Alcohol its friends and foes Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ALCOHOL: ITS FRIENDS AND FOES. The great social question, several phases of which are comprehended in the various works whose titles are prefixed to this arti... more »cle, is one which has the very highest interest for every member of the human family. There is no question involving the interests of mankind which has not two sides to it; there is none in wlu'ch these sides are more strongly contrasted than that of alcohol, under which generic term we include, for the nonce, every form of stimulant. In every respect the antithesis is sufficiently striking: here we have a vast source of national revenue, colossal fortunes realized, and very many families supported in happiness and comfort by the manufacture, the sale, and other transactions relating to the production and distribution of alcoholic drinks; and there we have the deepest degradation and misery produced by their excessive consumption. The political economist — always more or less of a utilitarian — aghast at the immensity of the material interests at stake, yet fully aware of the evils of our present system, approaches the drink question in the wariest manner; temporizes, and looks to others for a solution of the difficulty, fearful of committing political suicide by bringing on himself a social avalanche which might be induced by the slightest disturbance of existing arrangements. The social reformer, goaded almost to madness by the degradation and misery around him, ignores every other consideration, and runs amuck at what he regards as the prime cause of the evil, — alcohol, — and would not hesitate to sweep from the earth all concernedwith the production and distribution of alcoholic drinks, out of excessive love and pity for their intemperate consumers. By means of Temperance, Teetotal, and Good Templar Societies he fl...« less