Chapter 12

But one splendid fact should always be borne in mind: THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS INCESSANT. WE ARE INFINITELY BETTER OFF NOW THAN WE HAVE BEEN BEFORE ON THIS EARTH, AND UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES OF IMPROVEMENT ARE AHEAD OF US.

The progress of humanity has been like that of an individual climbing the paths of a steep mountain. At every turn there are fresh dangers and difficulties to be overcome, fresh complications for which the traveler is prepared only by his courage and determination.

But every step takes the traveler higher up, out of the dark valley, toward the light at the top, and every danger overcome makes it easier to deal with the dangers to follow.

In its long fight the human race has encountered many enemies.

At one time in Europe one single epidemic destroyed half of all the population. But we have struggled on; through science we have almost conquered disease, and the plagues of the past are unknown among us.

In olden times brutal superstition, disguised as religion, dwarfed men's minds, punishing, with atrocious cruelty, the crime of independent thought and apparently making impossible any mental growth in the face of bigotry and monstrous persecutions.

But to-day bigotry begins to give place to true religion; the burning alive and protracted torture which disgraced all the religions of Europe until recently have ceased, probably forever.

Mankind in its travels has progressed as far as the stage of independent thought. If a creature still lives that would take the life of another because that other thinks differently from himself he dares not confess his criminal thought.

A few centuries ago the great majority of all human beings were slaves or serfs. The noblest of human brains, those of the Greek philosophers, wrote and lived in the midst of slavery. Even as great a man as Aristotle could not conceive a society based on a non-slave-holding system.

But except in some African jungle, here and there among savage and semi-savage races, no man is a slave now. And where slavery does exist it exists in stagnant pools of humanity, and it exists side by side with the other monsters, cruel superstition and widespread disease, that progressive humanity has left behind. ----

Every century of which the history has been preserved shows us its horrid side of life, its cruelties, its sufferings without number. But each succeeding century shows also some one point gained, some one hideous feature of life eliminated.

The enemy of the world to-day, the monster in the path of progress, is organized greed, the insane desire of a few men to take from others, and for themselves, what they do not need.

The trust, seeking through capital to reintroduce slavery under another form, and to establish the tyranny of money in place of the tyranny of swords and bullets, represents the present problem.

This problem, like all the others, will be solved in its turn. It will be found that the great danger did good as well as harm, and that, on its overthrow, only good was left behind it.

The diseases that once destroyed men forced them to live a decent life of cleanliness. Those diseases frightened human beings out of filth into respect for themselves as the rulers of the world.

We owe the cleanness and decent temperate living of to-day, as well as our knowledge of medical science, to the diseases that formerly destroyed the people.

The hideous travesties called religion which relied for their power on superstition, fire and sword appeared to block all spiritual development among men. These religions have passed away; only the vital, true religious principle is left--the command laid upon men to feel toward each other as brothers, to worship the ONE and benevolent power that rules the world.

A few years or centuries from now the trust problem will be solved, and that particular monster will lie dead on its ledge of rock back in the pages of history. And men will know that to the great danger and brutality of to-day they owe much of their progress and happiness.

When the trust goes commercial greed will go with it. It will have killed the hideous theory of competition, with its swindling of the public, its cutting of wages, its general mean, petty, treacherous tradesmen's warfare. ----

Every human being should read history intelligently, if only for the encouraging effect on the mind.

In every direction, and in spite of foolish croakers, the human race has improved.

Good men and women deplore the drunkenness of to-day, and they do right. But for their own satisfaction and encouragement they should know that in comparison with former times the drunkenness of to-day amounts to nothing.

Where one man drinks too much in these days, a thousand men and a thousand women were frightfully drunk a few years ago.

Drunkenness, which formerly attacked the most useful of human beings--doctors, statesmen, poets, the best mechanics--is confined now to a feeble fragment of humanity made weak by disease, hereditary influence, discouragement or imperfect organization.

