The managers of philanthropic inebriate homes have a difficult task, for they must consider ways and means, and are bound to look at the financial aspect. They naturally want strong, healthy, and industrious women, for the labour of these must be an important factor. The conduct of each woman must have an important bearing on the morale of the institution; and there must be, I feel sure, the temptation to ‘license’ out the inferior and badly-behaved women, and keep for longer periods such as are decently behaved and fairly industrious. With the State these things can have no weight, for the State only can afford to disregard the conditions I have named. But the State, having the care of these women during their detention, might easily have an arrangement with philanthropic societies for the after care of their patients, and so prevent their discharge until suitable arrangements are made for their future.
It is commonly believed, and accepted as an article of faith among temperance workers, that there is much less hope of reforming a drunken woman than of reforming a drunken man. My experience of both men and women leads me to the opinion that the chances are about equal. In both men and women physiological and pathological causes very often lie at the roots of their condition, and make it difficult--almost impossible--to deal successfully with the drink habit. Some of the best fellows I know are constantly getting into trouble, and creating terror and misery at home, not because they have any love for drink, or any uncontrollable impulse to take it, but because there is something wrong in their mental or physical organization.
I have studied these men, watched them, made friends of them, and the more hopeless I have seen my task to be, the more has my sympathy and desire to help them been enlarged. Ill-health, lowness of spirits, vacancy of mind, and often delusions, coupled with loss of memory in many variations, come upon them, and at such times they are apt to take drink, with terrible results. These men are not what they are because they drink, but the reverse: they drink because they are what they are. In a word, drunkenness is not the cause, but the result, of their condition. Doctors will not, of course, certify them to be insane; until, therefore, the State makes some provision for the half-mad, their case is hopeless, and frequent tragedies will continue; for matters are often ended by murder or suicide, and sometimes the latter course would undoubtedly give relief, and even comfort, to the suffering and distracted friends. But the dipsomaniac pure and simple, the man who at intervals of a few weeks or a few months has a passionate and overwhelming, uncontrollable desire for drink, is a strange being and a pitiful object. Cases of this kind almost fascinate me, for they are such tremendous contradictions.