BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.

CHAPTER VI.—SUBJECTIVE REMEDIES.

The history of the temperance movement has demonstrated the sad futility of palliative remedies. We have seen that the malady of the poison vice is not a self-limited, but a necessarily progressive evil. The half-way measures of “restrictive” legislation have resulted only in furnishing additional proof that prevention is better, because less impossible, than control.[A] The regulation of the poison traffic, the redress of the unavoidably resulting mischief, the cure and conversion of drunkards, in order to be effectual, would impose intolerable and never ending burdens on the resources even of the wealthiest communities, while the advocates of prohibition would forestall the evils both of the remedy and the disease.

But we should not overlook the truth that, in our own country at least, the poison plant of intemperance springs from a composite root. In southern Spain, under the dominion of the Saracens,[2] the poison vice was almost unknown during a series of centuries.[B] The moral code and the religion of the inhabitants discountenanced intemperance. The virtue of dietetic purity ranked with chastity and cleanliness. An abundance of harmless amusements diverted from vicious pastimes. Under such circumstances the absence of direct temptations constituted a sufficient safeguard against the vice of the poison habit; but in a country like ours the efficacy of prohibition depends on the following supplementary remedies:

1. Instruction.—In the struggle against the powers of darkness light often proves a more effective weapon than might or right. Even the limited light of human reason might help us to avoid mistakes that have undoubtedly retarded the triumph of our cause. We must enlighten, as well as admonish our children, if we would save them from the snares of the tempter; among the victims of intemperance, even among those who can speak from experience and can not deny that their poison has proved the curse of their lives, only a small portion is at all able to comprehend the necessary connection of cause and result. They ascribe their ruin to the spite of fortune, to the machinations of an uncharitable world, to abnormally untoward circumstances, rather than to the normal effects of the insidious poison. Intoxication they admit to be an evil, but defend the moderate use of a liquor as infallibly injurious in the smallest as in the largest dose; they underrate the progressive tendency of their vice and overrate their power of resistance; they cling to the tradition that alcohol, discreetly enjoyed, may prove a blessing instead of a curse. We must banish that fatal delusion. We must reveal the true significance of the poison habit before we can hope to suppress it as a life blighting vice. Our text-books should be found in every college and every village school from Florida to Oregon. Every normal school should graduate teachers of temperance. The law of the State of New York providing for the introduction of primers on the effects of alcoholic beverages was attacked by one of our leading scientific periodicals, with more learning than insight, on the ground that the physiological action of alcohol is as yet obscure even to our ablest pathologists, and therefore not a fit subject for a common school text-book. The same objection might be urged against every other branch of physiology and the natural history of the organic creation. “Every vital process is a miracle,” says Lorenz Oken,[3] “that is, in all essential respects an unexplained phenomenon.” A last question will always remain unanswered wherever the marvelous process of life is concerned, but our ignorance, as well as our knowledge, of that phenomenon has its limits, and in regard to the effects of alcoholic beverages it is precisely the most knowable and most fully demonstrated part of the truth which it behooves every child to know, but of which at present nine tenths of the adults, even in the most civilized countries, remain as ignorant as the natives of Kamtschatka who worship a divinity in the form of a poisonous toadstool. A boy may be brought to comprehend the folly of gambling even before he has mastered the abstruse methods of combination and permutation employed in the calculus of probable loss and gain. We need not study Bentham[4] to demonstrate that honesty is an essential basis of commerce and social intercourse. By the standard of usefulness, too, temperance primers might well take precedence of many other text-books. Our school boys hear all sorts of things about the perils encountered by the explorers of African deserts and Arctic seas, but next to nothing about the pitfalls in their own path—no room for the discussion of such subjects in a curriculum that devotes years to the study of dead languages. Is the difference between the archaic and pliocene form of a Greek verb so much more important than the difference between food and poison?

