After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world.

Billy Sunday (1862–1935), a former professional baseball player turned evangelist, became one of the most prominent revival preachers of the early 20th century. A central theme of his sermons and public campaigning was militant opposition to alcohol, aligning him with the broader temperance and Prohibition movements that culminated in the 18th Amendment (1919). The quoted sentence reflects Sunday’s characteristic rhetoric: sweeping, emphatic, and aimed at persuading mass audiences that alcohol was not merely a private vice but a corrosive social force. He frequently framed “the liquor traffic” as an organized evil that damaged homes, corrupted politics, and undermined economic life.

The statement argues that alcohol’s harm is comprehensive and systemic. By moving from “the individual” to “the family,” then outward to “politics and business,” Sunday portrays drinking not as an isolated moral failing but as a contagion that degrades every layer of society. The phrase “after all is said” suggests the debate is already exhausted—implying that further argument is unnecessary because the verdict is obvious. “Everything that you touch in this old world” universalizes the claim, turning temperance into a total moral and civic imperative. The quote exemplifies Sunday’s fusion of religious moralism with social reform rhetoric typical of Prohibition-era advocacy.