140 ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY 



of newspapers and magazines no longer advertise them. 

 Physicians too are warning their patients against the use of 

 these dangerous preparations, and, when prescribing medicines, 

 they are more careful to consider the danger of the formation 

 of alcohol or other drug habits. 



People who look to liquor as a means of " drowning their 

 sorrows " can be helped only by teaching them a better way of 

 meeting the difficulties of life. Liquor does not remove trouble, 

 and most people are intelligent enough to see that. We must 

 do what we can to diminish the causes of suffering and worry ; 

 but there will always remain some that cannot be prevented. 



Better cooking, better food selection, better habits of eating, 

 knowledge of and interest in the laws of health, and the oppor- 

 tunity to acquire health habits, better conditions of work, more 

 leisure, and training for a sensible use of that leisure these 

 are the things that will take the place of alcoholic drink. 

 Or, rather, they will remove much of the temptation and 

 occasion to acquire the drink habit. 



The tremendous amount of drinking that is caused by man's 

 sociability is to be remedied not by trying to make men less 

 sociable but by teaching people how to be sociable in a more 

 profitable way, and by giving them opportunities to meet and 

 enjoy each other's company outside the saloon or the drinking 

 club. Recreation centers maintained in the public schools, 

 clubrooms in churches and settlements, reading rooms, gym- 

 nasiums, athletic fields, and similar places furnish the best 

 antidote to the saloon. 



Finally, all the preaching against drinking will have to meet 

 the clever urgings of those who are interested in selling liquors. 

 So long as men can find a profit in selling alcohol, men will 

 be induced to buy it. The only way to stop this traffic, as 

 traffic, is to take the profit out of it. This has been done 

 by way of experiment in Sweden and Norway ; and wherever 

 the selling of liquor has been separated from the profit, the 

 amount of drinking has been very quickly diminished. 



