There are the two extreme samples of humanity in that cage which we build to protect ourselves against ourselves.
It is a dismal garden set apart for human weeds and in it many a good plant is hopelessly driven into the weed class.
Of the men in that prison may truly be said what a great student of plant life—Luther Burbank— says of the poor weeds that we despise among plants:
There is not one weed or flower, wild or domesticated, which will not, sooner or later, respond liberally to good cultivation and persistent selection. * * * Weeds are weeds because they are jostled, crowded, cropped and trampled upon, scorched by fierce heat, starved, or, perhaps, suffering with cold, wet feet, tormented by insect pests or lack of nourishing food and sunshine.
Most of them have no opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious beauty and abundance. * * * When a plant once wakes up to the new influences brought to bear upon it the road is opened for endless improvement in all directions.
More pitiable than any weeds in a garden and more worthy of sympathy are those poor human weeds in the great prison.
Crowded and kept ignorant in youth, tempted, ill-fed, cold and worried in after years, their lot was hard—and their fall almost inevitable. They must be confined, they must be protected against themselves, they must suffer for the poor start given to them.
But the duty of those who are FREE and fortunate is to treat kindly those who fall, and especially to deal in such fashion with the young as shall minimize the crop of weeds later.
Fortunately, it may truly be said that humanity begins to realize its responsibilities in both lines of effort.
Kindness reaches the convict in his prison.
And Education, the thrice blessed AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL, does steadily the work that makes useful plants of growing youth, diminishing year by year the crop of weeds.
Kindness and EDUCATION—go to Auburn prison and you will realize how much work they have still to do in our country.
Many of us feel that crime is the striking feature of modern life, that this century sits among the skulls of crime's victims, and that Father Time, after all his ages of travel, sees no improvement.
But those discouraged by modern crime misunderstand the meaning of events and fail to make a just comparison between the past and the present.
It is true that crime to-day is shocking in its frequency. Each day we see spread out before us murders.
But first of all remember this:
We often mistake widespread NEWS of crime for increase in crime itself. The newspapers are multiplied in number by tens of thousands, and they all tell what happens. It seems as though crime had increased, whereas in reality we have simply increased facilities for letting all the people know what goes on among us. ——
We are shocked occasionally by crimes of poisoning. Go back a few centuries and you find men and women making a regular business of selling poison to those who want to commit murder. The crimes that fill us with horror would not have been noticed in those days.
We hear of a father killing his own child, and we declare that humanity is going to destruction. Yet but a few centuries back and THE LAW RECOGNIZED EVERY FATHER'S RIGHT TO KILL HIS CHILD IF HE CHOSE.
We shudder when we hear that a mother has exposed a new-born child on a doorstep or thrown it into an ash barrel. That is a horrid and unbelievable crime.
But in Rome, before the days of Christianity, there were appointed places where mothers might legally expose their children to destruction. The wild beasts or dogs ate the children thus exposed, and no one was shocked. Whoever might care to take such an exposed child could keep that child for a slave forever. That kind of crime we have outgrown certainly.
The Presbyterian teaching of infant damnation seems to us horrible. We shudder at the statement that God would condemn a helpless baby to eternal punishment simply because it had not been baptized. The idea seems cruel now. But it was invented by the well-meaning early Christians in order to make women give up the legal practice of infanticide. The mother was made to believe that her unbaptized child went to hell, and that she must follow later on for not having had it baptized. Thus women were afraid to expose their children secretly, and infanticide was stamped out by a Christian doctrine which now seems so brutal. ——
And note one thing above all: Crime still lingers among us. But it is now LABELED AS CRIME. We no longer have horrible crimes sanctioned by law.
We read that a criminal has tortured some old man or woman for money—and then murdered the victim. We can scarcely believe in such atrocity. But only a little while ago—barely two centuries— IT WAS THE REGULAR LEGAL CUSTOM TO TORTURE OLD PEOPLE AND YOUNG.
Poor old women, falsely accused of witchcraft, were burned alive and ducked in this country, while clergymen and magistrates looked on and applauded.
All over Europe innocent witnesses could be tortured to make them give testimony at a trial.
Men accused of no crime whatever were tortured to make them give testimony against others—often when they had no testimony to give. They were hung up by the thumbs, the bones of their legs were crushed in a boot of steel, the soles of the feet were roasted over a brazier of red-hot coals—to make them help convict another.
The noble leaders of the French Revolution abolished such torture of witnesses in France, and they were criticised for doing so by the respectabilities.
"How are you going to convict criminals if you do not torture witnesses?" the respectable element asked. We have got beyond that state of affairs. We hear of murders based on jealousy— perverted affection. We hear of crimes based on envy—perverted ambition. All of the best elements in man, when perverted and thwarted, lead to crime.
And these perverted passions will continue to breed crime until men shall have learned to regulate society on a basis that will give full and natural play to the forces within us. But organized murder on a really vast scale is practically done away with.
Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon and others like them had great ambition. To gratify their ambitions they forced millions of men to die for them.
Human beings have protected themselves against the murderous ambitions of their great leaders.
The Napoleon of to-day must get a Congress to give him his soldiers.
Public opinion, the ballot and financial science have pulled the teeth of the greatest instrument of crime—the conquering army of ambition.
It is horrible to witness the assassination of a national leader.
The murder of McKinley or Carnot makes republican hopes seem chimerical.
