fective way of combating
alcoholism is to insure the enforcement of existing laws and to profit
from lessons taught by such enforcement; if children are taught that
the strongest reasons for total abstinence are social, economic, and
industrial rather than individual and physiological,--there is much to
be gained and little to lose from telling them the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth about alcohol. To stimulate a child's
imagination by untruths about alcohol is as vicious as to stimulate his
body with alcohol. Whisky drinking does not always lead to drunkenness,
to physical incapacity, to short life, or to obvious loss of vitality.
Beer drinking is not always objected to by employers. Neither crime,
poverty, immorality, lack of ambition, nor ignorance can always be
traced to alcohol. On the contrary, it is unquestionably true that the
majority of the nation's heroes have used alcoholics moderately or
excessively for the greater part of their lives. It is probably true
that among the hundred most eminent officials, pastors, merchants,
professors, and scientists of to-day, the great majority of each class
are moderate users of one or more forms of alcoholics. Overeating of
potatoes or cake or meat, sleeping or working in ill-ventilated rooms,
neglect of constipation, may occasion physiological and industrial
injuries that are not only as grave in themselves as the evils of
moderate drinking, but, in addition, actually tempt to moderate
drinking.

All of this can be safely admitted, because whether parents and
teachers admit it or deny it, children by observation and by reading
will become convinced that up to the year 1908 the noblest and the most
successful men of America, as well as the most depraved and least
successful, have used alcoholics. To be candid enough to admit this
enables us to gain a hold upon the confidence and the intelligence of
children and youth that will strengthen our arguments, based upon
social and industrial as well as physiological grounds, against running
the risks that are inevitably incurred by even the moderate use of
alcohol.

Other things being equal, the same man will do better work without
alcohol than with alcohol; the same athlete will be stronger and more
alert without alcohol than with alcohol; the clerk or lawyer or teacher
will win promotion earlier without alcohol than with alcohol; man or
woman will grow old quicker with than without alcohol. Other things
be