heard Bill and I cut it out and I am on the water wagon. Now, Bo, if you don’t mind, you can just whack off a little sirloin and a porterhouse steak. We never had any at our house. That’s the stuff these rich ducks eat that ride in automobiles, but I am going to buy it.”

     All right, up comes the next drunkard and buys beefsteak. I am trying to get the working men to spend their money for something good, instead of spending it for booze. When that is done the butcher runs out of meat. He says:

     “Hey, central, give me the slaughter house.”

     “Got any beef?”

     “Yes.”

     “Nice pork?”

     “Yes.”

     “Nice mutton?”

     “Yes.”

     “Send it up quick.”

     He sells out all he has and he runs to long distance. “Hey, give me Chicago. Armour, Swift, Cudahy, Nelson and Morris. Hey, send down beefsteak, send down mutton, pork, send her on the Twentieth Century schedule. Put two engines in front. Get her down here as quick as you can.”

     “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”

     “The whole bunch is on the water wagon and we can’t supply the demand.”

     “What’s the matter with the country?”

     Oh! that meat, that ought to be in the stomachs of women and children, giving them nourishment, is yonder in the slaughter houses and the whisky gang is picking the pockets of the working men and they can’t lug it home to their kids—that’s what the matter with this country!

     Come on! Are you ready? Mind you! Forward! Hip! Hip! Hip! Hip! Hip! Up in front of a grocery store.

     “What do you want?”

     “Flour! Flour! Flour! Flour!” rings down the line.

     The drunkards are all buying flour instead of booze now and so they rush to the telephone. They call Minneapolis —Washburn-Crosby—Gold Medal Flour—“Eventually, Why Not Now?”

     “Hey, Wichita; hey, Kansas City; hey, Topeka; hey, Fargo; hey, Grand Forks—send flour, send wheat!”

     What is the trouble? Oh, the wheat that ought to be ground into flour and the flour into bread and the bread in their stomachs, it is yonder in the elevators, yonder being speculated on by the board of trade. The drunken man hasn’t money to take it home. The whisky gang has picked his pockets.

     Come on! Here I am! Wait a minute, line up boys. We are ready, we are getting them all to spend their money for other things. Are you ready? Forward march! Hip! Hip! Hip! Hip! Hip! I am in front of a dry good store.

     “Hey, what do you want?”

     “I want calico, calico, calico, calico,” rings down the line.

     They sell it out and they telegraph to Fall River, to Lawrence and all the big mills. “Hey, send calico.” They telegraph, “Buy cotton, buy cotton!”

     What’s the matter? The cotton that ought to be made into cloth and the cloth into clothes to cover the shivering children, is yonder on the shelf of the merchandiser, down yonder, my friends, in the great storehouses of the southland. Why? The working men haven’t the money to buy it. The whisky gang is picking their pockets and they haven’t got the money.

     Here I am. The drunkard, the booze-hoister. I got my pay, staggered up to a hell-hole, threw down my dollar and got a quart of whisky, staggered home to my wife and children, a drunken, blear-eyed fool.

On the Water Wagon.

     Now then, I’ve cut it out. I’m on the water wagon now, bless God. I’m going home. Here I am, I’ve got a sack of flour on my shoulder, got the beefsteak under one arm and my calico under the other and I’m going home to Molly and the babies. What’s that I hear? “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

     They say, “Hello, Pa, what you got there?”

     “Got some beefsteak.”

     “Where are you going to take it?”

     “Here.”

     “What are you going to do with it?”

     “Your ma’s going to fry it and hit you kids in the stomach with it for supper.”

     “What have you got here, pa?”

     “Flour, and your ma’s going to make some biscuits, and we’ll have some flour bread.”

     “What have you got here, pa?”

     “I bought some calico to make you a dress, Molly, and I brought home enough to make Mary a new dress. You’ve patched hers so much it looks like a crazy quilt and I brought home enough cloth to make Tommy a pair of pants. You’ve patched the seat of his breeches so much it looks like a map of the United State.”

     Now, I see a fellow going down the street, staggering along, and I say, “Hello, where are you going?”

     He says, “I am going to go to hell, Bill.”

     “Why,” I say, “don’t go there.”

     “Yes, I am going.”

     “Why?”

     “Well, the Good Book says no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

     “But the Good Book says you can repent and God will forgive you and you can go to heaven.”

     “Well, it’s too late, Bill, I’m too far gone.”

     “Well, didn’t I help you?”

     “Yes, if I’d heard you two years ago, I wouldn’t be here, but good-by, old man, you’re on the square, you told the truth. Good-by.”

     And I will leave a lot of poor drunkards, staggering down to hell.

     I see another fellow on Sunday morning, Prince Albert coat, silk hat and white gloves on, walking down to the church with a Bible under one arm and I say, “Where are you going?”

     “I am going to heaven.”

     “Did you vote for the saloon?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then you will go to hell.”

     If the man that gets drunk goes to hell, the man that voted for the institution that made him a drunkard will go to hell. If the man that gets drunk goes to hell, then the man who votes for the saloon will go to hell, and I’d like to fire the furnace while he is there—don’t forget that!

Whisky Orphans.

     Wait a minute, wait a minute. There are 850,000 whisky orphan children in this country. Enough whisky orphan children in the world that if they stood hand in hand they’d belt this globe five times, punctured at ever fifth point by a drunkard’s widow. Oh, there they stand in their squalor. Look at that picture, you that buy, you that sell, you that take rent and you who rent your buildings for a saloon, in my mind are as low as the saloon keeper, or you can put it the other way. He is just as good as you in the world.

     What is the matter with this grand old country of ours? I heard my friend, George Stuart, tell how he imagined that he walked up to a mill and said:

     “Hello there, what kind of a mill are you?”

     “Why, I am a flour mill.”

     “What do you make?”

     “I make flour and meal.”

     “What do you make it out of?”

     “Wheat and corn.”

     “Is your finished product worth more than the raw material?”

     “Yes.”

     “Is your flour worth more than the wheat?

     “Yes.”

     “Meal worth more than the corn?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then we’ll make a law to protect you, for we’ve got to have something to eat.”

     “What kind of a mill are you?”

     “I am a sawmill.”

     “What do you make?”

     “Boards.”

     “What out of?”

     “Logs.”

     “Is your finished product worth more than the raw material?”

     “Yes.”

     “Lumber worth more than logs?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then you increase the value of what you work with?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then we’ll make laws to protect you.”

     “What kind of a mill are you?”

     “Oh, I am a paper mill.”

     “What do you make?”

     “Paper.”

     “What out of?”

     “Straws and rags and wood pulp.”

     “Is your finished product worth more than the raw material?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then, sir, we’ll make laws to protect you, for we have to have paper to keep our great presses running.”

     “What kind of a mill are you?”

     “Why, I am a gin mill.”

     “What is your raw material?”

     “The boys of America?”

     The gin mills of this country must have 2,000,000,000 boys or shut up shop. Say, walk down your streets, count the homes, and every fifth home has to furnish a boy for a drunkard. Have you furnished yours? No. Then I have to furnish two to make up.

     “What is your raw material?”

     “American boys.”

     “Then I will pick the boys up and give them to you!”

     A man says: “Hold on, not that boy; he is mine!”

     Then I will say to you what a saloon keeper said to me when I protested: “I am not interested in boys; to hell with your boys.”

     “Say, saloon, gin mill, what is your finished product?”

     “Blear-eyed, low-down, staggering men and the scum of God’s dirt, that have gone to the mat and taken the count.”

     A woman came to me in Illinois, arched her eyebrows and drew in her diaphragm and said, “Mr. Sunday, mine are all girls.” She said, “You can’t expect me to have the same degree of interest I would if I was the mother of a boy.”

     I said to her, “Sister, your neighbor’s boys will get your girls for wives, and when you get three or four of those foul drunken birds for sons-in-law, roosting in your family tree, you’ll have a rough-house on hand and you can’t sidestep it.”

     I feel a good deal like a fellow down in Tennessee. He used to make his living by catching diamond-back rattlesnakes and selling them to the circuses. One day he was out and caught an old diamond-back rattler. He had fourteen rattles and a button on the end of his tail. He put it in his little box with a glass cover over it and he came staggering home with it under his wing. He put it down in the yard and went to chop some wood. His little five-year-old boy, Jim, came out, slipped the blass back and the old diamond-back rattler wriggled out and bit the little boy in the cheek and he jerked back and said, “Papa, the rattler bit me.”

     His father came running with the ax and made mince-meat of the rattler.