With such a text as the monster curse of intemperance and its impressive practical lessons, a slight commentary would suffice to turn thousands of young observers into zealous champions of our cause, just as in Germany a few years of gymnastic training have turned nearly every young man into an advocate of physical education. The work begun in the school room should be continued on the lecture platform, but we should not dissemble the truth that in a crowded hall ninety per cent. of the visitors have generally come to hear an orator rather than a teacher, and enjoy an eloquence that stirs up their barrenest emotions as much as if it had fertilized the soil of their intelligence, just as the unrepentant gamesters of a Swiss watering place used to applaud the sensational passages of a drama written expressly to set forth the evils of the gambling hell. Enthusiasm and impressiveness are valuable qualifications of a public speaker, but he should possess the talent of making those agencies the vehicles of instruction. The great mediÆval reformers, as well as certain political agitators of a later age, owe their success to their natural or acquired skill in the act of stirring their hearers into an intellectual ferment that proved the leaven of a whole community—for that skill is a talent that can be developed on a basis of pure common sense and should be more assiduously cultivated for the purposes of our reform. A modern philanthropist could hardly confer a greater benefit on his fellow-citizens than by founding a professorship of temperance, or endowing a college with the special condition of a proviso for a weekly lecture on such topics as “The Stimulant Delusion,” “Alcoholism,” “The History of the Temperance Movement.”

Pamphlets, too, may subserve an important didactic purpose, and in the methods of their distribution we might learn a useful lesson from our adversaries, the manufacturers of alcoholic nostrums, who introduce their advertisements into every household, by publishing them combined with almanacs, comic illustrations, note-books, etc., i. e., not only free, but winged with extra inducements to the recipient, and often by the special subvention of druggists and village postmasters—till quack annuals have almost superseded the old family calendars with their miscellanies of pious adages and useful recipes. Could we not retrieve the lost vantage ground by the publication of temperance year-books, compiled by a committee of our best tract societies and distributed by agents of the W. C. T. U.—with inspiring conviction to emulate the zeal stimulated by a bribe of gratuitous brandy bottles?

Popular books must above all be interesting, and with a large plurality of readers that word is still a synonym of entertaining. A German bookseller estimates that the romances of Louisa MÜhlbach have done more to familiarize her countrymen with the history of their fatherland than all historical text books, annals and chronicles taken together, and we should not despise the aid of the novelist, if he should possess the gift of making fiction the hand-maid of truth, and the rarer talent of awakening the reflections as well as the emotions of his readers, for all such appeals should prepare the way for the products of the temperance press proper, by which we should never cease to invoke the conscience and the reason of our fellowmen.

2. Proscription.—That union is strength is a truth which asserts itself even at the expense of public welfare, and in favor of those who combine to thwart the purposes of the law or prevent the progress of needed reforms. To the cabals of such adversaries, against whom the influence of moral suasion would be powerless, we should oppose weapons that would strike at the foundation of their strength, namely, the most effectual means to diminish the number of their allies. Many of those who are callous to the stings of conscience would hesitate to defy the stigma of public opinion; others who are proof against all other arguments would yield if we could make it their commercial interest to withdraw their aid from the enemies of mankind.

That the prescription of alcohol for remedial purposes will ultimately be abandoned, like bleeding, blue-pill dosing and other medical anachronisms, is as certain as that the Carpathian peasants will cease to exorcise devils by burning cow dung, and we can somewhat promote the advent of that time by patronizing reform physicians in preference to “brandy-doctors,” as Benjamin Rush[5] used to call them, and by classing alcoholic “bitters” with the prohibited beverages. It is mere mockery to prohibit the sale of small beer and permit quacks to sell their brandy as a “digestive tonic,” and obviate the inconveniences of the Sunday law by consigning their liquor to a drug-store. Does the new name or the admixture of a handful of herbs change the effects of the poison? We might as well prohibit gambling and permit musical lottery drawings under the name of sacred concerts. Till we can do better we should permit druggists to sell alcoholic bitters only on the certified prescription of a responsible physician, all such prescriptions to be duly registered and periodically reported to the Temperance Commissioner of a Board of Health. Nostrum-mongers[6] will probably continue to fleece the ignorant to the end of time, but they must cease to decoy their victims by pandering to the alcohol vice.

