Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes | Page 9

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 me; but I will tell you all the same. I have been a drinking man all my life, and have kept it up since I was married, as you all know. I love whisky; it's as sweet in my mouth as sugar, and God only knows how I'll quit it. For seven years not a day has passed over my head that I didn't have at least one drink. But I am done. Yesterday I was in Chicago. Down on South Clark Street a customer of mine keeps a pawnshop in connection with his business. I called on him, and while I was there a young man of not more than twenty-five, wearing thread-bare clothes, and looking as hard as if he