     Then he took his pack-knife and cut big chunks from Jim’s face, where the rattler had bit him and put his lips to the wound and sucked as hard as he could to draw out the blood. Little Jim’s face was swollen nearly three times its normal size, his eyes were bloodshot and nearly popped from their sockets, his swollen tongue lolled from side to side in his mouth. There were great cuts through which the blood oozed and little Jim became covered with variegated hues—yellow, black, purple and green and he would shiver as with the ague and then he’d burn as with the fever. In his delirium he’d moan and say:

     “O Papa, the rattler bit little Jim, the rattler bit him,” and the little fellow gasped and his father laid him on the ground by the side of the dead rattler. He fell on his knees and as the tears rolled down his sunburned and weather-beaten face he said:

     “O God, I wouldn’t give little Jim for all the rattlers that ever wriggled their carcasses over the Blue Ridge mountains.”

Boys or Brewers.

     I say I wouldn’t give the boys of America for all the brewers and all the distillers in the universe. I’ll tell you another thing, hear me! I serve notive on the Liquor Dealers’ Association of America with their six hundred million dollar invested capital and all their dirty, stinking lies, and their vilifications and all their infamous, rotten degenerate stuff.

     That dirty gang of cut-throats and moral assassins are found up and down the land as they tag and follow me in every city and town I go to. When they hear I am going to a town, they prepare for me in advance.

     You can’t make drunkards out of the American boy. You can’t wring blood from the mothers’ hearts. You can’t wring tears from their eyes. You can’t fill our jails and penitentiaries and insane asylums and homes for feeble-minded with the wrecked manhood of this land, sir. You can’t get your dirty clutches on the American boy, and make a drunkard of him unless you go over my carcass.

     Listen! In a northwest city a preacher sat at his breakfast table one Sunday morning. The doorbell rang, he answered it, and there stood a little boy, twelve years of age. He was on crutches, right leg off at the knee, shivering, and he said, “Please, sir, will you come up to the jail and talk and pray with papa? He murdered mamma. Papa was good and kind, but whisky did it, and I have to support my three little sisters. I sell newspapers and black boots. Will you go up and talk and pray with papa? And will you come home and be with us when they bring him back? The governor says we can have his body after they hang him.”

     The preacher hurried to the jail and talked and prayed with the man. He had no knowledge of what he had done. He said, “I don’t blame the law, but it breaks my heart to think that my children must be left in a cold heartless world. Oh, sir, whisky, whisky did it.”

     The preacher was at the little hut when up drove the undertaker’s wagon and they carried out the pine coffin. They led the little boy up to the coffin, he leaned over and kissed his father and sobbed, and he said to his sisters: “Come on sisters, kiss papa’s cheeks before they grow cold.” And the little hungry, ragged, whisky orphans hurried to the coffin, shrieking in agony. Police, whose hearts were adamant, buried their faces in their hands and rushed from the house, and the preacher fell on his knees and lifted his clenched fist and tear-stained face and took an oath before God, and before the whisky orphans, that he would fight the cursed business until the undertaker carried him out in his coffin.

     You men now have a chance to show your manhood. Then in the name of your pure mother, in the name of your wife and the pure, innocent children that climb up in your lap and put their arms around your neck, in the name of all that is good and noble, fight the curse. Shall you men, who hold in your hands the ballot, and in that ballot hold the destiny of womanhood and children and manhood, shall you, the sovereign power, refuse to rally in the name of defenseless men and women and native land? No!

     I want every man to say: “God, you can count on me to protect my wife, my home, and my children and the manhood of America.”

     By the mercy of God, which has given you the unshaken and unshakable confidence of her you love, I beseech you make a fight for the women who wait tonight until the saloons spew out their husbands and their sons, and send them home maudlin, brutish, devilish, vomiting, stinking, blear-eyed, bloated-faced drunkards.

If you knew that your boy with eyes so blue—
With manly tread and heart so true,
Should enter yonder barroom bright
And stain his soul in one wild night,
     What would you do then; what would you do?

If you knew that your girl with silken hair—
With winsome way and face so fair,
By felon drink at last were seen
To follow the steps of Magdalene,
     What would you do then; what would you do?

If you knew that your wife through weary years,
Should drown her grief in bitter tears,
Because her boy of tender care
Was lured to death by liquor’s share,
     What would you do then; what would you do?

But you know, somebody’s boy must lie,
In drunken stupor and must die;
Some girl go wrong in tender years—
Somebody’s wife must sob in tears,
     What will you do then; what will you do?
                              —BY ALEX CAIRNS.

Text of Billy Sunday, “Get on the Water Wagon,” also known as “The Booze Sermon,” delivered to a meeting of white men in Atlanta on December 9, 1917, from the Atlanta Constitution, December 10, 1917, 11, 14. Sunday gave the sermon to an African-American audience in Atlanta on Deceber 15, 1917.

46. Sunday Given Lots of “Speakin’ Juice” by Negro Audience.
—————
Billy “A Hypnotic, Dynamic, Athletic, Linguistic, Spell-Binding, Gospel Expounder,” Says Colored Minister.

     Twenty-five hundred colored citizens (and citizenesses) of Atlanta presented Sunday with a little “speakin’ juice” last night at the tabernacle.

     Dr. Adam D. Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist, made the suggestion and then dug right in and saw that it was carried out properly.

     Dr. Williams insisted, before the meeting, that he be allowed to speak a few words and he persuaded Rody that the matter was important enough to take up some time.

     The big, wholesome, jovial negro knows how to talk and he knows how to raise “speakin’ juice.” For the information of J. K. Orr and other good wind-raisers, let it be explained right here that “speakin’ juice,” according to Dr. Williams, is the collection.

“Speaking Juice” Needed.

     After explaining that every good preacher had to be well provided with the aforesaid juice before he could do his best preaching, the worthy doctor called on the entire audience to sing, “I’m So Glad.”

     After the first attempt, he reproved the slackers and told everyone to show the white folks what they could do when they really cut loose. “Heaven sends cohorts of angels to listen to us when we start,” he said. “Hypocrites, keep your mouth out of this,” he added, “but those of you that think you’re going to heaven, say so!”

     Then the chorus rolled and billowed and faded away in tremulous minors:

     “I’m so-oh gla-a-d
     ’Im goin’ o—VER
     In the h’v’nly la-a—and.”

     “We folks here,” said Dr. Williams, “have been taught when we hear good gospel, we should give something. The preachers taught us that.

     “Now we’re going to do something that the white folks haven’t done yet. We’re always doing something or other they’re only thinking about.

     “We always owe good ministers something. Now do you see what I’m coming at?”

No Detectives Needed.

     “Tonight big things are coming off down here. I met a detective on the way down and I told him he could go home and rest easy—there’d be no fightin’ down here tonight. The sons of Ham are on the line and we’ll look after things.

     “Now, I don’t aim to waste any time. I make the motion, I second it and it is now carried unanimously and all over.

     “The ushers will pass you envelopes and you just stick down what you want to give to Mr. Sunday and stick it in. If you can’t write your name, find someone that can write it for you.

     “Mr. Sunday has missed none in Atlanta. He’s told the truth and he’s him he and he’s hit you.”

     Then, turning to where Billy sat on the platform, Williams said earnestly:

     “I’m going to live a better man, sir.”

     “He’s done a whole lots of good in Atlanta, there’s a better atmosphere on the streets. I feel better. Why, I went to a man six months ago and asked him would he help me out of this distress and he said he’d think about it. I went to him again two weeks ago and he come right out and gave me his check for $40. I’m going again before the influence works off.

     “Now, while the collection’s being taken, let’s all sing.”

Girls Lead the Way.

     The big colored choruses sang old time songs last night until the air quivered with the haunting minors and throbbing basses. A chorus of girls from Leonard street orphanage ranged themselves on the platform and sang, “I’m Leaning on the Lord.”

     Secretary Trent of the colored Y.M.C.A., led the congregation in singing “Walk Together, Children,” “Kneeling at the Mercy Seat,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “I’ll Study War No More.”

     By special request of Billy Sunday himself, the negroes sang, “You’d Better Live in Union.” The leader asked the white people to join in this song after a while, and said they would try to teach them how to sing it. But the turns and throbs which come so natural to colored people somehow seem to elude the Aryan thorax. They did their best. Billy worked hard himself, in imitation of the mumbling basses of the colored preachers; W. D. Upshaw, at the right of the platform, swung in with some vigorous notes, but they didn’t quite fit, and Rogers Winter tried to roll a few minors, fortunately in a very subdued kind of voice. In fact, it was perhaps fortunate all ’round that the real singers, the colored people, pretty well drowned out the white folks.

