GIFT OF 
 
 '/<? oo 
 
 We 
 
VHAT I KNOW ABOUT 
 
 -THE- 
 
 LLCOHOL QUESTION 
 
 'HE ONLY WAY TO SETTLE IT 
 
 BY 
 
 W. S. ("SAM") LEAKE 
 
 Author of "The Healing" of 'Sam' Leak.-" 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT 
 
 *L-:_= THE 
 
 ALCOHOL QUESTION 
 
 THE ONLY WAY TO SETTLE IT 
 
 BV 
 W. S. ("SAM") LEAKE 
 
 Author of "The Healing of 'Sam' Leake" 
 
 FIFTY CENTS 
 
 THE TEN BOSCH COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 
 
 121 SECOND STREET 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 BY W. S. LEAKE 
 
 PUBLISHED, MAY, 1914 
 
What I Know About The 
 Alcohol Question 
 
 What do I know personally about 
 alcohol and its abuses? Everything a 
 man can know and survive. The 
 story has already been told and need 
 not be repeated. If I understand the 
 signs of the times, what the world is 
 seeking is a hope, a promise, a solu- 
 tion not an unpleasant retrospect. 
 
 People acquire first a taste for 
 liquor which results in the disease of 
 drunkenness, primarily to get away 
 from some condition in their lives. 
 Very few have a natural liking for 
 alcohol. Nature has kindly made the 
 flavor of alcohol abhorrent and its 
 effect on the beginner indescribably 
 
What I Know About 
 
 distressing. The taste has to be pain- 
 fully cultivated acquired. Why then 
 do we see young men, almost boys, 
 gagging over their whiskey or beer? 
 To get away from something, from 
 their adolescence, from their un- 
 fledged condition. Nearly every 
 youth of eighteen or nineteen has a 
 consuming ambition to be rated as a 
 man. It happens too often that they 
 attempt to reach a man's dignity 
 by copying his vices. They cannot 
 grow whiskers ahead of time, but 
 they can swagger up to a bar and 
 counterfeit familiarity with things 
 beyond their years. Were it not for 
 this fatal inclination to ape their 
 elders, not one boy in ten thousand 
 would have any more inclination for 
 alcohol than for quinine or castor oil. 
 This is one of the numerous respon- 
 
 4 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 sibilities that elder topers cannot 
 dodge. It also brings into the light 
 the awful temptation that undis- 
 guised indulgence in intoxicants of- 
 fers to inexperienced youth. 
 
 All through life, the story is the 
 same just an effort to get away from 
 oneself. The man broken down with 
 overwork seeks to conquer the sense 
 of fatigue after his daily toil, by a 
 bracer or two. The man beset with 
 business troubles separates himself 
 from them for a few hours by indulg- 
 ing in a half doen_stiff jcockjjtils. The 
 man unhappy in domestic life seeks 
 a rejrngdyjiy a nightxiGLwlttLthe boys. 
 Last of all, the confirmed drunkard, 
 above all others, seeks to efface him- 
 self for a few hours from his pitiable 
 condition. I have examined, not hun- 
 dreds, but thousands of cases, and in 
 
What I Know About 
 
 every one a few simple questions lo- 
 cated the underlying cause of the dis- 
 ease. Ambition, restlessness, over- 
 strain, unhappiness anything that 
 tends to dissatisfaction with one's 
 status in life are all among the 
 prime excitants to drinking. 
 
 Just one simple act of legislation 
 will end the dominion of rum. This 
 is the absolute financial divorce of 
 Uncle Sam and all his subordinates, 
 states, counties, cities, and towns- 
 from his ancient running mate, 
 Booze. Just so long as a very large 
 part of the expenses of the Govern- 
 ment are paid directly by alcohol, it 
 (alcohol) will have staunch friends 
 in the highest councils of every delib- 
 erative body. Wherever it is given 
 full swing, it pays more than one- 
 fifth our total taxation. Property, 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 wealth, interests, all with seeming 
 pertinency ask, "If we abolish the 
 liquor revenues, where do we get 
 off?" This argument is not made in 
 the open. But silent gratitude for 
 burdens of government lifted from 
 the shoulders of others, is alcohol's 
 strongest asset the one line of de- 
 fense that protects it from annihi- 
 lation. 
 
