ohol. By teaching based on facts that intimately
concern the life of the child, as well as by caring for his health and
his environment, the schools can help supplant the desire for alcohol
with other more healthy desires.

No truth about alcohol is more important than that the craving for
alcohol or something just as bad will exist side by side with imperfect
sanitation, too long hours of work, food that fails to nourish, lack of
exercise, rest, and fresh air. Conditions that produce bounding
vitality and offer freedom for its expression at work and at play will
supplant the craving for stimulants. Finally, the great truth contained
in the last chapter must be taught, that success in coping with
alcoholism is a community task requiring efficient government above all
else.

CHAPTER XXXVI

FIGHTING TOBACCO EVILS

"It is not necessarily vicious or harmful to soothe excited nerves."
This editorial comment explains, even if it condemns while trying to
justify, the tobacco habit. To soothe excited nerves by lying to them
about their condition and by weakening where we promise to nourish, is
vicious and harmful just as other lying and robbery are vicious and
harmful. Yet two essential facts in dealing with tobacco evils must be
considered: tobacco does soothe excited nerves, and the harm done to
the majority of smokers seems to them to be negligible. For these two
reasons the tobacco user, unless frightened by effects already visible,
refuses to listen to physiological arguments against his amiable
self-indulgence. Cheerfully he admits the theoretical possibility that
by its method of soothing nerves tobacco kills nerve energy. But in all
sincerity he points to men who have found the right stopping point up
to which tobacco hurts less perhaps than coffee or tea, candy or
lobster, overeating or undersleeping. Therefore the physician, the
bishop, the school superintendent, candidly run the necessary risk for
the sake of nerve soothing and sociability.

Less harm would be done by tobacco if it were more harmful. Like so
many other food poisons, its use in small quantities does not produce
the prompt, vivid, unequivocal results that remove all doubt as to the
user's injuries and intemperance. As inability to see the physiological
effect upon himself encourages the tobacco user to continue smoking or
chewing, so failure to identify evil physiological effects upon the
smoker encourages the nonuser to begin smoking or