Litchfield enquirer., 1881-06-30
"0ther Sides. :"

The article by Rose Terry Cooke reprinted
 nize the views of the Temperance question
 ordinarily taken by those who preach Total
 Abstinence. The antagonism strikes us as iu
 the main fictitious. Sensible Total Abstain CTS admit all that she says about the special temptations to indulgence among the mill op- | efatives of . village like Winsted. They
 favor the establishment of just such places of entertainment as she describes They heart fly wish such places were to be found in every village If Mrs. Cooke means to say that dram shops are easier enumerated than sup. pressed, she may be right. There is no nec- essary antagonism between the two methods In the natural course of reform, countersction, of the kind she proposes, would smooth the way for the suppression of the liquor traffic. If in Wlnsted, as we infer from her article, an antagonism has grown up, it is the fault of the people who manage the two methods net the fault of the methods themselves.
 Certainly Mrs. Cooke cannot object to re- pression as mode of temperance action. for she herself proposes severe measure of re. pression, when she urges employers to refuse employment to workmen of bad habits. In that matter We think she is right. In the long run nothing would so surely root out in- temperance from manufacturing villages as the instant dismissal of all drunken employ ees. -"
 In fact we can find little if any fault with Mrs. Cookes article except its iucompleteness. It is little surprising that if she considers alcoholic beverages so dangerous that absti- hence from their use is the only safe rule of conduct, she nowhere says so. Hence we may guess that she holds to the old rule of temperance rather than the new rule of ab- stinence.
 We cannot believe that the former is a safe rule of action. Under it there is turned out a heavy, practically unavoidable percentage of drunkards. The alcoholic appetite has stolen on these men imperceptibly they are drunk ards before they knew they were in danger. Then. comes in another practical rule: once drunkard always drunkard With every ef fort, not one in twenty is ever reclaimed. Nor can any man know that he has no hered- itary predsposition to this vice. Drunkards are sure to be found among our ancestors. One or more must be found in our rapid ly widening list of grandfathers, great-grand- fathers, and areat-great- iandfathers. The predisposltion may have lain dormant for sev- eral generations so crop out in us. In that case, however temperate we may mean to be in the use of alcohol, we are almost sure to be- come incorporate if we indulge at'all.
 With all the risks of climate, of tempera- ment, of predisposition, are the pleasures of alcoholic indulgence SO great that we act the part of wise men Tn incurrIng it's terrible dan gers? The total abstinence principle is flat negative to this question. Total abstinence goes further. It demands of the law the SUD- pression of dram drinking, as it suppresses gambling and prostitution. Let us then do our best to render the practice of total absti- aence prevalent. Let us train our children up to that standard. Above all, let us prac- tIce what we preach. With no sacrifice short of that can the vice of drunkenness be rooted out from among US.