Take Care Of The Boys

[To the Editor of The Registkk.] Sir:- As petitions are in circulation for new legislation en the liquor question, I feel like offering a contribution to the discussion oí this and kindred topics in the interests of our boys, and will open it with the remark that I have always been averse and am still increasingly so to the employment oí either denunciation or landation in this class of discussions. A calm address to the reason is what we need and this only will yield the desired fruit. Let me then first calmly put the question to those parents who do themselves make some use of alcoholic beverages, whether they would not prefer to have their own children brought up in schools protected by legislation and a strict execution of the same against the danger of forming the drinking habit. Please do not answer this question as one put to you by an adversary, against whorn you feel bound to stand on the defensive, but as one put to you by yourselves as to the real interest of your children. I cannot doubt what would be your answer, if you came in this way to the consideration of the subject. Why not, then, sign a petition for legislation which shall protect the state institutions by what is called the five mile act from the danger to which your children and others are exposed? Now you can carry this further at your pleasure and settle your duty in regard to a petition fcr a more sweeping statute. But I did not begin this article for the sole purpose of urging to action with referece to new legislation. I have in mind a social, or it might be better to cali it, a domestic question which statute law cannot reach. I perceive a growing tendency to the forination of clubs. Now divine law has provided for one class of clubs and sorae doubt might be entertained as to its having distinctly founded any other. I refer to the family, though without denouncing subordínate associations for special purposes. I will illustrate by a narrativo. I do not disapprove at all of the concocted story of Johnnie and his father to which theRfiGiSTEK's readers have been treated ; but wishthe reader to understand that my story relates a real occurrance. A few years ago while at a summer resort in the Catskills I was much in the company of an old gentleman and his wife, the former of whom had spent his life as cashier of a bank in New York City. In speaking of the frequefat embezzlements by bank officials and other trustees of funds, I asked him what could be done to prevent these occurrences. His reply was that the effectual and really just preventive would be to hang in front of the bank every one detected in such transactions. I agreed with him that such treatment would be effective and yet I was not quite ready to favor so se veré a measure, and he went on : "I have a nephew," he said, "to whom I gave a place in the bank of which I was cashier, and a home in my family. He soon asked for night-key that he might get into the house if he should be out late. I thought it best to deal with him faithfully and at once and so asked him if he bad joined, or intended to join a club. He acknowledged such intention and asked if I thought there was any harm in the clu.bs. I told him that I did not care to enter the discussion of that question, but thought it best he should know that when he got to spending his evenings at club meetings, his services would be dispensed with in the bank. He concluded to give up the club and attend to his assigned duties in the bank. I think I saved him from ruin." "I am now, " continuod the old man, "past three score and ten. I have spent my life sínce I was old enough in charge of a bank, have had no defalcations in the institution of which I have had the care, and furthermore, am satisfied that these are almost uniformly traceable to the clubs." But does not this theory interfere too much with human freedom? it may be asked. I answer that it is the perfection of freedom. It leaves the employer, wh ether person, or Corporation, free to dismiss an employé when for any reason he is not satisfactory, and it sets the employed at uil liberty to go where he pleases. By closing my papers at this point I may leave readers with wrong impressions as to my views of organization for social purposos; I therefore beg them to reserve their conclusions until they shall find my conviotions on the subject more fully disclosed in a second article. January 28th, 1895.