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whole is becoming more sober, drunkenness
is increasing amongst women. I do not believe that
women take to liquor because they like it, anyway at
first, but because they are driven by the wretchedness
of their surroundings and the hopelessness of their
outlook to drown their miseries in alcohol. Men are
led to drink by example and association, but women
are usually secret drinkers and take alcohol for its
numbing effects, and by the way they have scriptural
warrant for this, in the seventh verse of the last
Chapter of the Book of Proverbs where King Solomon
says "Let him drink and forget his poverty and
remember his misery no more." Probably the wise
man did not intend to include women when he wrote
these words, but the effect of poverty is the same now
as it was two thousand years ago, and women drink
to forget. Again and again I repeat—alleviate
misery and you destroy the main temptation to
alcoholic intoxication. More sanitary surroundings
would go a long way towards this end. Sufficient
fairly paid employment would enable husbands to
provide their wives with better food and better
housing and thereby do much to achieve our object,
the diminution of the wastage of infant life.