Reading through old newspapers is a fun dive into the past, which isn’t too different from the present in many cases. Take, for instance, the article below from The Carbon Advocate newspaper on November 22, 1873. In this article, the author likens the rum seller to a murderer and assassin (or worse). It is the same language people use today when describing a drug dealer or even a political party.
Prohibition in the United States was in place from 1920 to 1933. This article is from 1873 – well before the start of prohibition, but you can plainly see that the attitudes against alcohol are present.
The Rum Seller
By Dr. Joseph Cross.
What is murder? Must there be “malice pretense,” with an intention to kill? No. The sacrifice of human life from a sordid love of gain, is often murder in the highest degree. So says Blackstone and all the best expounders of the law. Who then is guilty of blood, if not the rum seller? Does he not vend death for dimes, and perdition for picayunes [picayunes is a coin of little value]? Is he sure that the dram he is now measuring out will not prompt to the murder of a wife or a child, and result in the drinker’s suicide? What cares he, while he can accumulate filthy lucre, how many hopes he blights, how many hearts he breaks, how many homes he desolates, how many cemeteries he peoples with the loathsome victims of his cupidity [cupidity is a greed for things, such as more money]. What, though there be no “malice pretense,” we challenge the rum seller to show a better motive that often impels the midnight assassin!
The rum seller is actuated by mere love of gain; so is the assassin! The rum seller declares he does not like his business; so does the assassin. The rum seller would change his course, had he any other prospect for a living; so would the assassin. “But,” says the rum seller, “I do not steal to my neighbor’s bed and kill him in his sleep.” True: but if you did, the act would be less criminal and less calamitous. Then his victim would die innocently, but now he puts the instrument into his hand and makes him his own murderer. Better than the assassin! The assassin is an angel of mercy in the comparison! The assassin can kill only the body; the rum seller destroys both soul and body, in hell. All the heroes whose deeds are recorded in the annals of persecution could not invent a ruin so complicated and dreadful; a ruin which Satan himself could not achieve without the agency of the rum seller. Oh! class him not with men! He belies every attribute of his species.
Better rank him with wolves, hyenas, alligators and boa constrictors. Money is the goal of his wishes and the god of his worship. Money he will have, though he get it by vending poison, ruin and despair.
He wants but the toleration of law, and the fascination of the coin, and he would vend vipers to your children by the bushel and scorpions by the score. Such is the rum seller, and such is his work. [Source]