But it must be remembered that not so long ago the head of a government who ESCAPED assassination was the exception. A few centuries back, and murder was the natural end of the average ruler. ——
Murder results first from control of the brain by animal passions. Almost every animal is a murderer, and at stated times murders its own kind. Primitive man is always murderous. Murder results, in the second place, from misdirected forces within us.
Crime will diminish through education, as the mind takes control of us, and through society better organized, which shall give men a chance to develop normally. Thanks to education and to improving social conditions, crime is disappearing, NOT increasing. Even our despondency is comforting. It proves that we have progressed so far as to be horrified at that which we should have taken for granted a few centuries back.
A majority of men long for a great deal of money.
Each man will tell you that he is struggling along in uncongenial employment; that if he had his way his life would be arranged very differently.
Put to any friend this question:
"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
You will learn that, first of all, he would get rid of the useful daily plodding that occupies him. Instead of living to work he would live to enjoy himself.
A majority of men are usefully employed because they must work to live.
If we all had our way we should do as we chose, and there would be no progress. Fortunately, the wisdom of Providence keeps the great majority of men poor and usefully busy. ——
This writer asked an able business man, who manages the material success of a great newspaper, what he would do if he had a million dollars. He replied without hesitation: "I would go abroad and spend the rest of my life collecting artistic things and enjoying them."
By his newspaper work, which helps to disseminate truth and to fight privilege, this man renders the greatest possible service to the world. He is head of the commissariat department of an army of righteousness. How fortunate that he cannot abandon his useful work to collect artistic trash that would only make him useless and enrich a few unscrupulous dealers! ——
Joseph Jefferson as an actor has done great good for the world. He has filled hundreds of thousands of young and old hearts with kindly sympathy. He has set a good example to all the actors of the world. He is truly a public benefactor.
If Joseph Jefferson had had a great fortune he would have spent his life painting pictures, for he believes that he was meant to be a painter.
He was not meant to be a painter; if his life had been devoted to painting it would have been wasted.
How lucky that he was not rich enough to be able to waste his life! ——
Often the world marvels that the sons of great and successful men accomplish so little.
The world is foolish. It should marvel that the sons of the rich accomplish anything at all.
For genius has truly been called the capacity to take infinite pains. It is the splendid fruit that grows on the tree of HARD WORK.
Infinite pains and hard work are distasteful to human beings. They are avoided by those who can avoid them. It is lucky for the world that the number of those who can shirk is limited. ——
Dryden tells you in four lines what the actual man would amount to if he had his way.
"My next desire is, void of care and strife,To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life.A country cottage near a crystal flood,A winding valley and a lofty wood."
Every man who could afford it would live for himself, to indulge some useless little tenth-rate part of his brain activity. ——
The world progresses because the wisdom of the universe compels every man to work directly or indirectly for every other man.
If we had our way, if hard necessity did not compel us to do the disagreeable work for which we are fitted, we should all live for ourselves; we should all be mere human sponges, absorbing personal gratification—the progress of the human race would stop.
Let this fact console you when you contemplate with bitterness the few who accumulate great fortunes.
You are a disappointed drop in a great ocean of useful human beings. The interest of the whole ocean demands that you and the vast majority of all other drops should fail to get what you crave—
On one single day 600 teachers, representing and devoted to theAmerican public school system, sailed for the Philippine Islands.
These 600 teachers, men and women, will do more than 6,000 or 6,000,000 soldiers could do with cannon and Gatling guns to civilize and Americanize the new possessions.
They will teach the inhabitants FACTS. They will give them solid knowledge in place of degrading ignorance and superstition.
They will teach them that the world is round and that every man on it has the same chance, if he will use his brain; that if he himself cannot seize the opportunity it can he seized by the children whose success is as dear to him as his own.
Like all wars, the conquest of the Philippines has had many discouraging and some disgraceful features. The killing of ignorant men and women, the burning of houses, the unnecessary severity, will all be forgotten when the school teachers of America shall have done their work. ——
A great many thoughtless people imagine that the world is retrograding, that times are not as good as they used to be.
We are still far from perfect. But as a matter of fact we are angels compared to the men of olden times. A few years ago the usual course was as follows:
First, soldiers were sent to subdue the people.
Then tax collectors followed with the public executioner, the noose and various ingenious instruments of torture to extract cash payments.
We still send soldiers, but with them we send physicians to cure the wounded; and when the soldiers' work is done we do not send tax collectors or other civil vampires.
We send school teachers, publishers of newspapers, organizers of labor unions. We send those agencies which shall enable the people conquered to make themselves equal or superior to their conquerors.
We wish to discuss with our readers in this and in later editions of this newspaper the great and serious question of education.
It is a question as broad as the ocean, and as deep. It is a question so vast that organized discussion of it seems hopeless.
The greatest minds of the world have devoted their powers to the intricate question of developing the human brain, and the problem has been scarcely touched.
The greatest works on education in the history of the world are undoubtedly Plato's "Republic," Spencer's "Education" and Rousseau's "Emile." The last is the greatest of all. It should be read by every father and mother and by every earnest citizen.
Other works that may be earnestly recommended are Aristotle's"Politics," Pestalozzi's "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children" andFroebel's "Education of Man."
To Rousseau undoubtedly belongs the high honor of having thought and written most powerfully, most originally and most practically on the greatest of problems. His brain is the cornerstone of the structure of intelligent educational methods.
He foreshadowed in his "Emile" Fourier's splendid principle of "attractive industry." ——
The intricate processes of thinking separate mankind from other members of the animal creation.
Man is far from the animal in proportion as his brain is cultivated. Even the animals themselves rank in their kingdom in proportion to their brain activity.
