BY careful breeding, a thoroughbred race of horses has been produced; likewise a thoroughbred race of corn; also a thoroughbred race of dogs; similarly a thoroughbred race of flowers and fruit.
It is time we were producing a thoroughbred race of men. And the first step in the process would be to destroy alcohol, for alcohol is destructive to manhood.
It has now been scientifically demonstrated that alcohol is a toxin — poison. A toxin is the excretion of some form of life. It will poison the form of life producing it, and all other more highly organized life. This is a universal law, which stands unchallenged and undisputed.
The rise and fall of crime in Chicago has been found to correspond to the privileges accorded the all-night saloon.
Alcohol is produced by the lowest form of life known, the yeast germ. It will therefore act only as a poison on all forms of life more highly organized than the yeast germ. It is because of this that nothing living can get into any organic matter placed in alcohol.
By cultivation, there can be developed in a plant certain colors that were not in it by nature. Apply alcohol to the plant, and color will at once stop developing.
By domestication and breeding, a wolf can be evolved into a gentle, faithful dog. Give him alcohol, and he will develop again the nature of a wolf. The most highly civilized and educated man can be changed into a besotted, stupid lump of flesh by alcohol. This is not guesswork. These things are absolutely scientific in their results. They can be watched and measured, and the result never fails.
Sixteen thousand men in the United States last year deserted their children. Three thousand men murdered their wives. Twenty-five hundred fathers killed their own children. No other race of animals has fallen so low as to make such a record. Alcohol is the cause.
The processes of nature, when acting normally, build up and strengthen. Alcohol reverses nature's processes by tearing down, by degenerating. And when the processes of degeneracy set in and are not checked, nature herself assists the progress of degeneracy, and proceeds to exterminate. Nature does this in the case of the user of alcohol by shortening his own life and blighting his offspring.
Take fifty thousand young men who are total abstainers, and they will live to an average age of sixty-five years. Turn them into moderate drinkers, and they will live but fifty-one years. If they become heavy drinkers, they will live but thirty-five years. The cost of being a moderate drinker is fourteen years of life. The cost of being a heavy drinker is thirty years of life.
It is estimated that three fourths of the fallen women were lured from the path of chastity while under the influence of drink.
Americans are consuming alcoholic liquors at the rate of twenty-two gallons every year for each man, woman, and child in the country. As a result, alcohol kills between six hundred thousand and seven hundred thousand citizens every year — about two thousand a day. Very nearly one half of the deaths in America — forty-four per cent, to be exact — are premature, due to alcohol.
But far worse than the shortening of the drinker's life is the blighting of his children. For both parents to be moderate drinkers means an increase of infant mortality under the age of one year, of nearly eighty per cent. On the same basis — moderate drinking by both parents — the disturbances of the processes of reproduction, the dangers of maternity, and the chances of accident are increased more than four hundred per cent. With both parents alcoholics, one child in seven will be born incurably deformed; one child in five of those who live will become insane; every third child will become either epileptic or hysteric; and only one child in six will be normal.
One of the objects of the United States constitution is to protect life. To do this, alcohol must be destroyed. You will soon have an opportunity to help destroy it. A campaign, "the stakes of which are the existence of the nation and the race," is on.
VOTE DRY.
If you would reduce crime to the minimum, destroy the liquor traffic, the chief cause of crime.
The Company It Keeps
ALCOHOL is a cause of crime; first because many commit crimes in order to obtain drink; further because men sometimes seek in drink the courage necessary to commit crime; again because, by the aid of drink, young men are drawn into crime, and young women led into prostitution; lastly because the saloon is the meeting place of criminals, where they not only plan their crime, but also squander their gains.
— August Vollmer.
"THE black flag of the legalized saloon stands for poverty, misery, and crime, for destruction, death, and damnation." It must be supplanted by the white ribbon of the Stars and Stripes.
Jeopardizing the Foundations
SOCIETY can only exist by virtue of a full and normal recognition, on the part of each individual, of the mutual rights of one another. One of the early effects of alcohol upon the novice is a lessening of that appreciation of the right relation of things which makes him a normal being. When a large number of individuals, through the influence of a drug environment, begin to have a lessening of the perception of right and wrong, then the real foundations of society are in jeopardy.
— De Witt G. Wilcox, M. D.
ALCOHOL benumbs the higher controlling faculties of the mind, and obliterates, to a large degree, the sense of responsibility and discretion, stimulating the animal passions, and creating a desire for sensual things.
Cause of National Inefficiency
ARTHUR NEWSHOLME, after reviewing the experience of the United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution, from 1849 onward, in which the recorded experience concerned 31,776 whole life policies of non-abstainers, passing through a period of 466,942 years of life, and 29,094 whole life policies of abstainers, passing through 398,010 years of life, and after showing the greater life expectancy of the latter, says:
"In alcoholism we have to deal with a chief cause of national inefficiency. This inefficiency is partly caused by the sickness and mortality due to alcoholism, and the numerous diseases which it favors, or actually produces, including insanity. Alcoholism is a chief cause, if not actually the chief cause, of poverty. The evil really wrought by alcoholism is much greater than any official figures reveal."
"ALCOHOL is one of the most dreadful and insidious of all corrupting agents known to men, in debauching legislatures, and robbing our citizens of the results of their labors at the ballot box, making a government of the people, by the people, for the people a farcical phrase, while King Alcohol sits enthroned in the legislative hall."
