The Republican., 1891-10-16

THE ALCOHOL HABIT.



Beverages.
How shall we explain the fact that
the power of public opinion has proved
so much more effective in the struggle
against the spread of the gambling vice
and the social evil than in the crusade
against the curse of the alcohol habit?
The explanation can certainly not be
found in the lack of persistent effort
Without the tenth part of the energy
and the moral enthusiasm devoted to
the promotion of temperance, gam
bling, lotteries and the traffic in OBJ
scene literature have been reduced to
practical minimum. Gaming, in its
worst forms, enjoyed for generations
the protection of civilized governments
in Europe and America, the interests
of the gambler were protected by the
inveteracy of the vice and the lavish
expenditure of money bribes, and yet
we see that in less than quarter of a
century the public gambling hells of
Christendom have been reduced to
den maintaining precarious exist
ence in small principality of the Ital-
ian peninsula. The sovereign of that
principality derives by far the larger
part of his revenues from the direct
and indirect tax on the privilege of the
hazard tables, and is known as man
entirely unincumbered with moral
prejudices, yet the ostracism of public
opinion has forced him to become an
exile, not only from his hereditary do
minions, but from the better social
circles of his adopted land. Fifty
years ago the roulette dens of
the Rhenish watering places en-
riched the public revenues with yearly
contribution aggregating 240, 900, 600
marks, of nearly $4,000, 900; yet the
constant increase of financial difficulties
has failed to encourage even the modi-
fed establishment of those profitable
institutions. In spite of enormous
bribes the managers of the Louisiana
state lottery failed to hold their own
against the rising tide of public indig-
nation. The obscene literature evil has
no chance of survival outside of tie
hope common TO other forms of recog-
nized crime-the refuge of obscurity.
Imagine the result of an attempt to
override the veto of public opinion by
an organized '1eague of American pub
fishers of indecent periodicals." or a
mutual aid society of faro dealers and
three card monte men," with or with
out subsidized press and a trained
staff of lobby steerers!
How shall we account for the fact
that the alcohol habit still contrives to
secure the advantage of legislative pro-
lection by means which would have no
chance of success in behalf Of other
vices?
The only logical explanation can be
found in the circumstance that those
vices have been generally recognized
as unqualified evils, while larger pro-
portion of our fellowmen still labor
under the fatal delusion of the belief
that, within certain limits. taste for
Intoxicating beverages can be indulged
with impunity. They persist in calm
ing their own misgivings with the be-
drinking, and of the ''milder stimu-
lants," and confess the evils of intem-
perance only in the sense of the admis-
sion that all excess Is injurious. The
fact that stimulants can be swallowed
in health-endangering over-doses,"
they argue, "'does not justify the plan
to lessen that danger by anti-liquor
laws We might as we'll prohibit the
sale of meat and sugar, because a sur
felt of meat pies and pastry may result
in dyspepsia. Be temperate in all
things, and defend the palladium of
personal liberty"
And too many of our brethren en-
courage those delusions by still aScrib-
ing intemperance to the temptations
of unrestrained appetite" and the
''passions of unregenerate nature"
The dread of chronic alcoholism may
deter many young men from the per-
ilous first steps on the road to ruin, and
the grim logic of experience may in
duce a few half-confrmed drunkards
to renounce their vice in time; but we
can never hope to get stroke at the
root of the upas tree till we can en-
force the general recognition of the
truth, that the alcohol habit in all its
forms is a wholly abnormal PASSION,