PUTNAM AND THE WOLF;
OR,
THE MONSTER DESTROYED.
AN ADDRESS ORIGINALLY DELIVERED AT POMFRET, CONN.,
BY REV. JOHN MARSH.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Weeping drunk with wife and child]
I remember, when a boy, reading a story which chilled my blood in my veins; but which taught me never to sit down and try to bear an evil which might, by bold and persevering effort, be remedied. The story was this. A certain district of country was infested by a wild beast. The nuisance was intolerable. The inhabitants rallied, and hunted it day and night, until they drove it into a deep den. There, with dogs, guns, straw, fire, and sulpher, they attacked the common enemy; but all in vain. The hounds came back badly wounded, and refused to return. The smoke of blazing straw had no effect; nor had the fumes of burnt brimstone. The ferocious animal would not quit its retirement. And now the shadows of evening gathered around them. The clock struck nine, and ten. And should they lose their prey? They must, unless some one should be so daring as to descend into this den of monsters and destroy the enemy. One man offered to go; but his neighbors remonstrated against the perilous enterprise. Perilous indeed it was; but live so they could not, and stripping off his coat and waistcoat and having a long rope fastened round his legs, by which he might be pulled back, he entered with a flaming torch in his hand, head foremost. The most terrifying darkness appeared in front of the dim circle afforded by his light. It was still as the house of death. But proceeding onwards with unparalleled courage, he discovered the glaring eyeb.a.l.l.s of the ferocious beast, who was sitting at the extremity of the cavern. For a moment he retreated; but again descended with his musket. The beast howled, rolled its eyes, snapped its teeth, and threatened him with instant death, when he levelled, fired, and brought it forth dead, to the view of his trembling and exulting neighbors.
Little did I then think that I should one day see the country rallied on the same spot, to hunt a more terrible monster, whose destruction will require Putnam courage.
The old enemy, gentlemen, which your fathers hunted about these hills and dales, was visible to the eye, and could be reached with powder and ball; but the enemy whom you a.s.sault is, like the foe of human bliss which entered the garden of Eden, invisible, and therefore not to be described, and not to be destroyed by force of arms. That enemy did, indeed, to effect his purpose, a.s.sume the form of a serpent; and ours has been said, as belonging to the same family, to have occasionally the same aspect. A gentleman in Missouri has recently described a dreadful worm which, he says, infests that country. "It is of a dead lead color, and generally lives near a spring, and bites the unfortunate people who are in the habit of going there to drink. The symptoms of its bite are terrible. The eyes of the patient become red and fiery; the tongue swells to an immoderate size and obstructs utterance, and delirium of the most horrid character ensues. The name of this reptile is, "THE WORM OF THE STILL."" I suspect it is one of the same family which is infesting the peaceful villages of New England, and whose ravages have alarmed the country, and caused you this day to leave your homes and seek its destruction. I would not here inquire minutely into its history. It is said to have originated in Arabia, the country of the false prophet. The aborigines of our forests never knew it. They could proudly tread on the rattlesnake and copperhead, but never fell before the worm of the still. O woful day when it found its way to our coasts; when here it first generated its offspring.
Yet there are men who think we belie it; who say that we are needlessly alarmed; that we are hunting a friend; that we are driving one from our country without whose aid we can never check the ravages of disease, or perform our labor, or have any hilarity. It is not, say they, a poisonous foe. It is a pleasant cordial; a cheerful restorative; the first friend of the infant; the support of the enfeebled mother; a sweet luxury, given by the parent to the child; the universal token of kindness, friendship, and hospitality. It adorns the sideboards and tables of the rich, and enlivens the social circles of the poor; goes with the laborer as his most cheering companion; accompanies the mariner in his long and dreary voyage; enlivens the carpenter, the mason, the blacksmith, the joiner, as they ply their trade; follows the merchant to his counter, the physician to his infected rooms, the lawyer to his office, and the divine to his study, cheering all and comforting all. It is the life of our trainings, and town-meetings, and elections, and bees, and raisings, and harvests, and sleighing-parties. It is the best domestic medicine, good for a cold and a cough, for pain in the stomach, and weakness in the limbs, loss of appet.i.te and rheumatism, and is a great support in old age. It makes a market for our rye and apples; sustains 100,000 families who are distilling and vending, and pours annually millions of dollars into our national treasury. Had the wolf possessed the cunning of the fox, she would have told Putnam as smooth a story as this. But it would have made no difference. The old man"s cornfields were fattened by the blood of his sheep, and he would give no quarter. And the blood of our countrymen has been poured out at the shrine of the demon Intemperance, and we must give none. Talk we of alcohol as a friend! As well may a mother praise the crocodile which has devoured her offspring.
