What Drunkenness Is Doing.
THE Pittsburgh Commercial, in a recent article upon what drunkenness is doing in the land, says:— “Yesterday afternoon, while looking over a batch of exchanges, a suggestion was made that, among other things, we should observe the more striking cases of infraction of law, violence, and disorder, reported in the various exchanges then under notice as arising directly from drunkenness. We did not complete the task; it was too sad. When we had glanced through about a score of exchanges, our courage failed us. The instances reported were of themselves so numerous and ghastly as to make us shudder. It seemed as if the whole country was being rapidly turned into a vast grog-shop—a hell of drunkenness—a howling, staggering pandemonium of brutalized men. Drunkenness in every city and town; drunkenness in the country; drunkenness by land and sea; drunkenness in the kennel and in the parlor; drunkenness coiled upon the door-steps, and drunkenness frothing in the Legislature; drunkenness among the poor and among the rich; drunkenness in the dark lanes and alleys; drunkenness in the wide, lamp-lit streets; drunkenness in the home, by the cradle, at the altar, in the school and in the church; drunkenness everywhere—vast, opaque, omnipresent, encompassing the land like a baleful atmosphere. It was horrible!” The Commercial, to show that the above is no verbose, declamatory rhetoric, gives a partial resume of the results of its investigation, in which it mentions between twenty and thirty murders and suicides, all occurring within a few days; besides these, there were many shames and crimes of such a character that they should not be named in the columns of respectable journals, the direct and frightful fruits of the dram shops, which are being gathered day in and day out through all the blessed year. It then refers in eloquent terms to the many unknown miseries and crimes caused by the seeds sown by the traffickers in rum throughout our land. We further quote:— “And let it be remembered that these instances are but faint illustrations of the ravages which drunkenness is making. It is only the exceptional cases of violence and disorder which are reported in the press. When the volcano overflows, a note is made of the occurrence; but no mention is ever made of the fluid core of fire which evermore burns within. The evils of intemperance are not adequately indicated by such instances as we have cited. Back of its visible ravages, and deeper than all these, lies a field of devastation which can never be reported, because it can never be explored. The sober people of the country suffer from it, in having to raise annually a vast amount of taxes which go to build poor houses and prisons, and to support paupers and criminals created by drink. There are also in our country two millions of children who, in an infinite variety of ways, are the innocent and helpless victims of drunken parents. There are three millions of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, of confirmed drunkards in the United States; and women suffer more from this vice than from all other evils combined. The keenest pangs and the sharpest agonies are endured by women who make no sign. In the wasted realms of the social affections, in the higher or inner life of wife and mother and friend, what tortures are silently endured, what suppressed wretchedness is borne, what slow torments of desolated hopes and broken hearts go on, no word of which ever reaches the outward ear! The cases we have reported are but the inadvertent evidences which escape through gaps and chasms. What, then, must be the character of the fiery sea of anguish which burns and smoulders beyond? The breaking hearts of mothers over ruined sons; of wives from whose lives all love and tenderness have been blotted out; of the want and woe of little children, grown old and haggard before their time? And now let the mind go back for years, and then multiply the years by centuries, and try to comprehend this fathomless and shoreless sea of unutterable ruin and overthrow; and you will begin to have some conception of the illimitable downward dragging horror over which we have preached this poor sermon; but not till then.”—Sel.