r of the Sons of Temperance
appointed a committee to ascertain the number of deaths from cholera
among their members. It was found that there were twelve hundred and
forty-three members in the city and suburbs, and among these only three
deaths had occurred, being only one-sixth the average death-rate." "In
New York, in 1832, only two out of five thousand members of temperance
societies died." The Northwestern Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, one of the oldest and most successful Companies in the
Northwest, has lived for nearly forty years next neighbor to lager beer
interests. The shrewd men of this company have studied the influence of
the beer industry upon those who engage in it. The result is, that they
will no longer grant an insurance policy to a beer-brewer, nor to any
one in any way engaged in the business. In their own words their reason
is this: "Our statistics show that our business has been injured by the
short lives of those men who drink lager beer."

Then, we need to study the drink evil in its relation to society. "A
recent report of the chaplain of the Madalen Society of New York shows
that of eight-nine fallen women in the asylum at one time, all but
two ascribed their fall to the effect of the drink habit." "A lady
missionary makes the statement that of two thousand sinful women known
personally to her, there were only ten cases in which intoxicating
liquors were not largely responsible for their fall." "A leading worker
for reform in New York says that the suppression of the curse of strong
drink would include the destruction of ninety-nine of every one hundred
of the houses of ill-fame." "A missionary on going at the written
request of one of these lost women to rescue her from a den of infamy
remonstrated with her for being even then slightly under the influence
of drink." "Why," was her indignant reply as tears filled her eyes,
"do you suppose we girls are so dead that we have lost our memories of
mother, home, and everything good? No, indeed; and if it were not for
liquor and opium, we would all have to run away from our present life or
go mad by pleadings of our own hearts and home memories."

Only by a study of the drink evil shall we know its ravages in the home.
Those of us who have lived in the pure air of free, country home-life
can not easily realize the moral plague of drunkenness as it blights the
home in the crowded districts of city slum life. Nor is the home of the
ci