UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN A SAN D EGO 
 
 3 182202461 9447
 
 
 r 
 
 OTHA 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF C LIFORN A SAN D EG 
 
 3 182202461 9447 
 
 Social Sciences & Humanities Library 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 Please Note: This item is subject to recall. 
 
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 UCSD Lib.
 
 ALCOHOL AND 
 SOCIETY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN KOREN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1916
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1916 
 
 BY 
 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIQHT, 1916 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Publithed May, 1916
 
 PREFACE 
 
 SINCE the memorable work of the Committee of 
 Fifty was published there has been little discussion 
 of the liquor problem except from the propagandist 
 standpoint ; and new studies of a general nature have 
 not been undertaken. Evidence against alcohol is 
 diligently being sought, not to enrich our knowledge 
 but to prove an assumption. Searchers after fact 
 are chided for failing to take it for granted that every 
 depth of the drink problem has been explored and 
 thoroughly mapped, and for venturing to question 
 the wisdom and sufficiency of current remedial 
 proposals. 
 
 Are we to believe that science has said the final 
 word about alcohol? Is the solution offered by pro- 
 hibitionists sufficient and are their methods sound? 
 May there not be a better approach to the temperance 
 ideal than through coercion? These questions, 
 among others, the author seeks to answer. If the 
 original articles in The Atlantic upon which the book 
 is based awakened much resentment among prohibi- 
 tion enthusiasts, they were also accorded an attention 
 which encourages the author to give them a more 
 permanent and much enlarged form. 
 
 Of recent years so much ignorant assumption, 
 prejudice, and fanaticism have obscured the real issues 
 
 iii
 
 iv PREFACE 
 
 in temperance reform that relentless criticism has 
 become a necessity. One naturally shrinks from the 
 obligation of giving a hurt by writing unpalatable 
 truths ; but there can be no apology for them. The 
 wrath that may descend upon the writer is harmless 
 so long as his utterances are not proved false. 
 
 The author gratefully acknowledges his great in- 
 debtedness to recent publications on the alcohol 
 problem from which he has drawn both inspiration 
 and information and which he has used freely. Fore- 
 most among these are the works of the Committee 
 of the Swedish Medical Society, of the Norwegian 
 Alcohol Commission, and the monumental studies by 
 Dr. Ulrik Quensel. With these authorities on the 
 many phases of the drink question and true tem- 
 perance reform the author takes his stand, but he 
 is willing always to modify his views in the light 
 of new knowledge. 
 
 J. K. 
 March, 1916.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER FAGS 
 
 PEEFACE ... . ..... v 
 
 I SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK ... 1 
 
 1. Introductory .... 1 
 
 2. Alcohol as Nutrition ... 6 
 
 3. Effects of Small Quantities of 
 
 Alcohol 7 
 
 4. Alcohol and Degeneracy . . 18 
 
 5. Alcohol and Insanity ... 23 
 
 6. Alcoholism and Disease . . 30 
 
 7. Alcohol and Economic Distress . 42 
 
 8. Alcohol and Crime ... 49 
 
 9. The Extent of Inebriety . . 56 
 10. Unknown Factors in Alcoholism 60 
 
 II DRINK REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES 68 
 
 1. Historical 68 
 
 2. Present Conditions ... 76 
 
 3. Our Experiments in Prohibition 86 
 
 4. National Prohibition ... 94 
 
 III GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION . . Ill 
 
 1. Introductory . . . .111 
 
 2. Anti-Saloon League . . . 119 
 
 3. Prohibition Attitude toward Ad- 
 
 ministration . . 128 
 v
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 IV DRINK REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 141 
 
