Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes | Page 9

York City in 1832, of two hundred and four cases in the
Park Hospital only six were temperate, and all of these recovered;
while one hundred and twenty-two of the others died. In Great Britain
in the same year five-sixths of all who perished were intemperate. In
one or two villages every drunkard died, while not a single member of
a temperance society lost his life." "In Paisley, England, in 1848, there
were three hundred and thirty-seven cases of cholera, and every case
except one was a dram-drinker. The cases of cholera were one for every
one hundred and eighty-one inhabitants; but among the temperate
portion there was only one case to each two thousand." "Of three
hundred and eighty-six persons connected with the total abstinence
societies only one died, and he was a reformed drunkard" of three
months' standing. "In New Orleans during the last epidemic the order
of the Sons of Temperance appointed a committee to ascertain the
number of deaths from cholera among their members. It was found that
there were twelve hundred and forty-three members in the city and
suburbs, and among these only three deaths had occurred, being only
one-sixth the average death-rate." "In New York, in 1832, only two out
of five thousand members of temperance societies died." The
Northwestern Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one
of the oldest and most successful Companies in the Northwest, has
lived for nearly forty years next neighbor to lager beer interests. The
shrewd men of this company have studied the influence of the beer

industry upon those who engage in it. The result is, that they will no
longer grant an insurance policy to a beer-brewer, nor to any one in any
way engaged in the business. In their own words their reason is this:
"Our statistics show that our business has been injured by the short
lives of those men who drink lager beer."
Then, we need to study the drink evil in its relation to society. "A
recent report of the chaplain of the Madalen Society of New York
shows that of eight-nine fallen women in the asylum at one time, all but
two ascribed their fall to the effect of the drink habit." "A lady
missionary makes the statement that of two thousand sinful women
known personally to her, there were only ten cases in which
intoxicating liquors were not largely responsible for their fall." "A
leading worker for reform in New York says that the suppression of the
curse of strong drink would include the destruction of ninety-nine of
every one hundred of the houses of ill-fame." "A missionary on going
at the written request of one of these lost women to rescue her from a
den of infamy remonstrated with her for being even then slightly under
the influence of drink." "Why," was her indignant reply as tears filled
her eyes, "do you suppose we girls are so dead that we have lost our
memories of mother, home, and everything good? No, indeed; and if it
were not for liquor and opium, we would all have to run away from our
present life or go mad by pleadings of our own hearts and home
memories."
Only by a study of the drink evil shall we know its ravages in the home.
Those of us who have lived in the pure air of free, country home-life
can not easily realize the moral plague of drunkenness as it blights the
home in the crowded districts of city slum life. Nor is the home of the
city alone cursed by the drink evil. Three years ago this last holiday
season we were doing some evangelistic work in a neighboring town, a
mere village of a couple hundred inhabitants. I shall never forget how
the mother of a dejected home cried and pleaded for help from the
ravages of her drunken husband. She said that he had spent all of his
wages, and had made no provision for the home, in furniture, in books
for the children, nor in clothing for them nor for her. She had come
almost to despair, and was blaming God for allowing her little ones to
suffer because of a worthless man. O, the world is full of this sort of
thing to-day, if we only knew the sighs and heartaches and blasted

hopes of those who suffer! In a smoking-car one day a commercial
traveler refused to drink with his old comrades, by saying: "No, I won't
drink with you to-day, boys. The fact is, boys, I have sworn off." He
was taunted and laughed at, and urged to tell what had happened to him.
They said: "If you've quit drinking, something's up; tell us what it is."
"Well, boys," he said, "I will, though I know you will laugh at