William T. Harris said truly: "If man had let himself alone he would have remained the monkey that he was. Not only this, but if the monkey had let himself alone he would have remained a lemur, or a bat, or a bear, or some other creature that now offers only a faint suggestion of what the ape has become."
The elephant and the ape, among our humble animal brothers, appear to have reached their limits of possibility in the way of educational development. They still remain, and always will remain, vastly inferior to their microscopic comrades—the ants and bees and other insects.
The human race has barely begun the systematic study of the problem of application, and systematic application of the truths discovered and agreed upon. In proportion to our stature and possibilities we are hideous ignoramuses compared with the ant in the garden path.
The education of children is regulated not by their brain formation and possible development, but by the wealth of their parents, the parsimony of municipalities, the baleful influences of tradition and the colossally stupid idea that thorough brain cultivation is in some way antagonistic to material success.
The greatness of a nation depends upon the average mental power of the nation's citizens, and mental power depends absolutely upon education.
The man who doubts the importance of educating his son thoroughly—if any such man now exists—is invited to consider the following brief statement of facts:
The holders of slaves in the Southern States and outside of America desired to keep their slaves down. They wanted them to be content with slavery. They wanted them and their children to remain willing, humble, helpless machines.
The ignorant man who has succeeded through natural force and lucky opportunity is fond of asking these questions:
"What is the good of education? Of what practical use is scientific training?" These men are admirably answered by Herbert Spencer, to whose work they are referred.
A collection of Englishmen ruined themselves in the sinking of mines in search of coal. They might have saved their money had they known that a certain fossil which they dug up in abundance belongs to a geological stratum below which no coal is ever found. They went on digging cheerfully and wasting their money. An acquaintance with that fossil and its meaning would have saved their cash.
Some individuals spent one hundred thousand dollars trying to save the alcoholic byproduct that distils from bread in baking. They would have saved their money had they known that only a hundredth part of the flour is changed through fermentation.
The study of biology is essential in the successful fattening of cattle.
An "entozoon" seems to the practical man a foolish, imaginary creature. But millions of sheep have been saved by the discovery that one of these fancy scientific entozoa, pressing on the brain, caused the sheep's death. When you know the entozoon you can dig him out and save the sheep's life.
"My son's going to be an artist," says one proud father. "He does not need to study a lot of scientific rubbish."
This parent does not know that the difference between a good and a bad sculptor or painter is often based on knowledge or ignorance of anatomy and mechanical principles. ——
Education is important to the individual because it means development of the brain, development of capacity for production and increased chances of success.
Education is important to the State because it means not onlyCOMPETENT citizens, but MORAL citizens.
The animal in us yields to the influence of education. Knowledge and brutality are enemies. They do not dwell together.
The most important institutions in this country are the public schools—the gymnasiums of human brains. The most important citizens of the nation are the teachers.
The greatest criminals are the employers of child labor, because they deny education, cut down in childhood the citizen's chance of progress and success.
Work and vote for more and better public schools.
These are days when men do their hardest work for money, when they scramble and struggle and strike each other down in the effort to reach wealth. And it is not possible to blame them. They are trying to escape from poverty, from a disaster worse than any prairie fire or other physical danger.
Dire poverty is the worst of curses. It combines every kind of suffering, physical, mental, moral, and in the end it means either death or degradation.
The great task of humanity is the abolition of poverty. The great benefactors of humanity are the great industrial organizers of this day, because, in spite of individual selshness,{sic} they are planning production on a scale that will in the end provide for all.
It is worth while to discuss and to realize what real poverty means. If we can realize its meaning every one of us must be more anxious to relieve, as far as we can, the poverty around us, and especially anxious to work for the social betterment that shall one day wipe out poverty forever
Poverty means dirt.
The thoughtless and comfortable have a way of saying: "The poor might at least be clean." But cleanliness is a LUXURY; it demands leisure and peace of mind, as well as bathtub, soap, hot water and good plumbing. The very poor cannot be clean.
Poverty means ignorance, and it means ignorance handed down from father to son.
Poverty means drunkenness. The pennies of POOR men and POOR women pay for more than half the vile whiskey, gin and other poisons that men buy to help them forget.
Poverty and its sister, Ignorance, fill the jails and the insane asylums.
Poverty is the mother of disease, and it fills the hospitals.
Tens of thousands of consumptives alone are murdered every year by poverty. They are too poor to do that which is required to save their lives. ——
The great men of the world do not emerge from poverty, from squalor.
They come from very modest homes, from the log cabin, and from the towpath, as advertised. They come from those whose fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers had at least enough to eat, and enough fresh air to give them pure blood and proper nourishment for their brains.
Poverty destroys ambition, inventive power and the capacity to struggle.
A starved body produces a starved brain. The greatest genius that ever lived could not think better than a child of ten if you deprived him of food for ten days.
What can you expect of the inferior minds that have been half fed through a lifetime, or through several generations?
Do you know what made the Revolution and changed conditions in France? It was not poverty. Not a single poor man was a leader in that Revolution. Every one of them was well fed, had a well- nourished brain—Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins, Mirabeau—every one a well-fed brain in a vigorous body.
The labor unions and the great strikes, although sometimes unwise and unreasonable, are great blessings to the Nation. They compel the worker to get such pay as will feed himself and his children, giving the Nation well-fed brains. The Union is the enemy of poverty, and for that reason especially it is an agent for good. ——
As poverty breeds ignorance, so ignorance breeds poverty. The greatest enemy of poverty is the Public School. Work and vote, therefore, for public school betterment.