Look, my countrymen, at the ravages of intemperance. Fix your eye on its waste of property.
At the lowest calculation, it has annually despoiled us of a hundred millions of dollars--of thirty millions for an article which is nothing worth, and seventy or eighty millions more to compensate for the mischiefs that article has done--money enough to accomplish all that the warmest patriot could wish for his country, and to fill, in a short period, the world with Bibles and a preached Gospel. What farmer would not be roused, should a wild beast come once a year into his borders and destroy the best cow in his farmyard? But 6-1/4 cents a day for ardent spirit wastes $22 81 cents a year, and in 40 years nearly $1,000, which is a thousand times as much as scores of drunkards are worth at their burial.
See the pauperism it has produced. We have sung of our goodly heritage, and foreign nations have disgorged their exuberant population that they might freely subsist in this land of plenty. But in this granary of the world are everywhere seen houses without windows, fields without tillage, barns without roofs, children without clothing, and penitentiaries and almshouses filled to overflowing; and a traveller might write--BEGGARS MADE HERE. We are groaning under our pauperism, and talking of taxes, and hard times, and no trade; but intemperance has stalked through our land and devoured our substance. It has entered the houses of our unsuspecting inhabitants as a friend, and taken the food from their tables, and the clothing from their beds, and the fuel from their fire, and turned their lands over to others, and drove them from their dwellings to subsist on beggary and crime, or drag out a miserable existence in penitentiaries and almshouses. Two-thirds, or 150,000 of the wretched tenants of these abodes of poverty in the United States, were reduced by intemperance. So themselves confess. It was rum, brandy, and whiskey, that did it. And the Prison Discipline report tells of 50,000 cases of imprisonment for debt annually in the United States, in consequence of the use of ardent spirits. O, its sweeps of property can never be known.
Look at the crime it has occasioned.
It is said that there is a spring in China which makes every man that drinks it a villain. Eastern tales are founded on some plain matter of fact. This spring may be some distillery or dram-shop; for this is the natural effect of alcohol. It breaks down the conscience, quickens the circulation, increases the courage, makes man flout at law and right, and hurries him to the perpetration of every abomination and crime.
Excite a man by this fluid, and he is bad enough for any thing. He can lie, and steal, and fight, and swear, and plunge the dagger into the bosom of his nearest friend. No vice is too filthy, no crime too tragical for the drunkard. The records of our courts tell of acts committed under the influence of rum, which curdle the blood in our veins. Husbands butcher their wives; children slaughter their parents.
Far the greater part of the atrocities committed in our land, proceed from its maddening power. "I declare in this public manner, and with the most solemn regard to truth," said Judge Rush, some years ago in a charge to a grand jury, "that I do not recollect an instance since my being concerned in the administration of justice, of a single person being put on his trial for manslaughter which did not originate in drunkenness; and but few instances of trial for murder where the crime did not spring from the same unhappy cause." Of 895 complaints presented to the police court in Boston in one year, 400 were under the statute against common drunkards. Of 1,061 cases of criminal prosecution in a court in North Carolina, more than 800 proceeded from intemperance. Five thousand complaints are made yearly in New York to the city police of outrages committed by intoxicated persons; and the late city attorney reports, that of twenty-two cases of murder which it had been his duty to examine, every one of them had been committed in consequence of intemperate drinking. "Nine-tenths of all the prisoners under my care,"
says Captain Pillsbury, warden of our own state prison, "are decidedly intemperate men, and were brought to their present condition, directly or indirectly, through intoxicating liquor. Many have confessed to me with tears, that they never felt tempted to the commission of crime, thus punishable, but when under the influence of strong drink." And the Prison Discipline report states, "that of 125,000 criminals committed to our prisons in a single year, 93,750 were excited to their commission of crime by spirituous liquors."
