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                            THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

 _A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF
             THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE._

                 VOL. V.      JANUARY, 1885.      No. 4.




Officers of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.


_President_, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. _Chancellor_, J. H. Vincent,
D.D., New Haven, Conn. _Counselors_, The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.,
the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C.
Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. _Office Secretary_, Miss Kate
F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. _General Secretary_, Albert M. Martin,
Pittsburgh, Pa.




Contents

Transcriber’s Note: This table of contents of this periodical was created
for the HTML version to aid the reader.

    REQUIRED READING
    Temperance Teachings of Science; or, the Poison Problem
        Chapter IV.—The Cost of Intemperance                     183
    Sunday Readings
        [_January 4_]                                            186
        [_January 11_]                                           186
        [_January 18_]                                           186
        [_January 25_]                                           187
    Glimpses of Ancient Greek Life
        Chapter IV.—Public Life of the Greek Citizen             187
    Greek Mythology
        Chapter IV.                                              190
    Studies in Kitchen Science and Art
        IV.—Apples, Peaches, Blackberries and Strawberries       194
    Home Studies in Chemistry and Physics
        Air—Physical Properties                                  199
    The Homelike House
        Chapter I.—The Hall                                      203
    A Prayer by the Sea                                          206
    Geography of the Heavens for January                         207
    Yale College and Yale Customs                                208
    New Zealand                                                  211
    The Laureate Poets                                           212
    The Bells of Notre Dame                                      215
    The New York Custom House                                    215
    The Christian Revolt of the Jews in Southern Russia          218
    The Inner Chautauqua                                         220
    Outline of Required Readings                                 221
    Programs for Local Circle Work                               221
    Local Circles                                                222
    The C. L. S. C. Classes                                      227
    Questions and Answers                                        229
    The Chautauqua University: The Correspondence Schools        231
    “Invincible”—Class of ’85                                    232
    Editor’s Outlook                                             233
    Editor’s Note-Book                                           235
    C. L. S. C. Notes on Required Readings for January           238
    Notes on Required Readings in “The Chautauquan”              239
    A Chapter of Blunders                                        242
    Talk About Books                                             244
    Special Notes                                                245
    Sunday-School Normal Graduates, Class of 1884                246




REQUIRED READING FOR JANUARY.




TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE; OR, THE POISON PROBLEM.

BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.


CHAPTER IV.—THE COST OF INTEMPERANCE.

    “Shall we sow tares and pray for bread?”—_Abd el Wahab._[1]

If we consider the manifold afflictions which in the after years of so
many millions of our fellowmen outweigh the happiness of childhood, we
can hardly wonder that several great thinkers have expressed a serious
doubt if earthly existence is on the whole a blessing. Yet for those
who hold that the progress of science and education will ultimately
remove that doubt, it is a consoling reflection that the greatest of all
earthly evils are avoidable ones. The earthquake of Lisbon[2] killed
sixty thousand persons who could not possibly have foreseen their fate.
In 1282 an irruption of the Zuyder Sea overwhelmed sixty-five towns
whose inhabitants had not five minutes’ time to effect their escape.
But what are such calamities compared with the havoc of wanton wars,
or the ravages of consumption and other diseases that are the direct
consequences of outrageous sins against the physical laws of God? The
cruelty of man to man causes more misery than the rage of wild beasts
and all the hostile elements of Nature, but the heaviest of all evils in
our great burden of self-inflicted woe is undoubtedly the curse of the
poison vice. The alcohol habit is a concentration of all scourges. In
the poor island of Ireland alone one hundred and forty million bushels
of bread-corn and potatoes are yearly sent to the distillery. The
shipment of the grain, its conversion into a health-destroying drug, the
distribution and sale of the poison, are carried on under the protection
of a so-called civilized government. _Waste_ is not an adequate word for
that monstrous folly. If the grain farmers of Laputa[3] should organize
an expedition to the sea-coast, and under the auspices of the legal
authorities equip an apparatus for flinging a hundred million sacks
of grain into the ocean, the contents of those sacks would be lost,
and there would be an end of it. The sea would swallow the cargo. The
distillery swallows the grain, but disgorges it in the form of a liquid
fire that spreads its flames over the land and scorches the bodies
and souls of men till the smoke of the torment arises from a million
homesteads. We might marvel at the extravagance of the Laputans, but
what should we say if the priests of a pastoral nation were to slaughter
thousands of herds on the altar of a national idol, and in conformity
with an established custom let the carcasses rot in the open fields till
the progress of putrefaction filled the land with horror and pestilence;
if moreover, among the crowd of victims we should recognize the milch
cows of thousands of poor families whose children were wan with hunger,
and if furthermore the intelligent rulers of that nation should supervise
the ceremonies of the sacrifice, distribute the carcasses and calmly
collect statistics to ascertain the percentage of the resultant mortality?