     Then Dr. P. J. Bryant, of Wheat Street Baptist church, spoke in behalf of the colored evangelical ministers’ union. He said that various organizations and classes of men had given various features to the campaign, but that it remained for him and his friends to give color to the proceedings. He then read a resolution of gratitude on behalf of the union to Billy Sunday for his splendid service and gospel messages during the Atlanta campaign. In the course of this resolution he described Mr. Sunday as—

     “A hypnotic, dynamic, athletic, linguistic, spellbinding gospel expounder.”

A Valued Resolution.

     Billy said that he would take that resolution and put it away in a bank vault when he got home and would always keep it there and would will it as one of his most precious possessions when the time came for him to die.

     He said that when he got home, he and Ma Sunday would sit before the fire in the gloom of the dusk on many nights and they would listen and hear once again the singing of the colored congregations of Atlanta, which he said he had heard of but never fully believed until he came and was shown.

     “I have preached all over country,” said Billy, “but I shall carry the most tender recollections of any place I have ever been in away with me from Atlanta.”

     Rev. H. H. Proctor, D.D., made the opening prayer that Billy might be “saved from the assaults of misguided men.”

     Billy preached on the home that is promised to all who accept Christ as their Savior after death. The sermon is found in full in this issue of The Constitution.

     As he drew towards his close and pictured the scene in heaven when he should be reunited with all his family and Rody and the different members his organization should gather there with him, and the friends he has made in Atlanta, over 50 per cent of the white people present were unashamedly wiping the tears from their eyes. And the Negroes! Billy had to wait numerous times while the shouting died down. One old negro mammy on the front row to the left kept up a continuous stream of “Yeh, Lord!” “Man, youse tellin’ de troof.”

Many Trail Hitters.

     Then the trail hitting began and the old plantation melodies again floated back and forth across the tabernacle. There seemed no end to the stream of Negroes that came forward to the evangelist’s hand. The colored preachers stood in a solid row across the front of the platform and waved the billows of song out across the wide spaces with perspiration pouring down their faces and bodies swaying as they sang.

     It was a great meeting and the effect on an onlooker can best be described in the words of a certain well-known Atlanta business man who has not been hitherto noted for his sentimentality.

     “I tell you,” he said as he left, “a sight like this makes a fellow think hard. I confess a lump came into my throat as I watched that stream of negroes pressing down the aisle. There’s a tragedy in the thing somewhere, only I can’t quite explain it.”

     No one can—quite.

Ralph Jones
Atlanta Constitution, December 23, 1917, 7A.

47. 500 Negroes Hit Sawdust Trail.
—————
Great Enthusiasm Aroused at Tabernacle by Billy’s Strong Sermon.

     Inspired by the rythmic chant of the song of long ago, “It’s Old-Time Religion,” and encouraged by the promise of Christ who said, in the words of Billy Sunday’s text, “I go to prepare a place for you,” 500 negroes hit the sawdust trail at the Saturday night service at the Tabernacle.

     The singing of religious songs that have come down from slavery days, with their simplicity and appeal to the soul and heart, the prayers of negro preachers, and Billy’s description of the anticipated joys of the Heaven, featured the service.

     The Rev. H. H. Proctor, in a fervent prayer, asked the protection of the Almighty for Billy and prayed that the hand of God stand between him and the assaults of misguided men.

     A chorus from the Leonard Street Orphanage sang and the Rev. A. D. Williams entered a plea for funds to be donated to Billy. The response was liberal.

Praise for Billy.

     That Billy Sunday is an iconoclast like John the Baptist, an evangelist like the Apostle Peter, a doctrinarian like St. Paul, a loving and loveable counsellor like St. John, and a “hypnotic, athletic, dynamic, linguistic, spellbinding, militant, gospel Ambassador” was the assertion of the Rev. P. James Bryant, who read resolutions adopted by the Colored Evangelical Ministers’ Union.

     That the evangelist has done great good among the colored people of Atlanta was the testimony of a number of preachers, who agreed that he has performed a work to last long after he has gone and to make Atlanta a safer and better place in which to live.

     When Billy got started on his sermon he made it plain that color nor creed made no difference to God’s promise to the world. He said that eternal life was the desire of all normal people, and that God and God alone could give it. He pictured the life after death, told of a realistic heaven, and said that he believed in a real home and not a condition or state after death.

What He Will Do in Heaven.

     He pictured his own arrival within the Eternal City and said that the first thing he’d do would be to seek Jesus, thank Him for His great sacrifice and the plan of salvation, and then ask permission to stand around the gates of glory to await “Ma” Sunday, the family, Rody and the rest. Heaven was a place greatly to be desired, said Billy, and he pointed out that there would be mansions for everyone, without regard to condition on earth.

     At the conclusion of the strong sermon Rody and the choir sang, and then colored leaders took charge of the song service, making the great building ring with the old camp meetin’ songs that have caused the conversion of thousands of Georgia black men and women. Shouts and halleluiahs were not infrequent, and the meeting ended only after some 20 per cent of the audience had “gone across” for God.

Hearst’s Sunday American (Sunday edition of the Atlanta Georgian), December 23, 1917, 7A.

48. Must Be No “For Rent” Signs in Heaven, Billy Says.
—————
Evangelist Asks Three Questions in Discourse.

     Billy Sunday preached on the subject of “Heaven” on Saturday night. His sermon, in full, was as follows:

     Billy Sunday spoke last night on “Heaven.” He said:

     I would like, in my sermon tonight, if my strength will permit and your patience endure, to ask and answer three questions:

     First, what do I want most of all?

     A man in Chicago said to me one day, “If I could have all I wanted of any one thing I would take money.”

     He would be a fool, and so would you if you would make a similar choice. There’s lots of things money can’t do. Money can’t buy life; money can’t buy health. Men spend money traveling all around the earth in private cars, and special trains, and in their steam yachts, in the winter cruising in the Mediterranean and up the Nile and in summer going to North Cape and Alaska, visiting the world’s famous sanitariums to drink the waters which are supposed to counteract the diseases with which they are afflicted, and they will bring doctors from both sides of the Atlantic to stand by their beds.

     It you should meet with an accident which would require a surgical operation or your life would be despaired of, there is not a man here but that would gladly part with all the money he has if that would give him the assurance that he could live twelve months longer.

     It you had all the money in the world you couldn’t go to the graveyard and put that loved one back in your arms and have them sit once more around the family circle and hear their voices and listen to their prattle.

Futility of Money.

     A steamer tied up at her wharf, having just returned from an expedition, and as the people walked down the plank their friends met them to congratulate them on their success or encourage them through their defeat, when down came a man I used to know in Fargo, N.D.

     Friends rushed up and said: “Why, we hear that you were very fortunate.”

     “Yes, wife and I left here six months ago with hardly anything. Now we have $350,000 in gold dust in the hold of the ship.”

     Then somebody looked around and said, “Mr. L—, where is your little boy?”

     The tears rolled down his cheeks and he said, “We left him buried on the banks of the Yukon beneath the snow and ice, and we would gladly part with all the gold if we only had our boy.”

     But all the wealth of the Klondike could not open the grave and put that child back in their arms. Money can’t buy the peace of God that passeth understanding. Money can’t take the sin out of your life.

Want to Live and Learn.

     Is there any particular kind of life you would like? If you could live 100 years you wouldn’t want to die, would you? I wouldn’t. I think there is always something the matter with a fellow that wants to die.

     I want to stay as long as God will let me stay, but when God’s time comes for me to go I’m ready, any hour of the day or night. God can waken me at midnight or in the morning and I’m ready to go beyond.

     But if I could live 1,000,000 years I’d like to stay. I don’t want to die. I’m having a good time. God made this world for us to have a good time in. It’s nothing but sin that has damned the world and brought it to misery and corruption. God wants you to have a good time.

     Well, then, how can I get this life that you want and everybody wants—eternal life.

     If you are ill the most natural thing for you to do is to go for your doctor. He it is whom you phone any hour of the day or night, and then you let him whistle for his money.

     You ought to be as anxious to pay his bill as you are to get him there. You think he is awfully slow about getting there, and he thinks you are slow about paying your bill.

     You go to your doctor and you say, “Doctor, I’ve been thinking it over. I don’t want to die. Can you help me?”