Look at its destruction of intellect.
It reduces man to a beast, to a fool, to a devil. The excessive drinker first becomes stupid, then idiotic, then a maniac. Men of the finest geniuses, most acute minds, and profound learning, have dwindled under the touch of this withering demon to the merest insignificance, and been hooted by boys for their silly speeches and silly actions, or chained in a madhouse as unsafe in society. Of eighty-seven admitted into the New York hospital in one year, the insanity of twenty-seven was occasioned by ardent spirit; and the physicians of the Pennsylvania hospital report, that one-third of the insane of that inst.i.tution were ruined by intemperance. What if one-sixth of our maniacs were deprived of their reason by the bite of the dogs, the friendly inmates of our houses, or by some vegetable common on our table; who would harbor the dangerous animal, or taste the poisonous vegetable? But, one-third of our maniacs are deranged by alcohol. Indeed, every drunkard is in a temporary delirium; and no man who takes even a little into his system, possesses that sound judgment, or is capable of that patient investigation or intellectual effort, which would be his without it. Just in proportion as man comes under its influence, he approximates to idiotism or madness.
Look at its waste of health and life.
The worm of the still, says the Missouri gentleman, never touches the brute creation, but as if the most venomous of all beings, it seizes the n.o.blest prey. It bites man. And where it once leaves its subtle poison, farewell to health--farewell to long life. The door is open, and in rush dyspepsia, jaundice, dropsy, gout, obstructions of the liver, epilepsy--the deadliest plagues let loose on fallen man--all terminating in delirium tremens or mania a potu, a prelude to the eternal buffetings of foul spirits in the world of despair. One out of every forty, or three hundred thousand of our population, have taken up their abode in the lazar-house of drunkenness, and thirty thousand die annually the death of the drunkard. These sweeps of death mock all the ravages of war, famine, pestilence, and shipwreck. The yellow-fever in Philadelphia, in 1793, felt to be one of the greatest curses of heaven, destroyed but four thousand. In our last war the sword devoured but five hundred a year: intemperance destroys two hundred a week. Shipwrecks destroy suddenly, and the country groans when forty or fifty human beings are suddenly engulfed in the ocean; but more than half of all the sudden deaths occur in fits of intoxication. It needed not a fable to award the prize of greatest ingenuity in malice and murder to the demon who invented brandy, over the demon who invented war.
Look at its murder of souls.
Not satisfied with filling jails, and hospitals, and graveyards, it must people h.e.l.l. Every moral and religious principle is dissipated before it. The heart becomes, under its influence, harder than the nether mill-stone. It has gone into the pulpit and made a Judas of the minister of Christ. It has insinuated itself into the church, and bred putrefaction and death among the holy. It has entered the anxious room in seasons of revival, and quenched conviction in the breast of the distressed sinner, or sent him, exhilarated with a false hope, to profess religion, and be a curse to the church. It has accompanied men, Sabbath after Sabbath, to the house of G.o.d, and made them insensible as blocks of marble to all the thunders of Sinai and sweet strains of Zion.
It has led to lying, profane swearing, Sabbath-breaking, tale-bearing, contention; and raised up an army, I may almost say, in every village, who wish for no Sabbath, and no Bible, and no Saviour, and who cry out with stammering tongues, "Away with him, crucify him." It has, without doubt, been the most potent of all the emissaries of Satan, to obliterate the fear of the Lord, turn men away from the Sabbath and the sanctuary, steel them against the word, the providence, and grace of G.o.d, stupefy the conscience, bring into action every dark and vile pa.s.sion, and fill up with immortal souls the dark caverns of eternal night. Let a man, day by day, hover around a dram-shop, and sip and sip at his bottle, and the devil is sure of him. No ministers, no Sabbaths, no prayers, no tears from broken-hearted and bleeding relatives, can avail to save him. He holds that man by a chain which nothing but Omnipotence can break.
And look, too, at its waste of human happiness.
Yes, look--look for yourselves. The woes of drunkenness mock all description. Some tell of the happiness of drinking. O, if there is a wretched being on earth, it is the drunkard. His property wasted, his character gone, his body loathsome, his pa.s.sions wild, his appet.i.te craving the poison that kills him, his hopes of immortality blasted for ever; it is all
"Me miserable, Which way I fly is h.e.l.l, myself am h.e.l.l."