3. Healthier Pastimes.—There is no doubt that a lack of better pastimes often tends to promote intemperance. In thousands of our country towns, equidistant from rural sports and the amusements of the metropolis ennui rather than ignorance[C] or natural depravity leads our young men to the dram shop, and in recognizing that fact we should not delude ourselves with the hope that reading-rooms alone could remedy the evil.[D] The craving after excitement, in some form or other, is an instinct of human nature which may be perverted, but can never be wholly suppressed, and in view of the alternative we would find it cheaper—both morally and materially—to gratify that craving in the comparatively harmless way of the Languedoc[9] peasants (who devote the evening hours to singing contests, trials of skill, round dances, etc.), or after the still better plan of the ancient Greeks. Antiquity had its Olympic Games, Nemean and Capitoline arenas, circenses, and local festivals. The Middle Ages had their tournaments, May days, archery contests, church festivals and guild feasts. The Latin nations still find leisure for pastimes of that sort—though in modified, and not always improved, forms; but in Great Britain, Canada and the United States, with their six times twelve hours of monotonous factory work, and Sunday laws against all kinds of recreations, the dreariness of existence has reached a degree which for millions of workingmen has made oblivion a blest refuge, and there is no doubt that many dram-drinkers use alcohol as an anodyne—the most available palliative against the misery of life-weariness. We would try in vain to convert such men by reproofs or ostracism. Before we can persuade them to renounce their excursions to the land of delirium the realities of life must be made less unendurable. They know the dangers of intemperance, but consider it a lesser evil.[E] They know no other remedy. Hence their bitter hatred of those who would deprive them of that only solace. Shall we resign such madmen to their fate? I am afraid that their type is represented by a larger class than current conceptions might incline us to admit. Let those who would verify those conceptions visit a popular beer garden—not as emissaries of our propaganda, but as neutral observers. Let them use a suitable opportunity to turn the current of conversation upon a test topic: “Personal Liberty,” “The Sunday Question,” “Progress of the Prohibition Party.” Let the observer retain his mask of neutrality, and ascertain the views—the private views—of a few specimen topers. Do they deny the physiological tendencies of their practice? The correlation of alcohol and crime? They avoid such topics. No, nine out of ten will prefer an unanswerable or unanswered argument; the iniquity of interfering with the amusements of the poor, with the only available recreations of the less privileged classes. Take that away and what can a man do who has no better pastimes, and can not always stay at home? What shall he do with sixteen hours of leisure?

The question then recurs: How shall we deal with such men? How reclaim them sufficiently even for the nobler purposes of the present life, not to speak of higher aims? How save them from the road that leads down to death? A change of heart may now and then work wonders, even the wonder of a permanent reform; but we have no right to rely on constant miracles, and for thousands in sorest need of help there is only one practical solution of the problem: Let us provide an opportunity of better pastimes—not as a concession to our enemies, but as the most effectual method to counteract the attraction of their snares and deprive them of the only plausible argument against the tendencies of our reform. We need not profane the Sabbath by bull-fights. We need not tempt the poor to spend their wages on railway excursions or the gambling tables of a popular summer resort. But we should recognize the necessity of giving them once a week a chance for outdoor amusements, and unless we should prefer the Swedish compromise plan of devoting the evening of the Sabbath to earthly purposes, we should adopt the suggestion of the Chevalier Bunsen,[10] and amend the eight hour law by a provision for a free Saturday afternoon. Half a day a week, together with the evenings of the long summer days, would suffice where the means of recreation are near at hand. Even the smallest factory villages could afford a little pleasure ground of their own, a public garden with a free gymnasium, a footrace track, ball ground, a tennis-hall or nine-pin-alley, for the winter season, a free bath, and a few zoÖlogical attractions. In larger towns we might add free music, a restaurant managed on the plan of Susanna Dodds, M.D.,[F] and perhaps a museum of miscellaneous curiosities. Such pleasure resorts should be known as Temperance Gardens. They would redeem as many drunkards as all our prisons and inebriate asylums taken together; they would do more: they would prevent drunkenness. And above all, they would accustom the working classes to associate the name of Temperance with the conceptions of liberality, manliness, cheerfulness, and recreation, instead of—well, their present misconceptions. We might arrange monthly excursions, and the happiest yearly festival would be a Deliverance Feast; an anniversary of the day when the city or village decided to free itself from the curse of the poison traffic. Like some of the Turner halls[11] of the German gymnasts, temperance gardens could be made more than self-supporting by charging a small admission fee to the spectator-seats of the gymnasium, and selling special refreshments at a moderate advance on the cost price. The surplus might be invested in prizes to stimulate competition in such gymnastics as wrestling, running, and hammer throwing (“putting the club,” as the Scotch highlanders call it), with reserved days, or arenas, for juvenile competitors. In winter we might vary the program by archery, singing contests, and trials of skill in various domestic fashions, with an occasional “spelling bee”—at least for those who could be trusted to consider it a pastime, rather than a task, for the purpose of recreation should not be sacrificed even to considerations of utility. In regard to athletics, that apprehension would be superfluous; the enthusiasm of gymnastic emulation has exerted its power at all times and among all nations, and needs but little encouragement to revive in its old might. It would make the Temperance Garden what the Village Green was to the archers of Old England, what the palÆstra was to the youth of ancient Greece. It would supersede vicious pastimes; it would regenerate the manhood of the tempted classes, and thus react on their personal and social habits; they would satisfy their craving for excitement in the arena, they would learn to prefer mechanical to chemical stimulants.[G] Physical and moral vigor would go hand in hand.