     He looks at you and says, “I have 100 patients on my hands all asking the same thing. None one of them wants to die. They ask me to use my skill and bring to bear all I have learned, but I can’t fight back death. I can prescribe for your malady, but I can’t prevent death.”

     Well, go to your philosopher. He it is that reasons out the problems and mysteries of life by the application of reason. Say to him:

     “Good Philosopher, I have come to you for help. I want to live forever, and you say that you have the touchstone of philosophy, and that you can describe and solve. Can you help me?”

     He says to you, “Young man, my hair and my beard have grown long and as white as snow, my eyes are dim, my brow is wrinkled, my form bent with the weight of years, my bones are brittle and I am just as far from the solution of that mystery and problem as when I started. I, too, sir, must soon die and sleep beneath the sod.”

Cannot Bribe Death.

     I go to the millionaire, and I say, “O, man of wealth, you will not die, you can bribe death. You bribed legislatures, city councils, you have bribed the lawmakers and Congressmen. Certainly you can bribe death! Tell me, I want to live forever.”

     He says, “I can hire the best doctors on both sides of the Atlantic and I can bring to my bedside the skill of the world, but ah! they can’t prolong my life.”

     In my imagination I have stood by the bedside of the dying Pullman palace car magnate, George M. Pullman, whose will was probated at $25,000,000, and I have said, “Oh, Mr. Pullman, you will not die, you can bribe death.”

     And I see the pupils of his eyes dilate, his breast heaves, he gasps—and is no more.

     The undertaker comes and makes in incision in his left arm, pumps in the embalming fluid, beneath whose mysterious power he turns as rigid as ice, and as white as alaster and they put his embalmed body in the rosewood, jeweled coffin trimmed with silver and gold, and then they put that in a hermetically sealed casket.

     The grave diggers go to Graceland Cemetery, on the shores of Lake Michigan, and dig his grave in the old family lot, nine feet wide, and they put in there portland cement four and a half feet thick, while it is yet soft, pliable and plastic, a set of workmen drop down into the grave a steel cage with steel bars one inch apart.

     They bring his body, in the hermetically sealed casket, all wrapped about with cloth, and they lower it into the steel cage, and a set of workmen put steel bars across the top and another put concrete and a solid wall of masonry, and they bring it up within eighteen inches of the surface. They put back the black loamy soil, then they roll back the sod and with a whisk broom and dust pan they sweep up the dirt, and you would never know that there sleeps the Pullman palace car magnate, waiting for the trumpet of Gabriel to sound, for the powers of God will snap his steel, cemented sarcophagus as though it were made of a shell and he will stand before God as any other sinner.

     What does your money amount to? What does your wealth amount to?

Cannot Prolong Life.

     I summon the three electrical wizards of the world to my bedside and I say: “Gentlemen, I want to live and I have sent for you to come.”

     And they say to me: “Mr. Sunday, we will flash messages across the sea without wires; we can illuminate your homes and streets of your city and drive your trolley cars, and we can kill men with electricity, but we can’t prolong life.”

     And I summon the great Queen Elizabeth, queen of a country upon which the sun never sets. Three thousand dresses hung in her wardrobe. Her jewels measured by the peck. Dukes, kings, earls, fought for her smiles.

     I stand by her bedside and I hear her cry: “All my possessions for one moment of time.”

     I go to Alexander the Great, who won his first battle when he was 18, king of Macedonia when he was 20. He sat down on the shore of the Aegean Sea, wrapped the drapery of his couch about him and lay down to eternal sleep, the conqueror of an unknown world, when he was 35 years old.

     [I go to Napoleon Bonaparte. Victor Hugo called him the archangel of war. He arose in the air of the nineteenth century like a meteor. His sun rose at Austerlitz; it set at Waterloo. He leaped over the slain of his countrymen to the Presidency of his country; then he was first consul, and then he vaulted to the chair of the Emperor of France.

     But it was the cruel wanton achievement of insatiate and unsanctified am]bition and it led to the barren St. Helena isle. As the storm beat upon the rock once more he fought at the head of his troops at Austerlitz, at Mt. Tabor, and the Pyramids.

     Once more he cried, “I’m still the head of the army,” and he fell back, and the greatest warrior the world has known since the days of Joshua was no more.

     Tonight on the banks of the Seine he lies in his magnificent tomb, with his marshals sleeping where he can summon them, and the battle flags he made famous draped around him, and from the four corners of the earth students and travelers turn aside to do homage to the great military genius.

Only One Way.

     I want to show you the absolute and utter futility of pinning your hope to a lot of fool things that will damn your soul to hell. There is only one way:—

     “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

     Search the annals of time and the pages of history and where do you find promises like that? Only upon the pages of the Bible do you find them.

     You want to live and so do I. You want eternal life and so do I, and I want you to have it.

     The next question I want to ask is, how can you get it? You have seen things that won’t give it to you. How can you get it?

     All you have tonight or ever will have you will come into possession of in one of three ways—honestly, dishonestly, or as a gift. Honestly: You will work and sweat and therefore give an honest equivalent for what you get. Dishonestly: You will steal. Third, as a gift, you will inherit it. And eternal life must come to you in one of these three ways.

     A great many people believe in a high moral standard. They deal honestly in business and are charitable, but if you think that is going to save you, you are the most mistaken man on God’s earth, and you will be the biggest disappointed being that ever lived.

Can’t Hire a Substitute.

     You can’t hire a substitute in religion. You can’t do some deed of kindness or act of philanthropy and substitute that for the necessity of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

     Lots of people will acknowledge their sin in the world, struggle on without Jesus Christ, and do their best to live honorable, upright lives. Your morality will make you a better man or woman, but it will never save your soul in the world.

     Supposing that you had an apple tree that produced sour apples and you wanted to change the nature of it, and you would ask the advice of people. One would say prune it and you would buy a pruning hook and cut off the superfluous limbs. You gather the apples and they are still sour.

     Another man says to fertilize it and you fertilize it and still it doesn’t change the nature of it.

     Another man says spray it to kill the caterpillar, but the apples are sour just the same. Another man says introduce a graft of another variety.

     When I was a little boy, one day my grandfather said to me: “Willie, come on,” and he took a ladder and beeswax, a big jackknife, a saw and some cloth, and we went into the valley.

     He leaned the ladder to a sour crab-apple tree, climbed up and sawed off some of the limbs, split them and shoved in them some little pear sprouts as big as my finger and twice as long, and around them he tied a string and put in some beeswax.

     I said, “Grandpa, what are you doing?”

     He said, “I’m grafting pear sprouts into the sour crop.”

     I said, “What will grow, crabapples or pears?”

     He said, “Pears. I don’t know that I’ll ever live to eat the pear—I hope I may—but I know you will.”

     I lived to see those sprouts which were no longer than my finger grow as large as my limb and I climbed the tree and picked and ate the pears. He introduced a graft of another variety and that changed the nature of the tree.

Man Can Change.

     And so you can[’t] change yourself with books. That which is flesh is flesh, no matter whether it is cultivated flesh or ignorant flesh, or common ordinary flesh. That which is flesh is flesh, and all your lodges, all your money on God Almighty’s dirt can never change your nature.

     I go to Napoleon Bonaparte. Victor Hugo called him the archangel of war. He arose in the air of the nineteenth century like a meteor. His sun rose at Austerlitz; it set at Waterloo. He leaped over the slain of his countrymen to the presidency of his country; then he was first consul, and then he vaulted to the chair of the emperor of France.

     But it was the cruel wanton achievement of insatiate and unsanctified am-

     Never. That’s got to come by and through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the only way you will ever get it changed. We have more people with fool ways trying to get into heaven, and there’s only one way to do, and that is by and through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

     Here are two men. One man born with hereditary tendencies toward bad, a bad father, a bad mother and bad grandparents. He has bad blood in his veins and he turns as naturally to sin as a duck to water.

Only One Way to Save.

     There he is, down and out, a booze fighter and the off-scouring scum of the earth. I go to him in his squalor and want and unhappiness, and say to him: “God has included all that sin that He may have mercy on all. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Will you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior?”

     “Whosoever cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,” and that man says to me, “No, I don’t want your Christ as my Savior.”

     Here is a man with hereditary tendencies toward good, a good father, a good mother, good grandparents, lived in a good neighborhood, was taught to go to Sunday school and has grown up to be a good, earnest, upright, virtuous, responsible business man; his name is synonymous with all that is pure and kind, and true. His name is as good as a government bond at any bank for a reasonable amount. Everybody respects him. He is generous, charitable and kind.