 Those who look kindly on John 
 Barleycorn for the enormous reve- 
 nues he produces, which revenues 
 they so cheerfully pay, never reckon 
 up the other side of the balance sheet. 
 They shut their eyes to what it costs 
 them in prisons, almshouses, lunatic 
 asylums, wrecked lives, lowered man- 
 hood, ruined homes, and general ef- 
 ficiency impaired to an extent start- 
 ling if we knew the truth. It may be 
 
What I Know About 
 
 asserted conservatively that seventy- 
 five per cent of the male workers in 
 every large city are materially worse 
 for the wear because of alcohol. 
 While a large proportion of them 
 would not be classed as drunkards, 
 they are not at their best either in 
 mind or body, through the use, or 
 rather the abuse, of rum. 
 
 My plea is to let alcohol stand by 
 itself. I would accept no favors 
 from it, neither would I strong-arm 
 it. I have no faith in local option, 
 high license, or even prohibition, for 
 all these things mean force, and force 
 has ever been met with resistance. 
 But if alcohol could once be shown 
 in all its hideous nakedness not as 
 a vast distributer of funds to govern- 
 ment but as the universal scourge 
 of all mankind, public opinion would 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 rise to such a height that the seeming 
 power of alcohol could not withstand 
 it. Those who would cry out the 
 loudest in indignation at such a pro- 
 ceeding would be the tax-paying in- 
 terests that now give liquor its sole 
 effective support. 
 
 When public opinion is thus clari- 
 fied, it will be no more difficult for a 
 young man to avoid liquor than it is 
 for him to avoid strychnine and cyan- 
 ide to-day. 
 
 Until the time comes when the 
 legislatures, national, state and local, 
 decline to license alcohol to go out 
 and kill, I shall have no faith at all in 
 the value or permanence of any kind 
 of settlement that may be proposed. 
 
 The attitude of our national gov- 
 ernment with regard to liquor bor- 
 ders on the grotesque. On the one 
 
What I Know About 
 
 hand the government is a stern moral- 
 ist. Long ago liquor was banished 
 from the canteens. Civil Service offi- 
 cials have been practically under 
 total abstinence rules. On top of that 
 comes the sweeping order of Secre- 
 tary Daniels forbidding the use or 
 the presence of liquor on ships of the 
 United States. But how about the 
 proletariat? 
 
 "Bottled in bond" is one of Uncle 
 Sam's most alluring and valuable as- 
 sets in advertising his whiskey. 
 "Bottled in bond" is equivalent to 
 saying, "Come on boys, drink all you 
 want, it is good for you; it was bot- 
 tled in my warehouse. It is not 
 good for the men in my navy because 
 it poisons them and destroys their 
 usefulness as defenders of my coun- 
 try, but you must drink it because we 
 
 ID 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 need your money to build more bat- 
 tleships, and support the navy and 
 army and some of the civil depart- 
 ments." If an individual were to en- 
 gage in such deception as this he 
 would promptly be arrested and 
 prosecuted. 
 
 There must be drunkenness among 
 the officers and men of the navy or 
 there would be no necessity for the 
 proclamation making the navy dry. 
 What then is to become of the navy 
 drunkard? Will Uncle Sam under- 
 take to heal him, or will he force him 
 to desert in order that he may par- 
 take of Uncle Sam's "bottled in 
 bond" whiskey without interference? 
 
 Uncle Sam is the sole proprietor 
 of every distillery and brewery in the 
 United States. His revenue agents 
 carry the keys, authorized to close 
 
 IT 
 
What I Know About 
 
 and open at will. If it be right for 
 Uncle Sam to engage in the produc- 
 tion of alcohol, then it is treason to 
 interfere with its sale and consump- 
 tion. 
 
 Uncle Sam has been notified by 
 John Barleycorn that unless he is 
 given the right of way at the Panama- 
 Pacific International Exposition, he 
 will cause the fair to be a failure. 
 Whether the dog will allow himself 
 thus to be wagged by the tail, it will 
 be interesting to observe. 
 
 To be consistent, Congress should 
 pass an Enabling Act authorizing 
 Uncle Sam to stamp his whiskey with 
 the same emblem placed on his silver 
 dollar: "In God We Trust." 
 