And his family. I can never look at it but with feelings of deepest anguish.
"Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of paradise that hast escaped the fall,"
thou art shipwrecked here. Sorrow, woe, wounds, poverty, babblings, and contention, have entered in and dwell here. Yet we have 300,000 such families in the land; and if each family consists of four individuals, more than a million persons are here made wretched by this curse of curses.
And his death. O, to die in our houses, amid our friends, and with the consolations of religion, strips not death of its character as the king of terrors. But to die as the drunkard dies, an outcast from society, in some hovel or almshouse, on a bed of straw, or in some ditch, or pond, or frozen in a storm; to die of the _brain-fever_, conscience upbraiding, h.e.l.l opening, and foul spirits pa.s.sing quick before his vision to seize him before his time--this, this is woe; this is the triumph of sin and Satan. Yet, in the last ten years, 300,000 have died in our land the death of the drunkard; rushing, where?--"Drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of G.o.d"--rushing into h.e.l.l, where their worm dieth not, and their fire can never be quenched. And if the demon is suffered to continue his ravages, 300,000 more of our existing population will, in the same way, rush into eternal burnings.
And his funeral. Have you ever been at a drunkard"s funeral? I do not ask, did you look at his corpse? It was cadaverous before he died. But did you look at his father as he bent over the grave and exclaimed in agony, "O, my son, my son, would to G.o.d I had died for thee, my son."
Did you look at his widow, pale with grief, and at his ragged, hunger-bitten children at her side, and see them turn away to share the world"s cold pity, or, perhaps, rejected and forlorn, follow the same path to death and h.e.l.l?
Such are the ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections--for a drunkard is not fit for an elector--and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged any nation under heaven.
We talk of our religion, and weep over the delusions of the false prophet and the horrors of Juggernaut; but a more deceitful prophet is in our churches than Mahomet, and a more b.l.o.o.d.y idol than Juggernaut rolls through our land, crushing beneath its wheels our sons and our daughters. Woe, woe, woe to Zion. Satan is in Eden. And if no check is put to the ravages of the demon, our benevolent inst.i.tutions must die, our sanctuaries be forsaken, our beautiful fields be wastes, and the church will read the history of her offspring in the third of Romans: _Their throat is an open sepulchre; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood_--all, blasting our bright hope of the speedy approach of millennial glory.
There is cause, then, for the general alarm that has been excited in our country; reason for this extensive and powerful combination to hunt and destroy the monster. Much, by divine help, has been done. He has been routed and brought to the light of day; the mischief he has done has been exposed; his apologists have been confronted; he is driven into his den, and now how can he be destroyed? That he must be destroyed there can be no question. The man who does not wish for the suppression of intemperance must have the heart of a fiend; especially, if he wishes to grow rich on the miseries of his fellow-men. And he must be destroyed now. It is now or never. Men may say enough has been done, and talk about his being held where he is. He cannot be held there. He has the cunning of a serpent, and he will escape through some fissure in the rock. He is now in our power. The temperance movement, which has on it the impress of the finger of G.o.d, has brought him within our grasp; and if we let him escape, the curse of curses will be entailed upon our children. How then can he be destroyed? I answer, and thousands answer, by starvation. No weapon can reach him so long as you feed him. But who has a heart so traitorous to humanity as to feed this monster? Every man who now, in the face of the light that is shed upon this subject, distils, or vends, or uses intoxicating liquor; every distillery, and every dram-shop in the land, nourishes this foe to human peace; every man who takes the alcoholic poison into his system, or imparts it to others, except as he takes and imparts other poisons to check disease, gives life to the beast. I need not stop to prove it. It is manifest to the child. Let every distillery in the land cease, and every dram-shop be closed, and total abstinence become the principle of every individual, and the demon will be dead; yes, take away from him his wine, his brandy, and his whiskey, and he will perish for ever. But here is the very brunt of the battle. We have hunted the monster through the land, and driven him into his den; and now we must stand at the very mouth of the cavern, and contend with our fellow-men and fellow-sufferers--yes, and fellow-Christians too--who are either afraid to attack the monster, or are determined he shall live.
