Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1909-10-01
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DECREASE IN DRINKING HABIT
Better Living Conditions and Health
Ter Amusements Tend to Lessen
Drunkenness.

1t is only proper and right that the
public's attention should be called fire.
Quently to the evils of intemperance.
Few of us meanwhile realize what i'm
mense strides humanity has made in
the course of the centuries toward
temperance, says /. X. Friedman in
the Chicago Daily News.
AS late as 1886, we are told by
Porter in his Progress of the Ma
tion," the favor in which intoxicating
drinks were held by the people had
reached such point as to occasion
continued debates in parliament and
to call for remedies of a very string
ent character. 1t was then the prac-
tice of some keepers of liquor shops
to entice customers with a notice to
the following effect, painted on a
board outside. the tipping house:
You may get drunk for penny, dead
drunk for two pence, and have clean
straw for nothing" The mere diff
ference in public opinion in our own
day and in the age which would toll
crate such a vicious appeal to the
lowest of instincts perhaps is its own
best comment
When the legislators of that time,
thinking to correct the abuse by in
creasing the price of spirituous
liquors, proposed a duty of 20 shillings
($4.S0) a gallon, the act led to riot
and violence on the part of the popu-
lace. The secret sale of gin went
on in defiance of the law Says the
historian: 1.-The demand for penalties
the offenders were unable to pay filled
the prisons and by removing every re-
straint plunged them into courses
more audaciously criminal"
In March, 1898, a proclamation was
issued to enforce the gin act, to pro-
tect the officers of justice i'll their eff
forts to that end and threatening of
tenders with punishment Within less
han two years from its passage H.
90 persons had been subjected to
fines. The harsh measures failed ut
terly, as any measure unsupported by
public feeling, always must fail.
Nor were those habits of drunken
ness" Porter again remarks, CON
fined to the laboring classes. What
would now be called drinking to ex-
cess was then so much the custom in
every circle that it was as uncommon
for any party to separate while any
member of it remained sober as it is
now for one in such party to de-
grade himself through intoxication.
In those days it rarely happened that
men holding the rank and otherwise
! bearing the character of gentlemen
rose from the table of a dining party
in condition to enter the society of fe-
males, and thus all were debarred
from the sweetest hours of rational en-
joyment which now spring from So
cial intercourse" The contemporary
novels verify these words.
With reference to this same period
another authority tells us: NO loss
of character was incurred by habitual
excess. Men in the position of gen
tlemen congratulated each other upon
the number of bottles emptied: and
it would have been considered a very
frivolous objection to a citizen who
aspired to the dignity of alderman
or mayor that he was a habitual
drunkard"
II one seeks an explanation for the
great and most satisfactory decrease
in drunkenness which has come one
finds it not in drastic laws or compul-
sorry prohibition, but in the growth
of intelligence among the people. in
an enlightened public opinion. in the
spread of education refinement and
sane living consequent thereupon.
Better living conditions, better
wages and shorter hours and the di-
version OF the people from grosser
and crueler forms OF sport to healthy
amusements have been tremendous
factors in the movement. Nor is it
to be doubted that these same benef-
cent forces, increasing in strength as
humanity increases in age and expe-
rience, will lead to a greater and
greater decrease in the drinking
habit; for of all methods of abolishing
an evil that of pointing out it's bad
effects to those who indulge in it has
proved the best and the most lasting.