     I go to your high-toned, cultured, respectable man and say to him: “God hath included all under sin that He might have mercy upon all. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. ‘Whosoever cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.’ Will you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior? Will you give me your hand?”

     He says, “No, sir; I don’t want your Christ.”

     What’s the difference between those two men? Absolutely none. They are both lost. Both are going to hell.

     God hasn’t one way of saving the one and another way of saving the other fellow. God will save that man if he accepts Christ and He will do the same for the other fellow.

     That man is a sinner and this man is a sinner. That man is lower down in sin than this man, but they both say “No” to Jesus Christ, and they are both lost or God is a liar.

Morality Won’t Save.

     Morality doesn’t save anybody. Your culture doesn’t save you. I don’t care who you are or how good you are, if you reject Jesus Christ you are doomed.

     God hasn’t one plan of salvation for the millionaire and another for the hobo. He has the same plan for everybody. God isn’t going to ask you whether you like it or not, either. He isn’t going to ask you your opinion of His plan. There it is, and we’ll have to take it as God gives it.

     You come across a lot of fools who say there are hypocrites in the church. What difference does that make? Are you the first person that has found that out and are you fool enough to go to hell because they are going to hell? If you are, don’t come to me and expect me to think you have any sense. Not at all. Not for a minute.

     A good many people attend church because it adds a little bit to their respectability. That is proof positive to me that the Gospel is a good thing. This is a day when good things are counterfeited.

     You never saw anybody counterfeiting brown paper. No, it isn’t worth it. You have seen them counterfeiting Christians? Yes. You have seen counterfeit money? Yes. You never saw a counterfeit infidel. Why? The reason is obvious.

     You say they counterfeit money? Certainly. The United States Government has same of the sleekest counterfeiters in this country on its pay roll. Uncle Sam has found out that it is a good deal easier to pay some of these fellows a big salary than it is to hunt them down, and you would be dumfounded if I would tell you how much he pays some counterfeiters.

     They counterfeit religion. Certainly. A hypocrite is a counterfeit. But there is one class of these people that I haven’t very much respect for. They are so good, so very good, that they are absolutely good for nothing.

     Like a woman came to me and said: “Mr. Sunday, I haven’t sinned in ten years.”

     I said: “You lie, I think.”

     Well, a man says: “Look here, there must be something in morality, because so many people trust in it.”

     Would vice become virtue because more people follow it? Simply because more people follow it doesn’t make a wrong right, not at all.

Respectability Not Salvation.

     A friend mine told me that he one time went into a man’s house and he took him into a place where he had pulleys, and shaftings, and bearings, and contrivances of all kinds, and my friend said: “What are you doing?”

     He said as be stroked his spinach: “I’m trying to discover perpetual motion.”

     “Why,” said my friend. “How long have you been at it?”

     “Eighteen years.”

     “Why have you fooled away eighteen years of your time?”

     “Don’t you think it can be done?”

     “Unless you can discover some law whereby you can prevent the laws of nature, you are just wasting and fooling away your time.”

     “Does it ever exist?”

     “Oh, no; only in some man’s imagination.”

     That’s where salvation exists. A lot of people think because they do thus and so, that’s salvation. Your money and your respectability are not salvation. That’s not doing what God tells you to do.

     There was an old Spaniard, Ponce De Leon, who searched through the glades of Florida. He thought away out there in the midst of the tropical vegetation was a fount of perpetual youth, which, if he could only find and dip beneath its waters it would smooth the wrinkles from his brow, his gray hair would turn like the raven’s wing.

     Did he ever find it? No. It never existed. It was all imagination.

     And there are people today searching for something that doesn’t exist. Salvation doesn’t exist in morality, in reformation, in paying your debts. It doesn’t exist in being true to your marriage vows. It is only by repentance and faith in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and some of you fellows have searched for it until you are gray-haired, and you will never find it because it only exists in one phase—repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Wheat or Diamonds?

     Supposing I had in my hand a number of kernels of wheat. In this hand I had a number of diamonds equal in number and size to the kernels of wheat.

     “I would say, “Take your choice.” Nine out of ten would take the diamonds.

     I would say, “Diamonds are worth more than wheat.”

     So they are, now, but you take those diamonds, they will never grow, never add. But I can take a handful of wheat, sow it, and fecundated by the rays of the sun and the moisture, it will grow and in a few years I have what’s worth all the diamonds in the world, for wheat contains the power of life; wheat can reproduce and diamonds can’t; they’re not life.

     A diamond is simply a piece of charcoal changed by the mysterious process of nature, but has no life. Wheat has life. Wheat can grow.

     You can take a moral man: he may shine and glisten and sparkle like a diamond. He may outshine in his beauty the Christian man.

     But he will never be anything else. His morality can never grow. It has no life, but the man who is a Christian has life. He has eternal life. Your morality is a fine thing until death comes, then it’s lost and you are lost. Your diamond is a fine thing to carry until it’s lost and of what value is it then? Of what value is your morality when your soul is lost[?]

     Why don’t you stop doing what you think will save you, and do what God says will save you? If there is an honest man or woman that have been trusting in their morality and culture and your circumspect life, if you think these are enough to save you, you can’t go out of here and believe they do and be an honest man or woman.

     I will wipe the cobwebs from your vision and knock the foundation from beneath your feet and you will have nothing to stand on, and the waves of God are washing that from beneath your feet.

High State of Cultivation.

     I have been riding and driving out into the country and I have seen the beautiful scenery of your hills and looked upon your rich land.

     Supposing I go out in the spring and I see two farmers living across the road from each other. One man plows his field and then harrows and puts on the roller, gets it all fine and then he plants the corn or drills in the oats. I come back in the fall and that man has gathered his crop into the barn and the granaries and has hay stacked around the barn.

     The other fellow is plowing and puts the roller on and gets his ground in good shape. I come back in the fall, and he is still doing the same thing.

     I say, “What are you doing?”

     He says, “Well, I believe in a high state of cultivation.”

     I say: “Look at your neighbor. See what he has. A barn full of grain.”

     “Yes.”

     “More stock.”

     “Yes.”

     “But,” he says, “look at the weeds. You don’t see any weeds like that on my place. Why, he had to burn the weeds before he could find the potatoes to dig them. The weeds were as high as the corn.

     I say: “I’ll agree with you that he has raised some weeds, but he has raised corn as well.”

     What is that ground worth without seed in it? No more than your life is worth without having Jesus Christ in it. You will starve to death it you don’t put seed in the ground. Plowing the ground without putting in the seed doesn’t amount to a snap of the finger.

     So, simply ridding your life of the weeds of sin and not planting Jesus Christ is of no more value to you than a piece of ground is to a farmer without seed in it. And yet that is exactly what multitudes of people are doing.

     Some fellow is a booze-fighter: he pulls that weed up and throws it away. Yes, but he doesn’t plant Jesus Christ. How is he going to win out? He is lost.

     Now, you know, some people think that religion is a sort of—well, that God will be so pleased with their attainments that He will grant them salvation as a sort of reward for merit.

     You just dismiss the idea that God owes you salvation. He gives you the opportunity, and if you don’t improve it you will go to hell. You get out of your head as quickly as you can the idea that God owes you salvation.

     Some people seem to think that God will be so pleased with their culture, so pleased with their superior attainments as a reward of merit.

Rewards of Merit.

     When I was a little boy out in Iowa at the end of the term of school it was customary for the teachers to give us little cards, with a hand in one corner holding a scroll, and in that scroll was a place to write the name, “Willie Sunday, good boy.”

     Willie Sunday never got hump-shouldered lugging them home, I can tell you. I never carried off the champion long-distance belt for verse quoting, either. If you ever saw an American kid, I was one. Yes, sir.

     A friend of mine told me he was one time being driven along the banks of the Hudson and they went past a beautiful farm, and there, sitting on the fence in front of a tree, in which was fastened a mirror about twelve inches square, sat a bird of paradise that that was looking into the mirror, adjusting its plumage and admiring himself, and the farmer who had driven my friends out said that every time he passed those birds were doing that.

     I thought, “Well, that reminds me of a whole lot of fools I’m fortunate enough to meet everywhere. They sit before the mirror of culture, and their mirror of money, and their mirror of superior education and attainments, they are married into some old families. What does God care about that?”

     I expect some of you spend a whole lot of money to plant a family tree, but I expect you keep to the back the limbs on which some of your ancestors were hanged for stealing horses.

