NOVEMBER 15, 1912 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Temperance 



IMBECILES, DEGENERATES, ETC.; SHALL OUR 



GOVERNMENT CONTINUE TO FOSTER AND 



ENCOURAGE THIS SORT OP "CROP"? 



I have before spoken of the American 

 Medical Society; and I have been assured 

 that it is the best authority in the land in 

 regard to the safegTiarding of our people. 

 I have also referred occasionally to Miss 

 Minnie J. Ellet as a woman who has been 

 for some years indefatigable in this matter 

 of rousing our people to the importance of 

 getting legislation for the protection of our 

 boys and girls. Below is something which 

 she furnishes : 



STATISTICAL WARNINGS AND ALCOHOLIC DEGEN- 

 ERACY. 



Dr. F. A. MacNicholl, vice-president of the 

 American Medical Society, delivered an address 

 before that society at Atlantic City in June, on 

 alcohol and degeneracy. He declared: "Mainly be- 

 cause oi the appalling increase in the use of nar- 

 cotics and alcohol a wave of degeneracy is sweep- 

 ing the land — a degeneracy so appalling that it 

 staggers the mind and threatens to destroy the 

 republic." * * * jje tells how modern scien- 

 tific methods have reduced the mortality from acute 

 diseases ; how the sources and carriers have been 

 discovered and destroyed ; but he laments the 

 marked contrast with which the nation deals with 

 alcohol, "that most potent source and carrier of 

 chronic diseases of heart, liver, lungs, and other 

 organs." 



He further says: 



"A study of the United States census shows thjit, 

 within a period of fifty-three years, the population 

 of the United States has increased 330 per cent, 

 while the number of insane and feeble-minded has 

 increased 955 per cent." 



He says: "Statistics compiled by leading in- 

 surance companies of Great Britain show that, in 

 every 1000 deaths, 440 are due to alcohol. This 

 same rate in the United States would mean a mor- 

 tality from alcohol of 680,000 a year. 



"But the great burden of drink is not borne by 

 the drinker, but by the drinker's children. The 

 germ cell that is to be evolved into another being 

 is the most highly organized of all the cells in 

 the body. In its protoplasm lies the material and 

 pattern of the perfected organism. Should such 

 poison as alcohol lessen the nutrition of the cell 

 or impair the quality of the protoplasmic material 

 and deface the pattern, these shortcomings and de- 

 fects will be manifested in the subsequent stages 

 of development." 



He tells of a hospital in New York for the 

 treatment of physical defects, in which every patient 

 was the child of drinking parents. He says fur- 

 ther : 



"One-third of New York city's schoolchildren 

 are mentally deficient. If this percentage holds 

 good over the entire country, there are seven million 

 children of school age who are mentally deficient, 

 and fewer than 67,000 of these are free from 

 hereditary alcoholic taint. A nation half diseased 

 and half well can not live ; but here we have three- 

 fifths of the rising generation mentally and physic- 

 ally diseased." 



"Not long ago a call was issued for young 

 physicians to enter the United States army. Eighty 

 per cent of those examined were rejected as physic- 

 ally unfit. When four-fifths of our most repre- 

 sentative men are pronounced unfit for war, what 

 shall we say as to their fitness to father the next 

 generation ?" 



"Boards of health, armed with police power of 

 state, eradicate the carriers of typhoid, and quar- 

 antine the victims; but alcohol, a thousand times 

 more destructive to public health, continues to de- 

 stroy. Alcoholic degeneracy is the most important 

 sanitary question before the country; and yet 

 health authorities do not take action, because alco- 

 hol is entrenched in politics. Leaders in politics 

 do ncrt act, because their political destiny lies in 



the hands of the agents of the liquor traffic. We 

 are face to face with the greatest crisis in our 

 country's history. The alcohol question must be 

 settled within the next ten years or some more 

 virile race will write the epitaph of this republic." 

 East Akron, Ohio. Minnie J. Ellet. 



THE LEGALITY OF THE TREATING LAW. 



It transpires that my department has a 

 good friend located in the very heart and 

 head of our nation, and here is what he 

 says: 



Mr. A. /. Root: — As a reader of Gleanings I 

 have noticed with much interest your vigorous 

 wielding of the cudgel on the live moral questions, 

 including that of temperance, and as of possible 

 interest to you I enclose a page which I have torn 

 from a weekly publication of court decisions, con- 

 taining a discussion of a ease tliat was decided 

 hy the Supreme Court of the State of Washington 

 holding a "no-treating" law to be constitutional, 

 and valid. Chas. J. Williamson. 



Attorney at Law, Patent Solicitor and Counsel. 



Washington, D. C, Aug. 20. 



From the clipping he sends, I extract 



the following: 



It is argued that treating is an act of hospitality 

 which has always been exercised by a free people, 

 and is a right of the purchaser of liquor not to 

 be prohibited. The court answers this contention: 

 "In our opinion it is of no weight .vhatever in 

 support of a practice which becomeo recognized 

 as a source of evil and a menace to public morality 

 and good order. Just as the right to engage in the 

 liquor traffic is not an inherent right in any citi- 

 zen, neither is it an inherent right in any citizen 

 to treat another in a licensed saloon which is un- 

 der the control of the police power being exercised 

 by a municipality, as in this case. Whatever the 

 right of the citizen may be elsewhere, he has no 

 inherent right even to buy liquor at such a place." 

 The ordinance is upheld. 



"raising the revenue" by selling germs of 

 "typhoid fever," etc. 



The writer in the Rural New-Yorker says he 

 "has no more use for intoxicating liquor than for 

 typhoid germs." What would he think if some one 

 should ask him to vote for men or parties that 

 propose to legalize the sale of typhoid germs and 

 raise revenue from it ? What would you think of 

 such a proposition? Yet such a policy could scarce- 

 ly do more harm than the legalized and protected 

 .sale of alcoholic poison. Now, there is only one 

 party that always and everywhere proposes to put 

 a stop to this "sum of all villainy," so what is 

 the duty of all temperance people ? If members 

 of the Prohibition party act in an "uncharitable 

 and unchristian manner," it is unfortunate; but if 

 the above facts are true, does that fact absolve you 

 or any one else from helping the Prohibition party 

 to ultimate victory ? Would it not be more prac- 

 tical for the Anti-saloon League to help the party, 

 and thereby "pour coals of fire" on its head? 



I notice you speak of pokeweed. We have eaten 

 the young shoots in spring when about six inches 

 high, induding the tender stalk, cooked as other 

 greetis. 



Savannah, Ga., Sept. 21. Chas. E. A. Hale. 



THE EFFECT OF PROHIBITION IN OKLAHOMA. 



See the following, which we clip from 



the American Issue: 



The New State Brewery in Oklahoma City is 

 owned by the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company, 

 of St. Louis. Constitutional prohibition closed this 

 brewery, and a few days after statehood 27,000 

 gallons of beer was run into the sewers from the 

 vats in this brewery. 



May God be jDraised for what Oklahoma 

 has done and is doing. 



