Concerning Alcohol.

White Ribbon, Volume 12, Issue 141, 13 February 1907, Page 6

Concerning Alcohol.

The Cm ei/h of Li< ev'K - At tin Christchurch Magistrates Court, on January .‘MI, a woman with 1 14 pro viouH convictions against licr ami win had junt been released from gaol aftei serving a sentence of eighteen month* was convicted of drunkenness and discharged— without doubt to come ii| again for her llfith conviction. Tin same day another woman was convicted of drunkenness and breach of prohibition order She had just come out n| tin* Salvation Army Home, where sin had l>een allowed to spend tlmv months as an alternative to prison, and while in the Home had behaved in an exemplary manner. A few days later a 155th conviction was recorded against a third woman. Is it anything short oi fiendish cruelty to deliberately subject these poor creatures, afflicted with Tantalian thirst, to the sight and odour of alcohol at well nigh every street corner, and then to punish them for attempting to quencn that thirst? In Mildura during the first six months of last year, there wen* three cases of drunkenness < >n .lan. Ist, HM)7, the wine license began its operations, and within six liie** had been sixteen cases of drunkenn..*** before the local Bench, each offender admitting that the cause of his was Australian wine, from the i»c»\ wine bar. 0 * * The Karl of Carlisle, upon his conversion to the principles ot total abstinence some years ago, closed all the public houses upon his estates, and destroyed tin* contents of his celebrated wine cellar. « 0 0 Dr. T. 1). ('rothers has recently declared that the administration of alcohol in tuberculosis is really more dangerous than the disease it is given to correct. Alcohol \ni> the Industrial World. —The temperance question is no longer

merely a religious or moral question ; business men, fur self-protection and for the protection of their employees, are demanding and enforcing total abstinence. In ('ollingwood, ()., a a suburb of Cleveland, are large repair shops belonging t» the bake Shore Bail way. .lust before die last election the company announced that if the tow n voted no on the license question, the corporation would spend a million dollars there for additional shops. If the saloons remained the company did imt care to increase its plant, because it could imt get and keep tin* high class of workmen it required. The town voted for no-license by a large majority, and in one month thirty-six saloons had been closed. Exchange. 0 Alcohol \s Medicine. —The thirtythird annual meeting of the London Tempeiance Hospital last year was pres ded over by the* Bishop of London, who made an appeal for £IO,OOO iecjuired for the extension of the premises. Ihe Bishop said lie had been an out-and-out teetotaler for twenty years, and probably by reason of such abstinence he* had always enjoyed almost uniform good health. Ilis position gave him great opportunity fur observing the disastrous haven 1 made* by ui 'iik in all ranks of society. He could remember the time when they w'ould have been regarded by medical men as fanatics, but now the profession were being gradually warn to tlie side of Teni|>eranc*e. The report showed that out of a total of nearly 2f>,000 cases admitted since the* foundation of the Hospital in 1873, only seventy-five had been treated w ith alcohol.