Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
U >>
Unknown >> Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18
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."
"The brain works more quickly, more energetically, more freely."
"After drinking a certain amount I can live more in an hour than
I could ordinarily in a month," etc. ----
These men who believe that alcohol improves the mind, stimulating
it to better effort, constitute a very large class, perhaps the
largest class of those who drink to excess.
We wish we could persuade such men that they are mistaken in
believing that excessive alcohol feeds the brain.
The man who has drunk too much, and thinks that his mind is
working splendidly, might learn something by studying any sort of
machinery when the belt slips off the wheel, or the screw of a
steamer when the power of the waves throws the screw out of the
water.
While the belt is securely attached, doing its works, it turns
slowly and monotonously.
While the screw is buried in the water, fighting its way and
pushing its load ahead, it turns slowly and laboriously.
When the belt slips off or the screw comes out of the water, the
whole thing is changed. The screw whizzes around like lightning.
The belt rattles and dances.
The screw in the water and the machinery doing its work properly
are like the sober brain.
The brain that is made abnormal by alcohol is simply the screw
out of water, the misplaced machine belt. The brain is no longer
connected with the working realities of life. It has lost its
balance and its function. It works rapidly and aimlessly. It
moves with wonderful swiftness, but it accomplishes nothing.
Let men who drink too much, believing that the action of their
minds is improved by drinking, think over this proposition about
the machinery and see if there is not something in it to
interest them.
How much actual work does this alcoholized brain turn out? What
do they actually DO "next day"?
TRY WHISKEY ON YOUR FRIEND'S EYEBALL
Your friend drinks too much, or drinks temperately but unwisely.
You may entreat, or argue, or abuse, or threaten.
You may show your friend the happy home where rum never enters.
You may lead him through the alcoholic ward at Bellevue.
Such sights may produce an impression. But usually they do not.
The man who possesses, indulges and keenly enjoys an overwhelming
passion--for drink or any other vice--is rarely moved by your
fine talk, for the reason that he believes in his wily soul that
you do not know what you are talking about.
Mr. Lecky, in his history of European morals, page 135, volume
I., observes:
"That which makes it so difficult for a man of strong, vicious
passions to unbosom himself to a naturally virtuous man is not so
much the virtue as THE IGNORANCE OF THE LATTER."
You are naturally virtuous. Your drinking friend is naturally
and proudly bad. He thinks you do not know what you are talking
about when you ask him to give up drink. ----
When you start out to cure a vicious friend by arguing with
him, do you ever reflect how little you know what goes on within
him? Suppose that in his nerves there is a craving ten thousand
times louder and stronger than your most virtuous arguments?
What good will those arguments do? No use whispering poetry to a
man in a boiler shop. No use humming a love song in a whirlwind.
The poetry, the song, are out of place. Any sort of argument
save the most powerful is wasted on a man whose soul is filled
with the racket of a dominating passion, such as drink or
gambling. ----
Just two things can cure a drunkard--two things, and nothing else
on earth.
First, his own cold reason and strength of will.
Second, the growth within him of some passion stronger than his
love of drink.
Love of his children, love of a woman, will cure a drunkard (but
we earnestly advise any woman to make sure he is cured before
trusting her future to him). Ambition--which includes every form
of vanity and self-delusion--will cure a drunkard, and has cured
many thousands. Even the miser's passion of economy may outweigh
love of drink and cure the lesser desire. ----
To cure a drunkard, try to arouse within him some desire stronger
than his desire to drink. Any boy will stop smoking to play
football or to excel in any sort of athletics. You reach his
vanity. What preaching could produce the same effect?
If you feel that you must use argument, try such arguments as
will appeal to the man himself, not such as seem sound to you in
your fine state of virtue.
The American drunkard is usually manufactured by the vile
American habit of drinking pure whiskey or cocktails. No other
race, except among the most degraded classes, absorbs crude
spirits as stupidly as this race. ----
Suppose you have a young friend whose tendency to drink
"straight" whiskey makes you nervous. You see what it is leading
to. Instead of trying to make a teetotaler of him, try to
transform him into a sensible drinker. ----
When your friend orders his whiskey, start off as follows:
Tell him you take it for granted that he knows all about the
mucous membrane. He will say that he does--for it is our
American mania to want to appear wise.
