The Serpent in the Saloon: A Seattle Sermon Demands Local Option
After two liquor-fueled shootings in the city, Rev. Dr. Alton told First Presbyterian Church that Seattle could no longer pretend a licensed saloon was anything but a public danger.
Rev. Dr. Alton preached a sermon last evening at the First Presbyterian church on “A Warning Against Intemperance.” Taking his text from Proverbs xxiii:32—“At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder”—he described the evil of intemperance and its cost to the individual and the community. In his third and final point he showed how the bite of the serpent brought disaster. Under this head he referred to the two shootings of recent date in our city, in which, so far as can be seen, two gentlemen of respectability and good family, while under the influence of liquor, brought sorrow to their homes and to all connected with them. He closed with an emphatic expression of wonder that an intelligent community would allow the continuance in its midst, under forms of law, of a licensed saloon where such results were continually and manifestly occurring. It was surely time that public sentiment should crystallize until it should demand local option or something else whereby the citizens at the polls might make the bite of the serpent impossible.
“It was surely time that public sentiment should crystallize until it should demand local option or something else whereby the citizens at the polls might make the bite of the serpent impossible.”
In 1895, Seattle’s temperance advocates had to win voters church by church, arguing that the law should not license a business that produced violence and grief. The same arguments over alcohol licensing, nightlife and public safety still divide Seattle neighborhoods today, though the ballot box has replaced the pulpit as the main arena.
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