The LOSS OF LIFE caused by the ravages of the alcohol plague equals the
result of a perennial war. The most belligerent nation of modern times,
the Russians, with the perpetual skirmishes on their eastern frontier,
and their periodical campaigns against their southern neighbors, lose
in battle a yearly average of 7,000 men. The average longevity of the
Caucasian nations is nearly 38 years. Of their picked men about 45 years.
The average age of a soldier is now-a-days about 25 years. The death of
7,000 soldiers represents therefore a national loss of 7,000 times the
difference between 25 and 45 years, _i. e._, a total waste of 140,000
years. Medical statistics show that in the United States alone the direct
consequences of intoxication cost every year the lives of six thousand
persons, most of them reckless young drunkards, who thus anticipate
the natural term of their lives by about twenty years. But at the very
least, two per cent. of our population is addicted to the constant use
of some form of alcoholic liquors. Prof. Neison, of the British General
Life Insurance Company, estimates that rum-drinkers shorten their lives
by seven years, beer-drinkers by five and one-half, and “mixed drinkers”
by nine and one-half years. For the city of London, Sir H. Thompson
computes that drinkers of all classes shorten their lives by six years.
But let us be quite sure to keep within the limits of facts applying to
all conditions of life, and assume a minimum of four years. A total of
4,120,000 years for the population of the United States is therefore a
moderate estimate of the annual life waste by the consequences of the
poison vice! In other words, in a country of by no means exceptionally
hard drinkers, alcohol destroys yearly thirty times as much life as the
warfare of the most warlike nation on earth. The first year of the war
for the preservation of the Union and the suppression of slavery cost
us 82,000 lives. When the death list had reached a total of 100,000 the
clamors for peace became so importunate that the representatives of our
nation were several times on the point of abandoning the cause of the
most righteous war ever waged. Yet the far larger life waste on the altar
of the Poison-Moloch continues year after year, and for a small bribe
not a few of our prominent politicians seem willing to perpetuate that
curse to the end of time. Among all the nations of the Christian world,
with the only exception of the Syrian Maronites,[4] the poison vice
has shortened the average longevity of the working classes by at least
five years. Political economists have calculated the consequent loss of
productive force, but there is another consideration which is too often
overlooked. The progress of degeneration has reduced our life term so
far below the normal average that the highest purposes of individual
existence are generally defeated. Our lives are mostly half-told tales.
Our season ends before the harvest time; before the laborer’s task
is half done he is overtaken by the night when no man can work. The
secret of longevity would, indeed, solve the chief riddle of existence,
for the children of toil could then hope to reach the goal of the
visible compensation which, on earth at least, is now reserved for the
exceptional favorites of fortune. That hope is diminished by everything
that tends still further to reduce our shortened span of life, and beside
increasing the burdens of existence, the poison vice therefore directly
decreases the possibility of its rewards.

Yet that result is almost insured by the LOSS OF HEALTH which all
experienced physiologists admit to be the inevitable consequence of the
stimulant habit. Every known disease of the human system is aggravated by
intemperance. The morbid diathesis, as physicians call a predisposition
to organic disorders, finds an ally in alcohol that enables it to defy
the expurgative efforts of Nature. A consumptive toper will fail to
derive any benefit from a change of climate. A dram-drinking dyspeptic
can not be cured by outdoor exercise. The influence of alcoholic tonics
tends to aggravate nervous disorders into mental derangements. But
even the soundest constitution is not proof against the bane of that
influence. Before the end of the first year habitual drinkers lose that
spontaneous gayety which constitutes the happiness of perfect health as
well as of childhood. The system becomes dependent upon the treacherous
aid of artificial stimulants, and the lack of vital vigor soon begins to
tell upon every part of the organism. Alcohol counteracts the benefit
of all the hygienic advantages of climate and habit, and it is doubtful
if the effect of its continued influence could be equaled by the
intentional introduction of contagious diseases. A medical expert might
collect the most incurable patients in the leper slums of Shanghai, in
the lazarettos[5] of Naples and the fever hospitals of Vera Cruz, and
distribute them in the cities of another country; yet a year after the
dissemination of such diseases the hygienic condition of a temperate
nation would be better than that of a drunkard nation after a year of the
strictest quarantine protection. In the sanitary history of the Caucasian
nations alcohol has proved a worse plague than the Black Death.

The WASTE OF LAND and the WASTE OF LABOR must be considered together,
in order to comprehend the total amount of the loss which the fourteen
most civilized nations inflict on themselves by the unspeakable folly of
devoting from 20 to 25 per cent. of their fertile area to the production
of stimulating poisons. If the land thus abused were simply neglected, if
it were abandoned to the weeds and tares, the laborers who now cultivate
it in the interest of hell might employ their time in assisting their
friends and help them to cultivate better or larger crops on the soil of
the adjoining lands. If they should prefer to emigrate, their abandoned
fields might be cultivated by their neighbors. Even children in the
intervals of their play might plant cherry stones, and help the soil to
contribute to the welfare of the community. As it is, it contributes only
to the development of diseases, vices and crimes. The productions of the
land, the toil of the husbandmen, are not only utterly lost, but become a
curse to the population of the country. Starving Ireland devotes a third
of her arable lands to the production of distillery crops. Spain begs
with one hand and with the other flings two-fifths of her produce to the
poison vender. The statistics of the last census show that distilleries
devour every year 34,300,000 acres of our total farm produce; breweries,
9,600,000; wine cellars, cider mills (not to mention tobacco factories),
about five millions more!