 1. Russia and Finland . . .142 
 
 2. France . . ... . 155 
 
 3. Great Britain .... 162 
 
 4. Germany 168 
 
 5. Italy . . . . . ... 171 
 
 6. Austria-Hungary . . 172 
 
 7. Belgium . . . . . 173 
 
 8. Commonwealth of Australia . 174 
 
 9. Canada 179 
 
 10. Denmark . . . . .181 
 
 11. Holland 183 
 
 12. Iceland . ... . .184 
 
 13. Switzerland . . . . .186 
 
 14. Norway and Sweden . . .187 
 
 V CONSTRUCTIVE TEMPERANCE REFORM . 206 
 
 1. Evolution of the Saloon . . 206 
 
 2. Local Option . . . .211 
 
 3. Taxation of Alcohol . . . 222 
 
 4. High License and Restriction . 225 
 
 5. Licensing Authorities . . . 229 
 
 6. Essentials of Progressive Reform 232 
 
 APPENDIX 253 
 
 INDEX . . 265
 
 ALCOHOL AND SOCIETY
 
 ALCOHOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 i 
 
 INTBODUCTORY 
 
 ALCOHOL is a world-old and well-nigh universal 
 article of consumption. For unnumbered centuries 
 peoples in far-apart countries have habitually used 
 a variety of alcoholic beverages made from grain, 
 fruit or milk (koumyss, kefir). When the art of dis- 
 tillation had been mastered and finally made a com- 
 mercial venture, spirits of all kinds became generally 
 available, and, through the improved channels of 
 transportation, reached the uttermost confines of the 
 globe. At the present time, according to Dr. Hart- 
 wich, the only " alcohol-free " races are certain ab- 
 original remnants in Ceylon, Malacca, and among 
 the Indians of South America. 
 
 Contrary to popular belief, the Muhammadans 
 are not free from the dangers of alcoholism. Theo- 
 retically, all consistent Islamites are abstainers, but 
 in practice they are not so. Large sections of the
 
 2 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 population of India, especially the Muhammadan, 
 are giveii to the abuse of spirits. The Turks of Asia 
 Minor are held to be fairly sober; also the Tuaregs 
 of the innermost recesses of the Sahara. Elsewhere 
 throughout the Muhammadan world drunkenness 
 has become common ; for instance, in Egypt, Cy- 
 renaica and the Tripolitaine ; Tunis, Algeria, and 
 Morocco; also in Persia and Syria. 
 
 The consciousness of dangers (chiefly individual) 
 from the intemperate use of alcohol is also of great 
 antiquity. Even the prohibition theory is of ripe 
 age, for Muhammad was its first, and for a time, 
 effective prophet; but it remained for modern times 
 to discover in the abuse of alcohol a social-hygienic 
 problem of the first magnitude. Great wisdom be- 
 yond this we have not yet attained. 
 
 Our temperance preaching has not wholly emerged 
 from the vituperative stage. It is still the all- 
 absorbing occupation of the reformer to denounce 
 the wickedness and nefarious schemes of the " trade." 
 But it is not helpful, for vituperation is a form, not 
 of communicating truth, but of self-indulgence. It 
 is a dull weapon of attack, and bars the way to an 
 objective and passionless consideration, without 
 which progress halts. To a great extent, even the so- 
 called " alcohology " of the latter decades savors of 
 invective and extravagant rhetoric. But, more im- 
 portant, it astounds the critical investigator by the 
 crudity of its methods of investigation, the triviality 
 of much of its subject-matter, the glaring methodo-
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 logical defects, and the consequent questionableness 
 of its general conclusions. But if evident untruths 
 underlie some of the fundamental conceptions of the 
 present-day systems of temperance doctrine, the pro- 
 tagonists of the status quo in liquor legislation are 
 equally unscientific and guilty of untruths when they 
 prate about the usefulness of alcohol in all its forms, 
 shutting their eyes almost wilfully to its menaces. 
 Like the common run of alcohol literature, the 
 practical temperance policies insisted upon are not 
 based on real knowledge won through methodical ob- 
 servation and intensive study of the social aspects 
 of the drink question. Indeed, our fact basis is amaz- 
 ingly weak. We do not know definitely the extent 
 to which alcohol is abused within any state or any of 
 its civil subdivisions, such as city, village, or rural 
 district. We have no clear conception of the char- 
 acteristics of the different types of alcoholic persons ; 
 we have not penetrated their lives; the kind and 
 amount of injury they do themselves and others are 
 known only in the most general way and have not been 
 ascertained in casu. The development of alcoholism 
 in the individual, and the circumstances of an indi- 
 vidual or social character that give rise to and 
 perpetuate it, have not been studied. We de- 
 claim about the use of alcohol as a social disease, yet 
 are curiously ignorant of its deeper-lying causes, 
 its manifestations and progression. There is no com- 
 petent social organ delegated to observe the ravages 
 of this disease and lay bare the many-sided conditions
 