And first, we are met by a body of men who tell us that alcohol is useful. And what if it is? What if every benefit that the moderate and immoderate drinker can think of, flows from it? What will this do to compensate for its giant evils which are desolating our land? Is man so bent on self-gratification that he will have every sweet, though it be mingled with poison? Will he exercise no reason; make no discrimination between unmixed good and good followed by desolating woes? Tea was good.
But, said our fathers, if with it we must have all the horrors of British tyranny, away with it from our dwellings. My countrymen, "the voice of your fathers" blood cries to you from the ground, "My sons, scorn to be slaves!"" Away with the shameful plea that you cannot do without an article which subjects you to an evil ten thousand times worse than all the horrors of British tyranny. You kindle the fires of liberty by pointing to the woes of the prison-ship, and the bones of your countrymen whitening on the sh.o.r.es of New Jersey. O, crouch not to a tyrant who binds a million in his chains, and demands thirty thousand annually for his victims. I blush for the imbecility of the man who must have an article on his farm which eats up his substance and his vitals, and may turn his son into an idiot and a brute. Better have no farm.
Better go at once, with his family, into the poor-house, and be supported by public charity.
Next comes canting Hypocrisy, with his Bible in his hand, telling us that "every creature of G.o.d is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." What does he mean; that ardent spirit is the gift of G.o.d? Pray, in what stream of his bounty, from what mountain and hill does it flow down to man? O, it is in the rye, and the apple, and the sugar, and the Mussulman has taught us Christians how to distil it. And so the poet tells us Satan taught his legions how to make gunpowder. "There are," said he,
"Deep under ground, materials dark and crude, Of spirituous and fiery spume.
These, in their dark nativity, the deep Shall yield us, pregnant with internal flame; Which, into hollow engines, long and round, Thick ramm"d, at th" other bore with touch of fire Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth From far, with thundering noise, among our foes Such implements of mischief as shall dash To pieces and o"erwhelm whatever stands Adverse.
Th" invention all admired; up they turn"d Wide the celestial soil; sulphurous and nitrous foam They found, they mingled; and, with subtle art Concocted and adjusted, they reduced To blackest grain."
And now, to carry out the argument, gunpowder, and guns, and swords, are the gift of G.o.d, and men must needs use them, and kill one another as fast as possible.
But nothing, it is plead, was made in vain. Spirit is good for something, and to banish it from use, and promise that we will "touch not, taste not, handle not," is contempt of the works of G.o.d. I should like to have seen what the Pomfret hero would have done with a man who should have stood before him, and said, Don"t you destroy that wolf; G.o.d made it, and it may be good for something.
Next, we are checked in our principle of starvation by a set of thoughtless youth and presumptuous men, who say there is no danger from the demon if we keep him low. All his ravages have been occasioned by his being full fed. Let him sip but little, feed him _prudently_, and he will do no harm.
"Good," says the demon, growling in his den; "that is all I want. The doctrine of prudent use is the basis of my kingdom. Temperate drinking has made all the drunkards in the land, and keep it up in all your towns and villages, and I shall be satisfied."
O the delusion! Prudent use! What is the testimony of every chemist and physician in the land? Alcohol is a _poison_.
"Not a bloodvessel," says Dr. Mussey, "however minute, not a thread of nerve in the whole animal machine escapes its influence. It disturbs the functions of life; it increases for a time the action of the living organs, but lessens the power of that action; hence the deep depression and collapse which follow preternatural excitement. By habitual use it renders the living fibre less and less susceptible to the healthy operation of unstimulating food and drink, its exciting influences soon become incorporated with all the living actions of the body, and the diurnal sensations of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, are strongly a.s.sociated with the recollection of its exhilarating effects, and thus bring along with them the resistless desire for its repet.i.tion." More than fifty per cent. of common spirits are alcohol, this deadly substance, holding rank with henbane, hemlock, prussic acid, foxglove, poison sumach. Nausea, vertigo, vomiting, exhilaration of spirits for a time, and subsequent stupor, and even total insensibility and death, are their accompaniments. Broussais remarks, "A single portion of ardent spirit taken into the stomach produces a temporary phlogosis." Now, I submit it to every considerate man, whether there can be any prudent use of a poison, a single portion of which produces the same disease of which the drunkard dies, and a disease which brings along with it a resistless desire for a repet.i.tion of the draught.