 The moonshiner can make his corn 
 into corn-dodgers, mush, hot cakes 
 and hominy unmolested, but Uncle 
 
 12 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 Sam draws the line when it comes to 
 mixing it with other materials, the 
 product of which makes drunk. He 
 is the only one in the United States 
 having the indisputable authority to 
 blend raw materials for the purpose 
 of making a drink that causes drunk- 
 enness. He guards this distinction 
 with as much jealousy as a mother 
 does her first born. Why not have 
 him form a partnership with the 
 devil and monopolize the manufac- 
 ture of all other poisons, thereby 
 gaining a further distinction of sup- 
 plying all the subjects for the crazy 
 houses? 
 
 There is not a day, an hour, or a 
 moment in which Uncle Sam does 
 not violate the Sherman Act. There 
 is not now, nor was there ever, a part- 
 nership so vicious and destructive as 
 
What I Know About 
 
 the one entered into between Uncle 
 Sam and Demon Rum. The com- 
 bination is so powerful that it has 
 been able to drive out all competi- 
 tion. Even the individual is deprived 
 of the right of competition by the 
 threat of jail or death. Until the 
 President of the United States directs 
 the Attorney General to unmerge 
 Uncle Sam and Demon Rum, there is 
 little or no use in communities or 
 states enacting ordinances and laws. 
 Compel Uncle Sam to confine him- 
 self to legitimate business, and you 
 will take Demon Rum by the neck 
 and strangle him to death. Educa- 
 tion will accomplish all else that is 
 to be done. 
 
 In a recent lecture an ex-governor 
 of one of the southern states made 
 this statement: "I am not now and 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 never was a drunkard, but I have 
 been drunk." 
 
 Well might a man say: "I am not 
 now and never was a murderer, but 
 I have committed murder," or "I am 
 not now and never was a forger, but 
 I have committed forgery." We 
 should be honest with ourselves. We 
 cannot fool the public through self- 
 deception. I was a drunkard. I am 
 now an ex-drunkard, not a re- 
 formed drunkard. You cannot make 
 imperfection into perfection. 
 
 "Who can bring a clean thing out of an 
 unclean? Not one." (Job 14:4.) 
 
 Let us not wink at the plain fact 
 of today. Let us consider two classes 
 of people who have contact with this 
 liquor question One class is com- 
 posed of those who have convictions 
 and the courage to express them. 
 
What I Know About 
 
 These are they who turn not to the 
 right nor to the left; who walk 
 straight on through a mass of stag- 
 gering men, frantic women, and chil- 
 dren diseased or disgraced, searching 
 for something that will end it all- 
 something that will take the stagger 
 out of the drunkard's legs, the blear 
 out of his eye, the palsy out of his 
 hand, the stench out of his breath. 
 These people with the polar purpose 
 of discovering a remedy for all this 
 debasement of the spirit and destruc- 
 tion of the flesh of men, make no 
 compromise. 
 
 The other class is composed of the 
 politicians. So long as there are 
 more votes in alcohol, they are ac- 
 tively or passively for it. If they 
 sense more voting strength on the 
 other side they assume a virtue and 
 
 16 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 go over to it, thereby winning the 
 hatred of those they desert and the 
 contempt of those to whom they come 
 as parasites. 
 
 It is to this tendency that we owe 
 the pitiful piffle with which public 
 attention is diverted from main issues. 
 
 Just now a performance of this 
 sort is made a headliner. The Sec- 
 retary of the Navy has forbidden the 
 use of any form of alcoholic drink 
 to both officers and men on our war- 
 ships. 
 
 Think of it! 
 
 The United States Government 
 lives on the tax paid by alcohol. Al- 
 cohol built our warships. Alcohol 
 bathed their sides in baptism when 
 they were launched. Alcohol pays 
 their officers and crews, the salary of 
 the Secretary of the Navy, and for 
 
What I Know About 
 
 the pen that wrote his order. The 
 alluring Enlistment Bureau pictures 
 ' show officers and jolly jack tars 
 drinking toasts to the dusky beauties 
 of the South Sea Islands. The men 
 who built the ships are the men who 
 drank the government's taxed liquor. 
 They are rotting in drunkard's graves. 
 Their wives are in the almshouses. 
 Their daughters are prostitutes. 
 Their sons are convicts. The navy 
 rests on that foundation built by 
 misery and transgression, by early 
 hopes faded, happiness turned to fes- 
 tering sorrow, childhood without joy, 
 manhood without hope, womanhood 
 without virtue. All that built the 
 navy! And the Secretary writes the 
 title clear as an evangel of abstin- 
 ence, by forbidding wine to the 
 officers! 
 