 4 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 that determine it. In fact, we lack the expertness 
 needed in devising new measures of protection, as 
 well as in tracing the effect against the drink evil of 
 those we have adopted. 
 
 Yet the temperance question touches various 
 phases of community life which can be made the 
 object of exact investigation. In this field, as else- 
 where, legislation must be preceded by accurate in- 
 formation, not only concerning social phenomena 
 the bad conditions of life which instigate the reform 
 work, but also about the circumstances that produce 
 the phenomena. Unless such information is gained, 
 all proposals for reform are likely to become one- 
 sided and involve the danger that, in endeavoring to 
 suppress an evident evil, we may originate others 
 less easily discovered and perhaps more threatening. 
 
 Of course, the present directors of the temperance 
 movement in our country will not accept this plea; 
 for theirs is the enviable confidence of not needing to 
 learn. Are not the children of our forty-eight states 
 taught the precise physiological effects of alcohol in 
 small and larger doses, although the scientist may 
 still grope for the truth? Are not our towns and 
 highways adorned with " posters " stating in exact 
 percentages the human miseries that flow from intem- 
 perance? And are there not traveling exhibits that 
 have " scientifically " charted every social relation 
 into which alcohol enters, so that one may take in at 
 a diagrammatic-statistical glance any fact from the 
 effect of one glass of beer upon a person's industrial
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 efficiency to the hereditary influence of parental al- 
 coholism upon the offspring? The finality of the 
 case against alcohol seems indubitable since we are 
 assured, under congressional frank, that the regis- 
 tered mortality due in some way to alcoholism equals 
 the total registered mortality of all but infants for 
 the whole country ! Although the temperance ques- 
 tion is fundamentally a problem in adjusting social 
 conditions, nevertheless physiology, medicine, and 
 statistics are called upon, not merely as witnesses but 
 as judges who have rendered the unalterable verdict 
 against alcohol. 
 
 In Europe, far-seeing temperance advocates realize 
 the instability of the " scientific " foundation upon 
 which it has been sought to rear the dogma of univer- 
 sal prohibition. But the leaders in this country con- 
 tinue to misplace emphasis upon statements selected 
 from the teachings of physiologists, medical prac- 
 titioners, and investigators, as well as upon inferences 
 from social statistics. This appeal to authority car- 
 ries unreasonable weight with the general public ; for 
 as a people we are singularly prone to accept general- 
 izations dressed up in a quasi-scientific garb, when 
 they are given repeated currency by that portion of 
 the press whose chief function it is to spread inac- 
 curacies. Probably Dr. Karl Pearson goes too far 
 in saying, " We found that the whole ' scientific ' 
 basis of the movement [temperance] was worthless." 
 Physiology and medicine are invaluable allies in the 
 fight against alcoholism, but not as final arbiters of
 
 6 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 legislative policies. Nor does the state of our knowl- 
 edge about the relations of social ailments to drink 
 enable us to prescribe a specific. But reformers as- 
 sume generally that further pursuit of knowledge is 
 superfluous; and it is therefore necessary to outline 
 the more important " findings " about alcohol result- 
 ing from recent authoritative investigations. 
 
