TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 85

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

ALCOHOL AND THE HOME.

By' Me and Mrs BnAanvEii, Booth. (Read by Mrs Booth at the International Congress on Alcoholism in London.) Of home itself, one general observation may be offered. The home is not • only the seed-plot of a .nation's continued! existence, but it is the spring f&mi which proceeds all that is essential to the true patriotism of a people, to the real power of any community, and to the sustained influence of national life and institutions. The homes of the people constitute zif. innumerable and endless succession of minute contributories to the great stream of a nation's life. In' itself, each may appear like an insignificant rivulet, but together they constitute the flow of new life, of new influences, both moral and intellectual, and of iiew energy without which the nation must in the procees of time inevitably shrink and die.

Anything, therefore, which bears for good or ill upon the homes and upon the home-life of a people is of supreme importance to every nation. WASTE AND WAST. A wide experience of the conditions of life in many countries, and a somewhat close acquaintance with the Miner facts j of social progress among the working and peasan classes over a large part of the world, has brought an ilnportant body I of • information on this and kindred subjects to the officers of the Salvation. Army. ! This paper is intended to present — as briefly as nay be — some of the principal conclusions at which we have arrived as jto the influence of strong drink upon the life of the people as that life *s seen in their homes.

1. And first we remark, Alcohol" in the home dissipates and wastes the substance and material resources of the family.

It Ls scarcely .necessary to d<o move than state this fact to secure universal assent. Wherever it appears in the homes of the people, alcohol tends inevitabiy to waste. It consumes, without giving any adequate return, what should be expended in necessarks, especially for the children, the aged, and the sick. It is astonishing to what an extent it establishes itself as a supposed necessity, and then drives out what is all-important for the building up of vigorous physique avid the preservation of health. In times of scarcity and unemployment, the children's milk, is cut off long before the parents' beer and spirits. The wage-earner — and even the young mother — will, to. tbeir great deli'iment, forego important food much more willingly than the potion of alcoholic drink to -which they are accustomed.

The use of strong drink ib also, we find, a principal foe to thrift of every kind. The small margin of gain over necessary expenditure which might be stored for the future goes — even where there is no 6ign of excess — in this form of indulgence, and when, presently, special needs arise there is no reserve to fall back upon. It has been wasted. Even when eariy training has induced habits of thrift, and something has been accumulated by heads of families in the first years of housekeeping, the alcohol custom, being once established, invades these reserves, and that often on slight occasion, with ruinous consequences. They are quickly dissipated.

2. Alcohol dissolves the vigour and spirit which mane and keep the home a living factor.

Nothing >s much more valuable in the life of a. people than the possession by each individual of some centre of interest and affection to which all that is best in character" clings. Just as the homeless man is always a danger to society, m> the man with strong attachments — firet to the home of his childhood, and then to the home of which he is himself the head — will always be a more useful, more law-abiding, and in every way more desirable citizen than the man without those interests. LOSS OF RESPECT. But nothing so quickly attacks all that is most attractive in home-life as the use of, and desire for, strong drink. They engender selfishness ; they lead to associations totally alien and often antagonistic to home influence. They lead to a fatal lack of interest in the home on the part of both men and women, and induce carelessness in its management, and in a very large porportion of cases, even where stimulants are not a£ yet used to great excess, they strike at the confidence between parents and children, which is one of the finest qualities and most beautiful characteristics of true home-life. Once these evils have entered any home, there is a weakening, soon to produce a total loss, of respect in the children, or genuine regard in the parentb. Tens 'of thousands of young people, because of this curse, enter upon the serious affairs of life with, all real affection for home shattered, and with all

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J high ideals as to the homes they art j themselves to >build ru? -v destroyed* s>• r ' 3. "Afcbhof humbles and only too often dfestoays r thef natural |dignity. 'aidt feiesflge of hbrne" : and of family" life.* —lf fI - : One of the , highest \ p»actica^j as *ell 'as ethical ..advantages -o£ vv a /goga h^mc at' all, but gaHicula^ly , W-thji^ young \ people who li^e' therej.'ls^to'SkWal^J juia cultivate respect and esteem for human life, and character. It is ■thejje that ithe future citizen learns ;how great . a thing a human soul is, and how noble a human life 1 may ' become. T?he sacredness and purity- of - natural affection, ithe '-value 'of self-control, and the true wortbJ of labour, are all illustrated :n: n what* he sees before him ; ii the life of his home. To this end, God has, by the operation ot certain natural tendencies — waich we call 'laws — surrounded family life, and hornet which ie its centre, bj jt reserve and exclueiveness which constitute no small part of its dignity. Occasions , abound, both of joy and -sorrow, of low 1 and gain, of pleasure and of pain, whic»- ; tend to strengthe . that seclusion and to I uphold and increase that .dignity. f. In its influence upon the 'formation, of -* character this has a large place,, -helping \to deveiop - resource, self-control, willing' ' ness to accept responsibility, and sympathy and- affection towards all. But, alas! how cruelly opposed to aJI this :3: 3 alcoholism ! With what agony have we not all of us witnessed the graduat dispersal of that respect, and ■ the finaldestruction of that dignity, under the influence of that scourge ! The wife and: mother, who at first looked up In all things to tl>& husband, is gradually compelled to look d&wn upon him. The husband and father, whose esteem was at first of the highest for the wife, is compelled at last to think of her only as .the servant or slave of another master. The children grow up to see onjy too plainly; how the best and purest side of their parents' character us marred and stained! -by the influences of .this .strasge evil power, until presently all .respect, eithe« for their word or personalities, is gone. Who can estimate the evil consequences oF this loss of prestige? Who can say how far it i,s responsible for the growt^ of disorderlineffi, Insubordination, anarchism, and kindred evils -arquad us ? We verily believe that, many a revo!*c tionary spirit, many a. reckless criminal, many a forsaken woman, took the fir& steps on the way to nlin under the influence of a home in which strong drink had already undermined all that moral dignity and natural prestige which shouUl have been a strong bulwark against those very evik. (To be concluded.)

— They met attain at the same old seA eide resort. "Your fact looks familiar/ he said; "weren't w<* sngaged last a«« son?" "Her l :ac ' brightened '• vn*fcan#y. '•That* -just what we were!" .she cried gleefully. "I knew I had. captured nin# that season, but I could Vn-Iy account fa eight until you spoke."