Miserable women walk the streets by thousands on cold Winter nights—poverty has put them there.
Hundreds of thousands of children are born only to struggle for a few years through a stunted infancy—poverty digs their graves.
For one genius that has fought and conquered in spite of poverty ten thousand have sunk out of sight in the fight against the worst of enemies.
Don't waste time extolling the blessings of poverty—use your energies to diminish poverty's curse, and to improve humanity by giving it the full efficiency which freedom from worry alone can give.
The very old and very foolish saying, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," is disproved every day. Whenever you hear a man talk about "a little knowledge" ask him what he thinks about the danger of a great deal of IGNORANCE. Tell him this:
The teaching was elementary, including reading, writing, ciphering, and very little of each one. It was picked up at odd times, when he could be spared from daily labor. Remember that when he was a lad his father used to hire him out to work on other men's farms for very little money.
With that little learning he built himself up into one of the greatest men in history, saved the nation, ended once and for all civilized recognition of slavery.
A little learning might possibly have been dangerous had he been one of the idiotic kind of men. It might have made him feel dissatisfied with the hard labor for which he was fit, without stimulating him to better things.
But Lincoln's little learning gave him no rest—it kept him constantly adding more learning to his little supply. ——
The self-pitying young man who thinks he has no chance may be interested in Lincoln's methods of getting ahead. He walked about twenty miles through the wilderness to borrow an English grammar. He could get no other books, so he read and re-read the statutes of Indiana. He wanted to teach himself to write well and think closely. He had never heard Bacon's saying: "Writing maketh an exact man," but he felt the truth of the fact for himself, and he was bound to write. He had no paper and could not afford to buy any.
At night, when his work was done, he would bend his huge six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and cipher ON THE BACK OF A WOODEN SHOVEL.
When the back of the shovel was covered with writing he would shave a thin layer from it and begin writing once more. ——
It is a very useful thing for men occasionally to feel ashamed of themselves. If you want to feel ashamed of yourself, if you are complaining and whining, just picture to yourself Abraham Lincoln in his father's little hut, with no windows and no flooring, crouching by the fire and developing his mind by laborious writing on the back of a wooden shovel.
Children of twelve in schools, precocious little girls even of seven or eight, know much more than Abraham Lincoln knew when he was twenty-one years old.
With his "little knowledge" he grew and did the work that was to improve the condition of millions of men.
Don't be ashamed of your "little knowledge."
But do be ashamed if you do not add to it whenever you can, and especially if you fail to make it useful to your fellow-men.
Consider to-day the CHEERFUL side of conditions on earth.
Every human being has his troubles and worries. The luckiest of us all yearns for what cannot be had, and sees much to regret.
But one splendid fact should always be borne in mind: THEPROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS INCESSANT. WE ARE INFINITELY BETTER OFFNOW THAN WE HAVE BEEN BEFORE ON THIS EARTH, AND UNLIMITEDPOSSIBILITIES OF IMPROVEMENT ARE AHEAD OF US.
The progress of humanity has been like that of an individual climbing the paths of a steep mountain. At every turn there are fresh dangers and difficulties to be overcome, fresh complications for which the traveler is prepared only by his courage and determination.
But every step takes the traveler higher up, out of the dark valley, toward the light at the top, and every danger overcome makes it easier to deal with the dangers to follow.
In its long fight the human race has encountered many enemies.
At one time in Europe one single epidemic destroyed half of all the population. But we have struggled on; through science we have almost conquered disease, and the plagues of the past are unknown among us.
In olden times brutal superstition, disguised as religion, dwarfed men's minds, punishing, with atrocious cruelty, the crime of independent thought and apparently making impossible any mental growth in the face of bigotry and monstrous persecutions.
But to-day bigotry begins to give place to true religion; the burning alive and protracted torture which disgraced all the religions of Europe until recently have ceased, probably forever.
Mankind in its travels has progressed as far as the stage of independent thought. If a creature still lives that would take the life of another because that other thinks differently from himself he dares not confess his criminal thought.
A few centuries ago the great majority of all human beings were slaves or serfs. The noblest of human brains, those of the Greek philosophers, wrote and lived in the midst of slavery. Even as great a man as Aristotle could not conceive a society based on a non-slave-holding system.
But except in some African jungle, here and there among savage and semi-savage races, no man is a slave now. And where slavery does exist it exists in stagnant pools of humanity, and it exists side by side with the other monsters, cruel superstition and widespread disease, that progressive humanity has left behind. ——
Every century of which the history has been preserved shows us its horrid side of life, its cruelties, its sufferings without number. But each succeeding century shows also some one point gained, some one hideous feature of life eliminated.
The enemy of the world to-day, the monster in the path of progress, is organized greed, the insane desire of a few men to take from others, and for themselves, what they do not need.
The trust, seeking through capital to reintroduce slavery under another form, and to establish the tyranny of money in place of the tyranny of swords and bullets, represents the present problem.
This problem, like all the others, will be solved in its turn. It will be found that the great danger did good as well as harm, and that, on its overthrow, only good was left behind it.
The diseases that once destroyed men forced them to live a decent life of cleanliness. Those diseases frightened human beings out of filth into respect for themselves as the rulers of the world.
We owe the cleanness and decent temperate living of to-day, as well as our knowledge of medical science, to the diseases that formerly destroyed the people.
