TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 87

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

NO-LICENSE IN ONTARIO. ITS RAPID SPREAD. The following table shows the complete results of the local option vote taken in connection with the municipal elections in Ontario on January 3 last : Local option won in ; Twelve towns having 61 licences. Thirteen villages having 36 licenses. Fifty-two townships having 114 licenses. Total, 77 municipalities, 211 licenses. Local option was defeated by the threefifths clause in : Two cities, with 43 licenses. Fourteen towns, with 81 licenses. Eighteen villages, with 43 licenses. Twenty-one townships, with 58 licenses. Total : 55 municipalities, 225 licenses. The liquor men had majorities in ; Eight towns, with 60 licenses. Eight villages, with 16 licenses. Ten townships, with 28 licenses. Total : 26 municipalities, 104 licenses. Commenting on the above results, the Montreal Weekly Witness says : —“ The fact that over 70 municipalities in Ontario have given majorities of over threefifths of the entire vote cast in favour of no-license is an important forward step in the steady march towards the universal legal abolition of the greatest curse of Chi’istendom. In some places where the three-fifths clause prevented the by-law coming into effect the temperance sentiment revealed is such that a substantial reduction in the number of licenses will follow. The reports show that over 50 municipalities returned majorities in favour of prohibition without reaching the 60 per cent, necessary to secure the enactment of the veto. Under a majority vote 436 licenses would have been cut off; as it is, about 211 will lapse. Brantford affords a fine example of the working of the three-fifths handicap. Of the 4610 votes cast, 2710 were for local option and ladO against. It required 2766 votes to make the three-fifths majority demanded by the Ontario law. The majority of 810 votes for local prohibition did not count as against the 56 lacking to make up the three-fifths. The fact that almost none of the municipalities which adopted the veto under the majority rule have reversed the conclusion so reached, ever though a simple majority was sufficient to do so, is piling up an accumulating argument against the theory on which the three-fifths clause was based—namely, that a simple majority of the votes polled was not a sufficient evidence of public opinion in favour of prohibition. The handicap thus put upon the better class of voters, and the slight which these see in it, has caused so much feeling in actively influential! quarters that apart from any question of principle it might be politically 'wise for the Government to accept the logic of -facts before again facing the people. The Whitney Government has enforced the liquor laws as they have never been enforced before, and so has nothing to gain by antagonising the supporters of those laws.”

THE USE OF ALCOHOL BY NURCING MOTHERS.

By Dr Norman S. Kerr,

I have known half a glass of whisky taken by a nursing mother give rise, in a few hours, to the most alarming symptoms in an infant, who ultimately made a very narrow recovery ; and I have frequently had occasion to examine the bodies of infants whose deaths were clearly traceable to the direct effects of the alcohol imbibed at the maternal breast, the mother all the while unconscious of any possible mischief to her little darling from her own daily so-called "moderate" drinking. Many medical men have recorded instances where beer and porter were the sole cause of infantile diarrhcea, convulsions, and wasting sickness; and I have again and again been able to put an effectual stop to the disease and emaciation of infants at the breast by the simple prescription of non-alcohol diet to the mother, or of unalooholised and innocent artificial food to the child. The every-day prescription of " nourishing stout" to nursing mothers is not scientific medicine, but is the grossest quackery, and is but too often productive of most lamentable results to both mother and child ; and the resort to alcoholic beverages in such circumstances is a practice that ought no longer to be tolerated in an educated and civilised community. Where the child's natural food is deficient in quantity, oatmeal, gruel or porridge, cows' milk, farinaceous food, and good beefsteaks will accomplish all that is desired; but all the alohol in the world will never add a drop to the store of real milk. It will only dilute, adulterate, and poison the previous scanty supply. Most distressing cases have come under my own observation where the lowest depths of drunken degradation have been reached by females brought up as abstainers, whose first introduction to the " maddening bowl" was reluctuitly forced upon them on the unfounded plea that alcohol was imperatively demanded to support the constitution under the continuous drain arising from the nursing of strong and hungry children. The saddest feature of the whole question is that drinking may bequeath to their children &..i existence of physical and mental misery, a tendency to epilepsy and insanity, and various serious bodily affections, and an hereditary disposition to dipsomania. . . . If mothers

I wish their children to have a fair cbanco of avoiding physical or moral shipwreck, they must not only rear them hi the practice of abstinence, but they must launch them into existence with a body and brain free from the imprint of materi nai alcoholic indulgence. Dr Edmunds, who is a late Senior Physician to the British Lying-in Hospital, says:—“l think I might fairly say that among the comfortable middle-class of society the views at present held on this question are so deplorable that a large proportion of children are never sober from the first moment of their existence until they have been weaned. . . . My own deliberate conviction is that nothing but harm comes to nursing mothers, and to , the infants who are dependent upon them, ! by the ordinary use of alcoholic beverages of any kind.” SPREAD OF ANTI-ALCOHOL SENTLt MENT IN EUROPE. France.—The latest development is a strong and aggressive anti-alcohol group in the Chamber of Deputies. Mr Joseoi Reinach is the leader of this section of the French Parliament, and in a ringing speech, recently delivered in the Chamber, urged the abolition of the whole absinthi industry, even going so far as to declan that France could easily afford to indemnify the manufacturers of that poisonous beverage in order to rid the nation of the curse. M. Reinach recently held an extended interview with the Famous British Labour statesman, John Burns, and noted that leader’s opposition to the liquor traffic as an example for French emulation. The French Government is, however, still almost wholly in the control! of the liquor makers. - Germany.—As a result of the earnest and self-sacrificing efforts of eminent Ger • man scientists, who have sounded wid<i the alarm at the rising tide of intemperance in Germany, a powerful total abstinence movement is developing by leaps and bounds. In 1903, according tc the best authorities in Germany, there were 35,000 members of the various temperance societies in Germany. This membership had increased to 55,000 in 1905. and according to the International Monassocrift, -Uecember, 1908, there were 86,000 members in these same organisations at that date. In addition to this, there are thousands of boys and girls enlisted in juvenile temperance societies. In reply to a letter ol inquiry addressed to 550 high school societies and student fraternities throughout Germany, it was found that there are now 202 student societies which receive abstaining students; that six have discarded the nrinciple of drinking customs, and have joined in the campaign against alcoholism; and that 10 have no “ Komraers,” while in 65 others there is no compulsion to drink-. These figures are the more remarkable when it is understood that the drinking customs of student societies have long been conspicuous.

Poland.—"Liberty,".a society for absolute abstinence from intoxicating liquors, founded in November, 1909, is now perhaps the most enthusiastic and successful temperance movement in Poland.