Casually state that of course he knows the covering of his
eyeball is identical in all important respects--especially as
regards sensitiveness--with the lining of his stomach; in fact,
of his whole interior from his mouth down.
He will assent and gravely pour out his poison.
Then say to him:
"Just dip the tip of your finger in that whiskey and put the
finger to your eye-ball."
If he does so he will feel the eye smart. The eyeball will
become inflamed, and sight for a moment will be difficult.
Then let him dilute the whiskey with water--four or five parts
water to one of whiskey. That dilution, rubbed into the other
eye, instead of irritating it, will act as a gentle stimulant.
It will produce an agreeable effect.
When your friend has experimented with the whiskey "straight" and
diluted, deliver to him this little lecture:
"One drop of pure whiskey on your eyeball makes it hard to use
the eye. That glass of whiskey that you are now pouring into
yourself would blind you absolutely, at least for a time. If
straight whiskey has such an effect on the covering of the
eyeball, must not its effect be equally injurious to the covering
of the stomach and intestines, which is the same as that of the
eye?
"If diluting your whiskey makes it so much better as an eye-wash,
would not diluting it make it better also as a 'stomach-wash'?"
One other thing: When you argue with a drunkard don't tell him
that any man can cure himself if he will "only be a man." The
drunkard knows that that is not so. Tell him, on the contrary,
that not one man in fifty, not one woman in a hundred, can
overcome the drink habit.
He will wink his tired eyes at you and say: "I want you
distinctly to understand that I'm one in a hundred." Tell him
how difficult it is--not how easy--and thus stir up his ambition.
----
Above all, when you start out to admonish or despise the victim
of bad habits, just remember that you have no notion whatever of
what you criticise. Not one drunkard in a hundred has will power
to cure himself. Not one "virtuous" man in a thousand has
imagination enough to realize the drunkard's temptation and
suffering. We offer to your consideration this other extract
from Lecky's book, quoted above:
"The great majority of uncharitable judgments in the world may be
traced to a deficiency of imagination. * * * To realize with any
adequacy the force of a passion we have never experienced, to
conceive a type of character radically different from our own, *
* * requires a power of imagination which is among the rarest of
human endowments."
WHAT ARE THE TEN BEST BOOKS?
An interesting discussion progresses in Chicago. Mr. Sam T.
Clover has asked this startling question:
"If you were bound for a desert island, and could take with
you only ten books, which ten books would you select?"
Whoever is refined and well read in Chicago seems to have
answered Mr. Clover's question. Mr. Clover introduces each
guesser with a graceful speech; then the guesser solemnly names
ten books.
The selections are, from the moral viewpoint, admirable. The
Bible is omitted rarely, and the Rubaiyat never. It is amazing
to see how many inhabitants of Cook County would be unhappy on a
desert island without Col. Omar. ----
It may not be permissible for a Yellow Editor to break into a
Cook County literary fiesta. We dislike to run the risk--but we
shall run it.
First we remark that a man living on a desert island needs no
books at all.
Reading books is an idle occupation unless you make your reading
profitable to other human beings, and that you cannot do on a
desert island.
The trouble with many readers is this: They read as though they
WERE on a desert island. They sop up literature or facts as a
sponge sops up water; then, like human sponges, do nothing with
their wisdom. They read for themselves; they read to increase
their egotism and self-approval, and for no other purpose. ----
But, after walking into an intellectual parlor above our station
in life, it certainly does not become us to be finicky.
We'll tell as quickly as possible what it is that surprises us:
NOT ONE COOK COUNTY THINKER MENTIONS A BOOK ON ASTRONOMY.
A man on a desert island has a little sand, some goats and a few
miles of ocean around him--nothing else in sight.
But above him, and on the low plains of the horizon, the great
universe is spread out. Vega flashes overhead, beckoning to this
little solar system that is rolling on toward her.
