"I HATE IT! ... THE LIQUOR BUSINESS ..... " by J. Frank Norris

Taken from a sermon October 1946. Dr. Norris quotes Frank Hanley, the great Christian Governor of Indiana:

"I hate it for it's intolerance; I hate it for it's arrogance; it's hypocrisy; it's craft and false pretenses. It's commercialism; it's greed and sacrifice; it's sordid love of gain at any price; it's domination of politics; it's corrupt influence in civic affairs; I hate it for it's incessant effort to debauch the sufferage of the country.

I hate it! The liquor business. For the cowards it makes of public men; I hate it for it's ruthless trampling on the solemn compact of state constitution. I hate it! For it's utter disregard of law. For the load that it straps on labor's back. For the palsied hands that it gives to the toiler. It's wounds congeal; it's tragedies are mighty; the human wrecks it has caused; the alms houses it has peopled; the prisons it fills; the insanity it begets; the countless graves in potter's fields; the mental ruin it imposes upon it's victims.

I hate it's spiritual blight! It's moral degradation; the crimes it has committed; the homes it has wrecked; the hearts it has broken.

I hate it for the malice it has planted in the hearts of men.

I hate it!"


HABAKKUK 2:15 ..... Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!