     You are mistaken in God’s plan of salvation. Some people seem to think God is like a great big bookkeeper in heaven and that He has a whole lot of angels as assistants. Every time you do a good thing He writes it down on one page and every time you do a bad deed He writes it down on the opposite page, and when you die He draws a line and adds them up. If you have done more good things than bad you go to heaven; more bad things than good, go to hell.

     You would be dumfounded how many people have sense about other things that haven’t any sense about religion. As though that was God’s plan of redemption! Your admission into Heaven depends upon your acceptance of Jesus Christ; reject Him and God says you will be damned.

Noah and the Ark.

     Back in the time of Noah I have no doubt there were a lot of good folks in those days. There was Noah. God says: “Look here, Noah, I’m going to drown this world with a flood and I want you to go to work and make an ark.”

     And Noah starts to make it according to God’s instructions, and he pounded and sawed, and drove nails, and worked for 120 years, and I have often imagined the comments of the gang in an automobile going by.

     They say, “Look at the old fool Noah building an ark. Does he ever expect God’s going to get water enough to float that?”

     Along comes another crowd and one says: “That Noah bunch is getting daffy on religion. I think we’d better take them before the commission and pass upon their sanity.”

     Along comes another crowd and they say: “Well, there’s that Noah crowd. I guess we won’t invite them to our card party after Lent is over.” They said: “Why, they’re too religious. We’ll just let them alone.”

     Noah paid no heed to their criticism, but went on working until he got through. God gave the crowd a chance, but they didn’t heed. It started to rain and it rained and rained until the rivers and creeks leaped their banks and the lowlands were flooded. Then the people began to move to the hilltops. The water began to creep up the hills, then I can see the people hurrying off to lumber yards to buy lumber to build little rafts of their own, for they began to see that Noah wasn’t such a fool after all.

     The hilltops became inundated and it crept to the mountains and the mountains became submerged. Until the flood came that crowd was just as well off as Noah, but when the flood struck them Noah was saved and they were lost, because Noah trusted God and they trusted in themselves.

     You moral men, you may be just as well off as the Christian until death knocks you down, then you are lost, because you trust in your morality. The Christian is saved because he trusts in Jesus. Do you see where you lose out?

     Some people, you know, want to wash their sins and they whitewash them, but God wants them white, and there’s a lot of difference between being “whitewashed” and “washed white.”

     Not only does God promise you salvation on the grounds that you repent and accept Christ, but He offers you eternal life as a gift.

     Supposing I was at one of your banks this morning and they gave me $25 in gold. Supposing I would put fifty of your reputable citizens on this platform and they would all substantiate what I say, and supposing I would be authorised by the bank to say that they would give every man and woman that stands in line in front of that bank at 9 o’clock in the morning $25 in gold.

     If I could stand up there and make that announcement in Atlanta with confidence in my word, people would line the streets and string away back to the suburbs, waiting for the bank to open.

A Place for You.

     I can stand here and tell you that God offers you salvation through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and that you must accept it or be lost, and you will stand up and argue the question, as though your argument can change God’s plan.

     You never can do it. Not only has God promised you salvation on the grounds of your acceptance of Jesus Christ as your Savior, but He has promised to give you a home in which to spend eternity.

     Listen! “In my father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

     Some people say Heaven is a state or condition. I don’t believe it. It might possibly be better to be in a heavenly state than in a heavenly place. It might be better to be in hell in a heavenly state, or the home, than to be in heaven in a hellish state. That may be true.

     Heaven is as much a place as the home to which you are going when I dismiss the meeting is a place. “I go to prepare a PLACE for you.”

     Heaven is a place where there are going to be some fine folks. Abraham will be there, and I’m going up to see him. Noah, Moses, Joseph, Jacob, Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, Paul, John, Peter, James, Samuel, Martin Luther, Spurgeon, Calvin, Moody. Oh, heaven is a place where there will be a grand and noble people, and all who believe in Jesus Christ will be there.

     Wouldn’t old Atlanta be a grand place to live in if you would only get rid of some people that live in the city? If they would only die, or get converted, or move away, Atlanta would be a great place.

No Curses in Heaven.

     The booze fighter won’t be in Heaven; he is here. The skeptic won’t be there; he is here. There’ll be nobody to run booze joints or gambling hells in Heaven. Heaven will be place of grand and noble people, who love Jesus.

     The beloved wife will meet her husband. Mother, you will meet your babe again that you have been separated from for years or months.

     Heaven will be free from everything that curses and damns this old world here. Wouldn’t this be a grand old world if it weren’t for a lot of things in it? Can you conceive anything being grander than this world if it hadn’t a lot of things in it? The only thing that makes Atlanta a decent place to live in is the religion of Jesus Christ. There isn’t a man that would live in it if you took religion out.

     Your mills would rot on their foundations if there were no Christian people of influence here.

     There will be no sickness in heaven, no pain, no sin, no poverty, no want, no death, no grinding toil. There remaineth rest for the people of God.

     I tell you there are a good many poor men and women that never have any rest. They have had to get up early in the morning and work all day, but in heaven there remaineth a rest for the people of God. Weary women that start out early to their daily toil. You won’t have to get out and toil all day. No toil in heaven, no sickness.

     “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” You will not be standing watching with a heart filled with expectation, and doubt, and hope. No watching the undertaker screw the coffin lid over your loved one, or watching the pallbearers carrying out the coffin and hearing the preacher say, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” None of that in heaven.

     Heaven—that is a place He has gone to prepare for those who will do His kill and keep His commandments and turn from their sin.

     Isn’t it great? Everything will be perfect in heaven. Down here we only know, in part, but there we will know as we are known. It is a city that hath foundation.

     Here we have no continuing state. Look at your beautiful homes. You admire them. The next time you go up your avenues and streets look at the homes. But they are going to rot on their foundations. Every one of them.

     Where are you tonight, old Eternal City of Rome on your seven hills? Where are you? Only a memory of your glory. Where have they all gone? The homes will crumble.

The Saint From Earth.

     Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him. That is a complete biography of Enoch.

     Elijah was wafted to heaven in a chariot of fire and Elisha took up the mantle of the prophet Elijah and smote the Jordan and went back to the seminary where Elijah had taught and told the people there, and they would not believe him, and they looked for him, but they found him not.

     Centuries later it was not privilege of Peter, James and John in the company of Jesus Christ, on the Mount of Transfiguration to look into the face of that same Elijah who centuries before had walked the hill tops and slain 450 of the prophets of Baal.

     Stephen, as they stoned him to death, his face lighted up and he saw Jesus standing on the right hand of God the Father, the place where He had designated, before His crucifixion, would be His abiding place until the fulfillment of the time of the Gentiles in the world.

     Among the last declarations of Jesus is “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

     What a comfort to the bereaved and afflicted! Not only had God provided salvation through faith in Jesus Christ as a gift from God’s outstretched hand, but He provided a home in which you can spend eternity. He has provided a home for you.

     Surely, surely, friends of Atlanta, we surely, from the beginning of the history of man, from the time Enoch walked with God and was not, until John, on the Island of Patmas, saw let down by God out of heaven the new Jerusalem, had ample proof that heaven is a place.

     Although we cannot see it with the natural eyes, it is a place, the dwelling place of God and of the angels and of the redeemed through faith in the Son of God.

     He says, “I go to prepare a place for you.”

Does Not Expect Long Life.

     People sometimes ask me, “Who do you think will die first, Mr. Sunday, you or your wife, or your children, or your mother?”

     I don’t know. I think I will. I never expect to be an old man. I work too hard. I burn up more energy preaching in an hour than any other man will burn up in ten or twelve hours. I never expect to be an old man.

     I don’t expect to, but I know this much: if my wife or my babies should go first this old world would be a dark place for me and I would be glad when God summoned me to leave it, and if I left first I know they would be glad when God called them home.

     If I go first, I know after I go up and take Jesus by the hand and say, “Jesus, thank You, I’m glad You honored me with the privilege of preaching Your gospel; I wish I could have done it better, but I did my best, and now, Jesus, if You don’t care, I’d like to hang around the gate and be the first to welcome my wife and the babies when they come. Do you care, Jesus, if I sit there?”

     And He will say, “No, you can sit right there, Bill, if you want to; it’s all right.”

     I’ll say, “Thank you, Lord.”

     If they would go first, I think after they would go up and thank Jesus that they are home, they would say:

     “Jesus, I wish you would hurry up and bring papa home. He doesn’t want to stay down there because we are up here.”

     They would go around and put their grips away in their room, wherever it is, and then they would say:

     “Can we sit here, Jesus?”