The hideous travesties called religion which relied for their power on superstition, fire and sword appeared to block all spiritual development among men. These religions have passed away; only the vital, true religious principle is left—the command laid upon men to feel toward each other as brothers, to worship the ONE and benevolent power that rules the world.
A few years or centuries from now the trust problem will be solved, and that particular monster will lie dead on its ledge of rock back in the pages of history. And men will know that to the great danger and brutality of to-day they owe much of their progress and happiness.
When the trust goes commercial greed will go with it. It will have killed the hideous theory of competition, with its swindling of the public, its cutting of wages, its general mean, petty, treacherous tradesmen's warfare. ——
Every human being should read history intelligently, if only for the encouraging effect on the mind.
In every direction, and in spite of foolish croakers, the human race has improved.
Good men and women deplore the drunkenness of to-day, and they do right. But for their own satisfaction and encouragement they should know that in comparison with former times the drunkenness of to-day amounts to nothing.
Where one man drinks too much in these days, a thousand men and a thousand women were frightfully drunk a few years ago.
Drunkenness, which formerly attacked the most useful of human beings—doctors, statesmen, poets, the best mechanics—is confined now to a feeble fragment of humanity made weak by disease, hereditary influence, discouragement or imperfect organization.
More important than this encouraging development is the changed attitude of the public mind toward the drinking habit. Twenty-five centuries ago a Greek philosopher, to make heaven attractive, described the table at which heroes sat in a never-ending, blissful state of drunkenness.
To-day even the meanest man is ashamed to have it known that he is drunk, and the most hopeless drunkard would ask no greater favor than that some one should make it impossible for him ever to drink again.
There is a criminal conspiracy, called the Beef Trust, which thrives on the needs and privations of the whole people. It is a blot on humanity. Do what you can to destroy this evil. But do not be made bitter by it. Your age is a happier one than others.
In France, not so long ago, human beings were punished for eating the bodies of men that had died of the plague, and strict laws were issued to stop that kind of cannibalism. The Beef Trust age is an improvement on that age, is it not? High prices are bad, but not as bad as hideous, widespread starvation. ——
Human selfishness and heartlessness are criticised to-day, and the criticism is just. Yet, MORALLY, the human race has improved more than in any other way.
We see to-day callous, heartless men spending millions upon their personal pleasures, paving insufficiently the laborers whose work enriches them, and robbing the public whose patience makes the great fortunes possible.
But the worst plutocrat of to-day is an angel compared with the mildly vicious men of olden times.
Your selfish man to-day only asks for a yacht and some race horses, mild forms of dissipation. A thousand years ago the vicious man demanded and exercised the power of life and death over those who surrounded him, and his mildest fit of irritation cost the life of some helpless human being.
Men are ill-paid to-day, but their condition is Paradise compared to the slavery of their predecessors. ——
You should daily criticise yourself and others, and do what you can in your little sphere as preacher, politician, editor or private individual to help along humanity's progress.
But remember always for your encouragement that the world is improving steadily. It never stands still; it never goes backward. And there are no limits to our future improvement, thanks to our inborn love of what is right and to the steady influence of EDUCATION.
How should a whiskey drinker talk to his son? If he talked as he feels he would hold up the flat, brown bottle and say:
"My boy, you know that I am a poor man and have nothing to leave to you or your mother.
"The difference between myself and the successful men who have passed me is this:
"I have gone through life with this bottle in my hand or in my pocket. They have not."
A man comes into the world prepared to do his share of the world's work, well or ill, as his brain and his physical strength may decide. Of all his qualities the most important practically is BALANCE.
The whiskey in that bottle destroys balance, mental and physical.
It substitutes dreaming and foolish self-confidence for real effort.
It presents all of life's problems and duties in a false light.It makes those things seem unimportant which are most important.
Keep away from this bottle, and keep away from those who praise it. He who hands it to his fellow man is a criminal, and he who hands it to a young man is a worse criminal and a villain. ——
It is a well-established fact that in the usual order of events drunkenness would be handed down from father to son, and hundreds of thousands of families would be ultimately wiped out by whiskey.
It is not true, fortunately, that the son of a drunkard actually inherits drunkenness fully developed. But a drunkard gives to his son weakened nerves and a diminished will power, which tend to make him a drunkard more easily than his father was made a drunkard before him.
The great safeguard of a drunkard's children undoubtedly lies in the warning which they see every day in their home and in the earnest advice which the man who drinks will give to all young people if he have any conscience left.
If the man who drinks would save his own children from the same danger, he can do so better than any other. He need not lose their respect by telling them of his own mistakes, if these mistakes have been hidden from them. Let him simply tell them, without personal reference, what he knows about whiskey, its effects on a man's happiness, success, self-respect and physical comfort.
Whiskey gives a great many things to men. Of these gifts here are a few:
Lack of friends, lack of will, lack of self-respect, lack of nervous force—lack of everything save the hideous craving that can end only with unconsciousness, and that begins again with increased suffering when consciousness is restored. ——
Fathers and mothers blessed with self-control and with good children should use the picture of a drinking man as a useful, moral lesson in talking to boys and girls from seven to twenty years of age.
Children are impressed most easily through their imaginations. An intelligent father or mother can produce upon a child's receptive mind an impression that will last for years.
With the fear of whiskey there should be impressed upon children sympathy and sorrow for the unfortunate drunkard.
One of the ablest men, and one of the most earnest in America, said to his friends very recently:
"I never drink, as you know. But when I see a man lying drunk in the gutter, I know that he has probably made that very day a harder effort at self-control, a nobler struggle to control himself, than I ever made in my life. He has yielded and fallen at last, but only because all of his strength is insufficient to overcome the disease that possesses him."
