The Call of the Twentieth Century, an Address to Young Men

by David Starr Jordan

"'Ich habe gewagt mit Sinnen
Und trage des noch kein Reu.'"

"With open eyes have I dared it,
and cherish no regret."

For all indulgence in wine and coffee and tobacco you will have a bill to pay. Perhaps not a heavy bill. The indulgence may be worth the while, but if so, find out for yourself beforehand whether others have found it so. If you dare, dare with open eyes and cherish no regrets. For regret is the most profitless thing to cherish. There is nothing more distressing than remorse without will. The only hope in the world is to stop, and by the time that the inebriate comes to realize where he is, it is too late to stop.

"There is joy in life," says Sullivan, the pugilist, "but it is known only to the man who has a few jolts of liquor under his belt." To know this kind of joy is to put one's self beyond the reach of all others.

The joy of the blue sky, the bright sunshine, the rushing torrent, the songs of birds, "sweet as children's prattle is," the breath of the meadows, the glow of effort, the beauty of poetry, the achievement of thought, the thousand and thousand real pleasures of life, are inaccessible to him "who has a few jolts of liquor under his belt," while the sorrows he feels, or thinks he feels, are as unreal as his joys, and as unworthy of a life worth living.

There was once, I am told, a man who came into his office smacking his lips, and said to his clerk, "The world looks very different to the man who has had a good glass of brandy and soda in the morning." "Yes," said the clerk, "and the man looks different to the world."

And this is natural and inevitable, for the pleasure, which exists only in the imagination, leads to action which has likewise nothing to do with the demands of life. The mind is confused, and may be delighted with the confusion, but the confused muscles tremble and halt. The tongue is loosened and utters unfinished sentences; the hand is loosened and the handwriting is shaky; the muscles of the eyes are unharnessed, and the two eyes move independently and see double; the legs are loosened, and the confusion of the brain shows itself in the confused walk. And if this confusion is long continued, the mental deterioration shows itself in external things,—the shabby hat and seedy clothing, and the gradual drop of the man from stratum to stratum of society, till he brings up some night in the ditch. As the world looks more and more different to him, so does he look more and more different to the world.

A prominent lawyer of Boston once told me that the great impulse to total abstinence came to him when a young man, from hearing his fellow lawyers talking over their cups. The most vital secrets of their clients' business were made public property when their tongues were loosened by wine; and this led him to the firm resolution that nothing should go into his mouth which would prevent him from keeping it closed unless he wanted to open it. The time will come when the only opening for the ambitious man of intemperate habits will be in politics. It is rapidly becoming so now. Private employers dare not trust their business to the man who drinks. The great corporations dare not. He is not wanted on the railroads. The steamship lines have long since cast him off. The banks dare not use him. He cannot keep accounts. Only the people, long-suffering and generous, remain as his resource. For this reason municipal government is his specialty; and while this patience of the people lasts, our cities will breed scandals as naturally as our swamps breed malaria. Already the business of the century recognizes the truth of all this. The bonding companies ask, before they sign a contract, whether the official in question uses liquor, what kind of liquor, whether he smokes, gambles, or in other ways so conducts himself that in five years he will be less of a man than he is now.

The great corporations ask the same questions as to all their employees. Even these organizations called "soulless" know the value of men, and that the vices of to-day must be reckoned at compound interest and charged against their estimate of the young man's future. The Twentieth Century must be temperate; for only sober men can bear the strain of its enterprises.

Equally dangerous is the search for the joys of love by those who would shirk all love's responsibilities. Just as honest love is the most powerful influence that can enter into a man's life, so is love's counterfeit the most disintegrating. Happiness cannot spring from the ashes of lust. Love looks toward the future. Its glory is its altruism. To shirk responsibility is to destroy the home. The equal marriage demands equal purity of heart, equal chastity of intention. Open vice brings with certainty disease and degradation. Secret lust comes to the same end, but all the more surely because the folly of lying is added to other sources of decay. That society is so severe in its condemnation of "the double life" is an expression of the bitterness of its experience. The real character of a man is measured by the truth he shows to women. His ideal of womankind is gauged by the character of the woman he seeks.