Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/459

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
LEGISLATION AGAINST THE DRINK EVIL.
441

cion of a Ladies' Temperance Union! But as the person converted by the example would be certain not to parade the fact, no statistics could even then be attainable. The case or cases, if genuine, would be hidden in the consciences of the converts and beyond any marshaling in figures. All we can do is to hope and trust that our good examples may prevail, and that, like the apostle St. Paul (whom our British ecclesiastic begs to differ with), there may be some among us strong enough physically as well as spiritually to say, "If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world standeth."

These considerations have not, however, deterred certain States from ingrafting example upon the statute-book, as nearly as it could be made a subject of legislation, by enacting that there shall be held before the eye of the possible drinker the spectacle of his neighbors drinking rum: trusting, doubtless, to the rum itself to work a condition in the drinker to afford the example required, and so add to the unestimated but hoped-for good example to bad example at hand. Three States—i.e., Indiana, Michigan, and Utah—and the city of Atlanta, Georgia, by municipal ordinance, provide that the premises on which liquor is retailed by drinks shall have no screen or other obstruction before its windows, so that passers-by may see the drinking which goes on therein and its horrible accompanying circumstances. The reports from these States, however, are not such as to commend this policy of example to universal acceptance.

III. Education.—"Within the past four years several States—"Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Nevada—have enacted statutes providing that pupils in the public schools should be particularly instructed in so much at least of the science of toxicology as relates to the uses and abuses of alcohol, and of its effect upon the human system. Such instruction, if honestly imparted by capable teachers and by honest text-books, can not fail to be of the highest value. Capable teachers and honest text-books could not possibly teach, for example, that alcoholic liquors were an unmixed evil, could not deny their medicinal value, or their stimulative aid in fortifying against disease or exposure, or in supplying the waste of age; could not teach (as I gave instances of of fanatical teachings) that it were better to die for the need of a glass of whisky than to have one's life saved by the use of it, or that the use of liquor "destroys both body and soul" (in the teeth of the facts that only the most flagrant and protracted abuse of liquor ever, and that after a long term of years, destroyed a human body, and that statistics as to the soul are not attainable). Much is to be hoped for under this benign instruction. It is not possible that our youth will not miss to acquire much important information, such as that "wine is a good servant if well