Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
For No. I, pure and simple, we have but a single report, perhaps (as
of a frontier State) not exemplary, or safe to guide the more interior
States, but given exactly for what it may be worth. The Governor of
Montana (a State which boasts the bad eminence of having
proportionately more liquor-sellers paying license fees than any other
State in the Union--having, in fact, one licensed liquor-seller to
every fifty-five inhabitants) reports as follows:
"Saloons are run wide open night and day; while there is a great deal
of drinking there is very little drunkenness, and one in an
intoxicated condition is promptly arrested and fined." One other
State, however (Louisiana), has the continental idea that liquor laws
are for "revenue only." Louisiana, therefore, has an elaborate excise,
guiltless of any suggestion of reformative objects. So far as her
statistics go, she is the most temperate State in the Union.
II. EXAMPLE.--This may be called the apostolic cure--the one laid down
by the apostle St. Paul (I Corinthians, viii, 13)--though we find a
prominent English ecclesiastic, Dean Hole, on being asked if he was
not aware that people ought to abstain for the sake of their example
to others, replied: "I have never seen any one converted by example. I
have often challenged teetotalers to produce Mr. Jones converted by
the example of Mr. Brown, but I am waiting for him. I don't see why I
should make a fool of myself because others do." I should not deal
with the matter quite so summarily myself. Doubtless the example of a
thrifty, wholesome, prosperous laborer, if left (without exhortation
or impertinence of third parties) to work upon his dram-drinking,
wretched neighbor, might have its laudable effect: such example not
being deprived in advance of its value by the fetters of a written
pledge which a man's personal pride might force him to ostentatiously
observe--or if the exemplary person does not get his living by
denouncing liquor--or by the coercion of a Ladies' Temperance Union!
But as the person converted by the example would be certain not to
parade the fact, no statistics could even then be attainable. The case
or cases, if genuine, would be hidden in the consciences of the
converts and beyond any marshaling in figures. All we can do is to
hope and trust that our good examples may prevail, and that, like the
apostle St. Paul (whom our British ecclesiastic begs to differ with),
there may be some among us strong enough physically as well as
spiritually to say, "If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no
meat while the world standeth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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