DRINKING AMONG WOMEN

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1717, 25 January 1905, Page 69 (Supplement)

DRINKING AMONG WOMEN

GROWING DIFFICULTIES' FACED BY SAL V ATTONISTS. Tlie Salvation Annv sees strange and terrible things in its campaign against suffering, and in a sketch of t-lie Army s social work for the past year, issued untier the direction of Mr hramweli Booth, nianv such are recorded. ‘ Frecipices is the book’s title. ~ The terrible increase in recent years oi drunkenness amongst women is notch. Veteran omcers of the Army have been pamitiJiy impressed with the changes, in some localities, where it used to He thought a dreadful thing ior any young woman m enter a public-house, now the resplendent bars of these esUUil shments are on every holiday crowded vita i» e dressed young women. “Drink makes tramps out of the most unlikely material. Not long ago' we found amongst such company a clergyman’s daughter, as utterly lost iO cveijfeminine taste as if she had been horn amongst the most savage of peoples. Drink, it is noticed by Army workers, induces an unreasonableness m the case of thousands of parents, winch seems to amount to- incipient lunacy. A. mother brought ner whole family for c xmLoi ion to an oflicei. She had been ill in bed for Guv: as iho result of a drunken brawi, am 1 , had had some money to spend on the rn.

“The little tots were clad in velvet plush, with the most fashionable nats and shoes. The mo-fcner was proud ot the effect, but she had made up her in.nd to pawn the fin ry in order to get oriiuv the next Monday.” The rescue work of the Army is one of ite most important branches of effect, and in speaking of it Mr Booth makes terrible revelations of" the many sad cases which are the direct result of overcrowded dwell ngs/ A lax moral tone prevalent, not alone on the seamy side of life, renders the task of raising the fallen all the more difficult.