     “Yes, that’s all right.”

Pictures Home Coming.

     I don’t know where I’ll live when I get to heaven. I don’t know whether I’ll live on a main street or an avenue or a boulevard.

     I don’t know where I’ll live when I get to heaven. I don’t know whether it will be in the back alley, or where, but I’ll just be glad to get there. I’ll be thankful for the mansion wherever God provides it.

     I never like to think about heaven as a great, big tenement house, where they put hundreds of people under one roof, like we do in Chicago or other big cities. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

     And so it will be up in heaven, and I’ll be glad, awfully glad, and I tell you I think if my wife and children go first, the children might be off some place playing, but the wife would be right there, and I would meet her and say:

     “Why, wife, where are the children?”

     She would say, “Why, they are playing on the banks of the river.” (We are told about the river that flows from the throne of God.)

     We would walk down, and I would say, “Hello, Helen! Hey, George. Hey, Willsky; bring the baby; come on.”

     And they would come tearing like they do now when I come home from a trip like this. They will all be awaiting and all will fight for the first kiss, and I tell you one of the happiest days of my life is when I finish an evangelistic engagement in a town, get my ticket, check my trunk, and the people say, “Where are you going?”

     Home. I’m going home.

     The hardest cross I have to bear is to leave my wife and children and go up and down this country to preach. You never looked into the face of a man that loves his home more than I do.

     I would say: “Wife, where are the children?”

     “Down on the banks of the river.”

     They would come up and say: “I’m glad to see you. Well, where do we live?”

     “Right around here: come on, pop, there’s our mansion.”

     I would say, “Have you seen Fred, or Rody, or Peacock, or Ackley, or any of them.”

     “Yes. They live right around near us.”

     “George, you run down and tell Fred I’ve come, will you? Hunt up Rody and Peacock and Ackley and Fred, and see if you can find Francis around there, and tell them I’ve just come in.”

     And they would come and I would say: “How are you? Glad to see you. Feeling first-rate.”

Will Sing Old Hymns.

     “How did you get here?”

     “Just came a-sailing; I tell you it was great.”

     “When did you leave the earth?”

     “Last night at 6 o’clock.”

     “Well, Rody, are there a lot of folks here from Atlanta?”

     “Lots of them.”

     “See if you can round some of them up and sing some of the hymns we used to sing down there when we were holding that meeting in Atlanta 40,000 years ago.”

     Some good sister would come up and say, “Brother Sunday, I’m from Atlanta.”

     “Good; I’m glad to see you.”

     Another would say: “I’m from Atlanta.”

     “I’m delighted.”

     Another from Toronto.

     “We are going to sing some of the hymns we sang when we held that meeting in Atlanta 40,000 years ago.”

     “You’re wrong, it was 70,000 years ago we held that meeting.”

     “Well, let’s sing ‘ Brighton the Corner’ and ‘If Your Heart Keeps Right.’”

     And we’ll sing the old hymns, and I’m sure that some of the best songs we will sing in heaven will be some of the songs we have learned on earth.

     “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for you.”

     I would say: “Now, uhildren, run away and play a little while. I haven’t seen mother for a long time and we have lots of things to talk about,” and I think we would walk away and sit down under a tree and I would put my head in her lap, like I do now when my head is tired, and I would say,“Wife, a whole lot of folks down there in our old neighborhood have died; have they come to heaven?”

Asks After Old Neighbors.

     “Well, I don’t know. Who has died?”

     “Mr. S. Is he here?”

     “I haven’t seen him.”

     “No? His will probated five million. Bradstreet and Dun rated him AaG. Isn’t he here?”

     “I haven’t seen him.”

     “Is Mr. J. here?”

     “I haven’t seen him.”

     “Haven’t seen him, wife? That’s funny. He left years before I did. Is Mrs. N. here?”

     “No.”

     “You know they lived on River street. Her husband paid $8,000 for a lot and $60,000 for a house. He paid $2,000 for a bathroom. Mosaic floor and the finest of fixtures. You know, wife, she always came to church late, and would drive up in her carriage, and she would sweep down the aisle and you would think all the perfume of Arabia had floated in, and she had diamonds in her ears as big as pebbles. Is she here?”

     “I haven’t seen her.”

     “Well! Well! Is Aunty Griffith here?”

     “Yes. Aunty lives next to us.”

     “I knew she would be here. Gold bless her heart! She had two big, lazy, drunken louts of boys that didn’t care for her and the church supported her for sixteen years to my knowledge and they put her in the home for old people. Hello, yonder she comes. How are you, Aunty?”

     She will say: “How are you, William?”

     “I’m first-rate.”

     “Mon, yo look natural just the same.”

     “Yes.”

     “And when did yo leave, Wally?”

     “Last night, Aunty.”

     “I’m awfully glad to see you, and, Wally, I live right next door to you, mon.”

     “Good, Aunty, I knew God would let you in. My, where’s mother, wife?”

     “She’s here.”

     “I know she’s here; I wish she would come. Helen, is that mother coming down the hill?”

     “Yes.”

All Is Perfect In Heaven.

     And, oh, what a time we’ll have in heaven!

     Say, in heaven they never mar the hillsides with spades, for they dig no graves. In heaven, they never telephone for the doctor, for nobody gets sick. In heaven no one carries handkerchiefs, for nobody cries.

     In heaven they never phone for the undertaker, for nobody dies. In heaven you will never see a funeral procession going down the street, nor crepe hanging from the door knob.

     In heaven none of the things that enter your home here will enter there. Sickness won’t get in, death won’t get in, nor sorrow, because “Former things have passed away,” all things have become new.

     In heaven the flowers never fade, the winter winds and blasts never blow. The rivers never congeal, never freeze, for it never gets cold. No, sir.

     Say, don’t let God be compelled to hang a “For Rent” sign in the window of the mansion He has prepared for you.

     I would walk around with Him and I’d say, “Whose mansion is that, Jesus?”

     “Why, I had that for one of the rich men in Atlanta, but he passed it up.”

     “Who’s that one for?”

     “That was for a doctor, but he did not take it.”

     “Who’s that one for?”

     “That was for one of the school teachers, but she didn’t come.”

     “Who is that one for, Jesus?

     “That was for an Atlanta man, but he didn’t want it.”

     “Who is that one for?

     “That was for a booze fighter in Atlanta, but he wouldn’t pass up the business. That one was for a libertine, but he thought more of propagating his infamy with women than of praying.”

     Don’t let God hang a “For Rent” sign in the mansion that He has prepared for you.

     Just send up word tonight and say, “Jesus, I’ve changed my mind; just put my name down for that, will you? I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Atlanta Constitution, December 23, 1917, 8A.
(Text in square brackets is supplied from the text in the Hearst’s Sunday American (Sunday edition of the Atlanta Georgian), December 23, 1917, fourth edition, 6D–7D.)

49. Resolutions from the Colored Evangelical Ministers Union upon the Invaluable Services of Billy Sunday in Atlanta

Submitted by P. James Bryant and Approved by the Unions [December? 1917?]

     Whereas: the white Evangelistic Capmaign Committee composed of the Ministers of the Evangelical churches, Y.M.C.A/. workers leading laymen, business men and community leaders by a unanimity of purpose and co-operation of effort organized the city and secured the Godly services of the Rev. William Ashby Sunday, “Ma” Sunday, Brother Homer. A. Rodeheaver, and staff to conduct the largest, most effectual and far-reaching revival in the history of our city.

     And Whereas: the Ministry of Brother Sunday and staff has been a benediction to the city at large, affecting all races and classes and conditions of our hetero genious citizenry.

     And Whereas: by request of the colored Evangelical Ministers Union and by mutual agreement of the local committee and Brother Sunday and his staff, the same gospel has been preached and the same expert christian service has been rendered to us at the Tabernacle, and in our schools and churches that was given to the Whites.

     Therefore be it resolved: that we the representatives and leaders of the 20 thousand members in our Atlanta churches and schools hereby express to Brother Sunday our profound gratitude for the service he has rendered our community and for the sagacious, orthordox, evangelical, ethical and intensely practical gospel messages he has delivered to us as a race. That we put our stamp of approval upon Brother Sunday as an iconoclast like John the Baptist, as an evangelist like the Apostle Paul, as a doctrinarian like St Paul, as a loving and lovable counsellor like St John, and a hypnotic athletic dynamic, linguistic, spell-binding, militant, gospel Ambassador like himself.

