“Daily Evening Journal, Friday, Dec. 8, 1854
Crime in the City. [editorial]
In speaking upon this subject, it is useless to recount the enormities committed against the moral feelings of the whole city, during the first year of the present mayor's administration, when murders were perpetuated with impunity, and known violators of law permitted to go unpunished and unrebuked, provided their sinning was on the side of rum and intemperance. From the moment that he refused to appoint a Marshal, for whom more than a thousand citizens petitioned, vice and immorality held a jubilee, for they saw that the executive power of this city was their friend and ally, and rum shops sprung up at every corner of the street, drunkards staggered in every alley, while prostitution reared its brothels at every thoroughfare leading to us, and held carnival in the very heart of the city itself. Virtue was confronted on the streets by known harlots, young men decoyed to houses of infamy in open day, and beneath the very shadow of the Mayor's office, the courtesan bargained for the price of her embraces, and led her victims to a place of assignation.
Public opinion cried out against these outrages of decency, but the executive power of the city was as dead to petitions, to remonstrances, and to cries of help for redress, as it was destitute of those high principles of morality that alone can adorn an official position. No descents, as are done in other cities, was made upon known houses of ill-fame, and the quiet of four suburban villages was destroyed by their hellish orgies, while thieves made their dens the receptacles of their stolen plunder, and vice, hideous, loathsome and revolting, revelled in and disgraced our city. The people, at last, publicly rose against the Mayor, pulpits exposed his heedlessness and disregard of the honor of the city, and he retorted by accusing them of falsehood in their statements in regard to the amount of crime among us. A change was made in the city marshal, Irishmen made constables and appointed watchmen, and halycon days were once more to shine upon the city; but the Scriptures were still true, and the "last (year) of that man was worse than the first."
What think you, reader, is the amount of crime this year, compared with last? CRIME has nearly DOUBLED, and where last year, we had but 583 cases before the Police Court, we have, in the eleven months of this year,nine hundred and seventy-one . . . .
Where is the remedy? It lays at the ballot box. For two years the people of this city have voted for rum, elected rum mayors, and been the tools of the rum coalition party in this city, and at their door lies a load of guilt which they must remove…. Public opinion, as expressed by the suffrages of the people is the great agent that controls a community, and when it declares for rum mayors, crime stalks openly in our streets, and its agents murder in our public squares. But let the people declare for morality, chose an executor that is the friend of private morality, and public virtue, and all those human monsters, that have for two years disgraced our city, will slink back into their infamous hiding places, and Worcester will become as noted for its virtue and morality, as it now is for its vices and iniquities. God speed the day, we seem to hear, from two thousand American voices.”
Citation: Unknown. Crime in the City, Daily Evening Journal. December 8, 1854. The Temperance Archive. http://www1.assumption.edu/users/mcclymer/95Fall97/EveningJournalDec8.html . Accessed January 15, 2015.
The author of this newspaper article believes that temperance, can solve all of the crime and violent issues happening in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts at the time. He or she believes that the people are voting for the officials that are not right for the city, the author is trying to persuade them to vote for a mayor that encourages temperance. The author sees alcoholism to be the base of all of the crime and unrighteous happenings in the city. The article has facts to support its claims, but the piece is obviously one sided. It highlights the negative impacts to which having a alcoholistic society has brought upon; when there is more downsides than upsides to this, they still are not mentioned. At the time there were more liquor stores and bars that lined the streets than any other type of service, people would not only be drinking during the night, but during the day as well. Alcohol was tearing apart families, and costing people their jobs. Temperance could not have been a bad thing for society. The people doing the drinking were mostly men, but women were experiencing the consequences; domestic violence was one of the results of the amazingly large alcohol consumption. The author most definitely is attempting to convince the people to use their vote wisely, to vote for an official that would support temperance and decrease the available amount of liquor at the time.
