p. 7 | FUTILE ATTACKS by Mary M. Hunt

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 28, 1906

FUTILE ATTACKS.

By Mary M. Hunt

[By Mary M. Hunt, World and National Superintendent of the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction of the W. C. T. U.]

WHEN the brewers in this country began to complain of a decline in profits, a certain class of critics, among them moderate drinkers, began through various channels to make the vague charge, industriously repeated to school superintendents and school boards, that the indorsed temperance physiologies used in our public schools are inaccurate in their teaching against alcoholic drinks.

These critics were told by the friends and advocates of this study that the truths taught in those books were sustained by standard authorities and touched a vital question of private and public morals, namely, that of the sobriety or inebriety of coming generations, hence the charge of inaccuracy should be proved or be withdrawn.

Thereupon a self-appointed committee of fifty organized a costly system of experiments conducted through a period of ten years "to ascertain," they said, "the effects of the occasional or habitual use of a moderate quantity of wine, beer, or spirits upon the health and working powers of man," and "to free our public school system from the incubus [scientific temperance instruction] which rests upon it."

The report of the experiments made by this committee fills two volumes of 800 pages. The results of that report for evil would have been incalculable if only a surface consideration had been given to it, for it presents a seeming array of testimony in favor of that same moderate use of alcoholic drinks that through the centuries has eventuated in the alcoholic degeneracy that has destroyed individuals, families, and nations.

The Committee of Fifty Self-Condemned.

An exhaustive investigation was made of every one of these experiments to find what they really did prove, and of all the so-called evidence gathered by this committee of fifty from innumerable sources. This investigation shows that, when honestly interpreted, their experiments furnish experimental demonstration, not of the inaccuracy, but of the truth, of the testimony of science as presented in the indorsed public school text-books against even the moderate use of alcoholic drinks; and furthermore, that this committee has furnished nothing whatsoever to prove their accusation that the temperance instruction in our schools is unscientific or undesirable, but the reverse, that it is both accurate and desirable.

Now note how God takes care of truth that is essential to the salvation of the people.

The reply to this report of the committee of fifty, a pamphlet of twenty-eight pages, which proves the falsity of their charges, was all unsolicited by the advocates of this study, on motion of Senator Gallinger, a distinguished physician, made a government document, "Senate Document No. 171," by the unanimous vote of the United States Senate, February 27, 1904.

Thus a staggering blow was dealt to this effort to overthrow the public-school study of the laws of health, including those that teach abstinence from alcoholic drinks and other narcotics, a study upon which this nation depends as a means of securing a sound national physique.

When truths essential to human progress need defense, Omnipotence is not limited in instrumentalities that can sweep futile objections into oblivion.