The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, page 300, 21 Apr. 1886, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers stimulants and of tobacco. A large part of the suffering from diseases of various kinds among us comes directly from the use of alcoholic drinks, and all our united influence should be given to deliver ourselves and our afflicted sisters from this frightful wellspring of suffering. The evils that come to us from the use of these drinks are of two kinds those inherited from intemperate parents and those brought upon ourselves by our own intemperance. I do not mean to speak here in general of the evils of intemperance, but only of its evil results upon our bodies. First let us speak of inherited evils. That the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children is no more true anywhere than it is here. The drunken parent destroys or weakens not alone the body God gave him for the temple of his own soul, but transmits to the child a heritage of suffering, perhaps observable in general organic weakness or in fearful deformities or painful diseases. Perhaps the commonest form the inherited evils take is the first- inherited weakness. This is especially true of women whose more delicate organizations are more easily affected. As the child grows to womanhood the weaknesses are developed into diseases by the hardships and exposures incident to such a life as is an outgrowth of the intemperance of the father or the mother. Teachers, especially you who are in the country, can do much towards mitigating this evil by exerting a strong and aggressive influence against the use of whiskey. By precept and example help the people to the conviction that its use is sapping away their own and their children's strength. Take no part in, and frown upon, the tendency to enter into shameful excesses at the holidays when the farmers have ''settled'' their accounts, which is often but another way of saying they have gone more deeply in debt for a jug of whiskey. I have put the use of whiskey first in my list of causes, but now that I begin to think and write of another fruitful source of suffering, I am almost persuaded that it should come first. I refer to the use of tobacco. How sad that any one, least of all, a woman, should defile the beautiful temple, all clean and pure and undefiled when received from God's hands by making it reek with the foul fumes of tobacco ! ''My Father's house is a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.'' Your soul's house is the rightful temple of God, but ye have made it a den of filth. I can not speak too strongly against one of the commonest forms of the use of tobacco among Southern colored women, and indeed among all classes of Southern women the use of snuff. Aside BOO