"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." ("Crime in the City." Daily Evening Journal, 1854.)
In this document the author believed that drunkenness and intemperance were affecting the way the government in his town was being run. The purpose of his article was to show how the government officials were unfit for their jobs due to their inability to make sober decisions, and to show the rise in crime from excessive drinking. He has used specific evidence showing how the citizens of the town had reacted to the actions of their government and the problems the town was facing. The time period of this article was during the Temperance Movement in the United States. The goal of the Temperance Movement was to reduce the consumption of alcohol because it was believed that the high drinking rate was causing excessive violence and crime. From the document, we learn that drunkards were roaming the streets, brothels could be found on every corner, domestic violence was common, and punishment for these crimes was rare. The author was trying to convince the reader that the government was in need of reform. The Mayor was a drunk, and hired no Marshals to keep order in the town and let many go unpunished for crimes committed under the influence of alcohol. He used evidence such as the burning of homes and violence in the streets to prove his point. From this document we can see that alcohol was a major problem in the United States, and authors of works such as this were advocates for the Temperance Movement to reduce alcohol consumption.
Sources:
Crime in the City
Ken Burns’s Prohibition
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