Temperance Notes

1900

The first temperance journal to be published in Russia is the Viestnix Tresvosti (messenger of temperance). Its first issue appeared Sept. 1, 1899.

The Kansas Senate has passed a bill to make more efficient the enforcement of the prohibitory law. According to its provisions, the third violation of the law subjects the liquor seller to a term of from one to three years in the penitentiary.

Twenty-six thousand arrests for drunkenness a year and eight thousand imprisonments is the appalling record of one of the most enlightened of American cities. It means one arrest to every four families. The net cost to the city was therefore more than $100,000.

The Herald and Presbyter says: "The best authorities tell us that for every dollar of revenue the saloons bring in, they occasion a cost, direct or indirect, of $21. Blot out the saloons with the costs they compel, and the raising of the incurred deficit in the revenue would be as easy as laying aside one dollar out of twenty-one that you put in your pocket."

The terrible ravages of the opium trade in China is indicated by the number of suicides. In Yunnan province there are on an average a 1,000 attempted opium suicides per month. The average for the whole of China is not less than 600,000 per year. Dr. William Park says here are over 800,000, and that the number of deaths from opium poisoning is not less than 200,000 a year.

Rev. J. Q. A. Henry, superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League in New York, said recently concerning the church and the saloon: "One or the other is right; one or the other is wrong. One must triumph. If the saloon stays, the church must go. The solution of the problem is in the church. The charge cannot be turned over to any other body. The saloon is hostile to Christianity, to citizenship and to true Americanism."

A law which will go into effect in Germany in 1900, places every confirmed drunkard under the espionage of a "curator." This person will he empowered to put the individual whom he regards as a dipsomaniac anywhere he pleases, there to undergo treatment for the malady as long as the "curator" wishes. The law defines an habitual drunkard as one who, in consequence of inebriety, cannot provide for his affairs or endangers the safety of others.

Iowa first tried license laws, then prohibition, and now tries, in its larger cities, what is known as a mulct law. Under the license law, the number of penitentiary convicts was 800; under prohibition, 532; under the mulct law, 1,171. By a recent decision of the Supreme Court, brought about by the Anti-Saloon League, two-thirds of the saloons were temporarily closed, because they had not filed the consent petitions required by the new code of 1897.

The establishment of an asylum, or hospital, for drunkards by the state is being urged in South Carolina, the home of the state dispensary scheme. One set proposes to establish the asylum, or institute, as an annex to the State Insane Asylum, conducting it under the same management. Others urge that the Legislature pass a law making drunkenness a crime, and establish a reformatory for drunkards, where they can be given hard work in a cotton mill, machine shops and on a farm.

From the official report of the superintendent of the Washington police it is shown that while the whole number of arrests in the District, with a barroom for each 441 of its population, was equal to one arrest for every eleven of its population, the number of arrests made in the First precinct, with a barroom for every 113 of its population, was equal to one for every three of its population, and in the Ninth precinct, with a barroom for every 1048 of its population, the number of arrests was only one for every eighteen of its population. A petition to Congress to prohibit the liquor traffic in the District of Columbia is being prepared.

—The Ram's Horn, March 17, 1900, p. 15.