Stopping Wife-Beating Through Liquor Prohibition
By Editor
The best suggestion on the subject of legislation for wife-beating that we have heard is the following from the Woman's Tribune: “Much as we wish the wife-beater, who is distressingly common all over the country, could receive an adequate punishment for his misdeeds, it never seemed to the Tribune that the whipping-post could remedy the evil. Such a wretch is in an undeveloped, brutalized condition. The only effect a brutal punishment has on him is to harden him still more. Then he is left free to go on living in his family at the best with the almost inevitable result, as in the Bieker case, recently reported in the Portland papers. Bieker whipped the mother of his seven children; was punished at the whipping-post, and in a short time thereafter took to drinking again and became more brutal than before, bragging that he was not opposed to the whipping-post. Mrs. Bieker obtained a divorce and has the seven children to provide and care for. When legislators are really in earnest about stopping wife-beating, they will stop the sale of liquor, for it will be found invariably that men who beat their wives are maddened with drink.” One very cogent reason for the application of this remedy for wife-beating is, that it would also obviate so many other evils.