The Arvada enterprise., 1911-02-24
...1f6nARI,l'|!1Agrlfs :
MOTIFS
1EAE s.
ATTRIBUTE WANT TO LIQUOR
pauperIsnr, Crime and insanity d.
e crsctly or Indirectly Traced to
iWf it36i Whisky Habit.

Sir William Dawson, late principal
Of McGil college, Montreal, testified
before the Royal Commission: "I
have had occasion to institute inquir-
les In regard to the pauperism OF Mon
treal. ! can confidently say that near
~ all, the want and 'destitution prevail
Ing In this city is directly or indirect
ly attributable to the liquor trafnc."
Dr.. "A. R. Reid, ten years superinten-
dent Of the General hospital, Halifax,
N. g. also testified: The experience
OF ten years in our General hospital
shows me very clearly that though our
statistics represented very large per-
centage Of sickness there as the re-
suit Of intemperance. really II you fig
ure out the wide influence 1t has, that
the percentage would come, suppose,
up to 90."
Z Drink has been largely the cause.
direct and predisposing, of the numer-
ous insane in our asylums. DR.. Daniel
Clark, 18 years superintendent of the
Insane asylum, Toronto. gave evidence
that Of 5000 cases which he had care
fully examined he found 91k per cent.
were without any uncertainty pro-
duced directly by drink, says the Mon
treal Star and Herald.
The Hon George w. Ross, in his
place In the House of Commons, esti-
mated the annual loss Of life in Can
ada through the liquor traffic at 1000.
And in 1885 the Hon. George E. Fos-
for In hto plo ", Do ltov ~
5000 deaths per year might be safely
set down as due to this cause.
4 We are only on the threshold of the
exact study Of heredity In relation to
vice and crime, yet enough Is known
to justify General Booths strong lam
guage: Thousands upon thousands OF
these poor wretches (the homeless
and starving poor Of darkest England)
are. as Bishop South truly said, mot
SO much born into this world as
damned into it" Richard L. Dugdale
writes of the progeny of a woman
named Margaret, descendant of Max,
very hard drinker, who became blind
and many of whose children inherited
his intemperance: I'm tracing the
genealogies Of $40 persons who de-
scended In seven generations from
this degraded woman, and 1859 who
were related by marriage or cohabita-
tion,, 2S0 were adult paupers and 140
were criminals and Offenders OF the
| worst sort, guilty Of seven murders.
theft, highway robbery, and nearly
every other offense known In the cal
endar Of crime" He estimates that
the cost to the public of supporting
this family of drunkards was $1,30S,-
900. Il
Time would fail to tell of Sir Mat
thew Hale, Chief Justice of England,
who said that "by due observation
he had found that four out of every
five cases Of crime adjudicated by him
have been the issues and products Of
excessive drinking.
OF Gladstone, who affirmed: "It has
been said that greater calamitfes-
greater because more coptinual-have
been inflicted upon mankind by intem-
perance than by the three historic
scourges of war, famine and pestilence
combined. That is true, and It is the
measure Of our discredit and dis
grace"
These voices were uttered in the
motherland. But the spirit of the
liquor traffic is one. ever and every
where the same. and its fruits abound
In our own land. Sir Oliver Mowat.
for more than quarter of century
Premier of Ontario, and proyerbial for
his extreme caution, repeated, after a
lapse OF score of years, as his ma
ture Judgment, IAN enormous proper
.tion, probably three-fourths of the vice
that prevails at the present day, Of
the crime which they had to contend
with, of the lunacy, the .idfocy, the
poverty and the misery of every kind,
is owing to the foul evil of fntem-
perance."