More important than this encouraging development is the changed attitude of the public mind toward the drinking habit. Twenty-five centuries ago a Greek philosopher, to make heaven attractive, described the table at which heroes sat in a never-ending, blissful state of drunkenness.

To-day even the meanest man is ashamed to have it known that he is drunk, and the most hopeless drunkard would ask no greater favor than that some one should make it impossible for him ever to drink again.

There is a criminal conspiracy, called the Beef Trust, which thrives on the needs and privations of the whole people. It is a blot on humanity. Do what you can to destroy this evil. But do not be made bitter by it. Your age is a happier one than others.

In France, not so long ago, human beings were punished for eating the bodies of men that had died of the plague, and strict laws were issued to stop that kind of cannibalism. The Beef Trust age is an improvement on that age, is it not? High prices are bad, but not as bad as hideous, widespread starvation. ----

Human selfishness and heartlessness are criticised to-day, and the criticism is just. Yet, MORALLY, the human race has improved more than in any other way.

We see to-day callous, heartless men spending millions upon their personal pleasures, paving insufficiently the laborers whose work enriches them, and robbing the public whose patience makes the great fortunes possible.

But the worst plutocrat of to-day is an angel compared with the mildly vicious men of olden times.

Your selfish man to-day only asks for a yacht and some race horses, mild forms of dissipation. A thousand years ago the vicious man demanded and exercised the power of life and death over those who surrounded him, and his mildest fit of irritation cost the life of some helpless human being.

Men are ill-paid to-day, but their condition is Paradise compared to the slavery of their predecessors. ----

You should daily criticise yourself and others, and do what you can in your little sphere as preacher, politician, editor or private individual to help along humanity's progress.

But remember always for your encouragement that the world is improving steadily. It never stands still; it never goes backward. And there are no limits to our future improvement, thanks to our inborn love of what is right and to the steady influence of EDUCATION.

A WHISKEY BOTTLE

How should a whiskey drinker talk to his son? If he talked as he feels he would hold up the flat, brown bottle and say:

"My boy, you know that I am a poor man and have nothing to leave to you or your mother.

"The difference between myself and the successful men who have passed me is this:

"I have gone through life with this bottle in my hand or in my pocket. They have not."

A man comes into the world prepared to do his share of the world's work, well or ill, as his brain and his physical strength may decide. Of all his qualities the most important practically is BALANCE.

The whiskey in that bottle destroys balance, mental and physical.

It substitutes dreaming and foolish self-confidence for real effort.

It presents all of life's problems and duties in a false light. It makes those things seem unimportant which are most important.

IT DULLS THE CONSCIENCE, WHICH ALONE CAN MAKE MEN DO THEIR DUTY IN SPITE OF TEMPTATION, AND STRUGGLE ON TO SUCCESS IN SPITE OF EXHAUSTION.

Keep away from this bottle, and keep away from those who praise it. He who hands it to his fellow man is a criminal, and he who hands it to a young man is a worse criminal and a villain. ----

It is a well-established fact that in the usual order of events drunkenness would be handed down from father to son, and hundreds of thousands of families would be ultimately wiped out by whiskey.

It is not true, fortunately, that the son of a drunkard actually inherits drunkenness fully developed. But a drunkard gives to his son weakened nerves and a diminished will power, which tend to make him a drunkard more easily than his father was made a drunkard before him.

The great safeguard of a drunkard's children undoubtedly lies in the warning which they see every day in their home and in the earnest advice which the man who drinks will give to all young people if he have any conscience left.

If the man who drinks would save his own children from the same danger, he can do so better than any other. He need not lose their respect by telling them of his own mistakes, if these mistakes have been hidden from them. Let him simply tell them, without personal reference, what he knows about whiskey, its effects on a man's happiness, success, self-respect and physical comfort.

Whiskey gives a great many things to men. Of these gifts here are a few:

Lack of friends, lack of will, lack of self-respect, lack of nervous force--lack of everything save the hideous craving that can end only with unconsciousness, and that begins again with increased suffering when consciousness is restored. ----

Fathers and mothers blessed with self-control and with good children should use the picture of a drinking man as a useful, moral lesson in talking to boys and girls from seven to twenty years of age.

