But I make haste to say that within the last twenty or thirty years American students have improved immensely in this respect. Athletics and greater interest in study, caused by the substitution of the students' own aims and tastes for the old cast-iron curriculum, are doubtless the main reasons for this improvement.[12]
[12] Further reasons for this improvement I have endeavored to give more in detail elsewhere.
Yet, in spite of this redeeming thing, the fact remains that one of the greatest curses of American life is the dram-drinking of distilled liquors at bars; and one key of the whole misery is the American habit of ``treating,''--a habit unknown in other countries. For example, in America, if Tom, Dick, and Harry happen to meet at a hotel, or in the street, to discuss politics or business, Tom invites Dick and Harry to drink with him, which, in accordance with the code existing among large classes of our fellow-citizens, Dick and Harry feel bound to do.
After a little more talk Dick invites Harry and Tom to drink; they feel obliged to accept; and finally Harry invites Tom and Dick, with like result; so that these three men have poured down their throats several glasses of burning stimulants, perhaps in the morning, perhaps just before the midday meal, or at some other especially unsuitable time, with results more or less injurious to each of them, physically and morally.
The European, more sensible, takes with his dinner, as a rule, a glass or two of wine or beer, and is little, if at all, the worse for it. If he ever takes any distilled liquor, he sips a very small glass of it after his dinner, to aid digestion.
It is my earnest conviction, based upon wide observation in my own country as well as in many others during about half a century, that the American theory and practice as regards the drink question are generally more pernicious than those of any other civilized nation. Iam not now speaking of TOTAL ABSTINENCE--of that, more presently. But the best TEMPERANCE workers among us that I know are the men who brew light, pure beer, and the vine-growers in California who raise and sell at a very low price wines pleasant and salutary, if any wines can be so.
As to those who have no self-restraint, beer and wine, like many other things, promote the ``survival of the fittest,'' and are, like many other things, ``fool-killers,''
aiding to free the next generation from men of vicious propensities and weak will.
I repeat it, the curse of American social life, among a very considerable class of our people, is ``perpendicular drinking''--that is, the pouring down of glass after glass of distilled spirits, mostly adulterated, at all sorts of inopportune times, and largely under the system of ``treating.''
The best cure for this, in my judgment, would be for States to authorize and local authorities to adopt the ``Swedish system,'' which I found doing excellent service at Gothenburg in Sweden a few years since, and which I am sorry to see the fanatics there have recently wrecked. Under this plan the various towns allowed a company to open a certain number of clean, tidy drinking-places; obliged them to purchase pure liquors; forbade them, under penalties, to sell to any man who had already taken too much; made it also obligatory to sell something to eat at the same time with something to drink; and, best of all, restricted the profits of these establishments to a moderate percentage,--seven or eight per cent., if I re-member rightly,--all the surplus receipts going to public purposes, and especially to local charities. The main point was that the men appointed to dispense the drinks had no motive to sell adulterated drinks, or any more liquor than was consistent with the sobriety of the customer.
I may add that, in my opinion, the worst enemies of real temperance in America, as in other countries, have been the thoughtless screamers against intemperance, who have driven vast numbers of their fellow-citizens to drink in secret or at bars. Of course I shall have the honor of being railed at and denounced by every fanatic who reads these lines, but from my heart I believe them true.
I remember that some of these people bitterly attacked Governor Stanford of California for the endowment of Stanford University, in part, from the rent of his vineyards.
People who had not a word to say against one theological seminary for accepting the Daniel Drew endowment, or against another for accepting the Jay Gould endowment, were horrified that the Stanford University should receive revenue from a vineyard. The vineyards of California, if their product were legally protected from adulteration, could be made one of the most potent influences against drunkenness that our country has seen. The California wines are practically the only pure wines accessible to Americans. They are so plentiful that there is no motive to adulterate them, and their use among those of us who are so unwise as to drink anything except water ought to be effectively advocated as supplanting the drinking of beer poisoned with strychnine, whisky poisoned with fusel-oil, and ``French claret'' poisoned with salicylic acid and aniline.
The true way to supplant the ``saloon'' and the barroom, as regards working-men who obey their social instincts by seeking something in the nature of a club, and therefore resorting to places where stimulants are sold, is to take the course so ably advocated by Bishop Potter:
namely, to furnish places of refreshment and amusement which shall be free from all tendency to beastliness, and which, with cheerful open fireplaces, games of various sorts, good coffee and tea, and, if necessary, light beer and wine, shall be more attractive than the ``saloons''
and ``dives'' which are doing our country such vast harm.
My advice to all men is to drink nothing but water.
