806 Ch. 20 • Responses to a Changing World
tion” since its population might cease to reproduce itself because of the rav
ages of alcoholism. Some doctors blamed women for not doing their part to
increase the French population, their attacks complementing surging resis
tance to the rise of feminism. For their part, some women began to put for
ward their role as republican mothers to bolster demands for more rights.
Nationalists insisted that only by rallying around patriotic values could
France avoid total collapse. In Britain, the temperance movement began
earlier and was far stronger than in France. It was also much more closely
tied to churches, as was the movement in Sweden, where in 1909 temper
ance societies had almost half a million members who signed pledges promis
ing not to drink alcohol at all.
The use of opium and its derivatives—morphine (the popularity of which
increased with its use as an anesthetic), laudanum (a mixture of wine and
opium), and heroin—as well as cocaine and hashish, unfortunately became
common among the artistic avant-garde, well before most people were
aware of their devastating effects. These drugs arrived from Turkey, Persia,
and India, with coca (from which cocaine is derived) brought from Peru
and Bolivia. The painter Pablo Picasso (1881 — 1973) was for a period a
hashish user, which may have influenced his dreamy rose-colored paintings
of 1905-1908. Only in the latter years did the French government ban such
drugs, in the wake of a number of drug-related suicides. Less dangerous,
exoticism, mysticism, spiritism (including attempts to contact the souls of
deceased people during seances), and a fascination with the occult became
more popular than ever before, another sign of the rejection of science and
the associated preoccupation with the irrational.
Modern life seemed to provide evidence that industrialization and
urban growth had uprooted traditional values. Crimes seemed to be increas
ing. Seeking an explanation, the
French social theorist Emile
Durkheim (1858-1917) believed
that the rapid, seemingly uncon
trollable growth of large cities had
destroyed the moral ties that had
sustained the individual in tradi
tional society. Durkheim believed
that the waning of religious prac
tice had undermined authority
and therefore social cohesiveness.
Durkheim s quantitative study of
suicide led him to conclude that
the stresses and strains of
increasingly urban, industrial life
were becoming more debilitating.
He concluded that individuals