Children are impressed most easily through their imaginations. An intelligent father or mother can produce upon a child's receptive mind an impression that will last for years.

With the fear of whiskey there should be impressed upon children sympathy and sorrow for the unfortunate drunkard.

One of the ablest men, and one of the most earnest in America, said to his friends very recently:

"I never drink, as you know. But when I see a man lying drunk in the gutter, I know that he has probably made that very day a harder effort at self-control, a nobler struggle to control himself, than I ever made in my life. He has yielded and fallen at last, but only because all of his strength is insufficient to overcome the disease that possesses him."

Teach your children that drunkenness is a horrible disease, as bad as leprosy. Teach them that it can be avoided, that the disease is contracted in youth through carelessness, and that it is spread by those who encourage drinking in others. Tell them that the avoiding of whiskey is not merely a question of morals or obedience to parents, but a question involving mental and physical salvation, success in life, happiness, and the respect of others.

THOSE WHO LAUGH AT A DRUNKEN MAN

How often have you seen a drunken man stagger along the street!

His clothes are soiled from falling, his face is bruised, his eyes are dull. Sometimes he curses the boys that tease him. Sometimes he tries to smile, in a drunken effort to placate pitiless, childish cruelty.

His body, worn out, can stand no more, and he mumbles that he is GOING HOME.

The children persecute him, throw things at him, laugh at him, running ahead of him.

GROWN MEN AND WOMEN, TOO, OFTEN LAUGH WITH THE CHILDREN, nudge each other, and actually find humor in the sight of a human being sunk below the lowest animal.

The sight of a drunken man going home should make every other man and woman sad and sympathetic, and, horrible as the sight is, it should be useful, by inspiring, in those who see it, a determination to avoid and to help others avoid that man's fate. ----

That reeling drunkard is GOING HOME.

He is going home to children who are afraid of him, to a wife whose life he has made miserable.

He is going home, taking with him the worst curse in the world--to suffer bitter remorse himself after having inflicted suffering on those whom he should protect.

AND AS HE GOES HOME MEN AND WOMEN, KNOWING WHAT THE HOME-COMING MEANS, LAUGH AT HIM AND ENJOY THE SIGHT. ----

In the old days in the arena it occasionally happened that brothers were set to fight each other. When they refused to fight they were forced to it by red-hot irons applied to their backs.

We have progressed beyond the moral condition of human beings guilty of such brutality as that. But we cannot call ourselves civilized while our imaginations and sympathies are so dull that the reeling drunkard is thought an amusing spectacle.

LAW CANNOT STOP DRUNKENNESS-- EDUCATION CAN

Everybody knows that until recently the average statesman, the majority of prominent men, in England, drank to excess.

Pitt was a drunkard--and Pitt was the most remarkable statesman in England.

Fox was a drunkard.

In fact, to write a list of England's greatest men, who lived more than a hundred years ago, would be to make a list of famous drunkards.

To-day the drunkard in public life is practically unknown in England, as well as in America. No legal pressure has been brought to bear upon the prosperous drunkard.

He was not badgered by policemen or by blue-laws.

He could get ALL that he wanted to drink WHENEVER he wanted it--yet, OF HIS OWN ACCORD, the prosperous drunkard has reformed and become temperate. ----

Our own great Daniel Webster was a drunkard, as were many other great Americans. No man to-day could be a drunkard and at the same time be respected.

Education, experience and common sense have done their work, and drunkenness is now left to self-indulgent fools, or to those whose lives are made dull by poverty, to whom alcohol affords the only escape from horrible monotony.

It would, perhaps, be worth while for the advocates of temperance to study the causes which have practically eliminated drunkenness from the most intelligent classes of men.

Education undoubtedly is the greatest factor.

In nearly all the public schools now the evil effects of alcohol are taught.

