TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 28, 2 February 1907, Page 12

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[Tho matter for this column is supplied by a representative of the local temperance bodies, who alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in THE STATE VERSUS ALCOHOL. "Alcohol versus the State," is a familiar theme. Now, apparently, the tables are being turned— in Great Britain, at all events Stato officials are beginning to take up the crusade and issue warnings against the national vice. Sixty-one cities have been placarded, the liquordealers protesting in vain. Thei following is -a fair sample of these official nosters :—: — ' • \ City of Nottingham.—Physical'deterioration and alcoholism. The report of the committee, presented to Parliament by command of His Majesty states that:— •* The abuse of alcoholic stimulants is a most potent ' and deadly 'agent of physical deterioration. Alcoholic persons are speedily liable to tuberculosis and all inflammatory disorders. Evidence was placed before the committee .sho wing that in abstinence is to be sought $he source of muscular vigor and activity. > The iunacy figures show a large and increasing number of admissions of both sexes which are due to drink. The following facts recognised by the medical profession and placarded all over France by order of the Government, are published in order to carry out the~ recommendation of the committee and to bring home cd men and women the fatal effects of alcohol on physical eniciency. 1. Alcoholism is a chroits poisoning, resulting 'from the habitual use of alcohol (whether as spirits, " wine or beer) which may never go as far as drunkenness. ' * 2. It is a mistake to say that those doing hard w,ork require stimulants. As a fact no one requires alcohol as' either food or tonic. • ' ' 3. Alcohol' 'is really a. narcotic, dulling the nerves (ike laudanum or opium,' bntit is more dangerous than either, in that often its first effect is to weaken a man's self-control while his passions aro excited ; hence the number of crimes which occur under its influence. 4. Spirits, as usually taken, rapidly produce alcoholism, but milder alcoholic drinks as beer, and even cider, drunk repeatedly every day, produce 'in time alcoholic poisoning with equal certainty. 5. The habit of drinking leads to the ruin of families, the neglect of social duties, disgust for work, misery, < theft and crime. It also leads to the hospital, for alcouol produces the most various and most fatal diseases', including paralysis, insanity, diseases of the stomach and liver, and dropsy. It also paves the way for consumption, I and frequenters of public houses furn- J ish a iarge proportion of the victims ' of this disease. It complicates and aggravates all acute diseases. Typhoid fever, pneumonia, erysipelas arc rapidly fatal ;n; n the subject of alcoholism. 6- The sins of alcoholic parents are visited on the children ; if these survive infancj they are threatened with idiocy or epilepsy, and many are carried away by tuberculosis, meningitis, or phthisis (consumption). 7. In snort, atcoool is tie most terrible enemy to personal health, to family., tioppiue£3, and to national pros--1 perity. By order of fche Health Committee: Forbes Robertson Mutch, M.D., chairman; PhjlilJ Boobyer, M.D., Medical ' Officer of Health. Countersigned : Samuel G. Johnson, Town Clerk. VERMONT TIRED OF LICENSE. Vermont repealed her prohibition law in 1902, and the liquor press joyfully heralded it as one more .iep toward their long-wished era of na .ional "personal liberty."' Here is tb- reco.rd of Vermont for the four years since Local Option was adopted. The number of iicens'e towns from 1902 to 1306 was as follows :— 1905, 92; 1904. 40: 1905, 34; 1906, 29. The total 'Local-option votes of the State since tb.o repeal- of prohibition 'have shown majorities for and against license as follows: 1903, Yes, 5222 majority'; 1904, No, 7(R)8 majority: 1905, Np, 6020 majority; 1906, No, 6697 majority. OAMARU UNDER NO LICENSE. The Otago Daily Times supplies these figures. The table includes arrests and summonses on police offences and crime foi 1905 and also for 1906,' but as v No License has only been in existence six months, the latter year is divided intq tljose periods for comparative purposes. The figures aro as follows :— Drunkenness 1.90,5, 188 cases ; first half o£ 1906, 97 cases ; second half, C cases. Theft 1905, 19 cases; lirst half 1906, 12 Vases ; "second half, 3 cases. Vagrancy 1905, 7 cases; firsj; half 1906, 4 cases ;' second half none. Totals (smaller items being omitted) : Police offences 1905, 299 ccses; first half oi 1906, 138 cases second half 1906, 29 cases. ANOTHER EMINENT PHYSICIAN SPEAKS. Professor yf. (Jslqr, in his address pu "The Care of the Body," at. the Working" Men's College, London, said that alcohoj was quito unnecessary. If all the beer and spirits cquld be dumped^ into the Irish Channel, the English Channel, and the North Sea, for a year, people in England would be infinitely better," and it would, of course, solve almost all the problems that philanthropists, physicians, and "politicians had to deal with. ]"Dq you suppose you need tobacco?'' asked Professor Osier,' and the audience laughed. "If," he continued, "on the second day you dumped all the tobacco into the s.ea, it would bo good for-yqu and hard on the fish." Tea aiid coffee, like alcohol and tobacco, were really not necessary and, in fact ? disturbed the furnaces of the body. THE CURSE OF THE WORKER. A correspondent of the Brisbane ] Worker, writing from Fairymead, (Q.), ;1 as to my impiovement of the condition i of the workers while "the drink purqo" ] remains,. "Its victims," he says, "are j hawking their labour, tho only pos- ] session they have left, to the planters' ] dooxs. It would require another advent j of Chrisi. to prove to those men how ; they ' bloc}: all efforts to" better 4heir | conditions. They say it is a free coun- I try, and they sue at liberty to do as j they like with their own money. When "i this freedom makes them unable to re- j sist 'the \.-agc-cutting tactics of em- , ploycrs it ought to bo time for them to make a mighty effort to aland by then* hard-earned money, so that they may be ip a position to refuse the kanaka wage winch is being* offered to $eld woil:cr3 :u: v the sugar districts. The position heio at present is this: », small proportion of men aro making heroic efforts to improve thoiv conditions through unionism ; knowing well that tbV largo majority, when they have 1 spent all their money on drink, will ,j smash thu Sugar Workers' Union by; p beiDg compelled to sell their labour." \ L