Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2110, 8 February 1908, Page 3

DRINK AND CHILDREN. (Part. I.) '■ OF all the suffering in its manifold forms that perennially llows from the Liquor Traliic, none is so pathetic as that which it indicts upon tho child-lifo of our country. This heartless and unrelenting traffic is the greatest enemy that the child lias to contend against. It bestrews its pathway with all sorts of obstructions that most soriously handicaps its progress in life. And the deep pathos of it lies in tho fact that in its innocency,- weakness, and dependence this young life has to fight its foe unconsciously and helplessly. This great Destroyer robs the children of LIFE. Tho Registrar-General of Great Britain said that in London out of every 100 U children born 155 die before they are a year- old. In Liverpool the proportion is 200; in Manchester 100. In special parts of these cities where tho drink shops are most numerous the percentage is much higher. For instance, in one part of Manchester out of every 1000 children born no less than 30-i die before they aro Ijwcllve months old. Whilst _ this fearful destruction of young life is not wholly the result of drink, it is well known that the greatest portion of it is. Talk about the massacres of Pharoah and llerod! These pale into insignificance before the wholesale sacrifice ol child-life that is being laid every hour of the year upon the altar of the insatiable Licjdor Traffic. But appalling as is this phase of the subject, perhaps, after all, the drink traffic is in one of its most merciful moods when it is clubbing life m its infancy. Those that are slam almost. before they are conscious of existence are not the worst _ victims of this traffic, for the survivors of the club are perpetually kept on tho rack. Tlicv have to fight their way through life against the greatest odds. This will be evident in view of the following facts. , , The Drink Traffic robs children oi HEALTH. Dr. Macinikolls, of America said that “we found in a study of lb.liildren of drinkers that 76 per cent offered from some organic disease, bile of 231 children of abstainers nly 18 per cent were thus affected. 71iat possible chance lias a child to truvgle through the world with sucrss when it is handicapped with phyical weakness? It is unutterably fid to think that a large proportion f those born into the world emerge ,to life with the germs of disease nplanted in their systems, the innoout victims of a vile traffic that xists only through the criminal apaiiy.of those who ought to know botAdvt. (To be continued.) C.P.