THE RAILWAY AND THE DRINKER.
By C. M. S.
The New Voice has been making a systematic canvass of the railroad companies of the United States to ascertain how they stand on the question of liquor-using employes, and announces the result of its investigations in its issue of May 16. The facts therein brought to light are certainly important, especially when considered in connection with the position taken by the War Department on the temperance question. Of the ninety-four principal railways to which letters of inquiry had been sent, forty-nine had submitted the information desired. Of these forty-nine, thirty absolutely forbid employes frequenting saloons, under pain of dismissal. Total abstinence, both while on and off duty, is required by twenty of the roads, whose officials responded to the inquiry. Only two of the roads so replying have rules merely against “intemperance.” The position taken by those failing to report in the matter can only be surmised; but it is safe to say that a considerable number of these roads have regulations governing their employes similar to those who submitted replies. Thus we see the estimate which these great corporations place upon the trustworthiness of even the moderate drinker, as compared with the employe who abstains from all intoxicating drink. The liquor-drinker, even when not strictly under the influence of drink, is not as reliable, either for steady, exacting duty, or in a crisis where steady nerve and cool judgment are demanded, as is the man who takes no ardent stimulant. Many of these roads also have regulations in reference to the use of tobacco. Some of them will employ no person known to be a user of cigarettes, and those who contract the habit while in the employ of the roads are dismissed. This is as it should be. The lives of those who travel should not be placed in jeopardy by the unnerving of the men who have to do with the operating of the road. If this is a sound policy for a corporation to adopt for its employes, it certainly is a sound policy for each individual to adopt for himself. The effect of liquor and tobacco upon the employe, which makes his services undesirable, simply indicates the ruin which those things are bringing about in his constitution. The corporation has no use for him because he is unreliable; he should have no use for the liquor because of the terrible ruin it is causing in his own system. It is because it is ruining him that his services are undesirable; and it is because of the ruin which it is causing thru the length and breadth of the land that the influence of Christians should be exerted against it in every legitimate way.