Thoughtless, self-sufficient men say, they can control this desire, can govern their appet.i.te, can enjoy the exhilaration of strong drink, and yet be temperate. Let them look at the poor inebriate wallowing in his pollution. He once stood just where they stand; boasted just as they boast; had as fair character, and as kind friends, and as precious a soul and bright hopes of heaven as they have. Let them tell why he does not control his appet.i.te. Perhaps they say, he is a fool. Ah, what made him a fool? Or, his reason is gone. And what took away his reason? Or, he has lost his character. And what took away his character? Or, his sense of shame is departed. And what took away his sense of shame? Ah, here is the dreadful secret, which it may be well for all, boasting of their power of self-control, to know. At the very moment when the man thinks he stands firm, and reason can control appet.i.te, his moral sense departs, his shame is gone, and he turns, through the power of his morning bitters and oft-repeated drams, into the brute and the maniac.
With the moral sensibilities laid waste, reason here has only the power of the helmsman before the whirlwind. "Twenty years ago," says Nott, "a respectable householder came in the morning with a gla.s.s of bitters in his hand, and offered it to his guest, saying, "Take it; it will do you good. I have taken it for some years, and I think it does me good; and I never want any more." Time pa.s.sed on, and presently the bottle of bitters in the closet was exchanged for the barrel of whiskey in the cellar; and the poor man was often at the tap for just as much as would do him good, and he never wanted any more. Time pa.s.sed on, and a hogshead was needful; and its contents were exhausted with the same intent, and the same self-deceivings. At length the home of his family was relinquished to his creditors; his polluted body was lodged in a jail, from which he presently issued a drunken vagabond, and wandered a wretched being, until he found a drunkard"s grave." It is but the history of thousands. No laws of nature act with more uniformity than the laws of intemperance. No inoculation sends with more certainty disease into the system than drinking strong drink. Hundreds have made an agonizing struggle to escape from perdition. They have seen their sin and danger; they have walked the streets in agony; they have gone to their homes and looked at their wives and children, and into the pit of despair. But their feverish stomach has cried, Give, give! and they have drank often and often, with the solemn promise that it should be the last time; until they have exclaimed, with a once interesting youth, "I know I am a ruined man, but I cannot stop."
Some, indeed, through much care and strength of const.i.tution, may escape; but the plague, if it appear not in their skin and their bone, may break out in their children. "I will drink some," said an aged deacon of a church of Christ; "for it does me good." G.o.d was merciful, though he tempted Heaven, and it is said that he died with his character untarnished; but six loathsome sons drank up his substance, with the leprosy in their foreheads. What a meeting must there be between that deacon and his sons on the judgment-day! The doctrine of prudent use must be abandoned. It can have no standard. Every man thinks he drinks prudently, whether he takes one gla.s.s a day or five, and is just as much excited and just as liable to drunkenness as all drunkards were when they stood where he now stands. He only that entirely abstains can properly be called a temperate man. And he only is clear from the guilt of spreading intemperance through the land. Moderate drinkers are the life of this b.l.o.o.d.y system which is wringing with agony the hearts of thousands. Did all at once drink to excess, alcohol would be viewed with dread, as is laudanum and a.r.s.enic. Better that all who tasted it were at once made drunkards; then, drunkards would be as scarce as suicides.
But men now sip moderately and are reputable; they think themselves safe, but one in every forty sinks to drunkenness; and thus, among twelve millions of people, drinking moderately, the demon has perpetually 300,000 victims. And for these, while all are thus paying homage to the bottle, what is the hope? The lost wretch may wake from his brutality and crime, and resolve that he will reform, and his broken-hearted wife may hope that the storms of life are over, and his babes may smile at his strange kindness and care; but the universal presence of the intoxicating fluid, and the example of the wise and the good around him, will thwart all his resolutions, and he will go back, like the dog to his vomit. All the drunkenness, then, that shall pollute our land, must be traced to moderate drinkers. They feed the monster.