Alcohol permanently impairs both body and mind. Depending on how much is taken, it may cause various ills, ranging from inflammation of the stomach to insanity. It reduces the power of the mind to concentrate and it diminishes the ability of the muscles to work. It reduces the resistance of the body and shortens life. Its first effect is to lull the higher faculties to sleep.
Most drunkards do not recover from their disease, for drunkenness is a disease. The various drugs given to cure the afflictions are delusions. Strengthening the body, mind and the will and instilling higher ideals are the best methods of cure. Suggestive therapeutics, and the awakening of a strong resolve for a better life are powerful aids. Proper feeding should not be overlooked, for bad habits do not flourish in a healthy body.
Civilization necessitates self-control and considerable self-denial. Those who go in the line of least resistance are on the road to destruction. It is often necessary to overcome habits which produce temporary gratification of the senses.
According to Warden Tynan of the Colorado Penitentiary, 96 per cent. of the prisoners are brought there because they use alcohol. It is also well known that moral lapses are most common when the will is weakened through the use of liquor. Those who have the welfare of the race at heart are therefore compelled to give considerable thought to this subject. According to past experience, it will not help to try to legislate sobriety into the people. Education and industrialism are the factors which it seems to me will be most potent in solving the alcohol problem. Morality, which in the last analysis is a form of selfishness, will teach many that it is poor policy to reduce one's efficiency and thereby reduce the earning capacity and enjoyment of life.
More and more the employers of labor will realize that the use of alcohol decreases the reliability and worth of the worker. Many will take steps like the following:
"In formal recognition of the fact, established beyond dispute by the tests of the new psychology, that industrial efficiency decreases with indulgence in alcohol and is increased by abstinence from it, the managers of a manufacturing establishment in Chester, Penn., have attacked the temperance problem from a new angle.
"Unlike many railways and some other corporations, they do not forbid their employees to drink, but they offer 10 per cent. advance in wages to all who will take and keep—the teetotaler's pledge. Incidentally, a breaking of the promise will mean a permanent severance of relations, but there is no emphasizing of that point, it being confidently expected that the advantage of perfect sobriety will be as well realized on one side as on the other."
Business has during the past two centuries been the great civilizer, the great moral teacher. It has found that honesty and righteousness pay and that injustice is folly. Business has led the way to the acceptance of a new ethics, and new morals.
What has been said about alcohol applies to tobacco in a much smaller degree. The use of tobacco seems to lead to the use of alcohol. It retards the development of children. It is surely one of the causes of various diseases. Tobacco heart, sore throat and indigestion are well known to physicians.
Tobacco contains one of the deadliest of poisons known. One-sixteenth of a grain of nicotine may prove fatal. The reason there are so few deaths from acute tobacco poisoning is that but very little of the nicotine is absorbed.