TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 41

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

THE “ CATCH-MY-PAL.” At morning service at the Presbyterian Church, Adelaide road, Dublin, recently, the Rev. William M'Neill, 8.A., in the course of his sermon, gave an interesting account of the Catch-My-Pal movement, the total abstinence crusade which has made remarkable progress in Ulster. He said that last year in nearly every congregation in the land earnest prayer was offered up to God that He would again revive them, and many of them hoped that it would be a distinctly ethical revival. Now it seemed as if their prayer had been . answered. The towns and villages cf Ulster were again witnessing and wondering at a mighty manifestation of the power of Gcd, and the movement was distinctly an ethical one whose fruits were manifest already. It was possible that some of them had only heard of the movement, arid did not exactly know how it started The name of the Rev. Robert J. Patterson, of Armagh, would always be associated with its inception. One day in July he was walking down where there was a lamp around which men were accustomed to gather. There were six standing there, and one of them said that he ought to get them to sign the pledge. The Rev. Mr Patterson asked them what they thought of the idea, and they replied that they would consider it, and promised to go to the manse one by one. At his request, they agreed to go together. They all turned up the following evening, and signed the total abstinence pledge, and each undertook to get a man to do the same. They went away, set to work, and the following week 12 men turned up. They formed themselves into the “ Armagh Protestant Total Abstinence Union.” Three nights later 25 others signed the pledge, and at the next meeting 57 new members were added to the roll. The movement grew in Armagh, until 400 men —half of the available Protestant, population of the city-—joined the union. In October last no Petty Sessions were held in that city, and for three weeks in the month of October there was no town court held. The public-houses were wellnigh deserted. The movement spread from Armagh. In Milford village, out of a possible 160 men over 16 years of age, the limit of membership, 130 joined. Next came Keady, then Portadown, and afterwards it reached County Derry. In Ballymena there were 1000 members, in Carrickfergus 1300, and in Coleraine 1600. There were about 200 branches in Ulster, and about 40,000 members, all over 16 years of age. These men were to a large extent heavy drinkers, and manv of them the Church had regarded as hopeless cases—men who could not venture to give up drink, although they knew it was destroying both soul and ! body. They clutched at the new movement with avidity, and they saved themselves by trying to save a brother. Already the results of the movement were apparent, even to the sceptical people who said that the men would soon return to the public-houses again. In many homes in the North of Ireland Christmas of 1909 would be remembered by the mothers and children, as well as by the men themselves. In one town the butchers were unable to execute their Christmas orders, and they stated that for the first time they were paid in ready cash. A friend of hir who was visiting his relatives in a country village at Christi mas told him that the casks of whisky and other liquor could be seen lying at the railway station, because the publicans would not trouble to send for them. In another town he (Mr M'Neilll was informed that the public-houses did not see a dozen men in a day, and a resident of the town stated that if the movement , lasted 12 months, at least half the pubiichonses would be. closed. The preacher proceeded to set forth the main principles of the movement. First of these came its individualism, so that the men who created the problem should solve it each for himself. Secondly, it was an aggressive movement, and they should carry the campaign into the enemy’s territory. The movement had the expulsive power of a new enthusiasm. Instead of a man kicking up his heels at home, the man should go out and find a “ pal.” That gave him something to do. Another feature was that the pledge- was made in public, everyone knew of it, and explanations were unnecessary. Mr M'Neill, in conclusion, considered the applicability of the movement to Dublin, offered some practical suggestions, and appealed to the men of the congregation to join the movement. ALCOHOL AND PARENTHOOD. Dr Saleebv addressing a large audience in Fratry. Carlisle, on the above subject, ■snowed that alcohol bad a deleterious

[ effect on parenthood, and especially on I expectant motherhood. People wno were i constitutionally prone to intemperance, he i said, ought to be taken care of all their i lives, and the future relieved of the buv- | den of the kind of children they pro- | duced. Replying to the question. Would the fatherhood of a healthy man who drank be deteriorated? he said there W£S accumulated evidence to shew that if healthy people took sufficient alcohol for a suffi- | ciently prolonged period, not ' only the i brain, but the parental tissues, would be ; injured in such a way that their parent- \ hoed would be greatly prejudiced. Chil- | dren befc-e birth were protected in a ! miraculous way from many injurious ini fluer.res affecting mothers, but they were 1 not protected from the injurious effects iof alcohol, ar.cl r t child might be poisoned i before it saw the light. It was as bad |to introduce alcohol int-j the maternal organism as into the child's organism, and he himself had seen children born intoxicated. Proceeding, he said the mother's organic and vital relations to her child did not cease when it was born. If they did, so much the worse for the child. For one breast-fed baby who died under 12 months old, an average of from 12 to 15 died who were not fed by their mothers. As he did not practise medicine, he was free to write and say anything he liked, and one of the things "hat he took leave to say—and the doctors did not like him to say it—was that the doctor who orescribed stout and porter for the nursing mother was an ignorant man on the on which it was his business to ■be informed. Stout and potter made more j milk, but if the baby got more fluid it j got le?s food. But not only did the child thus get an excess of water and a minished proportion of nutritive elements —it also got something which it had no business to get, and that was alcohol. If anybody asked him what He would advise nursing mothers to take instead of stout and porter, he would tell thenv that there were few things better for making milk than milk. —(Cheers). Discussing next the. phvsical relations of mother and child, he pointed out that the mother was the child's natural environment, and said that mothers and babies should sleep very close to each other. When they did so. the baby was in no danger of being overlaid, unless the mother was under the influence of alcohol. A mother whose brain was not poisoned with alcohol responded to the slightest movement of her child. Since the Children's Act of 1908 came into operation on April 1. last year, cases of-overlaying had not been so frequent, and when the detailed figures of infantile mortalntv came out, he hoped it would be found that the number of cases of overlving had been diminished by the operation of the act. —(Cheers). Having shown that the operation of the Children's Act during the nine months of last vear had already had the effect of reducing the rate of infantile mortality, which had droppd to 109 per 1000 last'-year, from 120 in 1908, and from 140 six years ago. he said that they had seen that even the threatening of an act of Parliament, as had been the case with the Budget, could diminish drunkenness.—(Cheers). He was not one of those who said they could do nothing by legislation. They had got to get the right kind of public opinion, and get it to work, very largely, through legislation; but he also believed in the right instruction of youth in these matters, and he hoped everyone interested in temperance, especinllv in its relation to oarenthood and childhood, was acquainted with the syllabus issued by the Board of Education for the direction of teachers who Slave lessons in temperance. This svllabus had' been drawn up after having been submitted to eminent authorities who had never said' anything against alcohol—(laughter)—and he hoped public opinion would be so brought to bear upon local education authorities, that they would have to adopt it.—(Cheers). Sometimes the energies and activities of temperance people were directed along lines less profitable . than others would be; but he thought there was no field where the temperance worker would get so much value for his time, money and energy as by working on the principle, or dogma, which he wished to leave with them, and which seemed' to be the great doctrine for the temperance reformer of the immediate future.—Protect parenthood from alcohol. —(Cheers).