From: We Should Improve Our Communities
LIQUOR LAW
We’ve had another law on our books with reference to liquor, and there was an effort made to expand the present liquor law to the detriment of the people. Nobody had to ask anybody any questions as to where the right and the wrong were to be found. If there are any Latter-day Saints today who think that the old open saloon is uplifting or would help us build a better community, it must be because they are not old enough to remember the days when we had those institutions in our midst and saw from actual experience the results and the evils, the deterioration that set in, the sorrow and the hardships, that such places of vice brought. So I feel again to commend those in our state legislature who saw fit to vote against any act which had for its purpose the bringing back of the open saloon. They do not call it that now, but that is what it would have been had we had sale of liquor by the drink, and do not let any of us forget that. Let us raise our voices whenever we have the opportunity, and create the opportunity, my brothers and sisters. Let us elect men to office who will be opposed to the institution in our midst of such places of vice as the open saloon. It is bad enough to have to traffic in liquor at all. We certainly should not go farther than we have. If it is necessary, in order to fight this evil, to meet the opposition on the other side, why, then I say to you from the bottom of my heart, let us start fighting for prohibition, for after all, that is what we ought to have to maintain the kind of communities our Heavenly Father would have us maintain in this world, and on this continent, and in this land of his. We cannot hope to receive the blessings of our Heavenly Father here, in as rich abundance as he is willing to give them to us if we do not exercise every power that we have to make this a land choice above all others 1 Ne. 2:20 Prohibition would help to make it that, and the open saloon would make it the contrary.
HORSE RACING BILL
We had one other bill that I would like to speak about in conclusion and that is the horse racing bill. I suppose there is no harm in horse racing, but there is no more insidious vice on earth than gambling. It is destructive of the morals. The man does not live who is strong enough in the faith, I do not care what his past record has been, to start in gambling and continue therein and keep the faith. If there are any people in this state who desire horse racing and the gambling that is incident thereto, we invite them to leave and to go to places where those things can be had. We do not have to have them in our midst. I feel to say that no man can maintain his full standing in this Church and keep his faith and at the same time have anything to do with horse racing and gambling.
Now, brethren, let us take this seriously. In those communities, in this state, where horse racing and gambling have become more or less of an institution, let us use our faith and our courage to eradicate them as such and to elect men to the legislature who will not open the doors to the element that follows horse racing with all the vice and corruption that would come into this state.
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