The old settlers of western Arkansas still remember the excitement caused
by occasional raids of predatory Indians who used to cross the Texas
border and devastate the farms of the frontiersmen. Near Arkadelphia they
once burned three hundred acres of ripe corn, and half a dozen counties
joined in the pursuit of the marauders. Imagine the blazing indignation,
the mass meetings, the general uprising of an outraged people, if the
Mormons should take it in their heads to burn three million acres of
our grain crop. Yet the distillers not only burn up more than the
tenfold amount, but fan the flames to kindle a soul and body consuming
conflagration, and shriek about infringements of their privileges if a
bold hand here and there succeeds in snatching a brand from the burning.

The WASTE OF REMEDIAL EXPENDITURE must be considered under a separate
head, for beside squandering their own resources, the votaries of the
poison fiend waste those of their neighbors, who have to devise means
for mitigating the resulting mischief. The care of drunkards, _i. e._,
of persons picked up in the streets in a state of life-endangering
intoxication, costs our hospitals a yearly sum of $5,000,000. A list
of the various diseases which can be traced to the direct or indirect
influence of intemperance would require the enumeration of nearly all
known disorders of the human organism, but, though drunkards become a
burden to their families oftener than to the charitable institutions of
the community, it has been ascertained that they constitute 30 per cent.
of the inmates of such establishments as county infirmaries, charity
hospitals, almshouses, poorhouses and lunatic asylums. Prisons proper,
that is, institutions for the cure of moral disorders, are filled with
patients where derelictions in forty out of a hundred cases have been
committed either under the immediate influence of intoxicating liquors,
or as a consequence of such direct results of intemperance as loss of
property, loss of credit, loss of moral or mental integrity. In 1870 the
prisons of the United States cost the nation a yearly sum of $87,000,000.
By this time their cost probably amounts to a full hundred millions.
The magistrates of our city courts have to waste half their time on
the trial of drunkards. On the blackboards of our metropolitan station
houses “D. D. C.” after the name of a prisoner means So-and-So locked
up for drunkenness and disorderly conduct; they have to abbreviate the
specification of that offense to save a little space for other memoranda.
If the indirect consequences of the poison vice could be traced through
all their ramifications, it would be found that the suppression of that
vice would relieve our cities from a burden equivalent to a full half of
all their municipal taxes.

The MORAL LOSS is not confined to the direct influence of the
brutalizing poison. The liquor traffic defiles all participants of
a transaction which involves a sin against Nature, a crime against
society and posterity, and an outrage against the moral instincts of
the veriest savage, for more than five thousand years ago the lawgivers
of the Bactrian nomads[6] recorded their protest against the vice of
intoxication. A drunkard who flees from the prohibitory laws of his
native place can not escape the voice of an inner monitor. The liquor
dealer who points to his license is not the less conscious that he is an
enemy of mankind, and that his servants eat the wages of a soul and body
corrupting vice. The lawgiver who can be bribed to connive at that vice
not only sins against the laws of political economy, but against Nature
and the first principles of natural ethics, and forfeits his claim to the
respect of the community. Faith in the sanctity of the law, in the wisdom
and integrity of the legislator, is the very corner-stone of public
morals, but that faith is incompatible with a system of legalized crime,
and the lawgiver who consents to sanction the outrage of the poison
traffic undermines the basis of his authority, and thereby the authority
of the law itself. It is wholly certain that larceny and perjury
combined do not damage the state the hundredth part as much as the curse
of the poison vice; yet what should we think of the moral status of a
legislative assembly devising a plan to increase the national revenues
by granting license to pickpockets and professional false witnesses?
Imagine a Titus Oates[7] offering his services on the public streets,
and a chief justice compelling the courts to recognize the legality
of his business, and protect him in the enjoyment of its emoluments!
Imagine Jack Sheppard[8] filching the weekly wages of a half-witted
working man, and flaunting a government license if the wife of his victim
should demand the restitution of the plunder. The absurdity of such an
arrangement might seem too glaring to imagine its possibility. Yet for
the same reason posterity may refuse to credit the records of our liquor
system; for, translated into plain speech, the contract between the state
and the rum vender means even this: “On condition of receiving a share in
the yearly profits of your business, I herewith grant you the right to
poison your fellow-citizens.”

The LOSS OF WEALTH, which some of the foregoing considerations will
enable us to estimate, has increased with the progress of our national
development in a way which in many respects has made that progress