Teach your children that drunkenness is a horrible disease, as bad as leprosy. Teach them that it can be avoided, that the disease is contracted in youth through carelessness, and that it is spread by those who encourage drinking in others. Tell them that the avoiding of whiskey is not merely a question of morals or obedience to parents, but a question involving mental and physical salvation, success in life, happiness, and the respect of others.
How often have you seen a drunken man stagger along the street!
His clothes are soiled from falling, his face is bruised, his eyes are dull. Sometimes he curses the boys that tease him. Sometimes he tries to smile, in a drunken effort to placate pitiless, childish cruelty.
His body, worn out, can stand no more, and he mumbles that he isGOING HOME.
The children persecute him, throw things at him, laugh at him, running ahead of him.
GROWN MEN AND WOMEN, TOO, OFTEN LAUGH WITH THE CHILDREN, nudge each other, and actually find humor in the sight of a human being sunk below the lowest animal.
The sight of a drunken man going home should make every other man and woman sad and sympathetic, and, horrible as the sight is, it should be useful, by inspiring, in those who see it, a determination to avoid and to help others avoid that man's fate. ——
That reeling drunkard is GOING HOME.
He is going home to children who are afraid of him, to a wife whose life he has made miserable.
He is going home, taking with him the worst curse in the world—to suffer bitter remorse himself after having inflicted suffering on those whom he should protect.
In the old days in the arena it occasionally happened that brothers were set to fight each other. When they refused to fight they were forced to it by red-hot irons applied to their backs.
We have progressed beyond the moral condition of human beings guilty of such brutality as that. But we cannot call ourselves civilized while our imaginations and sympathies are so dull that the reeling drunkard is thought an amusing spectacle.
Everybody knows that until recently the average statesman, the majority of prominent men, in England, drank to excess.
Pitt was a drunkard—and Pitt was the most remarkable statesman in England.
Fox was a drunkard.
In fact, to write a list of England's greatest men, who lived more than a hundred years ago, would be to make a list of famous drunkards.
To-day the drunkard in public life is practically unknown in England, as well as in America. No legal pressure has been brought to bear upon the prosperous drunkard.
He was not badgered by policemen or by blue-laws.
He could get ALL that he wanted to drink WHENEVER he wanted it—yet, OF HIS OWN ACCORD, the prosperous drunkard has reformed and become temperate. ——
Our own great Daniel Webster was a drunkard, as were many other great Americans. No man to-day could be a drunkard and at the same time be respected.
Education, experience and common sense have done their work, and drunkenness is now left to self-indulgent fools, or to those whose lives are made dull by poverty, to whom alcohol affords the only escape from horrible monotony.
It would, perhaps, be worth while for the advocates of temperance to study the causes which have practically eliminated drunkenness from the most intelligent classes of men.
Education undoubtedly is the greatest factor.
In nearly all the public schools now the evil effects of alcohol are taught.
These evil effects are taught, not in a lackadaisical way, with sentiment or religious duty as a basis. They are taught as FACTS.
Facts appeal to the mind, and they persist in their effect in later life, when moral suasion and religious appeals are forgotten.
Teach every child that alcohol destroys his chances of success, impairs his muscular efficiency, inflames the substance of the brain and prevents development—MAKE HIM FEEL THAT A DRINKING MAN IS A SECOND-CLASS MAN, AND YOU WILL HAVE DONE MUCH TO DESTROY THE DRUNKENNESS OF THE FUTURE. ——
As a matter of fact, drunkenness, like dirt, is mainly an accompaniment of poverty and a sad, hopeless life.
For the man or woman given to drinking, when the troubles of life are no longer to be borne, some relief must be had.
Make the lives of human beings more comfortable, make good food more plentiful, spread education—and you will solve the problem of excessive drinking.
You lucky, well-balanced ones talk much, and sincerely, of the horrors of drink, and of the drunkard's weakness.
You think the whiskey drinker ought to stop.
Do you ask yourself whether or not he CAN stop?
Let us consider to-day the drunkard's side of the case. ——
Very often physical weakness causes drunkenness. Many a man takes a drink because the task put upon him is heavier than he can bear. The whiskey does not help him—it hurts him. But it cheats him and makes him THINK that he is helped.
You realize that whiskey drinking as a settled habit must be fought with weapons of some kind.
WILL POWER is the great weapon to use in our own behalf. You tell the drunkard to use his will power.
But you forget that the first thing that whiskey attacks is will power.
You remind the drunkard that his weakness brings suffering on others, and you appeal to his conscience. But you forget that whiskey weakens conscience even more than it weakens the nerves. You forget, too, that whiskey makes its victims suffer. If he could free himself he would do so, if only for his own sake.
And you must not forget that whiskey argues ingeniously, in addition to its telling of lies.
A man is overcome with some great grief. Whiskey makes him forget, or at least it makes him not care.
A man is suffering some great humiliation, some sense of personal shortcoming, that is intolerable to him. Whiskey offers to relieve him, and for the moment it does relieve him. ——
YOU who talk nobly of temperance and advocate laws governing other men are apt to be proud of your own self-control.
Perhaps you have been a drinking man and have stopped. But you do not know how much lighter whiskey's hold may have been upon you than upon others.
Suppose you worked hard every day, every week and every year.