The union of temperance and athletic education has, indeed, been the ideal of many social reformers, from Pythagoras to Jean Jacques Rousseau,[12] and the secret of their failure was a mistake that has defeated more than one philanthropic project. They failed to begin their reform at the basis of the social structure. He who fears the hardships of such a beginning lacks, after all, true faith in the destiny of his mission. Perseverance and uncompromising loyalty to the tenets of our covenant is to us a duty, as well as the best policy, for as a moral offense treason itself would not be more unpardonable than doubt in the ultimate triumph of a cause like ours. There is a secret which almost seems to have been better known to the philosophers and patriots of antiquity than to this unheroic age of our own, namely, that in the arena of moral contests a clearly undeserved defeat is a step toward victory. In that warfare the scales of fate are not biased by a preponderance of gold or iron. Tyrants have reached the term of their power if they have made deliverance more desirable than life; the persuasive power of Truth is increased by oppression; and if the interests of a cause have become an obvious obstacle in the road of progress and happiness the promoters of that cause have to contend with a law that governs the tendencies of the moral as well as the physical universe, and inexorably dooms the unfit to perish.[H] The unmasked enemies of mankind have no chance to prosper.

And even where their disguises still avail them amidst the ignorance of their victims we should remember the consolation of Jean Jacques Rousseau in his address to the Polish patriots: “They have swallowed you, but you can prevent them from assimilating you.” Our enemies may prevent the recovery of their spoil; they may continue to devour the produce of our fields and of our labor, but we do not propose to let them enjoy their feast in peace; whatever their gastric capacity, it will be our own fault if we do not cause them an indigestion that will diminish their appetite. “All the vile elements of society are against us,” writes one of our lecturers, “but I have no fear of the event if we do not cease to agitate the subject,” and we would, indeed, not deserve success if we should relax our efforts before we have secured the coÖperation of every friend of justice and true freedom.

It is true, we invite our friends to a battle-field, but there are times when war is safer than peace, and leads to the truer peace of conscience. The highest development of altruism inspires a devotion to the welfare of mankind that rewards itself by a deliverance from the petty troubles and vexations of daily life; nay, all personal sorrows may thus be sunk out of sight, and those who seek release from grief for the inconstancy of fate, for the frustration of a cherished project, for the loss of a dear friend, may find a peace which fortune can neither give nor take away by devoting themselves to a cause of enduring promise, to the highest abiding interest of their fellowmen. At the dawn of history that highest aim would have been: security against the inroads of barbarism. In the night of the Middle Ages: salvation from the phantoms of superstition. To-day it should be: deliverance from the curse of the poison vice.

That deliverance will more than compensate all sacrifices. Parties, like individuals, are sometimes destined to conquer without a struggle; but the day of triumph is brighter if the powers of darkness have been forced to yield step for step, and we need not regret our labors, our troubles, nor even the disappointment of some minor hopes, for in spite of the long night we have not lost our way, and the waning of the stars often heralds the morning.