The old, benevolent stars look through cold space at our little
sun that was not even hatched in their yesterday.
The Milky Way, that Mississippi of the sky, rolls across the
thousands of billions of miles of space.
The messenger-boy comets go on their long, elliptical errands.
The colored planets and moons, the nebular masses and the cold,
dead worlds lying in the silent morgue of eternity tell the
wonderful story of cosmic grandeur.
We should think that a man on a desert island, living constantly
in contemplation of God's real work, would want to study that
work.
The greatest book ON MEN that ever was written on this earth
is but an analysis of the emotions of imperfect human minds. A
good ASTRONOMY is a guide book of GOD'S kingdom.
Many Cook County litterateurs select Carlyle for a desert island
companion. Have they not observed that Carlyle's mind was fixed
on contemplation of the universe?--"the eternal silences" were
his friends. And when he seeks monkeyfied human soldiers, booted
and spurred, he asks, "What thinks Bootes of them, as he leads
his hunting dogs across the zenith in a leash of sidereal fire?"
O, Cook County thinkers, inhabitants of a small corner of this
small ant-hill, drop your alcohol-loving tentmaker--Omar--forget
your half-hearted fondness for Milton. Buy "Ball's Story of the
Heavens," or even some simpler astronomy; spend four dollars and
four weeks finding out how grand is our real home, the boundless,
beautiful universe.
THE MARVELLOUS BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE--A LESSON IN THE TEXAS
FLOOD
A tidal wave and hurricane combined have destroyed thousands of
lives in one small corner of the globe.
After the first excitement and horror, the creditable outpouring
of help, there should be thankfulness in the hearts of the many
millions who live on safely.
Do you ever think of the wonderful protection, the marvellous
precision in celestial mechanics that guard you as you travel
through space? ----
The oceans, seas and lakes contain water enough to cover the
entire surface of the earth to a depth of six hundred feet, if
the earth's surface were actually round.
In huge reservoirs, which we call oceans, the earth's waters are
stored for our use. Those vast volumes of water rest on the
surface of a whirling sphere travelling through space at fearful
speed. The slightest derangement, the slightest lack of balance
in our motion round the sun, the slightest shifting of the poles,
and mountains of water miles high would sweep over the continents
and wipe out--not only one small city--but the entire human
race. ----
Our existence here requires a precision so great that our minds
can but feebly grasp it. Change the temperature of your body by
but a few degrees and you die. But you travel through space
safely, with a freezing ocean of ether about you. You travel in
company with suns that throw out endless billions of degrees of
heat. You are protected in a travelling hothouse, regulated
exactly to suit your feeble strength and all your wants. ----
Did you ever see the small, black nose of a pug dog pressed
against the window of a flying express train?
Have you ever seen that pug barking at the landscape whirling by?
Have you ever reflected on the utter inability of that pug to
realize the marvellous intelligence and power that are whirling
him along as he barks and wags his tail and enjoys himself
calmly?
Kind reader, you and all of us, whirling along in this
magnificently conducted express train called the earth--whirling
onward to a destiny worthy of our habitation--are so many poor
little pug dogs looking out at nature's marvels and looking out
with less than pug-dog appreciation.
THE EARTH IS ONLY A FRONT YARD
The philosophers, political economists, lawmakers, editors,
sociologists, and all the other would-be deep thinkers of this
earth, are really engaged in a pretty small business.
We are like a swarm of human beings cast away on some desert
island. This earth is our island, a little island in space, and
it is a desert island and a badly arranged island in more ways
than one. Many of us lack good dwellings, some of us lack food,
all of us are worried about the future. The island is infested
with mosquitoes and with diseases that we have not learned to
conquer. There are many criminals on it that prey upon the
honest people--criminals at the top and criminals at the bottom
of society.
And all of those who think and sympathize with their fellow
creatures are busy with the problem of putting things right on
this little desert island that carries us along in the wake of
the sun.
Most of us imagine that the most important work for men is the
organization of life on this little planet. That is a very small
and mean idea of man's real destiny.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18