Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-07-18
w. T. u. COLUMN.
votto: "God and Home and Native Land"
WOMAN AND HE SALOON.

Though the saloon brutalizes and
degrades men and increases the fric-
ton of all progressive effort immense
ly, the suffering which it entails upon
women is heavier and keener. The
material grief involved is but one
phase of the subject. If the saloon
wrecks thousands of lives and homes,
it's victims 60 to ruin with paralyzed
sensibilities; and when they are in
f1icting most pain upon those who
love them, they are least capable OF
realizing the truth. The liquor whose
habitual use dulls all the faculties ex-
tinguishes conscience, shame, and
self-respect in the course of it's de-
structive work, and the hardened
drinker will sacrifice everything to
his master passion without scruple or
hesitation.
But the women who are doomed to
bear the heavy burden of relation
ship to drunkards, are, indeed, to be
pitied. The domesticity from which
few of them can escape forces upon
them perpetual experiences SO heart
breaking, SO revolving, that their ex-
istence is a prolonged tragedy. All
the caprice, petulance, unreason, tyr
amy, brutality, engendered by drink
is expended upon them. All the So
cial degradation and modification of
the position falls upon their heads.
The living man chained to corpse is
not more terribly situated than the
wives and daughters of the saloons
victims. iLiquor eliminates all the
drunkard's good qualities, reinforces
all his worst vices, and, having thus
transformed him, sends him home to
torture and abuse those whom it is
his first duty to cherish and protect.
At the sacrifice of her future happi-
ness, the wife mayfsometimes obtain
divorce; very often, however, her
inability to support herself compels
her to endure her torment, or the re-
luctance to expose her children to re-
proach constrains her to bear every
thing. 1t is seldom that women are
SO situated as to be able to resume a
celibate life without submitting to Sc
rious hardships, and, perhaps, in a
majority of instances, they can Sc
cure separation only by facing des-
titution. There is no evil which oper-
ates so directly and with such disas-
trous potency against the family as
the saloon, in fact. 1t is the direst
enemy of domestic happiness, purity
and peace. Even in it's mildest man
ifestations it alienates men from their
homes; creates in them habits of sell
fish indulgence; gives them sensual
interests apart; brings into compe-
tition with the innocent recreations
of the home circle coarse, vulgar, and
amusements. In it's
more pronounced operations it stops
at no such trifies as the production Of
mere discomfort, but proceeding with
out disguise, turns men into wild
beasts, and then lets them loose upon
their families. What makes this es-
pecially shocking is that We. are all
acquainted with its truth, yet that we
have hitherto. tolerated it passively.
The horrors to which drink expose
women are worse than those of slav-
cry. The sufferings of the wives and
of drinking men are more
acute and constant than most men
are probably capable of experiencing.
We all know this, yet we 60 on calmly
in the old way, as if we either thought
women ought to be thus abused, or
believed that, though the matter was
pitiful, no help could be found for it.
Among other influences outside OF
the home that work for good is that
of dancing school, or, rather, OF those
classes for dancing and de-
pertinent so much in vogue at pres
emit. Surely much that they teach is
wholesome. Watch the little boy
who is numbered among their ellen
tele, and see how he is on the alert
TO raise his cap in acknowledgment of