Worse Than Tariff or Trust
Worse than Tariff or Trust is drunkenness. Not long ago the leading newspaper of France bore this testimony: 'People are ready to talk of 'alcoholism' for a day or two, and then think no more of it, but its terrible flood does not pursue its ravages only in a hidden and silent way; from time to time some statistical report surprises us, and we are obliged to face the evil which it is accomplishing. According to the official figures, the Department of the Seine contained in 1867, 7,805 lunatics; in 1896 there were 21,700; in 30 years the number of insane persons in Paris and its suburbs had tripled. To what must we attribute this terrible increase? No doubt there are several causes, but the medical men say that the steadily-increasing habit of alcoholism is the most fruitful one. . . . Last year at Ville Evrard, out of 100 new patients, 22 were there through alcoholism, that is to say, nearly 25 per cent. We must not imagine that this increase of lunatics is peculiar to the neighborhood of Paris; it is the same in Picardy, in Normandy, in Bretagne, and in the center of France; even in the south, which seemed to have escaped until recently, the same phenomenon is recorded. Almost all the departments are complaining of the insufficiency of the asylums. Alcoholism—this is the enemy. It is the scourge of destruction par excellence, which sweeps away those races who do not know how to defend themselves against it.' And the feeders to the great deadly lagoon of alcoholism are stimulating foods, condiments, tea, coffee, absinthe, tobacco, and other evil drugs and brews. The only sure way of escape is temperance in all things. Only those whose minds are clear and sensitive will be able to discern the moral principles involved in the great and momentous crises through which we are passing. The load of intemperance is the heaviest the nations of earth are bearing.