The Chief Enemy of Women : Part 4

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 24 of 30)

Much more important as a cause of the increased drinking amongst women of the lower classes are the modern conditions of factory and industrial life which so largely take women out of the home; the making of life being neglected in order to serve some industry or other which, if it costs the loss of the coming life, is a national cancer, however grateful its expansion may appear to the capitalist or the Chancellor of the Excheckr. As the nation cares nothing for its girlhood nor for directing employment and education for the supreme business of motherhood, upon which the national existence is always staked, vast numbers of women in early adolescence are now exposed to the very conditions of temptation outside the home to which so many of their brothers have succumbed.

The factory girl learns to drink, and when she marries she takes her drinking habits with her into her home. Modern industrialism, therefore, is to be cited as one of the causes for the increase in drinking amongst women. It may be noted that, in Italy, the temperate race which, according to one elegant but baseless theory, has been evolved through ages of past drinking, is proving itself intemperate when its members are exposed in towns to the industrial conditions which look like national success and the continuance of which would mean national ruin.

A third cause of this increase is to be found in the greatly enhanced facility with which alcoholic drinks can now be obtained by women, not merely outside the home, but within it. So far as Great Britain is concerned we must trace disastrous consequences to the "heaven-born finance" of a former illustrious Chancellor of the Excheckr, who made a little money for the State by selling to grocers permission to sell alcoholic liquors. That was a great blow at womanhood and especially motherhood; not to mention its lamentable effect in raising the death-rate amongst grocers in that intensely obvious and inevitable manner, the increase of temptation, which nothing can persuade the enemies of temperance reform to understand.

It is bad enough that women should be able to obtain alcohol as they do by means of devices which may often prevent their habits from being discovered at all until irreparable mischief has been done. Here the cunning and the greed of commercialism have set to work to fool the public and poison it by a systematic practice which is injurious to all sections of the community, but especially to women, and which cannot be too widely reprobated and exposed. All honor is due to the British Medical Journal, the official organ of the British Medical Association, for its recent attention to this subject.

No one can challenge it when it makes the following assertion regarding meat-wines and other specifics containing alcohol, which are now so widely advertised and consumed: - "It may be pointed out that by the use of these meat-wines the alcoholic habit may be encouraged and established, and that it is a mistake to suppose that they possess any high nutritive qualities." The following are analyzes to which everyone ought to be able to have reference, and further information regarding which may be found in the British Medical Journal for March 27 and May 29, 1909.

In order to complete our reference to this subject, the following may be quoted from an excellent little pamphlet which is published by the National Temperance League. The United States Government Laboratory affords striking evidence of the large percentages of alcohol contained in specifics which are stated to be largely used by persons who profess to be total abstainers.

But indeed we are far from having covered the ground in Great Britain alone. There are many well-known preparations which consist almost entirely of alcohol and water, together with small quantities of flavoring matter nominally medicinal.

There are also other compounds such as Crosby's Balsamic Cough Elixir, Townsend's American Sarsaparilla, and Warner's Safe Cure, which contain from 8 to 10-1/2 percent. of alcohol. As the British Medical Journal justly points out, in a mixture of which a table-spoonful is to be taken five or six times a day a proportion of 10 percent. of alcohol is by no means negligible.

Let it be noted further that though most malt extracts are free from alcohol, that which is called "bynin" contains 8.3 percent, and "standard liquid" 5 percent. The British Medical Journal has also shown that there is at least one "inebriety cure" in Great Britain which consists of a liquid containing just under 30 percent. of alcohol.

On this whole subject it is impossible to speak too strongly, more especially when one is concerned with the interests of woman and womanhood. It is true that in consequence of the labors of those few keen workers whom the impotent and the meaningless and the selfish call fanatics, we are making a beginning in the matter of education on Temperance. But apart from that, which amounts only to very little as yet, it is the lamentable truth that the State does absolutely nothing whatever to protect the community and especially its women from the manifold evils which are involved in such figures as those here quoted.

The State wants money, and life is a trifle. Anything that can pay toll to the State may therefore go without further question. A tax has been paid on all the alcohol in these things. In many cases, also, a further tax has been paid for the government stamp on patent medicines. That the medicine may be dangerous, that it may be a cruel swindle, that it may take from consumptives and others money which is sorely needed for air and food, and give them in return what is worse than nothing - all these things are nothing to the State if the tax is paid.

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.