The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-06-27
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
FRANCE AND RUM.

tNtN6 E1Stvts
Terrible Results Arising From the Almost
Universal Use of Crude Alcohol and Alb
sinthe.
A bill has been submitted to the
French chamber of deputies to curb
the rapid transit of the liquor traffic
in that country, by NJ. Jules Roche.
This measure is the twenty-third one
OF similar tenor and purpose intro
duced in that body since 1880, and will
probably meet the same fate as its
twenty-five predecessors-be thrown
aside without action. Yet the condi-
ton which it is intended to remedy is
one which no patrio<ic Frenchman
can investigate without alarm. The
statistics of the enormous increase of
drinking in France since the Franco
Prussian war, in 1870 are simply ap-
palling.
There are to-day in France 5000
more liquor shops than at that date
only twenty-five years ago With the
$1,000 open in Paris and the $4,000 in
the departments, there is one place for
selling alcohol to every thirtv-tive in
habitants. The actual consumption of
alcohol in France, per capita, has more
than tripled in the last forty years. In
the workingmen's suburb of Rouen the
average consumption, not of beer or
wine, but of raw spirits of alcohol, is
half-liter, or eighty eight one-hun-
dredths of pint, daily. Worst of all,
the stuff is made of crude alcohol of
the cheapest sort, served in highly
colored connections of various dyes,
and filled out with water at the near
est hydrant. This is served at two
cents glass in the lower resorts, and
the higher prices paid at the more re-
spectacle places do not insure any
thing better.
The darkest fact in connection with
the increase in the use of liquors there
is the fact that it curses both sexes,
and not one alone. The habit of drink
ing, which has grown upon France so
that now enormous quantities of alb
slnthe are consumed before the noon
lunch, as well as before the evening
dinner, is almost as prevalent among
the women as among the men. Dr.
Lancereaux says that intoxication by
the use of absinthe and bitters has
been, for some years back, as common
among women as among men,
DR.. Rey, the chief physician of the
Marseilles asylum for the insane, gives
the story drawn from the past twenty
years. Before that time the asv-
lum was large enough for the insane
of four attachments, including
10
bare city of Marseilles. Moreover, in
the city schools there are three hun
dred half-witted and epileptic children
whose condition, like that of the in
mates OF the asylum, is due to alco-
holism of their parents. Outside the
schools are at least three hundred more
whom it is useless even to try to teach.
And bad as the drink evil is, all its
effects are aggravated by the drugs
used in connection with the liquors
consumed. Absinthe is, as mentioned
above, enormously used. 1t contains
the poisonous essence of wormwood,
hyssop and fennel, which produce
epilepsy and sterility. There is grow
ing up in France race of alcoholics
which, as DR.. LancereuX says, lis
luckily wanting in the strength to
perpetuate itself" Eminent physi-
clans attribute the depopulation of
France to the one chief cause of alb
sinthe drinking. Certainly the ques-
ton of the abuse of alcohol is one of
the gravest now confronting French
legislators. But with them the prob
lem is even more difficult than with
ourselves. The French people, from
the highest to the lowest-the learned,
the great, the statesmen and scien-
lists, the priests, on down to the low
est workman, all indulge in some form
OF drink. Wine is universally seen
upon the tables at dinner. In such a
state of public feeling, it is impossible
TO array the better and more intelli-
gent classes solidly in favor of an eff
Tort to pulverize the rum power.-To-
ledo Blade.