These evil effects are taught, not in a lackadaisical way, with sentiment or religious duty as a basis. They are taught as FACTS.

Facts appeal to the mind, and they persist in their effect in later life, when moral suasion and religious appeals are forgotten.

Teach every child that alcohol destroys his chances of success, impairs his muscular efficiency, inflames the substance of the brain and prevents development--MAKE HIM FEEL THAT A DRINKING MAN IS A SECOND-CLASS MAN, AND YOU WILL HAVE DONE MUCH TO DESTROY THE DRUNKENNESS OF THE FUTURE. ----

As a matter of fact, drunkenness, like dirt, is mainly an accompaniment of poverty and a sad, hopeless life.

For the man or woman given to drinking, when the troubles of life are no longer to be borne, some relief must be had.

Make the lives of human beings more comfortable, make good food more plentiful, spread education--and you will solve the problem of excessive drinking.

THE DRUNKARD'S SIDE OF IT

You lucky, well-balanced ones talk much, and sincerely, of the horrors of drink, and of the drunkard's weakness.

You think the whiskey drinker ought to stop.

Do you ask yourself whether or not he CAN stop?

Let us consider to-day the drunkard's side of the case. ----

Very often physical weakness causes drunkenness. Many a man takes a drink because the task put upon him is heavier than he can bear. The whiskey does not help him--it hurts him. But it cheats him and makes him THINK that he is helped.

You realize that whiskey drinking as a settled habit must be fought with weapons of some kind.

WILL POWER is the great weapon to use in our own behalf. You tell the drunkard to use his will power.

But you forget that the first thing that whiskey attacks is will power.

You remind the drunkard that his weakness brings suffering on others, and you appeal to his conscience. But you forget that whiskey weakens conscience even more than it weakens the nerves. You forget, too, that whiskey makes its victims suffer. If he could free himself he would do so, if only for his own sake.

And you must not forget that whiskey argues ingeniously, in addition to its telling of lies.

A man is overcome with some great grief. Whiskey makes him forget, or at least it makes him not care.

A man is suffering some great humiliation, some sense of personal shortcoming, that is intolerable to him. Whiskey offers to relieve him, and for the moment it does relieve him. ----

YOU who talk nobly of temperance and advocate laws governing other men are apt to be proud of your own self-control.

Perhaps you have been a drinking man and have stopped. But you do not know how much lighter whiskey's hold may have been upon you than upon others.

Suppose you worked hard every day, every week and every year.

Suppose you had no pleasure in life, save the fictitious pleasure and excitement that come from whiskey. Suppose you failed, and failed and failed again--and suppose that whiskey was always ready to praise you, make you feel proud of yourself, make you hold others responsible for your failures--are you sure you could let it alone? ----

In your condemnation of those who persist in whiskey drinking you must remember that what is easy for one man is very hard for another.

Suppose you should urge two animals to go without meat--one of the animals being a tiger and the other a sheep. Would you praise the sheep for its faithful keeping of the promise? Would you blame the tiger for breaking its word, if the temptation to eat meat were offered?

In men's nervous systems, in their craving for alcohol, there is as great a difference between different temperaments as between the appetites of the sheep and the tiger. One man is dragged toward the gulf by whiskey with a force of which you have no conception.

You look with contempt at a hopeless drunkard, shuffling along toward destruction.

THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF SUCH MEN WHO EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES MAKE AN EFFORT OF THE WILL OF WHICH YOU WOULD BE INCAPABLE.

But that effort, great as it is, is not great enough to save them--whiskey drags them too hard in the other direction.

Fortunately, we can all congratulate ourselves on the steady falling off in drunkenness. To drink to excess is no longer respectable. Once it was a leading sign of respectability. Doctors in the old days wrote their prescriptions illegibly, because when called late at night they were usually drunk. To-day a drunken doctor cannot possibly survive.

Work as hard as you can against drunkenness, for drunkenness harms every one, even the saloon-keeper himself. The drunkard soon comes to ruin and ceases to be a profitable customer.

