Exit King Alcohol by Guy Woodbridge Wadsworth

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 1, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 34.

Exit King Alcohol

By Guy Woodbridge Wadsworth

By GUY WOODBRIDGE WADSWORTH, A. B., D. D.

General Superintendent of California "Dry" Federation

A DISTINGUISHED American educator said recently, "Show the American people what alcohol really is, and the American people will banish every saloon from the land." The American people are being shown. King Alcohol is on the run.

July 1, 1914, was a red letter day in the anti-liquor fight. West Virginia entered the column of prohibition states. The "drys" won the battle, November, 1912, by 92,000 majority; but the saloons remained open until midnight of June 30, 1914. This last day of the liquor régime will long be remembered in West Virginia, as five deaths, due to liquor, occurred on that day.

The United States navy went "dry" on the same day and hour; and Secretary Daniels had the satisfaction of seeing the kingdom of Norway establish a similar regulation June 10, 1914, to apply not only to the navy, but to the army.

From Boise, Idaho, comes a despatch, dated July 1, "Planks favoring state-wide prohibition were incorporated in the platform of the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive parties."

Let us notice certain reasons why alcohol's day of doom is near:

Condemned by Science and Business

1. Science condemns alcohol. It is not a true stimulant, but a narcotic poison. Alcohol is the excretion of the yeast microbe. The medical profession no longer consider it a food, and regard it as a drug whose use is rapidly vanishing.

Dr. Harvey W. Wiley says of prohibition: "Personally I would be glad to see nation-wide and world-wide prohibition. I am a prohibitionist. I am firmly convinced that the evils produced by alcohol so far outweigh any of its supposed advantages as to lead logically to but one conclusion, namely, the absolute prohibition of the use of alcohol for any but industrial purposes."

2. Business has no use for alcohol. In January, 1914, the board of trade of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, passed a resolution favoring national prohibition of the liquor traffic. The reasons for doing so were economic. Alcohol is an enemy to efficiency. The liquor traffic greatly reduces the purchasing power of the average citizen. The same dollar can not buy dry-goods and "wet" goods.

In answer to the question, Why do not all commercial bodies take similar action? the truth is that, in many of our cities, the brewer and the distiller are heavy depositors and frequently stockholders in the banks. Some of the banks own stock in the breweries and distilleries. The business world is an organism, and the liquor men hold the balance of power; but their day will be short, for intelligent and moral business men are everywhere showing signs of revolt against liquor domination.

Condemned by Patriotism

3. Patriotism cries out against alcohol. This is true in France, the greatest wine-producing country in the world. M. Joseph Reinach, a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, January 23, 1910, delivered a speech in the amphitheater of the Sorbonne, before a joint meeting of the National League against Alcoholism, and the National Federation of Mutual Insurance. The following are quotations from his speech:

"I do not believe, gentlemen, and I will not tire of repeating it, that there is at this moment for men of courage and good will, for all parties, and preeminently for the government itself, a single duty which is more pressing than that of engaging in a systematic and irresistible fight against alcoholism."

"If France does not wish to die—and who can doubt but that she still desires to live, and that her genius will yet give the world marvelous surprises—she must begin by burning out the cancer which gnaws within her, which is making greater ravages in the twentieth century than ever famine and the black death made in the middle ages."

In Ernest Gordon's recently published book on "Anti-Alcohol Movement in Europe," which is up to date and authoritative, we find, on page 232, these words: "Turning to France, a land in a galloping alcoholic consumption, we find a marked advance in physical degeneracy. Of the 275,234 conscripts summoned to the colors in 1907, 55,093 were rejected. Normandy a hundred years ago was the principal recruiting ground for cuirassier regiments. To-day the French military authorities are obliged to lower the requirement for cuirassier height."

