The Dynamite Peril by National Temperance Advocate

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 7, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 18.

The Dynamite Peril.

By National Temperance Advocate

COMMENTING upon the destructive dynamite explosions which have lately startled the civilized world, an exchange says: “As if to prove the futility of mere force as an agent for the regulation of society, and to throw the world back on the necessity for spiritual influences as the controlling power in human affairs, science has armed the dangerous classes with a weapon so terrible, so easily concealed, and so easily procured that the strongest government is helpless before it.” Upon the same subject a professor of John Hopkins University is reported as declaring: “I must say frankly that I believe we are just beginning to enter on a terrible era in the world’s history,—an era of internal and domestic warfare such as has never been seen, and the end of which only the Almighty can foretell.” In connection with forebodings so gloomy and ominous it becomes a question of first importance how most certainly and effectively to reach and convert to a better type of life, and thus to disarm, the “dangerous” classes. Why are they “dangerous”? And where do they most abound? It is safe to assume that chief among the causes which result in disorder, violence, and crime, producing the type of men and women who constitute what have come to be generally designated as the “dangerous classes,” is strong drink and the saloon system. Ex-Governor Long, of Massachusetts, when in Congress the bonded whisky bill was under discussion, gave expression to more than a mere figure of speech when he declared whisky to be the “dynamite of civilization.” It prepares the minds of many

of those who drink it to employ as conspirators the real explosive chemical for destructive and murderous ends. All dynamiters may not be whisky-drinkers, but there can be no doubt that the so-called dangerous classes, in whose hands dynamite becomes so great a public peril, are directly or indirectly the fruition of alcohol and the grog-shop. In this light, therefore, the temperance reform, which inculcates total abstinence for the individual and prohibition as the true policy for the State, is worthy of all consideration as one of the available safeguards for the community and the commonwealth against the possible dangers of dynamite.—National Temperance Advocate.