Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1907-12-30
SALOONS EFFECT UPON SCHOOLS

From personal experience / know
nothing at all of what the effect of
saloon upon a school is. Conse-
quently what shall herein say viii be
facts picked up from readings, and
from teachers who have personal
contact with saloons. We can
classify the effects of saloons upon
schools in two ways, the direct and
indirect.
by direct mean the effects brought
about by scholars in the school who
patronize the saloon, or come from
homes where either one or both of
the parents are regular customers of
the saloon. By indirect I mean al
other influences.
Of course the direct effects are those
commonly known about, labored
against by teachers, societies and
state. The teacher tries to rescue the
hayward boy. Temperance societies
| furnish literature, lend what other
aid they can, and the state fortifies
all Efforts by the threat of the law.
Take another example. A child is
conceived in drunkenness, born with
impaired faculties aud reared in a
rum scented atmosphere by rum
drinking parents, attends the public
schools as long as the law compels
him to. No one need be told what
the effects upon the schools are, but
Will tabulate the more fragrant ones
for our consideration. First, the
unfairness that results from teach
er's having to spend one-half her
time with few degenerates, while five
times as many scholars with normal
ana healthy brains are deprived of
their just share of her attention.
Next, the blackness of character that
the pure child gets tainted with from
every day association with depraved
natures, especially between the ages
of 10 and Is years when nature
touches nature more intimately than
In later years, and when those ten
denotes that result in criminal prac-
tees between the ages of 80 and 40
are being formed. Third, the expense
that results from the destruction of
school property, books, supplies etc,
for these children are almost in
variably the ones who damage their
books, lose their pencils, seem to
have no responsibility in taking care
of any kind of property. Another ex
pense results from truant officers fee
etc. realize these conditions I speak
OF may not be the result of the saloon
at all because there are drunkards who
have never seen a saloon, but tie
majority of drunkards are saloon
made.
This brief summary of direct effects
may answer for an Introduction to a
question that is beginning to absorb
the attention of educators, viz , how to
cope with the silent influence that the
saloons are exerting over the young
people of to-day. Our topic does not
call for any discussion as to how to
answer tie question, but merely for
an inspection to find out what are the
effects of the saloon upon the children
attending our public schools.
In the first place by its glittering
array and its snowy furnishings the
saloon tends TO overcome the very
thing for which our schools serve.
Tt tondc RI do1zlo tho y,indo ord ~,or
suade the child to accept as all saffi
Gent the superficial appearance of
things without inspecting them care
fully by cool common sense. The
saloon by it's bold-faced advertise
ments and its smooth appearance
gradually leads the young mind to
think that after all the liquor traffic
is not SO black thing as his mother
taught him it was. It gives him a
lower standard for the meaning of
responsibility. Finally it allures from
the compapionehip of school life,
which ls SO mus b part of school, to
t the conviVial initiating of the gay
party il the brightly lighted saloo
1t suggests to the young man that to
go with the crowd is the way to gel
on and thus prepares him to join the
, "rirg" and become a part of "ma
chine" politics. And worst of all are
those unnamable and hidden effects
that the saloon has on the schoo
/ through the medium of the corrupt
I vote. But now the devil is getting
paid back in his own coin for part O
the money sccruing to the state from
saloon heenses goes to support edu
. cation.
MRS. @. L. ERWIN
!. There is I othing better offered the publ
: to-day for stomach troubles, dyspepsia in
: 6igesC Z, ETC., than K0DOI. This is