The drunkard’s home.—More of our delinquent and dependent children are traceable to hereditary alcoholism than any other one cause save lust. The conditions and environments of a drunkard’s home are very unfavorable to normal hereditary influences. Seventy per cent. more of the drunkard’s children are defective from birth than those from sober parents.
In the average drunkard’s home, the wife is deprived of much or all that would be conducive to the best maternal conditions, such as plenty of nutritious food, good associations, wholesome recreation, good reading matter, freedom, cheerfulness, and proper attention and courtesy on the part of her husband. Instead of these conditions, she is poorly fed, surrounded by rough associations, lives in a rented shack without flowers or pictures, is overworked, timid, depressed and discouraged, deprived of a thousand little comforts a maternal heart longs for, and often tyrannized over by a rum-embruted husband.
Defective offspring from alcoholics.—Children born under these conditions cannot receive a good heredity. The children of drunken parents nearly always receive a bad heredity. This is especially true when the initial of a life takes place during or immediately following a drunken debauch. If the wives of drunkards had better environments during periods of gestation, they could more largely overcome the bad influences of their husbands upon their children. But, environed as they are, they cannot prevent their own unfortunate influence over their children, much less that of their husbands.
Intemperance and crime, lust and idiocy.—The mental and moral states of the drunkard are not only expressed in a desire for more drink; but at one time he is exceedingly lustful; at another time he is quite silly, idiotic and foolish; at still another time he is angry, cruel and dangerous. We often find all these morbid conditions strongly marked in his children. Some inherit alcoholic, some lustful, some epileptic, feeble-minded or insane criminal tendencies. His blood, being saturated with alcohol, is in a low state of vitality. This is proven by the drunkard’s inability to resist disease. The low state of vitality in the blood of the drunkard accounts for the defectiveness of a large per cent. of his children. More of the children of drunkards die before they are two years old than of any other class except the venerealized. Authorities from all civilized nations estimate that from forty to eighty per cent. of all crime is traceable to the use of alcoholic drink, and many of these criminals received a bad heredity from drunken parents; twenty-two per cent. of all insanity and eighty per cent. of epilepsy is traceable to drunken parents; seventy per cent. of all immoral women had drunken parents.
Effects of personal liberty.—One day while campaigning a county in Missouri for local option, I called at a home to get directions to my next engagement to lecture. I rapped three times at the door. Three times a voice from within said, “Come in.” Finally, I opened the door and entered. A mother sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room holding in her arms a nine-year-old boy. I noticed that the boy was as helpless as a twenty-four-hour-old baby. While giving me directions she was feeding the boy with a spoon. I remarked, “Friend, I observe that you have in your arms an unfortunate child. I have studied many unfortunate cases, lectured a good deal on heredity and have written a book on heredity. If you do not object, I would like to ask you some questions about your child.” In tones of anguish, such as only a broken-hearted mother could utter, she said, “I guess that no poor mother has ever had to bear a greater burden than I have. This is my first child, on the bed is my fifth child, only six weeks old. When this boy was four years old, during a spell of whooping cough, he got into this condition. For five years I have cared for this boy as I would a helpless baby. During these five years I have become a mother three times and have buried three children who became as helpless as this one. The three that are dead were seemingly all right at birth, but became helpless during attacks of hives and teething. I don’t know whether we will be able to raise the baby or not.” No pen can portray, no tongue can tell, no imagination can conceive the heartaches of this unfortunate mother. I asked whether she and her husband were related by blood, or whether there had been intermarriage in the past on either side? She replied in the negative. I asked other questions and failed to locate the trouble. Finally, I asked, “Were there any drunkards on either side of your family?” “On my side of our family there were no drunkards; on the father’s side of my husband’s family one-half of the men were drunkards; on his mother’s side most of the men were drunkards,” was her reply. “Does your husband drink?” I enquired. With some embarrassment, she said, “He drinks, but never gets to where he can’t attend to business.” From other sources I found him to be a very heavy drinker. Such men often boast that they have a right to drink if they want to, get drunk if they want to, kill themselves if they want to. What right did that drunken father and his drunken ancestry have to inflame their minds and brutalize their passions and thereby burden that innocent woman with all that sacrifice, suffering and heartache and to bring these helpless little children into this world foredoomed to such defectiveness? I answer, they did not have the shadow of a right to indulge in a habit that would deprive their descendants from developing on the earth plane.
Two more examples.—In the town of M——, Illinois, is a young lady of twenty-six winters unbroken by a joyful spring or summer. The initial of her life took place during the drunken debauch of her worse than worthless drunken father. Many times a day and often several times an hour she has spells. I have witnessed her go through many of them. The approach of one of these spells would be first noticed by the enlarged eyes and the exposure of the white of the eye. Then the muscles in the eye, face, neck and body would contract and pull her face into her lap. After remaining in that tortuous position for some minutes, the muscles would relax and she would resume a normal one.
In that same town, just to the right of my tent, lived one of the wealthiest citizens. Three children had been born into his home. Each had died of epileptic fits before it was two years old. The family physician, who had made a life study of heredity, told me that to his own personal knowledge the initial of each child’s life took place during or immediately following a drunken debauch of the father.
A visit to an asylum.—Not as a means of punishment, but as a means of enlightenment and conviction, I wish every drinking man and every man who favors the maintenance of the saloon could spend a few days in the insane asylums of this country. Let them be taken through the wards of the feeble-minded and the insane and at the close of the day listen for one hour to a discussion of the causes of insanity among the inmates. In this lecture, let them learn that twenty-two out of every one hundred cases of insanity are due to drunkenness. Let them spend the next day in the epileptic wards and witness from ten to twenty of those unfortunates have epileptic fits, which usually last from thirty minutes to one hour. At the close of this day have them attend a lecture given by an eminent authority on epilepsy. After such an experience, I will guarantee that every honest man, when he is convinced that twenty-two per cent. of the insane and eighty-eight per cent. of the epileptics are the results of drunkenness, would be converted to the prohibition of the liquor traffic. You had just as well put the balance of that crowd in a reform school or in some ward of the asylum without further delay or expense. They are helpless cases.
Personal liberty versus the rights of others.—I fully appreciate the value of personal liberty. One’s personal liberty to do right should never be infringed upon. One’s personal liberty is circumscribed by the welfare of others. His liberty to do as he pleases ends where the welfare of someone else begins. You can get mad at me if you wish, grit your teeth, clench your fist, swing your fist in a circle, vertically, horizontally and off at a tangent; anywhere you wish, just so you don’t strike my nose. But if you do, your personal liberty ends where my nose begins. You have the liberty to walk up and down these aisles, sidewalks, streets, public roads, up and down the railroad track, over these hills and hollows, put your old number “nines” down wherever you want to put them, but remember, when you put one of your number “nines” down on one of my corns, your personal liberty ends where my corn begins. Your personal liberty to drink, get drunk, inflame your mind, brutalize your passions ends right where the welfare of your unborn posterity begins. You have not the shadow of a right to indulge in any bad habit that will cause your children to receive from you some form of bad heredity. Your unborn descendants have the individual, inalienable, absolute right to inherit from you the best physical, mental and moral possibilities of manhood and womanhood. There is not a man but has the paternal instinct deeply impressed upon his very nature. God placed it there. It is to that principle of fatherhood, prospective or real, that I make my final appeal. Boys, men, don’t entertain thoughts, indulge in acts or form habits that you would not want to see reproduced in your offspring.
Owing to the prevalent use of tobacco among all classes, including doctors, teachers and ministers, many are inclined to doubt the hereditary influence of tobacco.