| Publication information |
|
Source: The Challenge of Pittsburgh Source type: book Document type: book chapter Document title: “Two Supreme Foes of the People, and One Supreme Privilege” [chapter 5] Author(s): Marsh, Daniel L. Publisher: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada Place of publication: New York, New York Year of publication: 1917 Pagination: 145-83 (excerpt below includes only pages 164-65) |
| Citation |
| Marsh, Daniel L. “Two Supreme Foes of the People, and One Supreme Privilege” [chapter 5]. The Challenge of Pittsburgh. New York: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1917: pp. 145-83. |
| Transcription |
| excerpt of chapter |
| Keywords |
| McKinley assassination (religious response); McKinley assassination (personal response: prohibitionists, temperance advocates, etc.); liquor and liquor traffic; presidential assassinations (comparison); crime (dealing with). |
| Named persons |
| Leon Czolgosz; James A. Garfield; Charles J. Guiteau; Andrew Johnson; Abraham Lincoln; William McKinley; Mary Surratt. |
| Notes |
|
The excerpt below comes from section II of the chapter, subtitled “The
Liquor Traffic.”
From title page: By Daniel L. Marsh, Superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church Union of Pittsburgh, and Pastor of Smithfield Street Church. |
| Document |
Two Supreme Foes of the People, and One Supreme Privilege [excerpt]
The Saloon and Crime
Are we interested in abolishing
crime? All the persons implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln were
drunkards, and had been drinking the night that the great President was killed.
The reason which Andrew Johnson gave for refusing executive clemency to Mrs.
Surratt was: “The whole plot to murder Lincoln was hatched in Mrs. Surratt’s
saloon.” President [164][165] Garfield’s assassin,
Charles Guiteau, was a drunkard. The man who killed President McKinley was the
direct spawn of the saloon. Czolgosz was an ex-bartender, was reared in a saloon,
and was at a saloon just before the assassination, and confessed before his
execution that it was the talk he had heard in his father’s saloon that determined
him to murder President McKinley. I have recalled the murder of these illustrious
men only for the sake of emphatic illustration. Eighty-five per cent. of all
the murders committed in Philadelphia last year were due to drink.
Divorce the evil of commercialized vice from the
liquor business, and you have cut its tap-root.