p. 413 | Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 26.

Health and Temperance.

Drinking among Women.

AMONG the many evils which afflict our cities, none is half so destructive in its effects or so insidious in its methods as that terrible enemy to civilization, intemperance. The deadly thirst for alcohol is not confined to the lewd and the vicious; it seizes alike rich and poor, high and low, male and female. But whether in the hovel or in the palace, its effects are the same—irritable tempers, ruined lives, shattered constitutions, premature death, in this world; and in the world to come, tribulation, anguish, and eternal death.

The following extracts show how the habit of indulging in the use of intoxicating liquors is growing and becoming common among women, even in genteel society:—

"The drinking, the startling increase of which has struck many observant residents of the city, is among the wives and daughters of business and professional men. Not so very long ago, any woman who drank in a public place virtually gave notice by the act that she was a loose character. It is so no longer. Scores of wives of business men, when on their shopping trips down town, step into some convenient drinking place and take a glass or two of beer or wine. Some are not content with a glass or two, but indulge in six or eight, or perhaps more. Their trips down town are often more for the purpose of drinking than shopping, and not infrequently those who make them return to their homes with their brains all awhirl. Occasionally they go into these resorts by themselves, but generally in company with some male acquaintance."—Chicago News.

"One of the most alarming features of the growing intemperance in our land is the hold it is getting upon women. It is not an uncommon sight in this city to see women and children going from saloons with pitchers of beer. We frequently notice the patrol wagon hastening to pick up a woman in a state of intoxication, who, guarded by nicely dressed policemen, is taken off to a place of temporary imprisonment. Fashionable drinking saloons are elegantly fitted up in our large cities for society women of the wealthy class. The number of habitual visitors of such places is said to be alarmingly on the increase. In this the devil is using his most ingenious devices to apply his deadly venom to the very heart of the race. Well may the alarm be sounded all over the land, and the strong ones put forth every possible effort to exterminate this terrible curse, when mothers begin to fall before the rum fiend. Say or think as we may, these facts stare us in the face, and should rouse every lover of sobriety and virtue to determined action against this terrible destroyer of the human race."—Vanguard.