"In the Norman regiments," writes a correspondent in En Normandie, "every fourth man has alcoholic trembling, tinglings in the hands, and mucous vomitings in the morning when rising. They have no power of resistance. On the march it is necessary to watch over them as if they were delicate children. . . . In the department of the Orne fifty-seven per cent of the recruits, according to a circular of the Ligue Nationale contre l'Alcoolisme, were rejected in 1903, in the Manche fifty per cent, in the Vallée des Vosges sixty per cent. The military authorities reckon that France loses an army corps each year through alcohol."

General Gallifet, in an interview, after remarking that all serious wounds meant death to a drinking soldier, affirmed that the French race was losing in height, physical force, and morale, because of this plague, and that there was more and more difficulty in filling the contingents. "In a mountain department we have had to do with, we got, thirty years ago, a splendid body of cuirassiers. Now not a single one comes thence."

Mr. Gordon, speaking of conditions in Germany, on page 234 makes the following statement: "In the sanitary report of the German marine for the ten years 1891-1901, a fourfold rise in heart-disease was noted. This army specialists attributed to the increase in beer drinking. The first and second Bavarian army corps lead in conscript rejections for heart trouble. It is not for nothing that Bavaria holds a beer record. In the Bavarian army between 1882-93 the number of admissions to army hospitals for heart sickness was from 3.1 per cent to 6.8 per cent of all. In the Prussian army it was but from 1.1 per cent to 3 per cent. Beer corpulence brings into the army multitudes of short-breathed, heavy, easily tired men, subject to heart fluttering and peculiarly liable to succumb to infectious diseases."

Concerning Italy, another great wine-producing country, the following statement appears on page 81 of Mr. Gordon's book: "Dr. Arcelli reports an infantile alcoholism. An investigation carried on in the schools of Milan among 36,462 children brings to light the fact that 24.8 per cent of the boys and 11 per cent of the girls confess to having been intoxicated at various times."

"The opinion as to the great danger in which Italy stands from alcoholism is a very great plague," writes the procurator of Undine. "The number of saloons is enormous. Sixty-five per cent of the crimes of violence are due to drink." The procurator of Treviso attributes more than half of the local crime, including crimes of carnal violence, to drink. In Padua "the number of drunkards is not small. Crime and frequent suicides are largely to be set down to drink." From Venice: "The vice of drunkenness is wide-spread and deeply rooted, and the number of drink shops continually increases." Brescia: "Eighty per cent of the crimes of violence result from the use of alcohol." The Milan prosecutor says: "It falls to my lot frequently to have to sum up the causes of a tragedy in two words—wine and knife."

The experience of these great nations in Europe and that of our own country is a call to every patriot to use his influence to have our government sever its connection with the liquor business, and for all to unite forces to annihilate the entire traffic.

Morality's Demand

4. Morality demands alcohol's destruction.

Dr. Legrain, a distinguished French author on insanity, characterizes the saloon as "a laboratory of moral poison"; and the procurator of S. Angelo dei Lombardi has said that in many cases which have come before his court, the criminal confesses to having deliberately charged himself with wine or other alcohol solution as a preparation for committing crime.

In this country, authors agree that from eighty to ninety per cent of the crimes are due directly or indirectly to alcohol. Riots seldom take place uninfluenced by drink.

In the name of morality, let us annihilate the traffic in alcoholic liquors of every kind, even in so-called pure and harmless wines. The much advertised wines of California are strongly alcoholic. The dry wines contain from ten to twelve per cent of alcohol, and the sweet wines from eighteen to twenty-four per cent. The iniquities of the restaurant with private wine-rooms are too well known for wine to be considered an innocent drink. Therefore let us make a clean sweep of the entire traffic.

There are now nine prohibition states. Six more vote this year on prohibitory amendments. Texas, Nebraska, Idaho, and Ohio will soon follow their example. Congress either now or later will pass constitutional amendments prohibiting the liquor traffic, which in the near future will be adopted by the necessary three fourths of the states in the American union. Possibly before that time the United States supreme court will decide against the legality of licensing saloons, on the ground that they are public nuisances. However the result may be reached, the more quickly it comes the better. May the cry soon be: "King Alcohol is dead. May his death be eternal."