Women and Children Who Suffer—Living Experiences in One of the Most Beautiful Cities of the Nation—Is There No Relief?
By ADELAIDE BEE EVANS
"LIQUOR won't hurt you if you let it alone," says the defender of the liquor traffic. "Regulation, not prohibition," is the great cry. But is it true? Does liquor harm only those who drink it? Look around you, in your own town, your own pleasant street, perhaps, and there read the answer.
Fairview is a temperance suburb of what loyal Americans like to call "the most beautiful city in the nation"; and many who have traveled far, and seen the noblest cities of distant lands, declare it to be the loveliest in the world. There are plenty of saloons in the beautiful city, along with its marble buildings, its parks, its splendid monuments, and its tree-lined avenues. It is no unusual thing to see two or three policemen assisting a well-dressed man "under the influence" into a waiting automobile, to be taken home or to the police station, as the case may be.
WHILE THE CHARTER HOLDS
But to the honor of the founders of Fairview be it recorded that as long as its charter holds, it is written that there shall be no saloons in that suburb. The wisdom of this restriction is clearly seen. The town is filled with pleasant homes. Its streets are clean and smooth, the schools are overflowing, the churches are well filled, and a general air of prosperity is apparent everywhere.
The suburb is not so large but that the neighbors take a friendly interest in newcomers; so when, three or four years ago, young Mr. Eddy took a bungalow on Flower Avenue, and established his little family therein, the other residents of the quiet street were quick to offer the hospitality that is characteristic of the place.
Mr. Eddy, it was soon learned, was a government clerk, with a salary that seemed large to Flower Avenue. His wife's friendly ways won all hearts, and much sympathy was expressed for the little daughter, who, it was whispered about, had tuberculosis. A pitiful little thing she was to see—great dark eyes, sunken in the delicate face, wasted limbs of almost unbelievable frailness, and a hollow little chest and stooped shoulders. However, her case was not hopeless, the mother said; and great improvement was hoped for the child from the country air and the shaded lawn.
STRANGE RUMORS AFLOAT
But it was not long before strange rumors began to float about the neighborhood. Often Mrs. Eddy left for the city as soon as her husband was off, staying till late at night, and leaving the baby, neglected, often not even dressed, in the care of a slatternly maid or a shiftless house boy. Once when the child, looking particularly forlorn and neglected, sobbed out that she was hungry, a venturesome woman opened the door, determined to find food and warm garments. What a sight met her shocked eyes! The mother, half clothed, was lying drunk on the floor, with an empty bottle by her side.
Not many weeks later, another baby girl came into this sad home—a little shadow of Lillian, who was scarcely more than a shadow herself. Patiently the young husband worked; generously he provided the money that ought to have fed and clothed his family, and furnished a comfortable and decent home; frequently he forgave, hoping against hope for the time when the repentant promises of the sobered wife and mother would be kept. But all in vain. Drearier and more dilapidated grew the home. Outside, the lawn was littered with papers, boxes, tin cans, and broken toys; inside, the house looked utterly barren and desolate. It came to be a common sight to see the children, even in cold weather, playing about the yard or on the sidewalk, often at evening wearing only a coat or a sweater over the clothes in which they had slept the night before. "Drunk again," the neighbors said, and sighed with the pity of it. Beautiful garments were occasionally provided for the children; but beauty and neglect do not long travel together, and in spite of all the father could do, the little girls soon came to look, the typical children of a drunkard.
MUST FIND ANOTHER HOUSE
At last the mother's condition became so notorious that for the sake of the neighborhood, and in spite of the sympathy felt for the father, he was told that he must find another house. Just before the family moved away, Lillian, for once made clean and shining by some friendly hand, but looking pitifully pinched and old, was on her way to the kindergarten. "I love my teacher," she said, expanding into rare friendliness under the wholesome influence of cleanliness—"I love my teacher—and Mary does too. But Mary couldn't come. She's been sick two, free days. And mama," she added, "is asleep. She gave Mary medicine out of a big bottle, and now Mary's asleep, too."
"Asleep"! Poor, deeply wronged babies! What can ever make up to them in this life for the loss and injury they have received at the hand of the terrible business of which, in their youth and innocence, they do not even know the name?
FOUND BY THE ROADSIDE
There is a widow in the temperance suburb. A few months ago, her husband was found early one morning lying by the side of the road, the ants covering his face. When "himself," this man was a loving husband and a kind father. Because of his devotion to his family, he had finally resolved to break the bonds that held him a slave to alcohol. But the liquor traffic had paid for the right to tempt this weak man to drink. Outside the limits of Fairview the "First Chance" saloon invited him in, to quench the thirst that consumed him. He fell; and returning home late at night with his drunken companions, he stumbled by the roadside, and was left by them to die alone. Often he had been warned that his heart would give way if he did not stop drinking; and now that weakened organ succumbed to the strain of his last debauch. The broken-hearted widow, the fatherless children, are the victims of the traffic that they loathed and shunned. They had nothing to do with liquor, but liquor had something to do with them.
THE INNOCENTS HAD TO SUFFER
Last winter, in the beautiful city, a man who had quarreled with his family returned home drunk one night, and entering the house, killed his wife and seriously injured her little brother. The child had let drink alone, but it did not let him alone.
Nor did his tender years and his innocent heart save the life of another child of this same city,—a happy, loving little lad, too young to know that papa had "bad times,"—who joyously ran to meet his father as he returned from his day in the office. "Papa, papa!" he cried. They were his last words; for his father, made a demon by drink, seized the boy, and savagely dashed out his brains against the wall.
The lovely city hides many such horrors. Within the past few months, another father tried to murder his two little sons, with himself, by asphyxiation, but failed. "I was drunk," he said, in his prison cell. Had the liquor business anything to do with those children—their mother dead, their father imprisoned, and themselves thrown upon the care of some institution?
DEFORMED BY CRUELTIES
And what shall be said of the deformed children, born into the world to bear a lifelong burden of physical infirmity as the result of the cruelty and blows of drunken fathers; of the mentally deficient, many of whom must become the wards of the state; of the epileptics, who form a hopeless, deplorable, unwanted, "unfit" army, whose ranks are constantly swelling? One such the writer knew—a lad of twelve years. In spite of the terror that had him by the throat, in spite of the dreadful paroxysms that made him loathsome to behold and shut him off from healthful association with other boys of his age, there still burned in the heart of this afflicted child an ambition to study, to succeed, to become a man among men.
"Why do I have these spells?" the child asked. "Why am I different from other boys?"
The kind-hearted woman who had been caring for him a few weeks was "sorry" for him, but she could not keep him in her home; so in spite of his pleading and tears, he was sent back to the institution from which he had been taken. "His father670drank, and his mother is dead,"—that was the summing up of the case.
DIED OF BROKEN HEART
A few years ago, a brilliant lawyer had a large business in the city. He had a good income, a splendid home, a Christian wife, and three beautiful little girls,—Esther, Ruth, and Naomi. But he had the liquor appetite; and wherever he went, the "business" reached out its tentacles, drawing him ever downward. The mother died broken-hearted; the children became half-welcome dependents in the homes of relatives; and in a few brief years the lawyer closed his career as a common drunkard.
What can be done to protect the children from this cruel and merciless traffic?
