These are the destructive things and this is one of the lions that is doing much to destroy us and keep us poor.
In a little town in Kentucky, upon a hill where our people lived and had homes, there was an Irish family who kept a grocery. The man worked and his wife kept grocery. She had a little keg of whiskey under the counter. She knew all the men by name, and would pat them on the back and tell them they could have anything they wanted on credit.
With the groceries they bought a little whiskey, and then she got them to put their names to a piece of paper. It was not long before the Irishman owned the house across the street and after a while nearly all the houses on the hill, and they started on a few bars of soap and a keg of whiskey. Scenes similar to this are going on in scores of localities in this country, but we do not want to be engulfed by the lion of drink. Another lion which is preying upon our pathway is _the vice of gambling_. In destructive power I place it next to intemperance, for it is just as fascinating when it gets a hold on a man. I know gamblers that never touch a drink of whiskey. There are scores of our boys and girls going down to destruction, through the door of the gambling hell. There are some people who profess to think there is no harm in a game of cards.
I can't for the life of me see how any man or woman can apologize for a deck of cards. I do not care whether there is any harm in it or not, when a man is with a deck of cards, he is in bad company.
When you get so you can play and play well, you desire to let somebody know how well you can play, you do not intend to be a gambler. Your friend has a quarter that says he can beat you. That's the way it starts. You have a quarter which says he can not. There are men at present in this city, dragging down their little children and wives in gambling hells of this town. The ravages of this vice are terrible. It has even affected some of our women. So infatuated are they that they will go out and wash all day and take the money to buy lottery tickets. These are some of the devouring lions by the way, that are helping to destroy us, and I say to every young man, don't play a game of cards. I know the temptations of young men and I know some of you have mothers off in distant cities praying for you. A young man goes to work in some hotel, after he waits his meals, he has no home to go to, and is at a loss what to do. Don't spend your money on gambling machines, keep it in your pocket; don't give it to those men down town, for I think when a man spends his money he ought to get value for value. There is another thing of which I wish to speak, that is _politics_. A great many people think you can make men and women by legislation. You can't put a law on the statute books which will create men and women, they are not made that way. Our dependence on legislation and political parties has been one of the barriers in our way.