The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1902-11-17
AS TO INTEMPERANcE.

4 WHISKY MAN said, not long ago,
Il in an argument in which he advo-
Gated the use of intoxicants, that more
people had been killed through intern
perance in eating than through IN
restrained indulgence in alcoholic slim
ulants. He told the truth. Thousands
of men and women die every year and
thousands more wreck their health be-
cause they eat not wisely, but too well.
Any physician who knows his profess
sion will tell you that the majority of
the ills that flesh is heir to come from
over-indulgence in food.
But the whisky man fails to make a
necessary distinction between the evils
of alcohol and the evils of food. Leav-
Ing out of the question the fact that
food is necessary to existence and that
alcohol is not. let US see which form
Of intemperance is worse. In the first
place the man who overeats hurts no.
body but himself. He suffers fearful
pain at times; he contracts diseases of
various sorts; perhaps he makes life
unpleasant for his family and his
friends. because your average dyspep-
tic is not usually companionable, con-
genial sort of chap.
Please bear in mind, though, that the
dyspeptic who has eaten himself into
III health the glutton who is travelling
that road. never deprive their families
of shelter or their children of food.
Even when a man cannot enjoy the
pleasures Of the table himself he likes
to see others enjoy them, and so ne
IoF l. 9aJ
terent it is with the drunkard. Whisky
begets selfishness just as surely as enc
falsebood begets another.
No man can be a drunkard and in
jure himself alone We care not if he
Is all alone in the world. It makes no
difference if every relative, by blood
or marriage, has preceded him into the
next world. He may have Iimitless
means with which to purchase whisky,
but he cannot be a drunkard without
hurting somebody else. One of the
worst attributes of drunkenness is its
sociability. Few men care to drink by
themselves. The man who can afford
to buy intoxicants, buys them for 9TH
ers as well as himself, and the man
who cannot afford the outlay soon ac-
quires the habit of making it just the
same
The results may come slowly, but
they come surely. Little luxuries are
cut off at home Necessities follow
until the wife and children are reduced
TO bare existence, but the man is able
TO buy more and more whisky for him
self all the time. And at last the day
comes when he fills a drunkard's grave
or goes to occupy prison CELL That's
the trouble about whisky. 1t never
lets go until it has done its worst
More, we don't believe anybody can
successfully contradict the statement
that whisky never did anybody any
lasting good. That is. when used ha-
bitually as a beverage, for, Of course.
it has its uses as medicine. Nor does
it do much good as medicine, since its
use in that line is yearly decreasing.
The Herald is not now prepared TO
say that every saloon should be abol
ished, but it does say that more strin-
gent laws should be passed to regulate
the traffic. We break Up the schools
OF the Fagins, who teach boys how 10
commit crimes; we drive fallen women
of the streets. and we arrest men who
have been made drunk in some If
reproachable saloon, but we never ar
rest the salOonkeeper for making him
drunk
If every bartender who sells whisky
TO drunken man in Salt Lake, in vio-
iation of the law, should be locked up
today, it would be necessary to build
a bigger city jail. But that is what
should be done, for there lies the root
OF a great part OF the evil.