Suppose you had no pleasure in life, save the fictitious pleasure and excitement that come from whiskey. Suppose you failed, and failed and failed again—and suppose that whiskey was always ready to praise you, make you feel proud of yourself, make you hold others responsible for your failures—are you sure you could let it alone? ——
In your condemnation of those who persist in whiskey drinking you must remember that what is easy for one man is very hard for another.
Suppose you should urge two animals to go without meat—one of the animals being a tiger and the other a sheep. Would you praise the sheep for its faithful keeping of the promise? Would you blame the tiger for breaking its word, if the temptation to eat meat were offered?
In men's nervous systems, in their craving for alcohol, there is as great a difference between different temperaments as between the appetites of the sheep and the tiger. One man is dragged toward the gulf by whiskey with a force of which you have no conception.
You look with contempt at a hopeless drunkard, shuffling along toward destruction.
But that effort, great as it is, is not great enough to save them—whiskey drags them too hard in the other direction.
Fortunately, we can all congratulate ourselves on the steady falling off in drunkenness. To drink to excess is no longer respectable. Once it was a leading sign of respectability. Doctors in the old days wrote their prescriptions illegibly, because when called late at night they were usually drunk. To-day a drunken doctor cannot possibly survive.
Work as hard as you can against drunkenness, for drunkenness harms every one, even the saloon-keeper himself. The drunkard soon comes to ruin and ceases to be a profitable customer.
Argue with young men, and talk to children ABOUT THEIR OWNWELFARE in the matter.
But remember also that the drunkard often has tried harder than you could try to overcome the enemy that has conquered him. Remember that unless you have lived his life you cannot know his excuse and cannot judge him.
Often a man talks about like this:
"I am a regular but moderate drinker. No one ever saw me drunk, and yet I drink every day. And what's the harm of it? Can you see anything the matter with me?"
The man would seem to have the advantage of you. You cannot SEE anything wrong with him. So far as outward appearances go the case is squarely against you. The man APPEARS to be all right.
But is he? The effects of drink upon the system do not show themselves to the extent of attracting very marked attention, at least until the conditions are fairly ripe.
In the man who comes out on to the street after a PROTRACTED DEBAUCH the effects of whiskey are visible; even the little children notice him.
He may not be drunk. It may have been hours since he touched a drop. But any one can see that his physical system has received a severe shock.
In the moderate drinker these signs are not visible, but the alcohol which he daily imbibes is doing its work, and slowly but surely his constitution is being undermined.
Now and then we run across some old man who is hale and hearty, notwithstanding the fact that he has been a moderate drinker all his life.
But no one will think of denying the fact that this old man is an exception—a very rare exception.
Many old men who SHOULD be hale and hearty are suffering from ailments born of the drink habit, by which, in their earlier days, they were enslaved.
In the "rheum, the dry serpigo and the gout" which rack their frames, make their bones ache and render miserable and thankless the evening days which should be so full of peace and beauty, they are reaping the fruits of their "harmless" moderate drinking.
Two or three weeks ago we made reference to the report by Mr. Mesureur, Director of the Department of Charities, Paris, upon the results of alcoholism in France.
That report was no sooner made public than the French liquor dealers were up in arms against it. Indignation meetings were held. The mails were flooded with all sorts of protests against the truth of Mesureur's claim that alcoholism was slowly but surely destroying the French people.
The discussion at last became so heated that the government took it upon itself to subject the offensive report to a careful scrutiny, with the result that it was CONFIRMED in every particular.
We quote from a poster, issued by the "Investigation Council forPromoting the Public Welfare," and now displayed all over France:
"Alcoholism is the chronic poisoning resulting from the constant use of alcohol, even if it does not produce drunkenness.
"It is an error to say that alcohol is a necessity to the man who has to do hard work, or that it restores strength.
"The artificial stimulation which it produces soon gives way to exhaustion and nervous depression. Alcohol is good for nobody, but works harm to everybody.
"Alcoholism produces the most varied and fatal diseases of the stomach and liver, paralysis, dropsy and madness. It is one of the most frequent canses of tuberculosis.
"Lastly, it aggravates and enhances all acute diseases, typhus, pneumonia, erysipelas.
"The sins of the parents against the laws of health visit their offspring. If the children survive the first months of their lives they are threatened with imbecility or epilepsy, or death carries them away a little later by such diseases as meningitis or consumption.
"Alcoholism is one of the most terrible plagues to the individual health, the existence of the home, and the prosperity of the nation."
Men have explained variously their reasons for drinking to excess.
An able architect drank too much every night. He said that he HAD to drink. If he went to bed perfectly sober his mind went on working and dreaming, after he had gone to sleep, and he woke up fatigued and unable to attend to his work.
"I don't want to drink," said he, "but in order to do my work I must have the sleep that follows what is ordinarily called taking too much."
Other men explained excessive drinking as follows:
"I must have the mental excitement that comes from drinking."
"You can't imagine the delightful agility of the mind under the influence of alcohol."
"The brain works more quickly, more energetically, more freely."
"After drinking a certain amount I can live more in an hour thanI could ordinarily in a month," etc. ——
These men who believe that alcohol improves the mind, stimulating it to better effort, constitute a very large class, perhaps the largest class of those who drink to excess.
We wish we could persuade such men that they are mistaken in believing that excessive alcohol feeds the brain.
The man who has drunk too much, and thinks that his mind is working splendidly, might learn something by studying any sort of machinery when the belt slips off the wheel, or the screw of a steamer when the power of the waves throws the screw out of the water.