 18 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 If the situation were not so serious 
 it would be amusing. This Secretary 
 of the Navy puts a bread and milk 
 poultice on the crater of Vesuvius 
 and enters the limelight, posed for 
 applause! But below the poultice 
 the fires and gas gather for eruption. 
 The poultice has not reached the 
 cause. 
 
 But let us suppose that alcohol is 
 wiped out in a wholesale outburst of 
 public indignation. What then? 
 Will that change human character 
 and nature? Will it alter the im- 
 pulses, the ambitions one might say 
 the instincts that guide our actions? 
 Will that banish unrest, overstrain, 
 unhappiness? Will it banish that ter- 
 rible desire to "get away from one- 
 self"? I have grave doubts. And 
 unless it does, the victim who has 
 
What I Know About 
 
 escaped from one vice runs a deadly 
 peril of falling into another, he will 
 seek some other strong agent to do 
 for him again what alcohol did. 
 
 In my own case, ceasing to drink 
 was the smallest part of my salva- 
 tion. Christian Science alone made 
 me immune from the varied tempta- 
 tions of life. 
 
 To mortal sense I was a drunkard 
 for a period of ten years. When, as 
 a matter of fact, I can truthfully say 
 that the real Sam Leake, God's per- 
 fect, spiritual man, made in His im- 
 age and after His likeness, never was, 
 never can be, and never will be a 
 drunkard. The body, which in real- 
 ity is a myth, was drunk for ten years, 
 but the body is not I, but mine. 
 
 Drunkenness will exist, legislation 
 or no legislation, high license or no 
 
 20 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 license, prohibition or no prohibi- 
 tion, local option or no local option, 
 until men and women realize that 
 their bodies are not themselves but 
 theirs, and learn that divine Mind 
 alone controls them. How can men 
 and women learn this? The answer 
 is : Through the teaching and the un- 
 derstanding of Christian Science. 
 When a man is healed of drunken- 
 ness through materia medica, no ef- 
 fort is made to change his thoughts 
 and no claim is made that his 
 thoughts have been changed. Chris- 
 tian Science not only heals man of 
 
 _ - - -- --------- si 
 
 drunkenness, but destroys all physical 
 sense^of discord, causes him to seek 
 the undivided jrarrnent, teachesjhim 
 ^ Our lives^annot be 
 
 differentfrom our thinking. 
 
 Over a hundred years ago Thomas 
 
 21 
 
What I Know About 
 
 Jefferson said that the nation could 
 not survive half slave and half free. 
 
 Ex-Governor Patterson, of Ten- 
 nessee, added that the nation cannot 
 survive half drunk and half sober. 
 I add that a man or woman cannot 
 succeed half bad and half good. The 
 man who is healed of drunkenness 
 and continues in the old way of think- 
 ing, looking upon drunkenness with 
 gratification and abstaining from it 
 through fear of the consequences, is 
 half bad and half good, and is neither 
 a temperate man nor a trustworthy 
 religionist. 
 
 "I know thy works, that thou art neither 
 cold nor hot; 
 
 I would thou wert cold or hot. 
 So then because thou art lukewarm, and 
 neither cold nor hot, 
 
 I will spue thee out of my mouth." 
 
 (Rev. 3: 15, 16.) 
 
 22 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 Before attempting to destroy an 
 evil we should first look to the cause. 
 Why do men and women drink? I 
 say that the object that impels them 
 to drink is a commendable one "to 
 get away from themselves." If they 
 are in poverty is it not commendable 
 that they should want to be prosper- 
 ous? If they are weak is it not 
 worthy that they should want to be 
 made strong? If they feel the lack 
 of courage is it not laudable for them 
 to want to be brave? If they are un- 
 happy is it not natural for them to 
 want happiness ? If they believe they 
 are bound by "limitation" is it not 
 commendable that they should seek 
 freedom? We could cite causes in- 
 definitely, but these are sufficient to 
 point out the fundamental instigating 
 cause of most forms and degrees of 
 
What I Know About 
 
 drunkenness. The trouble lies in the 
 remedy the unfortunate ones use - 
 "Rum." Liquor only gives them a 
 temporary sense of relief from their 
 troubles. Christian Science provides 
 correctly the remedy which the 
 drunkard seeks erroneously. 
 