     Resolved further: that we extend to “Ma” Sunday, Misses Gamlin, Kinney, Saxe, Miller, Mrs Asher, Messers Rodeheaver, Matthews, Peterson, George Sunday, and Dr Isaac Ward, and Mr Brewster.

     Resolved also: that our thanks and commendation be and are hereby extended to the committee of mang[. . .]nt, ushers and white people in general not excepting the Street car force, the brotherly and neighborly consideration shown and feeling exhibited at all these meetings.

     Resolved further: that we thank and put our endorsement upon the White and Colored press of the city, with the exception of the Atlanta Independent for the unlimited space accorded and the unanimity with which they co-operated with the White and Colored Ministers, the white and colored churches, the white and colored business men, the white and colored wives and mothers in making this the greatest, most constructive reformatory and transformatory revival ever held in our city or State or beloved Southland.

     We herewith assure Billy Sunday of our sympathy, prayer, and commend him to the christian brotherhood throughout the world.

     Resolved finally: that we congratulate ourselves upon the great meetings held, and the glorious privilege accorded us to come in personal contact with this gospel dynamo.

     Prayerfully submitted,

     The Evangelical Ministers Union

     E P Johnson— Pres Reed St Bapt Ch.
     J A Lindsay—Sec Allen Temple AME
     P. James Bryant Wheat St Bapt Church
     W H Nelson Butler St. C.M.E
     W. E. Williams Holsey Temple CM
     W. A. Fountain—Morris Brown Union
     R. H Singleton—Big Bethel M.E
     J. W. Williams
     E. G. Hirst
     N S Morris
     Bishop L. H. Holsey—C M.E
     S. E. Gore, T. G. Ballou, H. H Coleman
     C H. Robinson

The Papers of William and Helen Sunday, box 1, fol. 26, Morgan Library, Grace College and Theological
Seminary, Winona Lake, Indiana (microfilm edition, reel 1). Used by permission. All rights reserved.

50. Lula R. Rhodes Testimonial [December? 1917?]

     I want to say a few words about Mr. Billy Sunday’s trip to Atlanta. Mr. Billy Sunday is a man prepared to handle God’s work in any way, shape, form or fashion. He has the instruments along for any kind of disease caused by sin—if it takes pre aching, he has it, if it takes singing he has it, if it takes music, he has it if it takes the heavy voice of a man, he has it, or if it takes thetender smile and soft voice of a woman he has it.

     Did you ever look into s ch wonderful faces as Mr. Sundays and his co-workers? Not a frown on their faces; every man is at his post of duty and doing his work well. He is the greatest blessing the colored people have had since “freedom” came out; he is not out for any special race but just out to save souls for Christ. There is something peculiar about Mr. Sunday—it’s like religion, you can see it but you can’t tell, you can feel it but you can’t explain it. He is a wonderful man, loved by everybody, and those that think they dislike him are mistakenthey think th y dislike him is because Mr. Sunday throws on the Salvation Searchlight andlets them look into the “Gospel Looking Glass” they see their own sins and hate them, and they think they hate Mr. Sunday bu it is only their own sins, because he shows it to them so plainly.

     There is not a man living who can utter the things Mr. Sunday’s does unless he is a Christian, and everybody enjoys Mr. Sunday in some way, but to enjoy him in full and understand him you must have the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. He practices what he preaches—it is not a “put on” that he enjoys being with the colored people. You feel perfectly at home in his presence. He makes you feel so by his kind words and actions.

     I had the pleasure of shaking hands with Ex President Taft when he spoke at Bethel Chruch to the colored people and felt good over it, but when I shook hands with Mr. Sunday I felt that I had shaken hands with one greater than Taft. I enjoy seeing Mr. Sunday so much impressed with our singing and way of worshiping. We are just as sincere in it as he is in his way, and I believe he looks at it in that way. Mr. Sunday has knocked off more bumps, has filled in more ditches, cleaned up more new ground since he has been in Atlanta than anyone else since Lincoln signed freedom.

     It does not take anything except the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ to solve this race problem and such men as Mr. Sunday to spread it abroad. A man that fears God and values the soul of a man higher than rubies or diamonds. Every walk of life has been blessed by the coming of Mr. Billy Sunday from the man that sweep the streets to the man that own and control the banks. There is so many good things that Mr. Sunday has done that it would take too much of the papers to print it, but I am compelled to speak about this one, and when you look into it you will findit is true. Christ knew Zacharias wanted to see him beforehe left Jericho —he could have gone another way, but Christ always, when you want to see him, will come your way. Zacharias was anxious to see Christ from what he had heard about him and from the miracles he had wrought, so he put himself in the way so that he might see Jesus when he passed for he felt confident that Jesus could heal him, and so it was with Mr. Sunday when he went to Cartersville, Ga. He was the guest of Mr s. Sam Jones, naturally he was, of course, entertained by the white people but he knew the servants wanted to see him, as they has heard so much of Mr. Billy Sunday, they were as anxious to see him as Zacharias was to see Christ. So Christlike was he that the coffee suited his taste, and without a word to anyone he finishedhis dinner, and left the table, hunting the one that made that good coffee, sim ply becaus e he knew they wanted to see him. Mr. Sunday always makes an impression whereever he goes.

     At a Saturday meeting he preached for us the “Booze sermon” which we all enjoyed to the fullest. During his sermon he called three little b oys to the platform to demonstrate some thought; he did not hesitate to handle them because they were colored boys, and he could not have shown more curtesy to his own child. When he was thru with them he told Mr. Rodeheaver and “Ma” Sunday to pay them off. Now Mr. Sunday has made an impression on the children and he could now get every colored child to follow him for his kind treatment. It is the same with all the colored people. When Christ was on earth there were three classes of people he had to contend with—the Judas class, they were nothing—the Pharisee class, they were nothing, but the c[. . .] that followed Christ is the crowd that we represent, that is following Mr. Sunday and that crowd is in the majority and will always conquer. They say yu will be rewarded in heaven with starts in your crown, well, one of the things I want to see when I get to heaven is how the Lord arranged the stars in Mr Sunday’s crown for his work in Atlanta and other parts of the world. I would have liked to have gotten in my temperance song but Mr. Rodeheaver was there with his “Brewer’s Big Horses” and I could not hav them run over me., and Mr. Matthews and Mr. Brewer would have drown me out, so I just sat and listened.

     What I say about Mr. Sunday I mean to say about his workers, they all have the same interests, each man plays his piece, and plays it well. God bless them wherever they go. I hope he will live to come back to Atlanta again. In saying this I speak for the class of my people who represent the class of the eleven disciples.

     I talk Mr. Sunday on the street cars, I talk him on the streets of Atlanta, I have talked him in my ome, and thak the Lord, I can say that I live so that whatever I say has a weight to it. I am loyal to my church, I am faithful to my Savious, and these statements can be proven by my pastor, Dr. E. P. Johnson.

     I can handle Mr. Sunday’s name with a clean hand and heart, and that is why I can rejoice in the Gospel he is preaching.

     I have talked with my pastor and he says that Mr. Sunday is the greatest preacher known.

     Lula R. Rhodes,
     44 Vanira St., Atlanta, Ga.
     Dr E. P. Johnson is my pastor

The Papers of William and Helen Sunday, box 1, fol. 26, Morgan Library, Grace College and Theological
Seminary,Winona Lake, Indiana (microfilm edition, reel 1). Used by permission. All rights reserved.

51. Statistics on Revival Here

     The following accurate statistics on the Billy Sunday campaign in Atlanta were furnished to The Georgian Monday by the Sunday campaign committee:

     Trail hitters at Tabernacle:
Tabernacle, white..............................................................................................................13,629
Negro....................................................................................................................................833

     At boys’ and girls’ meetings:
White.....................................................................................................................................898
Negro....................................................................................................................................158

Total.................................................................................................................................15,518

     These figures include only those who signed cards and turned them in to the secretaries. The number who merely shook hands with Mr. Sunday ran far into the thousands.

     Check given Mr. Sunday, total of free-will offerings, $20,126.14.

     Checks representing $115 arrived Monday, and others are expected. Their total will be mailed to Mr. Sunday.

     The cost of the meetings was:

Tabernacle building.........................................................................................................$25,000
Other expenses.................................................................................................................25,000

Total...............................................................................................................................$50,000

     This was raised by an underwriting fund of $100,000, of which one-fourth was paid in. This, with the amount given in the plates, meets the expenses, and the sale of the building will leave a balance for “conservation” work.

Atlanta Georgian, December 24, 1917, home edition, 9.

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