Argue with young men, and talk to children ABOUT THEIR OWN WELFARE in the matter.

But remember also that the drunkard often has tried harder than you could try to overcome the enemy that has conquered him. Remember that unless you have lived his life you cannot know his excuse and cannot judge him.

DRINK A SLOW POISON

Often a man talks about like this:

"I am a regular but moderate drinker. No one ever saw me drunk, and yet I drink every day. And what's the harm of it? Can you see anything the matter with me?"

The man would seem to have the advantage of you. You cannot SEE anything wrong with him. So far as outward appearances go the case is squarely against you. The man APPEARS to be all right.

But is he? The effects of drink upon the system do not show themselves to the extent of attracting very marked attention, at least until the conditions are fairly ripe.

In the man who comes out on to the street after a PROTRACTED DEBAUCH the effects of whiskey are visible; even the little children notice him.

He may not be drunk. It may have been hours since he touched a drop. But any one can see that his physical system has received a severe shock.

In the moderate drinker these signs are not visible, but the alcohol which he daily imbibes is doing its work, and slowly but surely his constitution is being undermined.

Now and then we run across some old man who is hale and hearty, notwithstanding the fact that he has been a moderate drinker all his life.

But no one will think of denying the fact that this old man is an exception--a very rare exception.

Many old men who SHOULD be hale and hearty are suffering from ailments born of the drink habit, by which, in their earlier days, they were enslaved.

In the "rheum, the dry serpigo and the gout" which rack their frames, make their bones ache and render miserable and thankless the evening days which should be so full of peace and beauty, they are reaping the fruits of their "harmless" moderate drinking.

Two or three weeks ago we made reference to the report by Mr. Mesureur, Director of the Department of Charities, Paris, upon the results of alcoholism in France.

That report was no sooner made public than the French liquor dealers were up in arms against it. Indignation meetings were held. The mails were flooded with all sorts of protests against the truth of Mesureur's claim that alcoholism was slowly but surely destroying the French people.

The discussion at last became so heated that the government took it upon itself to subject the offensive report to a careful scrutiny, with the result that it was CONFIRMED in every particular.

We quote from a poster, issued by the "Investigation Council for Promoting the Public Welfare," and now displayed all over France:

"Alcoholism is the chronic poisoning resulting from the constant use of alcohol, even if it does not produce drunkenness.

"It is an error to say that alcohol is a necessity to the man who has to do hard work, or that it restores strength.

"The artificial stimulation which it produces soon gives way to exhaustion and nervous depression. Alcohol is good for nobody, but works harm to everybody.

"Alcoholism produces the most varied and fatal diseases of the stomach and liver, paralysis, dropsy and madness. It is one of the most frequent canses of tuberculosis.

"Lastly, it aggravates and enhances all acute diseases, typhus, pneumonia, erysipelas.

"THESE DISEASES ONLY ATTACK A SOBER MAN IN A MILD DEGREE, WHILE THEY QUICKLY DO AWAY WITH THE MAN WHO DRINKS ALCOHOL.

"The sins of the parents against the laws of health visit their offspring. If the children survive the first months of their lives they are threatened with imbecility or epilepsy, or death carries them away a little later by such diseases as meningitis or consumption.

"Alcoholism is one of the most terrible plagues to the individual health, the existence of the home, and the prosperity of the nation."

TO THOSE WHO DRINK HARD-- YOU HAVE SLIPPED THE BELT

Men have explained variously their reasons for drinking to excess.

An able architect drank too much every night. He said that he HAD to drink. If he went to bed perfectly sober his mind went on working and dreaming, after he had gone to sleep, and he woke up fatigued and unable to attend to his work.

"I don't want to drink," said he, "but in order to do my work I must have the sleep that follows what is ordinarily called taking too much."

Other men explained excessive drinking as follows:

"I must have the mental excitement that comes from drinking."

"You can't imagine the delightful agility of the mind under the influence of alcohol."