El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-09-30

| Sponsible persons who handle property.
Business managers, responsible clerks,
partners and persons occupying places
Of trust are regarding with increasing
anxiety, particularly if they are club
| men and known to be users OF spirits.
The first qualification of an aspirant
for a good position is, What are his
habits? Is he a total abstainer? Often
inferior men secure positions because
they are abstainers, while men, bril-
| liant, capable, talented, who are mod
crate drinkers, fail.
Mercantile agencies rate low all
companies and businesses managed by
moderate drinkers. Railroad and all
| transportation companies are rapidly
! throwing out all users of spirits and
making total abstinence an imperative
qualification of service. Several of the
largest banking companies in the
country employ only total abstainers.
The stockholders of a leading compa-
ny called for the resignation of two
leading officers because they were
moderate drinkers and club men. In
a list of twenty defalcations in New
York and vicinity, sixteen of the de-
faulters were users of spirits, and ten
of twenty-six firms and corporations,
the responsible managers were drink
ing men in twenty-one instances.
These facts were not made public, and
yet the business sense of the commu-
nifty was shown in greater effort to
eliminate this source of peril to CAPT.
tai. Some years ago large manufac-
turing firm suspended, due to the bad
management of a moderate drinking
president Since then they have start
ed again and have become very pros
porous. One of the rigid rules is, no
drinking man shall be employed in any
capacity. Every year this fear of
drinking men is increasing, and every
year capital is demanding that total
abStainerS only should be employed.
In this there is no sentiment nor theo-
ry, only cold, hard experience, which
brings only one conclusion, repeated
over and over again, namely that mod
crate drinking men are dangerous, I'M
trustworthy and unreliable. Science
points out the reason in the anaesthet-
ic action of alcohol and diminished
sensory acuteness, lowered powers of
judgment and enfeebled moral percep-
ton. They are poisoned, disabled and
unfit for work which requires the best
judgment and capacity of the brain.
Capital has no knowledge of these rea-
sons; it only judges from the facts of
experience, and the more wisely it OBJ
serves the perils which confront it, the
more fear is manifest in reliance on
moderate drinkers. In striking con-
trast to this is the action of a learned
board who placed at the head Of
great educational institution a brilli-
ant moderate drinker. Other learned
boards have put similar men in posi-
tions of great trust. Within a short
time two of these brilliant moderate
drinkers who were heads Of great in
situations of learning have resigned.
leaving heavy burdens for their sue
cessors. A professional and education
al sentiment has not risen above theo-
ries and turns away from the teach
ings of science and the warnings of re-
formers as foolishness. Some day
great awakening will take place. Ex-
perience will sustain the teachings of
science, and the danger and folly of
trusting the moderate drinker as sound
and capable will be fully recognized
and put into practical application in
all the workings of life"