Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1874 — Education the Remedy. [ARTICLE]

Education the Remedy.

The evil effects of intemperance, in the.use not only of intoxicating drinks but of.other stimulants and narcotics, are so great that it behooves reformers to study every phase of the question, and to urge every means of counteraction. It is well that the legal aspects of the temperance question should be thoroughly mastered and societygiven the benefit of all that can be done in this direction, either in the way of prohibition or restraint. But the moral aspect of the case is equally impdhant, and in this regard much can be done in the education of children and youth.— The idea should be thoroughlyinstilled into them not only that intemperance is morally degrading, but that the use of all stimulants retards mental and physical development, saps the system and ruins the health. A recent writer says: “I have long thought and frequent ly stated that if our young people would avoid the formation of habits of free indulgence in stimulants and narcotics until the growth is completed, a period which variously ranges between the age 6of twenty and twenty-five, intemperance and most of the physical disease that result from these substances 'would, iu the course of the next generation, be well-nigh unknown, for habitual intemperance, like most other vices, is usually the result of habits formed in youth.” This is sound philosophy. If we are becoming a nation of intemperate smokers, chewers and drinkers, it is largely because the youth of the land contract these vices at a period of life when they ought to eschew all stimulants, and when not only are the chains of habit easily forged which will bind them in -after life, but the healthy development ot mind and body are retarded and the seeds of disease planted deep in the sys tem- Even tea and coffee, unless very sparingly used, are injurious to growing youth, and how much more tobacco, wine mid spirits.—

Yet bow’ many American boys and girls are confirmed coffee and te 5 a drinkers, and how rare it is lo find a city youth of eighteen or twenty who does not smoke or drink, or, perhaps, do both. We art convinced that much more can be done than has yet been attempted to arrest the evils of intemperance by thoroughly instructing our youth as to its physiological effects. Of course the moral effects of all in temperance are worst, and not the least among v these is the utter enslavement to a low appetite or a bad habit—an idea which to any youth of pure mind and noble spirit ! must be intensely revolting. But in addition to the moral considerations, the physical evils 'resulting from the use of stimulants and narcotics in youth are such that a careful and constant inculcation of them could hardly fail To have its effect in restraining many who might otherwise insensibly lapse, as thousands do, into these bad habits, and waken only to find themselves in the iron grasp of an ineradicable vic«. A reform effected among the children and youth of the land might be slow in producing results, but it would be deep and lasting, and beneficial effects would appear with cumulative force in the improved morals, health and longevity ot the rac e.—lndianapolis Journal.