Growth of Vice by The Philadelphia Times

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 8, 1882

Growth of Vice.

By The Philadelphia Times

"TWENTY years ago, the young man who drank was the exception; now the young man who does not drink is the rarity. We are accustomed to blame everything on 'the war,' and perhaps the war will serve as a reason in this case. Certainly it was about that time or shortly after that lager beer began to grow in popularity, and young men and boys began to cultivate a fondness for it, and thereby to acquire a taste for alcoholic liquors of all kinds. The cigarette vice followed to reinforce and stimulate the drinking habit, until now a boy is scarcely in his teens before he begins to smoke his nasty cigarette, and drink his sophisticated beer and bad whisky; and gangs of youths who ought to be at school or serving an apprenticeship to some honest calling, go swaggering about the streets, and in and out of taverns, and are not ashamed to greet their mothers with their breath reeking with smoke and alcohol."