 n 
 
 ALCOHOL AS NUTRITION 
 
 From the social point of view, the dispute as to 
 whether alcohol is a nutritious substance has only an 
 academic interest and does not cover a real issue. 
 One must accept it as incontestable that, as alcohol 
 is burned up in the body, it saves carbohydrates, fat, 
 and albumen, and is therefore to be reckoned among 
 the nutritive substances. Dr. A. Forel, the eminent 
 Swiss temperance leader, admits this, but suggests 
 that alcohol be designated as a " poisonous nutri- 
 ment," whatever that may mean. The fact that alco- 
 hol in large quantities has a toxic effect does not 
 detract from its position as a nutriment in the physio- 
 logical view. Yet to advocate alcohol as an article 
 of consumption for the sake of its food-value is clearly 
 inadmissible. In its most wholesome form, in pure 
 beers, it is a poor substitute for other food. Alcohol 
 does not sound its own warning against use in unduly 
 large quantities by producing that sense of repletion 
 which is characteristic of ordinary foods. Simply
 
 EFFECTS OF SMALL QUANTITIES 7 
 
 the question of cost determines the unwisdom of re- 
 garding alcohol in any form as a food, unless it be 
 in very special cases under medical direction. 
 
 m 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF ALCOHOL 
 
 In recent years numerous experiments have been 
 made to ascertain the precise effects upon the human 
 organism of small quantities of alcohol. There is no 
 scientific contention about the effects of large quanti- 
 ties, for the teachings of physiology merely reinforce 
 what observation and experience have taught, namely, 
 that alcohol consumed in large quantities operates as 
 a dangerous poison. Theoretically, it is hardly open 
 to dispute that relatively very small quantities of 
 alcohol, such, for instance, as are found in fresh bread, 
 do not harm the human body. The important ques- 
 tion is whether a more or less habitual use of mod- 
 erate quantities of alcohol, taken in the form of the 
 customary beverages, injure health. 
 
 If science could furnish proof that even minute 
 quantities of alcohol hurt the individual, it would 
 lend the greatest possible support to the argument 
 for general prohibition. But such evidence is lack- 
 ing. Rosemann, widely known for investigations re- 
 lating to alcohol, summarizes his extensive inquiries 
 in these words : " It has not been proved that a mod- 
 erate use of alcohol injures the healthy adult body." 
 In discussing the assertion that even the smallest
 
 8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 doses of alcohol are hurtful to health, Dr. Santesson 
 says: "The majority of physicians, as well as of 
 the public, have never believed it, but hold daily ex- 
 perience to show that this conception is untrue and 
 exaggerated. . . . Note well, the burden of proof 
 rests on those who contend that in the long run mini- 
 mal quantities of alcohol operate injuriously." The 
 Swedish committee of physicians expressed itself on 
 this subject as follows : " The attempt to find support 
 in the results of medical investigations for the sup- 
 position that alcohol in the form of customary al- 
 coholic beverages under all conditions is to be re- 
 garded as an injurious substance, a poison, can with 
 certainty be said to have stranded. In this way 
 the chain of evidence whether in favor of a volun- 
 tary or an obligatory absolutism cannot be com- 
 pleted." 
 
 Our present state of knowledge, then, does not per- 
 mit any one to maintain that small quantities of 
 alcohol are injurious to health even if consumed 
 daily. But it is another matter to define where the 
 boundary lies between the injurious and the non- 
 injurious quantities when the object is to indicate a 
 maximum limit as a guidance for every-day life. 
 Many elaborate inquiries have been made in order to 
 fix the safe maximum dose of alcohol, but with very 
 varying results, some placing it as low as 16 grams 
 per day, others as high as 100 grams or even 
 higher. A majority of investigators would seem to 
 place the limit at from 30 to 40 grams of alcohol,
 
 EFFECTS OF SMALL QUANTITIES 9 
 
 corresponding to about one liter of beer or a tumbler 
 of wine or a wineglass of whiskey per day. 
 
