Miss A says: "I am a stenographer of ability when I am physically up to par. When I drink at night I go to work the next morning with a hang-over that makes me almost worthless. The mistakes I make in typing literally pile up. The boss becomes angry and severely scolds me. As I am irritable at a time like this, there is usually something like a pitched battle between me and the other stenographers in the department. This is what I pay for liquor."

Mr. D says by his actions: "I am married and have two sons. I drink, as a rule, only on payday. By the time I arrive home from my work on that day my money is either all gone or nearly so. My wife, under the strain of trying to keep the home together in spite of my habit, is unable to give my two boys the attention they should have. As a result of this, those boys are running with the wrong crowd and have already been involved in serious trouble in the neighborhood. If they continue to go in the direction they are now going, they are sure to end up in a penal institution. This is the price I pay for my liquor,"

Mr. K says: "I once was president of the Chamber of Commerce in a certain southern city. When I started drinking I then and there stepped on a toboggan that quickly took me to the bottom of the hill of prosperity and respect. This has been the price I paid for liquor.

There is no end to stories like these. The two, three, or more dolars one may have to pay for a bottle of liquor is in reality the small down payment. After the payment of dollars often comes the payment of loss of respect, loss of confidence, broken homes, acute domestic difficulties, loss of money, loss of good friends, loss of job, and often a premature death. This is a colossal price to pay for a dangerous liquid in a pretty glass. One must engage in a wholesale disregard of a sense of values in order to yield to this cobra that has such a deadly bite.

Let us discourage liquor advertising. Let us vote out the body-and-soul destroying liquid. But let us not forget the importance of completing our work. Unless men are helped to have a new sense of values, there will be ways for them to get what it may not be lawful for them to obtain. The person whose philosophy of life is "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die" has a view of life that is loaded with deadly poison. Such a philosophy allows for a woeful misplacement of values.

Drinking could never fit into a sound philosophy of life. With a true sense of values a person will seek to obtain and experience that which will enrich his own life and enable him to have something worth while to share with others. This is a safe measuring stick to carry with you. The value of liquor is nil, not only because it robs the drinker, but also because it all too often makes him a menace to society. Many a drunken driver has sent another person to the hospital or the morgue, the drinker, meanwhile, sobering up in the city jail.

In a sane moment, what value could a habitual drinker place on a substance he did not know beforehand was an intoxicant, if he were told the following facts? "The content of this liquid is 5 per cent vegetable matter, 4 per cent alcohol, and 91 per cent water. The habit-forming nature of this drink and its injurious constitutional effects far outweigh any benefit derived therefrom. It will dull the entire nervous system, causing illusions, double vision, color blindness, benumbed conscience, irritated nerves, and retarded mental responses. It contains protoplasmic poison that has a tendency to destroy the higher form of cells in the body. It puts brain cells to sleep, thus weakening judgment and self-restraint. This liquid is properly classed with chloroform, morphine, cocaine, and nicotine." Do you think he would be inclined to say, "If it is all that I will lay down my life at its altar"? A thinking person could not say that. Men who think are capable of establishing a safe sense of values.

This article appeared in the January 4, 1947 publication of "THE GOSPEL TRUMPET" A publication of the Gospel Trumpet Company Anderson, Indiana.