DRINK AND SOCIALISM.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 12862, 22 May 1905, Page 7

DRINK AND SOCIALISM.

To the Editor,;

Sir, — 'Having read with interest the letters in your columns lately on this topic, I would like to add a little from recent writers on the subject in Europe. I The Herman Socialist, Aidler, in writing about drinik, says : I "It contributes to keep the exploited masses in that condition of illusions and ignorance, of weakness of intellect and of willy which worfis for their oppression and despoiling." Vaudewelde, Belgian Socialist, says : "Every increase in pay has been followed by an increase in the amount of drink consumed" ; and that in years tHat< are prosperous beer consumption plainly increased though meat consumption, remained stationary. The German 1 Socialists are circulating largely a pamphlet by Dr. Richard Froehliclf, of .Vienna, who says : "It is a striking fact that from year to year the number of those investigators increases who see in the so-called moderate but regular drinking a far greater danger than in the drunkenness of individuals. Before one recovers from the injury which 1 a small dose of alcohol occasions the injury is repeated, arid so on through years until finally the condition ,«f severe alcohol poisoning is present without the patients' ever having been intemperate ori having had a single spree/* On the question whether poverty is the cause of drunkenness or the pi'oduct of it he remarks on the fact, worthy of mjuch consideration, that in the Swiss cities the death stStistics from alcohol show that forty-nine per cent, of the whole are among the well-to-do class. Further, he asks : "Does the class of women t workers which is worst paid, worst nourished and" worst , exploited of all, furnish more or less drunkenness than the men ? In these j Swiss statistics not two per cent, were women I" The question arises, shall wo put through the fight (in i Germany) for better wages, then* for better dwellings and better conditions of work, arid when this is 'done begin the battle with alcohol ? For every one experienced in the class struggle this presentation of the order of tasks is wholly unsatisfactory. There is, besides, this consideration : The fight for better wages, etc., can bo far better carried ott by a" temperate, alcohol-hating, and enlightened clasa than by one alcoholized. We must therefore, in tHe interests of the wagoearners, begin as quickly as possible with this direct i attack cm alcoholic prejudices, •in short— put , first things first. — I am, etc., G.H.'M. (TKere will, we fear, be no end to this discussion if correspondents continue quoting what this arid that social reTormer has said. Most of our readers, too, are capable of thinking for themselves, without looking to unknown (to . them) reformers for thou ght .-OJVI. T.H . )^^__^

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