Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-08-06
H RUM TRAFFIC.
1t Is the Curse of the Land, and 1t Is
Useless to Palter with It-Popalar Ed.
ucation Versus the Rum Power,
from the Toledo Blade,

Seventeen States and one Territory have
now enacted laws which provide for the
study of the nature and effects of alcoholic
drinks in the public schools, and Congress
has lately passed o similar law, applicable
to the District of Columbia, and the militia
~ and naval academies Of West Point and
Annapolis respectively, and to the Indian
and colored schools established by the au-
thority of the National Government in the
Territories. That a similar provision will
be engrafted upon the statutes of all the
other States is but a matter Of time. The
net result of this instruction as to the reul
properties and physical effects of alcohol
will be that the next generation of men
question through the clear eyes eff science,
and the strength OF the movement for the
suppression Of the rum traffic will be enor-
mously increased.
b all temperate men are not Rrohibi-
tionists in sentiment, and are not actively
engaged in the battle against the rum hover,
is due simply to ignorance. The amount
OF error as to the real nature of ruin
which term has come to be used in q gen
eral sense, to embrace all malt, %vinous, or
spirituous liquors, and all Of which contain
alcohol-is astonishing to one who Under
stands the case. Doctors, following the
erroneous beliefs of the past, pr.saibe
rum in their daily practice; people who DO
not dream of the dangers they incur nor
the risk they run, use it in their families,
as a sort of general cure-all. On all sides
you will hear the view expressed that it is
not the use, but the abuse of rum, which
is harmful. And the result is, that the rum
power finds one Of its strongest bulwarks
IN the Ignorance and indifference of the
great mas of the people.
Rum in any form has for its basis alcohol.
And what is alcohol? DR.. Willard Parker,
OF New York, answers
alcohol is q poison. 1t is so regarded
by the best writer's and teachers Oh toXicol-
ogy. Like arsenic, corrosive subllmate,
and prussic acid, when introduced into the
system it is capable of destroying life with
out acting mechanically, and It induces a
general disease as we'll marked as fever,
smallpox, or lead poison"
Prot. 1oumans, an eminent chemist of
the same city, says:
at is evident that, so far from being the
CONSERVATION of health, alcohol is an activ.
and powerful cause of disease, interfering
with the respiration, the circulation, and the
nutrition"
DR.. Richardson, one of the greatest of
English physicians OF the present day,
after making q long series of researches
to determine the nature Of alcohol, de-
clares:
81 find it to be an agent that gives no
strength, that reduces the tone of the
blood vessels and heart, that reduces the
nervous power, that builds up no tissues,
and can be Of no use whatever to me or
any other animal as q substance for food.
On that side of the question my mind is
made up, that this agent, in the most mod
crate quantity, is perfectly useless for any
of the conditions OF life to which men are
subjected, except under the most excep-
tional conditions, which none but close OBJ
servers can declare" @
Practically, the decision of science is
that every man who drinks rum inevitably
poisons himself. The process may be slow,
but it is absolutely sure. He who drinks
may not intend suicide, but all the same he
evidently kills himself, directly or indi-
directly; for where rum is not the direct
cause Of death, it has opened the door to
the fatal disease, and has shortened the
full term of years which nature had in
tended the victim to live.
In all visitations of epidemics it is found
that RUNS votaries form the greater por.
ton of the victims of the disease. In New
York, for instance, in the cholera epidemic
of 1882, out of 1,615 cases treated in hos.
pitfalls, 1,O23-nearly two-thirds-were de.
cidedly Incorporate persons. In 1858 the
yellow fever decimated New Orleans, anc
a physician Of that city wrote to a medica
journal that about 5000 of the patrons Of
drinking saloons died before the disease
touched a single sober man. Last summer
during one of the extremely hot spells, 6
New York paper stated that the number Of
fatal cases of sunstroke was AS, of which
at least two-thirds were habitual drinkers,
And the researches of Mr.. Nelson, an emf
nent English life insurance actuary, VIII
was investigating the effect of rum on the
duration of life, resulted in the startling con.
clusion that among beer drinkers 4.597 pei
cent. annually died; among spirit drinkers.
$500 per cent. annually died; among mixed
drinkers, 6.194 per cent. annually died
while of the general population, which ill.,
Guided both temperate and incorporate,
less than p per cent. died yearly.
Is it not well that our children should
know these things? That they should. be-
fore they can have contracted a taste fol
Rum, before it has reached brain and sys.
tenn with its whitening touch of fire, before
it has taught the tongue the internal Rum.
thirst, know the nature of this demon, anc
see it i in its true light? 1t will not be diff.
cult to enforce Prohibition when the me1
and women of the land know that Run
shortens life, ruins health, opens the way
Ior all Tell diseases; that 1t is the mos
potent promoter of vice, the great incentive
to the basest crimes, the great cause O
poverty and insanity, and altogether The
greatest curse of humanity.
But the education of youth in this direc.
ton is not the only thing that should b.
done. The ignorance of the masses is bu
a negative force for the perpetuation of the
Rum-curse. It has its active agents an6
promoters, untiring and vigilant. spurrei
to work by the basest of all motives-the
greed of gain. The brewers and distillers
the rectitiers, the Wholesale dealers, and the
vast army of saloonists, are all interested
in perpetuating the reign of Rum. Il
them it brings gold. What does it matter
to them that there is a veritable army. u.s..
600 strong, going to the grave each year il
this country, from the effects of ltum. sc
that their source of wealth is not en-.
dangered?
The rum traffic is the curse of the land
The men who carry it on are active mis-.
sionaries of the devil, doing his hellisi
work day and night in dragging down mer
10 ruin, beggary, vice, crime, and death
Their ears are deaf to the walls and tear
of widows and orphans; think you the,
care for the teaching Of science as to rum.