TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 12, 15 January 1910, Page 12

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[The matter for this column is supplied by a representative of the local temperance bodies, who alone is responsible for che opinions expressed in A PRIEST ON~~THE TRAFFIC. Chancellor Cassidy, of the Fall River, Massachusetts, who was quoted not long ago in this column, lately made a stirring speech, in which he described the bar-room as "an unmitigated curse." The liquor traffic, he said, in furthering its_ vile purpose, undermined every direct principle and knew neither good, God, nor Gospel. He proceeded : — "There are many men engaged in this evil who are clean, upright honest men. How their consciences reconcile them to a continuance in it is more than I can say. I pray God to open their minds to a realisation of the evil in which they are engaged, and turn them to nobler and better ends. "There are many men occupied in this nefarious occupation who are the lowest of the low, the vilest of the vile, whose motto and god is gold. They have their fingers on the throats of decent men; they debauch the people's tribunes; they control the representatives/ of the people, and_ they undermine the Government. Their power must be destroyed. "Cardinal Gibbons must have been misquoted when he is represented as saying that the greatest evil threatening society is divorce. Drink is the supreme evil. Show me one home disrupted by divorce and I will show hundreds destroyed by, drink. Show me one life blasted, one soul damned to the depths of hell, by divorce, and I will show hundreds made demons by drink. The divorce evil is insignificant compared with the supreme destroyer of body and soul." TEMPERANCE "PROGRESS IN" SCANDINAVIA. In Sweden where there are about half a million teetotalers, there are seventyseven daily .papers which «epresent total abstinence principles. Not only these seventy-seven papers (whose editors are mostly Good Templars), but at least eighteen, and probably more, other daily papers refuse to insert advertisements relating to intoxicating drinks. In Norway the conditions are similar. There, where the population is smaller, there are over 250,000 organised abstainers, and forty daily papers based on total abstinence principles. I In both these countries it is almost impossible to conduct any newspaper outside the large towns, that does not represent total abstinence principles. As opposed to this, in the capitals of the Scandinavian countries the influence on the press is less. The proposition is being strongly urged to publish daily papers in Stockholm, Christiania, and Copenhagen, which would be at the ser- i vice of the total abstinence cause. In Denmark, which in many respects is behind the other two countries (counting about 170,000 organised teetotalers), a daily temperance paper, Afholdsdagbladet Reform, is already published in Aarhus. Sweden and Norway, it is fully expected, will be the first countries to adopt national prohibition.