CHAPTER IV.

THE COST OF INTEMPERANCE.

"Shall we sow tares and pray for bread?"-Abd el Wahab.

If we consider the manifold afflictions which in the after years of so many millions of our fellow-men outweigh the happiness of childhood, we can hardly wonder that several great thinkers have expressed a serious doubt if earthly existence is on the whole a blessing. Yet, for those who hold that the progress of science and education will ultimately remove that doubt, it is a consoling reflection that the greatest of all earthly evils are avoidable ones. The earthquake of Lisbon killed sixty thousand persons who could not possibly have foreseen their fate. In 1282 an irruption of the Zuyder Sea overwhelmed sixty-five towns whose inhabitants had not five minutes' time to effect their escape. But what are such calamities compared with the havoc of wanton wars, or the ravages of consumption and other diseases that are the direct consequences of outrageous sins against the physical laws of God? The cruelty of man to man causes more misery than the rage of wild beasts and all the hostile elements of Nature; but the heaviest of

all evils in our great burden of self-inflicted woe is undoubtedly the curse of the poison-vice. The alcohol-habit is a concentration of all scourges. In the poor island of Ireland alone one hundred and forty million bushels of bread-corn and potatoes are yearly sent to the distillery. The shipment of the grain, its conversion into a health-destroying drug, the distribution and sale of the poison, are carried on under the protection of a so-called civilized government. Waste is not an adequate word for that monstrous folly. If the grain farmers of Laputa should organize an expedition to the sea-coast, and, under the auspices of the legal authorities, equip an apparatus for flinging a hundred million sacks of grain into the ocean, the contents of those sacks would be lost, and there would be an end of it: the sea would swallow the cargo. The distillery swallows the grain, but disgorges it in the form of a liquid fire, that spreads its flames over the land and scorches the bodies and souls of men till the smoke of the torment arises from a million homesteads. We might marvel at the extravagance of the Laputans, but what should we say if the priests of a pastoral nation were to slaughter thousands of herds on the altar of a national idol, and, in conformity with an established custom, let the carcasses rot in the open fields till the progress of putrefaction filled the land with horror and pestilence; if, moreover, among the crowd of victims we should recognize the milch cows of thousands of poor families whose children were wan with hunger, and if, furthermore, the intelligent rulers of that nation should supervise the ceremonies of the sacrifice, distribute the carcasses, and calmly

collect statistics to ascertain the percentage of the resultant mortality?

The loss of life caused by the ravages of the alcohol-plague equals the result of a perennial war. The most belligerent nation of modern times, the Russians, with the perpetual skirmishes on their eastern frontier, and their periodical campaigns against their southern neighbors, lose in battle a yearly average of 7,000 men. The average longevity of the Caucasian nations is nearly thirty-eight years; of their picked men about forty-five years. The average age of a soldier is nowadays about twenty-five years. The death of 7,000 soldiers represents, therefore, a national loss of 7,000 times the difference between twenty-five and forty-five years, i. e., a total waste of 140,000 years. Medical statistics show that in the United States alone the direct consequences of intoxication cost every year the lives of 6,000 persons, most of them reckless young drunkards, who thus anticipate the natural term of their lives by about twenty years. But at the very least, two per cent of our population is addicted to the constant use of some form of alcoholic liquors. Prof. Neeson, of the British General Life Insurance Company, estimates that rum-drinkers shorten their lives by seven years, beerdrinkers by five and one half, and "mixed drinkers" by nine and one half years. For the city of London, Sir H. Thompson computes that drinkers of all classes shorten their lives by six years. But let us be quite sure to keep within the limits of facts applying to all conditions of life, and assume a minimum of four years. A total of 4,120,000 years for the population

of the United States is therefore a moderate estimate of the annual life-waste by the consequences of the poison-vice! In other words, in a country of by no means exceptionally hard drinkers, alcohol destroys yearly thirty times as much life as the warfare of the most warlike nation on earth. The first year of the war for the preservation of the Union and the suppression of slavery cost us 82,000 lives. When the death-list had reached a total of 100,000, the clamors for peace became so importunate that the representatives of our nation were several times on the point of abandoning the cause of the most righteous war ever waged. Yet the far larger life-waste on the altar of the Poison-Moloch continues year after year, and for a small bribe not a few of our prominent politicians seem willing to perpetuate that curse to the end of time. Among all the nations of the Christian world, with the only exception of the Syrian Maronites, the poison-vice has shortened the average longevity of the working classes by at least five years. Political economists have calculated the consequent loss of productive force, but there is another consideration which is too often overlooked. The progress of degeneration has reduced our life-term so far below the normal average that the highest purposes of individual existence are generally defeated. Our lives are mostly half-told tales. Our season ends before the harvest time; before the laborer's task is half done he is overtaken by the night, when no man can work. The secret of longevity would, indeed, solve the chief riddle of existence, for the children of toil could then hope to reach the goal of the visible compensation

which, on earth at least, is now reserved for the exceptional favorites of fortune. That hope is diminished by everything that tends still further to reduce our shortened span of life, and, besides increasing the burdens of existence, the poison-vice therefore directly decreases the possibility of its rewards.

Yet that result is almost insured by the loss of health which all experienced physiologists admit to be the inevitable consequence of the stimulant-habit. Every known disease of the human system is aggravated by intemperance. The morbid diathesis, as physicians call a predisposition to organic disorders, finds an ally in alcohol that enables it to defy the expurgative efforts of Nature. A consumptive toper will fail to derive any benefit from a change of climate. A dram-drinking dyspeptic can not be cured by out-door exercise. The influence of alcoholic

tonics tends to aggravate nervous disorders into mental derangements. But even the soundest constitution is not proof against the bane of that influence. Before the end of the first year habitual drinkers lose that spontaneous gayety which constitutes the happiness of perfect health as well as of childhood. The system becomes dependent upon the treacherous aid of artificial stimulants, and the lack of vital vigor soon begins to tell upon every part of the organism. Alcohol counteracts the benefit of all the hygienic advantages of climate and habit, and it is doubtful if the effect of its continued influence could be equaled by the intentional introduction of contagious diseases. A medical expert might collect the most incurable patients in the leper slums of Shanghai, in the laza