Part 32 (1/2)
is to feed and clothe her individuals. This burden is just beginning to sit on her shoulders without galling weight. The next effort is to protect the more industrious against the forays of the wicked and the mistakes of the unwise. This is the problem with which the past century has had most to deal. It is an immeasurably greater question than is that of drunkenness, and it is immeasurably far from solution. For instance, a foolish statesman can to-day plunge fifty millions of people into
WAR
--a thing represented among words by three letters, but which among events entirely fails to find complete expression, from the lack of any other misfortune worthy of comparison. An angry statesman, acting like a boy, may stop, not a game of marbles, but ten thousand grain-laden s.h.i.+ps. But, notwithstanding, as an attendant in the betterment of her condition, Society is advancing rightly toward the rum-bottle. She does not hearken always to the voice of
THE PROFESSIONAL TEMPERANCE ”WORKER”
because a betterment in Society is naturally and rightly the result of self-interest. The man who spends his time altogether in the bettering of others does not establish reforms on the surest basis. Society usually has to do his work after him, with considerable delay and additional cost. He is all right in the abstract, but he delays matters.
What I would ill.u.s.trate is this: The place for the reformer to deal with drink on a fair battle field is in the city. The place where the professional reformer finds it profitable to go is in the country, where the youth wear
THE BADGE OF TEMPERANCE
in their cheeks--not in the b.u.t.ton-hole of their coats. In the country, surrounded by circles of persons as free from stimulants or the need of them as is their snow from the s.m.u.t of soft-coal, they swear eternal ”conversion” to the views of a man--usually a former victim of intoxication,--often a subsequent wallower in his same old gutters.
Society sometimes looks upon this Peter the Hermit with little pleasure.
The excitements, the pa.s.sions and the commotions which he sometimes foments are pitiable from the very fact that
NO RUM CAN BE BLAMED
as having fired the unhappy brains that rush into the vortex of public confusion, like s.h.i.+ps into the whirlpool. All the practical laws would be pa.s.sed (and at a date earlier than that at which the public finally accept them in reality) without the sacrifices of the man who proudly calls himself a ”horrible example” of the power of strong drink. How does Society do it? I am sure I do not know. All I know is this:
ON THE REAL BATTLE-GROUND,
in the city, where stimulant is often needed--whisky, iron, quinine, coffee, tobacco, opium, or tea--the men who waste the most nerve-tissue are more rigidly required to abstain from the abuse of stimulants than was the case fifteen years ago. To put it plainer, fifteen years ago, a smart man would be employed on a newspaper to ”write” or ”report”. If he were brilliant, he was ent.i.tled almost by custom to ”go on the war-path”
once a week--that is, to be drunk that often, and to be totally unable or unwilling to do the current day's work.
NOW-A-DAYS,
if a man in the same position were to get drunk once a year he would be superseded. No matter how brilliant he may be, the drunkard at once sinks to the bottom. The ”fat jobs” are filled by men as steady as clock-work. How has Society done this wonderful thing? Hard to tell. She has constantly tempted the steady man. In fact, she inclines to treat him a shade the better if he can drink some stimulant each day without unbalancing himself--some alcohol, some coffee or some tea--but
WOE TO HIM
if he transgress her limits. In the country it is asked ”Does he drink?”
In the city it is asked ”Does he get drunk?” The two methods are essentially the results of two conditions. The mistake of the one locality is to apply its own preliminary to the other. Now, again, to this frightful question of woman-torture: Society knows all about woman.
It knows that the wife must be the arbiter of her own sufferings. Her brother, being less wise than Society, separates the wife from
THE OCCASIONAL BRUTE
who married her, takes her ills and her children to his house, kicks the brute on the street, and, for all his pains, is eventually either a.s.sa.s.sinated by the wretch or anathematized by the wife. Having made matters much worse (by unanimous opinion), he abandons his reform, and then, with his valuable experience, joins Society and becomes a wave in the tide of events, instead of a presumptuous pebble rolling in small opposition on the beach of time. How will Society approach the wife-beater? n.o.body knows. Probably she will exterminate the breed. The woman, like the newspaper proprietor, will at last awake. The man who gets drunk will not gain her affections--above all, he will not keep them. The ”old soak” will be wifeless. Monsters will cease to propagate their species. When once the strong hand of Bread-and-b.u.t.ter gets hold of Whisky, then whisky will be as useful for good as it now is powerful in evil. Society however deals with the affections cautiously, and wisely, because her experience is inconceivably great.