Undoubtedly such a reason exists. You probably do not know, Miss Krause, nor you either, Hoffmann, what an appalling part alcohol plays in modern life … Read Bunge, if you desire to gain an idea of it. I happen to remember the statements of a writer named Everett concerning the significance of alcohol in the life of the United States. His facts cover a space of ten years. In these ten years, according to him, alcohol has devoured directly a sum of three thousand millions of dollars and indirectly of six hundred millions. It has killed three hundred thousand people, it has driven thousands of others into prisons and poor-houses; it has caused two thousand suicides at the least. It has caused the loss of at least ten millions through fire and violent destruction; it has rendered no less than twenty thousand women, widows, and no less than one million children, orphans. Worst of all, however, are the far-reaching effects of alcohol which extend to the third and fourth generation.—Now, had I pledged myself never to marry, I might perhaps drink, but as it is—My ancestors, as I happen to know, were all not only healthy and robust but thoroughly temperate people. Every movement that I make, every hardship that I undergo, every breath that I draw brings what I owe them more deeply home to me. And that, you see, is the point; I am absolutely determined to transmit undiminished to my posterity this heritage which is mine.
MRS. KRAUSE
Look here, son-in-law, them miners o' ours do drink a deal too much. I guess that's true.
KAHL
They swills like pigs.
HELEN
And such, things are hereditary?
LOTH
There are families who are ruined by it—families of dipsomaniacs.