TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 4977, 16 March 1895, Page 3

TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

Tho Board of Hcalt h has warned the New York confection ■ shops not to sell brandy drops to child rcn. Tho attenti'.n of the Board of Excise has also been culled to the rani ,ter. Tho chemist of the Hoard of Healt" li reports that six of the brandy drops ! sold to children contained as much alci )hol as an ordinary Jfcink of whisky. HP but six States in the United States T Or-ion now have laws I upon their statute books providing fop! scientific Temperante instruction in tin; ;ir public schools. Eleven hundred persons in North Dakota have pledged i themselves each to pay live dollars pel 1 ' annum toward a fund to be used in ! enforcing the prohibit ry law of that! itato. Speaking of tho wo: »k at Havre among the French (says the 1 fclkdisl Recorder) attention has been col led to the ' terrible hold the passion fon,'drink is taking in the jS'oi ih of France.') It is stated that it is difficult to find aij nong the thousands of workmen on the quays, eyea among those who arc rcgul arly employed by the great shipping i'c : mipanics, men who do not drink to excess ■•. And yet, strange to say, almost nothiii;' j is being done to combat this evil. Oi i the contraiy, the voting power is in the bauds of the trade and things arc becom ing worse year by year. 'ln the consu mptioa ot alcohol, France as a country, has gone up by bounds. It is now \ fourth among the milieus of Europe, following close on tie second and tliiw I; Belgium being first and Great Britain seventh.' These are grave statements, indicating a new peril to that gifted an d excitable people, jiffl through them to (he European ■fcms at large. What a drunken Fiance may mean the world has yet to learn."

That alcohol is a i lead'y and insidious foe to life, is const intly being shown by the facts of science. The latest noteworthy developments along this line, are brought out by a French scientist, and summarised us follows:—"It was shown by experiments with hen og„'s exposed to the vapour of alcohol, that such eggs, as a rule, do int hatch out, and when they do : , they often produce monstrosities. M. Fere, who made the experiments, concludes thatsiinilarly, iu the human species, ti're low birth-rate and degeneracy of persons addicted to alcohol, arc attributable to that habit. Development is checked, not only in the user, but the effect, is pernicious upon the offspring of tho alcohoiiscd person. Fere's experiments with ahsinthevapour, on hen eggs, also resulted in the production of monstrosities."— Allkmee Nciu.

In a suggestivu editorial entitled "Temperance in Schools," the Good Templar Record oi: Dunedin, urg:ug the importance of Temperance instruction for the children, says:—" It we in New Zealand are to hold our position already gained in relation to the drink trallic, we » have to bestir ourselves in tins t of school teaching. There is a danger of feeling; ourselves too sure of our victoiy, but we should lcaru to realise that we will never be safe without a watchful guard being kept i.t every point. One of the most impoi taut positions of defence lies in the minds of the children. If we succeed ia having them imbued with the impregnable facts of the nature and effects of alcohol on the human body, and the body politic, that would bo a source of strength we could not hope to establish by any other means."

The Westminster Gazelle uotes that it is remarkable (hat, while the claims of abstinence from intoxicating liquors have been brought before many influential classes of society, no movement in connection with the legal profession was inaugurated uutil some three months ago. A meeting was then held at Sion College, which was addressed by one of the Masters in Chancery, and others. At the close ot the proceedings, according to the annual repoit of the JN'ationalTemperante League just issued, eight members of the profession-two barristers, four solicitors, and two clerks «re enrolled as members of the Royal ts of Justice Temperance Society—- " a" new organisation that promises to become an important section of the Temperance Army." It is strongly pointed out that the use of intoxicants lessens the skill of the working man, A large manufacturing firm m Cincinnati recently made the following statement: "A drinking man will turn out from 20 to 32 per cent, less work than a non-drinker; and in addition his work is apt to be defective and require overhauling."

Tito way the Ma-inc prohibitory] liquor law "fails"is illustrated by a recent incident narrated by the Lewiston Journal. The officers learned that some ■beer had been unloaded from a car near South Lcwistown and was being sifted into the city keg by keg. On going to the locality aftcrdark they saw a light in a field, and, hiding behind a large boulder, they |saw two men lifting a few kegs up from a hole in the ground where a flat stone had been removed. It seem • that the smugglers had dug a hole there to hide the liquor and had been using it for several weeks, They made a rush and captured oucman before he could get out of the hole. "They had," says the Journal, "only one or two kegs, but had the officers «there a couple of days before they csid have captured a large lot, accord. i'ig to the tracks." This is the way Pro- i hibition "fails" in Maine. Of course, laws prohibiting theft, gambling, etc., also fail in a kindred manner, but the evils attendant upon a clandestine liquor traffic of that kind are reduced to a vciy small minimum as compared with the wide-open doors of the legalised gilded saloon.