The True Remedy.
Don’t say that times are pinching,
Don’t say that bread is dear;
Don’t say that our prospects darken,
And that worse times are near.
Times are not so very pinching,
Bread is not so very dear;
Countless stores of loaves are wasted,
Burned in whisky,—drowned in beer.
Don’t say that the harvest failed us,—
“Under average,” “short,” or “light;”
Don’t say that the Bounteous Giver
Gave not as you think he might.
God is bountiful, and giveth
As becomes the Godhead’s hand;
Food for man and beast providing,
Scattering plenty o’er the land.
Man himself, the food destroyer,
Spurns and wastes the bounties given;
Turns to famine God’s abundance,
Robs his brothers, blasphemes heaven.
Don’t say that this is fearful,
Killing men and burning corn;
War is raging here among us,
Day and night, and eve and morn.
Noiselessly and never ending,
In a quiet, legal way,
Murdering, starving, scourging, blasting,
All the year and every day!
Take your grain in million quarters,
Sink it in the lonely main,
There to feed the gaping fishes,
Never to be seen again;
Hide it in earth’s drearest caverns,
Burn it in the mid-day sun:—
That were mercy, that were worship,
When compared with what is done,—
Taking bread from hungry children,
And from starving, weeping wives;
Turning it to direst poison;
Demonizing human nature,
Dwarfing it in moral stature,
Blotting out each God-like feature,
Shortening, tort’ring human lives!
We say, something must be done;
Government must interfere,—
Take the “short and simple method;”
Stop the whisky, stop the beer!
You can stop them if you will.
’Tis a small thing, will you do it?
’Tis your country calls you to it;
Stop the traffic—shut the still.