The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1921-11-02

Much Of the difficulty in enforcing
the prohibition laws Is due to an in.
different public opinion.
That opinion is largely the result
of imperfect knowledge of the history
of alcoholism. Seldom is a present
problem correctly understood, unless
its historical perspective is taken into
account.
There is a current assumption that
alcohol, like the poor, has always
been with u.s." Prohibition is looked
upon as bolt from the blue--some-
thing suddenly injected into human
affairs without any valid antecedent
development.
That is not true. Prohibition be-
came social force only after al
coholism became a racial menace. The
reason that prohibition first fruited
in the United States was that alcohol
ism reached its most dangerous de-
Ivelopment in this country first.
There is very interesting room
in the Smithsonian institution in
Washington. 1t is filled with bones
and plaster casts of the bones of men
and women who lived in European
caves shortly after the great ice cap
retreated from Europe and America.
These folks were very, very hum
an. They are representatives of no
new race. Their ancestors had been
human for milleniums before. But it
was in their home that man first be-
gan to experiment with alcohol.
Humanity had practically reached
its present physical and nervous or
ganization before any member of the
race had ever slipped the alcoholic
poison.
When the first man tried it is be-
yond our ken. We know that it was
long after our ancestors discovered
the use of fire-probably mans great
est discovery.
When the white man came to AM
erica, he found a whole race ignorant
of alcohol and utterly unable to with
stand its rayages. In Africa and in
the islands of the sea, men have been
found within the last 100 years who
knew nothing of it.
All knew the use of fire. All had
legends which professed to tell how
man had snatched the secret of fire
from the gods, or from nature.
Likewise, men who knew the use
of wine or mead, had legends about
the discovery of alcohol. These leg
ends and the cults that clustered
about them are more recent than the
fire myths. From certain evidences
in the structure of these myths, we
are led to believe that crude wine was
known before men used iron. But
the same myths and cults make us
certain that this wine was very weak
stuff, and drunk only in midsummer,
and seldom, if ever, stored.
Men had no casks and little pottery.
Fermented juices were made at Il e
harvest and onsumed-usually with
religious rites-but there was no all
The year consumption. The physical
effect of alcohol in those ages was
very slight.
With the advance of civilization
and shipping, wine became stronger;
tasks and ships we're fashioned and
it became an article of commerce, but
he mass of mankind seldom tasted
t. 1t cost too much.
In an age of intensive slave labor, |
by some horse and cat
lie power, it was only the rich, the |
landlords or the conquerors, who could
)uy it.
In the northern lands, from whence
came the ancestors of most Amer
cans, wine was unknown. There was
/ little fermented honey, but the sup
ply was limited
Even such noted drunkards as Hell
ogobalus and Alexander had only Ia |
per cent wine for their strongest tip
Die. They drank themselves to death.
and helped the race by so doing, but
he mass of mankind remained SCUM
md imprisoned.
Came the middle ages and the dis
.overy of distilling, but whoever
stumbled on this secret had sense
enough not to make it generally
lnown. Whether it was some Arab
an savant or some clustered monk,
II an alchemist, matters not. They
Knew that the stuff they made was
Tot good for the people.
1t was not until well along in the