ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 244, 21 February 1911, Page 3

ALCOHOLOGY.

IN AMERICA,

(Published by Arrangement). The State of Washington has a statute which l'MitU: ''No person shall be employed as an engineer, train despatcher, fireman, baggageman, conductor, brakeman, or other servant of any railroad in any of its operating departments who uses intoxicating drinks as a beverage; and any company in whose service such person has knowingly been employed shall be liable to penalty of oOOdol. for every such offence, to be sued for in the name of tile people of State of Michigan." The people of the State, by their State legislature, have enacted the above law. Why? For the same reason that the railroad king, James J. Hill, along the entire line of the. Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads, has positively forbidden the employment ot drinking men. Taking the whole railway organisation of America, with an aggregate of 2,000,000 employees, it is found that, through the American Railway Association, it has been officially ordained that: "The use of intoxicant's by employees when on duty is prohibited." And many companies require total abstinence from their employees. Strict discrimination against frequenters of drinking saloons is made by'an.increas-, ing proportion of the largest commercial houses throughout America.' The United States Labor Department found officially that 90 per cent, of the railways, 7!) per cent, of factories, 88<per cent."of trades, and 7'2 per. cent, of [agriculturalists discriminate against employees addicted to the use of intoxicating beverages. It is noticeable, too, that operatives usually prefer that these .reguLa-, tions against alcohol be. upheld by their ■ployers. By a test vote taken in the great stores of Messrs Sears, Roebuck uid Co., of Chicago, 0000 employees were shown to be in favor of retaining the prohibitory rules of the firm to 1000 against—nine to one against liquor. The movement against liquor is gaining force in America year by year until now it is estimated that 40,000,000 people—nearly half of the whole population of U.S.A.— are living in dry districts, where the trade in alcoholic drinks is prohibited. In short, people are digesting knowledge concerning alcohol, and are getting wiser in their method of dealing with it; and this increased knowledge is being put into practice as they find that no one is the better for using it; or, if this statement is deemed too sweeping, it has not yet been shown that any man or woman is physically or mentally bettered by its use. On the other hand, we have daily evidence of men rendered by drink unfit for duty, and more especially for duty that requires judgment, nerve and prompt decision, such as railwaymon,' motor-drivers and seamen need. To put it another way, there is no home in any country that is happier or more prosperous because one or more of the family use strong drink; but there are hundreds —thousands, even in New Zealand—of homes from which alcoholic drink has driven peace, comfort and happiness, and has substituted discord, squalor and misery; and this, too, not in the homes of those who are deemed the lowest grades of society; it is found in the families of the wealthy and socially distinguished, only they arc often able'to hide the disgrace. AMERICA'S GREATEST MEN have set the example of watcr-drinkinc, from Franklin onwards. He said in his autobiography that his drinking com, rades in the printing house wondered at , seeing him carry two large formes of type, one in each hand, while they could only carry one with two hands. He showed them and taught them that "a pennyworth of bread eaten with water gives more strength than a quart of beer." President Lincoln was another of these water-drinkers. When his friends came to congratulate him on his nomination as President, he pledged them in a glass of water, saying that it was his only beverage. The poet Longfellow, too, advocated water in his "Drinkin" Song," with the lines: ° "Now to rivulets from the mountains Point the rod of fortune-tellers. Youth perpetual dwells in fountains, Not in flasks and casks and cellars."