Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-07-02
Intoxication

It is a fact well understood that
Illicit liquor is being made by hun
dreds of people who are greedy for
the money that the drink sells for,
and that those who are bent on get
ting intoxicating drinks are not
usually aware of what sorry liquor
will do for them. Taken rapidly in
large quantities it will drug the
brain, until it acts like a poison.
More than forty years ago a
western congressman who was an
unusually bright man, took enough
whisky to kill him as dead as if he
had put a pistol to the side of his
head and shot his brains out.
He might have been drinking
longer than his near hotel neighbors
had suspected, nevertheless he was
noticed in the hotel dining room
about p. M, on a Sunday, sitting
at his usual table, with his family,
and before day dawned on Monday
he was in commissions, dying in the
early afternoon, having been uncon-
scious from midnight. His face was
purp1ish red, his hands, neck and
bare feet were crimson. He had
killed himself by an overdose of
whisky. 1t was ono ~ the most
thrilling temperance lessons my
mind had ever studied.
At that time there was no call
to concoct drink, which would kill
like arsenic or strychnine. The bar
rooms were in full blast all over
the nations capitol city, He could
get guaranteed brands of liquor by
paying for it. Nowadays, I am
told, the Illicit liquor is made out
of all sorts Of grain, with cheap
sugar and molasses, and the greedy
profiteers will use even Peruna feed
| to fill up the stills-to make some
thing that will cause a man to lose
his head and his soul.
Sometimes this profuse drinking
does not kill so quickly, but we all
know that the drink habit grows
with it's growth into inveteracy,
and then paralysis supervenes, and
while the man still walks around.
still eats and still sleeps, the end
is certainly approaching-and the
end is death.
AS a rule the appetite for usual
food fails. Sleep is disturbed, the
limbs tremble, and finally the
heart gives way and the end is
reached Nervous exhaustion fin
ishes him.
Sometimes the mind is filled with
strange illusions, perhaps I should
say decisions. I have known persons
seized with de1irium tremens from
constant drinking who were eager to
kill and who saw snakes and who
would beat the wife and storm the
child and when questioned in lucid
interval he was as crazy as a bed
bug and knew nothing about it.
We have the eighteenth amendment
on the statute books of the nation.
The federal law forbids the manu-
facture, the sale or the housing of
it.
And there is very small attention
to the written law. I have known
lately of county and city officials
that handled it, and supplied it to
those who sought it and who paid
them for it. It causes nine-tenths
Of the criminals in our own state. 1t
is VIGOROUSLY winked at and the state
is swarming. with judges, court Off
cials, sheriffs, marshals, bailifs, etc,
who have all taken an oath to enfore
the laws on our statute books
against vending intoxicants. 1t keeps
the jails full of prisoners and it is
at the starting of race riots.
And why should any human being
crave the madness that goes with
the craving drink?
|. 1 have been informed that towns
are supplied from illicit stills con-
cealed on little old farms where the
farmer chooses to raise liquors.
rather than raise crops.
Of all the madness that curses our
civilization thAse is nothing so fatal
to peace, PROCESS and prosperity as
the manufacture and the sale of
decoctions that will take away the
victims health and his mind and his
happiness. The supreme law has
ruled against it, and there seems to