Temperance | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 20, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 44.

Temperance.

The Record of One Week.

It is a common remark that the best commentary on the evils of intemperance may be found in the columns of the daily newspapers. In support of this we submit the results of a personal examination of the columns of five or six of the leading dailies of the country, made during the space of seven days, with the view of noting all cases of crimes, casualties, etc., where strong drink was assigned as the producing cause. We have excluded all doubtful cases from the summary, and the record includes only those where the exciting cause is specially mentioned. The task of going through the shocking and often disgusting details of rum's doings was not a pleasant one, but the results are suggestive:—

Murders . . . . . . 11 Murderous assaults . . . . . . 17 Suicides . . . . . . 13 Wife beatings . . . . . . 7 Affrays . . . . . . 19 Miscellaneous . . . . . . 41 Total . . . . . . 108

Under the head of miscellaneous we have included such cases as arrests for drunkenness, cases of delirium tremens, dismissal from employment and cases of destitution.

We made no attempt at a general or exhaustive examination in collecting our statistics, but only inspected the columns of a few respectable dailies, and did not look into those publications that make a specialty of criminal news. It is evident that with the greatest care and widest research that we could possibly make, our record would be only a partial one. The great majority of cases of misery and suffering caused by strong drink in various ways never meet the public eye in print. One has only to walk through some of the tenement districts of such a city as New York and see the squalor and filth that abound there, and witness some of the sights that appear in those quarters daily among the drunken inmates of the "dives" and dens of infamy, to have a faint realization of what rum can do in debauching and ruining humanity. The visitor in the slums of the city will observe that vice and wretchedness are

everywhere in direct proportion to the number of beer saloons and groggeries; the more abundant the latter are, the deeper the degradation and woe. In the course of our examination we were more deeply impressed than ever before with the proportion between the cases of crime, etc., attributed to drink and those for which other causes were assigned. While noting the one hundred and eight given above, we found just eleven cases of the same general character where strong drink was not mentioned in connection with them. In several instances there were the best reasons for believing that rum was really at the bottom of the trouble.

The newspaper reports of these murders and other crimes are often very brief, but suggestive. One murder is recorded in three or four lines. It was a fight on the street. One man stabbed another fatally. The paragraph closes with three words—words of meaning: "Rum did it." So often does this phrase, or one of similar import, occur in the accounts of crime, that it suggests the thought that the newspapers might save themselves trouble and expense by keeping the words, "Rum did it," as a standing head-line for their criminal news. The cases are few that would not properly fall under that general head.

Our week's record of rum's doings may properly be supplemented by what we saw in the Tombs Police Court one morning. The night before, the police had raided a "stale beer dive" in Mulberry Street, and had brought to the Tombs all the inmates they could capture. The next morning the whole crowd were brought into court for examination and committal. A more wretched and disgusting array of human beings never stood before a bar of justice. There were between thirty and forty of them, nearly all middle-aged women, some of them with gray hair. No pen could adequately describe the appearance of these miserable creatures. All were bare-footed, and only one wore anything that had the likeness of a head-covering. Their garments were indescribably filthy, and hung about their bodies in tatters. Their faces were swollen and blotched; their hair matted and frowzy, while several bore the marks of recent squabbles, in scratches and welts on head and face, from which the blood had flown down and dried in with the dirt. The most of them seemed too stupid and idiotic to realize their condition, while a few appeared to rejoice at the transient notoriety the event had given them. They were all charged with drunkenness and disorderly conduct, and were disposed of in a summary manner with sentences of from three to six months on Blackwell's Island. These creatures had subsisted chiefly on the dregs of stale beer. And they were the product of only one "dive" in a street lined for blocks with places quite as bad.

With the foregoing facts yet fresh in mind, we read an interview with one of the officers of the United States Brewers' Association, in which he spoke of beer as "the people's drink" and a "health-giving beverage." The dregs of beer should be the very quintessence of healthfulness. We wish all who think so had seen and smelled the crowd of beer-drinkers in the Tombs Police Court that morning.

But, as we have already said, the scenes that we have depicted are no worse than those that are constantly passing before the public eye. The papers come teeming day by day with harrowing tales of want and misery and crime, with rum written everywhere as the potent cause. All the testimony is on the side of the declaration that the rum power is the source of our country's direst woes to-day, that like a malignant cancer it is eating out the life of the nation, debauching its manhood, ruining its homes, and filling the hearts of thousands with sorrow unutterable. But the day of reckoning will surely come, for God is just, and the prayers of his people shall not pass unanswered.—N. Y. Observer.