 Sam Blythe wrote in his book, 
 "Cutting It Out": "You have all 
 known the man who says he quit 
 drinking and never thought of drink 
 again. He is a liar. He doesn't ex- 
 ist." Had he understood anything 
 about Christian Science treatment 
 this sweeping statement would never 
 have been made. Through this heal- 
 ing the desire for drink is destroyed 
 and no man is healed until this is 
 done. Man does not leave drunken- 
 ness. Drunkenness leaves him. 
 
 Christian Science healing, whether 
 
 24 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 in drunkenness or any other disease, 
 goes back to the nature of man's exis- 
 tence, his being, for its foundation 
 and working hypothesis.- It finds that 
 man's being, his existence, is spiritual 
 instead of material. That man is 
 spiritual instead of material was 
 demonstrated by Jesus when He rose 
 from the dead, or rather, when He 
 showed that what was called death 
 had no reality nor power. Only a 
 spiritual being could do this, it be- 
 ing self-evident that a material thing 
 could not of itself come back from 
 the grave. 
 
 Therefore if man's nature is spirit- 
 ual instead of material, as it has been 
 shown above that it is, he must be 
 subject only to spiritual laws and con- 
 ditions, not to physical laws and con- 
 
What I Know About 
 
 ditions. This is self-evident and in- 
 herent in reason. 
 
 Again, if man is subject only to 
 spiritual laws and conditions, any 
 material or physical remedy or treat- 
 ment must necessarily be wholly out- 
 side the domain of his existence and 
 therefore utterly ineffective. 
 
 It may, however, be asked why, if 
 man is wholly spiritual in nature in- 
 stead of physical, should he need 
 treatment of any kind? The answer is 
 that he does not in reality need treat- 
 ment of any kind because he is spirit- 
 ual and therefore perfect. The 
 knowledge of this fact proves itself 
 and constitutes the only treatment 
 that there can be. 
 
 What then is this drunkenness for 
 which we seek a cure? It is the 
 claim, the belief, that there is such a 
 
 26 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 thing as a material man, and this be- 
 lief or claim includes the drink, the 
 temptation to drink, the drunkard, 
 and that which sees, knows, and con- 
 demns the drink and the drunkard. 
 
 The healing for drunkenness, so 
 far as there can be any, begins with 
 the practitioner in that his only func- 
 tion is to have the true concept of 
 man. This true concept on the part 
 of the practitioner not only frees the 
 man from the temptation to drink but 
 from the fear of condemnation of 
 foes or friends which is, itself, a 
 form of drunkenness. 
 
 Thus we see that Chistian Science 
 and not the Christian Scientist is the 
 healer in all cases, and that Christian 
 Science treatment means that the 
 practitioner is constantly looking 
 away from the senses to his own and 
 
What I Know About 
 
 his patient's refuge, the eternal Good, 
 which is too pure to behold iniquity. 
 
 Christian Science treatment, un- 
 like all other forms of treatment, does 
 not deal at all with personality. It 
 defines perfection and imperfection 
 showing that one is, and one is not, 
 the Truth. Truth makes man free 
 free from the illusion that there is, 
 was, or shall be any power apart from 
 the Mind which Christ Jesus proved 
 to be true. Christian healing means 
 eternal salvation in which there is no 
 power to sin or be sick and where 
 one man is never the superior of an- 
 other. It is the new heaven and new 
 earth where God wipes away all tears 
 and man loves his neighbor as him- 
 self. 
 
 The difference between Christian 
 Science treatment and other forms of 
 
 28 
 
The Alcohol Question 
 
 treatment is the difference between 
 "do" and "done." Christian Science 
 treatment finds that all is done and 
 done perfectly. Other treatments 
 seek to change imperfection into per- 
 fection which is manifestly im- 
 possible. 
 
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