The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-02-17
TEMPERANCE
HER TOPIC
Mrs. Roberts Smith
Lectures at
punahou.

LIT. Mary ROBERTS smith gave the Sec
ond of her interesting and valuable lee
lures under the auspices of the Young
Mems Research Club at Punahou Hall
last evening. A large and appreciative
audience was present. DR.. Smith pre-
sents her subjects in forcible and
scholarly manner and is thoroughly
conversant with sociological questions.
Her lecture last evening was on
Drunkenness and Race Progress" She
said in part:
Stimulants have been used from the
earliest ages by all peoples; by the
Greeks and Romans light wines were
used very temporarily, until the period
of decadence. The process of distilIa-
ton was not known in Europe till about
the eleventh century, and the cordials
made in Monasteries were used only
as medicines. The common drink
throughout the middle ages in Northern
Europe was beer-practicaliy synon-
ymous then with ale. The Normans
acquired English habits of drinking ale
after the conquest and the English in
turn acquired much heavier habits of
drinking from the Dutch. In the reign
of Queen Elizabeth this fact begins to
be commented upon but it was only the
upper classes who were addicted to
hard drinking of spirituous liquors:
Drunkenness among the upper classes
was never SO general as in the seven
teenth century. Many public men were
scandalously addicted to it, and by the
end of the century heavy drinking of
spirituous liquors was universal among
49, -.
commenda Bile.
Among the poor, however, at the be-
ginning of the eighteenth century, the
popular beverage was still ale. The
consumption was amazing. In 1868 1t
was eighty gallons per capita and one
third of the arabic land in England was
in barley. In 1889 distilling was thrown
open to English subjects. This meas
ure laid the foundation of the great ex-
tension of the English manufacture of
spirits and the passion for gin spread
with the rapidity of an epidemic. Field
ing declared that IF the drinking of
this poison be continued at it's present
height during the next twenty years,
there will be very few of the common
people left to drink it,
Various experiments in legislation
failed but the more moderate ones prov
ed somewhat of palliative. By the
end of the eighteenth century drinking
and duelling had greatly diminished
among the upper classes but drinking
was still excessive among the common
people. The introduction of tea, coffee
and chocolate between 1652-1657 had a
remarkable refining influence upon So
ciety.
America was settled by two streams
IF he Of
New England the other of Cavaliers
and Adventures to Virginia and the
South. The Puritans, though consider
ed comparatively abstemious at home,
brought their drinking habits with
them. The manufacture of cider and
rum became very important CONNER
cially. These beverages We're served to
guests and on all public occasions AS
late as 1910 liquors We're freely used at
Harvard commandments, at ordina-
tions and at religious councils. Public
men drank much and publicly: rum and
whiskey We're habitually used at train
ings, town meetings, huskings and har-
vastings. The planters in the South
made apple-jack and peach brandy and
imported foreign wines and liquors.
In the nineteenth century an extraor-
binary change took place in public
sentiment concerning drinking. The
decline of drinking among public men,
the regulation of the sale of liquors to
minors, the absence of liquors at many
public dinners, the rules against drink
ing enforced among the employees of
larges corporations, the combining of
excessive drinking to saloons and pri-
vate bars almost wholly, all testify to
a widespread change of habit in the
United States. The United States has,
in sixty years, changed from spirit to
a beer drinking country; we drink less
than half as much spirits per capita
and four times as much beer as we did
in 1860.
This change of public sentiment is
due to a variety of causes: to a wide
spread religious and moral revival
among the evangelical churches; to the
of the English physical
type into the more nervous, sensitive
American by change of climate, to the
of living conditions
among the working classes, to the sub
stitution of tea, coffee and soft drinks
for beer and wine. The increase in beer
is due in great measure to the
large number of Irish and German inn
migrants since 1850.
At present, the per capita consump-
ton of wine and of spirits is not in
in any European state nor in
the United States. The consumption of |
spirits is decreasing in Russia, Nor |
way and the United States: while the |
of beer is increasing in |
nine out of twelve countries.
Has Anglo-SaXon civilization develop
I'd because of, or in spite of drinking? |
We may say certainly in spite of the |
drinking of spirits. Looking back over |
this historical sketch we see that |
drunkenness as a national vice began |
With the invention of spirftuous liquors, |
an epidemic among the nobil- |
ty of England in the seventeenth CEN
Jury, among the common people in the /
eighteenth century. in Norway in the |
nineteenth century and reflected in the |
United States.
The checks which have operated in |
he hax