The Evening dispatch. [volume] (Provo, City, Utah) 1891-1895, 1894-12-14
THE DRINK EVIL.


good men and women is expended in
an endeavor to reduce the social evils to
the minimum. Good men and good
women are daily asking, how may or
we contribute TO this reduction? How
can we live and work so that these
evils of social nature may be lessened7
OF course we, in common with all
other observers, readily admit that
the drink eyil is one of the leading
evils of the day. Strong drink has en-
chained its thousands of victims where
other evils have only caught their
hundreds. 1t is all folly to pass pro-
hibitory laws 30 long as the grain con-
tains the alcohol and the human
stomach retains the appetite for it.
The indications then are plain-des.
troy or lessen the appetite, stamp it out,
and then the demand will be brought
into such subsection as that it can be
controlled. Make the drink habit CT
appetite unfashionable and discredit-
able, and it will double all other re-
stralning laws or forces. Let the ladies
reeolv e-that all men who drink to ex-
cess or who get drunk shall be excluded
vigorously from polite society or from
genteel association, and IN FIVE years
there will be seen only hundreds where
there are now thousands of men who
regularly toy with the seductive julep
or the intoxicating toddy. After all,
it is to the women of the day
that is to be ascribed the drunkenness
which is the disgrace of the age. This
is, we know, a very severe arraignment
of the sex. But who is there among
their companions, who can gainsay the
charge? The women who daily, or,
rather. nightly, meet and smile upon
the devotees of strong drink, and who
smile and fawn upon them, are carry
ing heavier onus by far than are the
saloon keepers and those who cater to
the tastes they themselves are cater
ing TO by setting strong drink, seduc-
tive wines and bewildering champsgnes
before their fashionable guests amid
the swell of voluptuary music, the
bright smiles and gay costumes of be-
witching women. Here is the bottom
OF the whole evil. Here is its home and
lurxlng place. Eradicate it right here
and you have the evil at fearful ad-
vantage. Like all others of fashion
able vices of the day, it must feed upon
the bright smiles OF fair women or die
the death.
Will the women of America ever rise
to the level of this great, this solemn
truth? If they dc, that hour sounds
the death knell OF drunkenness as of
nearly all others of the vices of the
times. So long as fashion sanctions
these and kindred vices, SO long will
they live. When this sanction is hon
estly withdrawn, the vice dies for want
of sustenance. Will the mothers, the
sisters and the associates of the young
men of today ever learn this lesso n?
If yea, then we say to them be Of good
cheer, the enemy is destroyed. If no,
then be assured that he will remain
until this remedy is supplied. So.
too, is it of the social evil:
SO long as men ale petted and admired
in social life who make it their busi-
ness to prey upon the giddy and the in
considerate girls of the age. 30 long will
the vice continue. Let the women of
society set their faces sterply against
these things and men will no longer
dare to practice them.
The women are 10 blame and thew
alone. If the Woman's Christian Tenn
perance union viii recognize this great
truth and act upon it, it will soon be
able to control these and all other 60
cial evils. This beating about the
bush, these high sounding sermons and
platforms will fall by their own
weight, if the personal lives of the
deyotees Of temperance and purity of
life do not conform to them. 1t is ex
ample, not theory, which is needed
Think of it.
THE indecent boast of the Utah re-