Wine and Babies

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 8, 1908

It has been the studied attempt of the liquor interests in this country for many years to instil into the children of the land, even in their infancy, an appetite for strong drink. This has been undertaken in a number of different ways, only a few of which, it is safe to say, have ever been brought to the attention of the public. For instance, candies have been flavored with liquor; sidewalks have been sprinkled with the dregs from beer glasses and kegs, that the odor of this beverage might assail the nostrils of those passing; play-rooms have been fitted up in which children have been given drinks flavored with alcoholic beverages; the leaders in the liquor interests have advised saloon-keepers to give young boys free drinks, thus creating in them an appetite for liquor, and so obtaining recruits to take the places of the older drinkers when they passed away; and now comes the latest from California,—a proposition of the liquor men to educate the people to the use of wine at meal-time, under the specious plea that children educated to the use of this beverage will not become inebriates. The full purpose of that campaign of education is laid bare in the words which are given below. They declare it their purpose—

to assist in the campaign of education which has been inaugurated by the association to counteract the influence of the prohibition movement, and educate the American people to the proper use of wine at table, thereby wiping out the evils of drunkenness.

They propose to teach American mothers to give their children a little wine and water with their meals as soon as they are old enough to sit at the table, “just the same as the mothers living in the wine-producing countries of the world have done for generations past, and where children, becoming accustomed to the use of these non-intoxicating beverages at the table, will have no desire for stronger beverages between meals, and thus become proof against intemperance.”

But those who know anything of the conditions prevalent in wine-producing countries, such as France, Spain, and Italy, know that the use of wine is no preventive of intemperance. In fact, the most conservative figures show that in France, which produces more wine than any other country in the world, three times as much alcohol is used per capita as in the United States, and that nation is cursed by one of the most terrible beverages that has ever been invented—that is, absinthe, which even Frenchmen themselves have designated as the “green dragon.” We can imagine no more detestable undertaking than that proposed by the liquor interests of California; namely, to instil into infants an appetite for strong drink; but the fact that such a proposition could be entertained by a body of men is in itself conclusive proof of the demoralizing influences of the liquor business.