Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/568

554, acknowledged his discouragement to a sagacious friend, who suggested to him that there was a sure way in which the cause might he made to succeed. "It has been shown," said he, "that the use of alcohol is very injurious to the human stomach. Men care for their stomachs more than for anything else. Prove to them that alcoholic liquors impair and destroy the digestive organs, and your case is won and that work done." Mr. Delavan, accordingly, had prepared a series of colossal lithograph plates, showing the progressive influence of alcohol upon the coats of the stomach, from the first congestion that follows moderate indulgence in the stimulant, onward through the stages of inflammation and disorganization to the final ulcerated condition shown by the post-mortem of habitual drunkards. The enterprise was pushed with great vigor. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in the manufacture of these stomach-charts, and they were hung up conspicuously in the halls of court-houses, on the walls of public institutions, and in all places where they could be observed by everybody. That these illustrations did good service there can be no doubt, although able medical men denied their strict accuracy. One effect was to concentrate so much attention upon the stomach that all other parts of the human system were neglected, and this made necessary new scientific expositions, showing that the peculiar and most injurious effect of ingested alcohol is upon the nervous system and the brain.

But, while great good was undoubtedly accomplished by the means adopted, and, indeed, all the good that could be expected from them, the results were still unsatisfactory—that is, the evil of intemperance was not swept from the country as the sanguine reformers had anticipated. The movement was driven as a crusade having a definite end. Attention was so concentrated upon the evils of intemperance that they came to be considered as almost the only evils with which mankind are afflicted. Fervor of feeling grew into heated and passionate partisanship, with impatience of tardy results. There was but little recognition of anything like natural laws in the case, and no admission of the great truth that radical changes in the conduct of human nature must proceed slowly and are limited by many conditions. There grew up a conviction that the temperance movement as thus prosecuted had proved a failure. Men had been instructed, persuaded, and denounced, until it was felt that these agencies had accomplished everything of which they were capable, and it was resolved to push on to more stringent measures. If men could not be induced to abstain voluntarily from the use of intoxicants, then they must be compelled to abstain. Government must be appealed to, to force the results which moral influence had failed to secure. If men would not stop drinking, they must be deprived of the means of drinking, and so it was determined to strike at the trade in alcoholic liquors, and to outlaw it by prohibitory legislation.

The temperance question was thus launched into politics, a change of great import, as it was the virtual abandonment of the policy hitherto pursued. Moral influences were, of course, not openly repudiated, but it remains true that they no longer characterized the temperance movement. The faith in them had departed, and its place was taken by the new faith in the efficacy of political action. We called attention last month to the overshadowing influence of the great superstition that political agencies are omnipotent for the accomplishment of social ends.

In the face of notorious facts, and in the teeth of all experience, we cling to the notion that government can do everything; so that now it is widely believed that a reformation of social habits, involving the strongest appetites,