Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/96

 82 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the Arabs, does not know alcohol and its results, because its legis- lator and prophet, Mahomet, forbade the use of wine. Alcohol, as Gladstone has said, makes in our day worse ravages than the three historic plagues — famine, pestilence, and war. It deci- mates beyond the pestilence and famine ; it kills more than war; and it does worse than slay — it dishonors. Famine has become rare. Medicine has vanquished the plague. War is an inter- mittent evil. But alcoholism is a continual and degrading evil. Some nations release themselves from it by energetic measures, but there is need of a similar energy and courage in other nations to annihilate the greatest enemy of the world. To conquer alcoholism would be to reduce the hereditary causes of nervous and mental disorders to a minimum ; and to diminish the num- ber of asylums for insanity, crime, vagabondage, and pauperism ; and also, consequently, the orphanages, hospitals, and hospices for the aged. This would be a notable contribution to the physical and moral welfare of the people, and to the happiness of numberless families.

Professor Delman, of Rome, has made a very interesting study of hereditary inebriety. One woman, named Ada Jaske, born in 1740, deceased at the beginning of this century, was an old drunkard, a thief, and a vagabond. She left a progeny of 834 persons, of whom 709 have been studied in their history. Of this number there have been 106 illegitimate children, 142 mendicants, 64 sustained by charity; 161 women gave them- selves to prostitution ; 76 members of this family were crim- inals, and among them seven assassins. In seventy-five years this single family, according to official estimates, has cost for maintenance, expenses of imprisonment, damage, and interest a sum of five million marks !

This statement deserves special notice ; it confirms the importance of improving social education. While many govern- ments and other institutions busy themselves with trifles of instruction, and also impose intolerable burdens on teachers who desire progress, they leave untouched the great questions to which we have called attention.