While the belt is securely attached, doing its works, it turns slowly and monotonously.
While the screw is buried in the water, fighting its way and pushing its load ahead, it turns slowly and laboriously.
When the belt slips off or the screw comes out of the water, the whole thing is changed. The screw whizzes around like lightning.
The belt rattles and dances.
The screw in the water and the machinery doing its work properly are like the sober brain.
The brain that is made abnormal by alcohol is simply the screw out of water, the misplaced machine belt. The brain is no longer connected with the working realities of life. It has lost its balance and its function. It works rapidly and aimlessly. It moves with wonderful swiftness, but it accomplishes nothing.
Let men who drink too much, believing that the action of their minds is improved by drinking, think over this proposition about the machinery and see if there is not something in it to interest them.
How much actual work does this alcoholized brain turn out? What do they actually DO "next day"?
Your friend drinks too much, or drinks temperately but unwisely.
You may entreat, or argue, or abuse, or threaten.
You may show your friend the happy home where rum never enters.
You may lead him through the alcoholic ward at Bellevue.
Such sights may produce an impression. But usually they do not.
The man who possesses, indulges and keenly enjoys an overwhelming passion—for drink or any other vice—is rarely moved by your fine talk, for the reason that he believes in his wily soul that you do not know what you are talking about.
Mr. Lecky, in his history of European morals, page 135, volumeI., observes:
"That which makes it so difficult for a man of strong, vicious passions to unbosom himself to a naturally virtuous man is not so much the virtue as THE IGNORANCE OF THE LATTER."
You are naturally virtuous. Your drinking friend is naturally and proudly bad. He thinks you do not know what you are talking about when you ask him to give up drink. ——
When you start out to cure a vicious friend by arguing with him, do you ever reflect how little you know what goes on within him? Suppose that in his nerves there is a craving ten thousand times louder and stronger than your most virtuous arguments? What good will those arguments do? No use whispering poetry to a man in a boiler shop. No use humming a love song in a whirlwind.
The poetry, the song, are out of place. Any sort of argument save the most powerful is wasted on a man whose soul is filled with the racket of a dominating passion, such as drink or gambling. ——
Just two things can cure a drunkard—two things, and nothing else on earth.
First, his own cold reason and strength of will.
Second, the growth within him of some passion stronger than his love of drink.
Love of his children, love of a woman, will cure a drunkard (but we earnestly advise any woman to make sure he is cured before trusting her future to him). Ambition—which includes every form of vanity and self-delusion—will cure a drunkard, and has cured many thousands. Even the miser's passion of economy may outweigh love of drink and cure the lesser desire. ——
To cure a drunkard, try to arouse within him some desire stronger than his desire to drink. Any boy will stop smoking to play football or to excel in any sort of athletics. You reach his vanity. What preaching could produce the same effect?
If you feel that you must use argument, try such arguments as will appeal to the man himself, not such as seem sound to you in your fine state of virtue.
The American drunkard is usually manufactured by the vile American habit of drinking pure whiskey or cocktails. No other race, except among the most degraded classes, absorbs crude spirits as stupidly as this race. ——
Suppose you have a young friend whose tendency to drink "straight" whiskey makes you nervous. You see what it is leading to. Instead of trying to make a teetotaler of him, try to transform him into a sensible drinker. ——
When your friend orders his whiskey, start off as follows:
Tell him you take it for granted that he knows all about the mucous membrane. He will say that he does—for it is our American mania to want to appear wise.
Casually state that of course he knows the covering of his eyeball is identical in all important respects—especially as regards sensitiveness—with the lining of his stomach; in fact, of his whole interior from his mouth down.
He will assent and gravely pour out his poison.
Then say to him:
"Just dip the tip of your finger in that whiskey and put the finger to your eye-ball."
If he does so he will feel the eye smart. The eyeball will become inflamed, and sight for a moment will be difficult.
Then let him dilute the whiskey with water—four or five parts water to one of whiskey. That dilution, rubbed into the other eye, instead of irritating it, will act as a gentle stimulant. It will produce an agreeable effect.
When your friend has experimented with the whiskey "straight" and diluted, deliver to him this little lecture:
"One drop of pure whiskey on your eyeball makes it hard to use the eye. That glass of whiskey that you are now pouring into yourself would blind you absolutely, at least for a time. If straight whiskey has such an effect on the covering of the eyeball, must not its effect be equally injurious to the covering of the stomach and intestines, which is the same as that of the eye?
"If diluting your whiskey makes it so much better as an eye-wash, would not diluting it make it better also as a 'stomach-wash'?"
One other thing: When you argue with a drunkard don't tell him that any man can cure himself if he will "only be a man." The drunkard knows that that is not so. Tell him, on the contrary, that not one man in fifty, not one woman in a hundred, can overcome the drink habit.
He will wink his tired eyes at you and say: "I want you distinctly to understand that I'm one in a hundred." Tell him how difficult it is—not how easy—and thus stir up his ambition. ——
Above all, when you start out to admonish or despise the victim of bad habits, just remember that you have no notion whatever of what you criticise. Not one drunkard in a hundred has will power to cure himself. Not one "virtuous" man in a thousand has imagination enough to realize the drunkard's temptation and suffering. We offer to your consideration this other extract from Lecky's book, quoted above:
"The great majority of uncharitable judgments in the world may be traced to a deficiency of imagination. * * * To realize with any adequacy the force of a passion we have never experienced, to conceive a type of character radically different from our own, * * * requires a power of imagination which is among the rarest of human endowments."