"J.J. McMURTREY " TOKEN, FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA 5c "GOOD FOR DRINK" RARE R-9

Description

Nice AU with some mint luster remaining - see the scans. This scarce AZ token is seldom seen and practically never available. Good value. JJ's honest manifesto follows:
J. J. McMURTREY
Dealer in Whiskies, Wines, Beer and Cigars
Beer Five Cents a Glass
"THE TEMPLE BAR SALOON"
Flagstaff, Arizona
Friends and Neighbors;
I am grateful for past favors, and having supplied my store with a fine line of choice wines and liquors, allow me to inform you that I shall continue to make drunkards, paupers and beggars for the sober, industrious, respectable part of the community to support. My whiskies will excite riot, robbery and bloodshed. They will diminish your comforts, increase your expenses and shorten life. I shall confidently recommend them as sure to multiply fatal accidents and incurable diseases. They will deprive some of life, others of reason, some of character, and all of peace. They will make fathers fiends, mothers widows, children orphans, and all poor. I will train your sons in infidelity, dissipation, ignorance, lewdness and every other vice. I will corrupt religion, obstruct the gospel, defile the church, and cause as much temporal and eternal death as I can. I will thus "accommodate the public." It may be at the loss of my never-dying soul, but I have a family to support ---the business pays---and the public encourages it.
I have paid my license and the traffic is lawful, and if I don't sell it somebody else will. I know the Bible says: "Thou shalt not kill," and "No drunkard shall enter the kingdom of heaven," and I do not expect the drunkard-maker to fare any better, but I want an easy living and I have resolved to gather the wages of iniquity and fatten on the ruin of my species. I shall therefore carry on my business with energy and do my best to diminish the wealth of the nation and endanger the safety of the state. As my business flourishes in proportion to your sensuality and ignorance, I will do my best to prevent moral purity and intellectual growth. Should you doubt my ability, I refer you to the pawnshops, the poor house, the police court, the hospital, the penitentiary and the gallows, where you will find many of my best customers have gone. A sight of them will convince you that I do what I say. Allow me to inform you that you are foul and I am an honest saloon keeper.
J. J. McMurtrey