 The speculation about safe quantities is without 
 much practical value, for the reaction of the indi- 
 vidual to alcohol differs greatly, not only according 
 to age and sex, but according to constitutional pecu- 
 liarities and acquired qualities connected with the 
 drink habits of the individual. There is no method by 
 which we can measure the degree of individual toler- 
 ance to alcohol, and therefore it is impossible to gen- 
 eralize about the safe maximum quantity. We know 
 that a person who is accustomed to intoxicants 
 perhaps owing to a more rapid burning up of the 
 alcohol shows greater tolerance toward it, while 
 other persons exhibit such a degree of intolerance 
 that even minute quantities may affect them as a poi- 
 son. Not a little depends on the general mode of liv- 
 ing, as alcohol is far more dangerous to the underfed 
 person, when it is allowed to become, as it were, 
 a substitute for food, than when taken together with 
 a sufficient quantity of nutrition. Occupation, also, 
 has some significance, since persons employed in 
 heavy muscular work are more likely to resist the 
 effect of alcohol than those of sedentary habits. 
 Then, too, much depends on the purity of the bev- 
 erage used, the concentration of alcohol, whether it 
 is gulped down or consumed at intervals, with meals 
 or before them, during the day's work or after its 
 close, as well as upon habits of life generally. Again 
 ordinary experience comes to our aid, for it teaches
 
 10 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 us plainly, among other things, that some adults are 
 peculiarly susceptible to the toxic action of alcohol 
 and should shun it, while others are not injuriously 
 affected if they use it in moderation. Experience 
 also shows that alcohol has no more place in the diet 
 of the young than coffee, tea, or spices, and for them, 
 as well as for nervously sick persons, total abstinence 
 spells safety. 
 
 Within recent years numerous experiments have 
 been undertaken, the results of which have gained 
 wide currency as proving that even a moderate use 
 of alcohol may have, and generally has, a harmful 
 effect. These experiments relate chiefly to the action 
 of moderate doses of alcohol upon psychic functions 
 and to some extent on muscular functions. They are 
 largely the work of Kraepelin and his disciples, among 
 whom may be mentioned Smith, Fiirer, Schnidtmann, 
 Hildebrandt, Ach, Aschaffenburg, Vogt, Iliidin, and 
 others. These scientists do not themselves assume to 
 have reached final conclusions on many essential 
 points, and their evidence is by no means harmonious. 
 But in the present-day discussion of the alcohol ques- 
 tion so much emphasis has been placed upon the re- 
 sults of these experiments as a basis of scientific tem- 
 perance teaching, that it is in place to examine their 
 bearings a little more closely without, however, at- 
 tempting to account for single experiments which 
 would involve too much detail. 
 
 In general, it has been attempted to show the pos- 
 sibly injurious effects of alcohol: On the ability to
 
 EFFECTS OF SMALL QUANTITIES 11 
 
 add numbers ; on memory ; on the perceptive power ; 
 on time reaction (the time elapsing before response 
 is made to a given signal) ; on the ability to dis- 
 tinguish signals; on the power of understanding. 
 Other experiments covered the probable effect of 
 alcohol on eyesight (Busch), on hearing (Specht), 
 and on will power (Hildebrandt). Finally, some ex- 
 periments have been made to show the influence of 
 moderate quantities of alcohol upon muscular ac- 
 tivity. 
 
 Aside from the fact that some of the persons ex- 
 perimented on were little affected by the alcohol 
 administered, the sum total of the results from the 
 investigations under consideration points in large 
 measure to the conclusion that, alcohol in a greater 
 or lesser degree has injurious effects. Yet all of the 
 experiments lack a final scientific validity and are 
 open to certain common-sense objections. 
 
 Evidently, an inquiry into the possible injurious 
 effects of alcohol intended to illustrate conditions in 
 every-day life must include consideration of persons 
 who are accustomed to the use of alcohol, for they, 
 and not the abstainers, are in need of guidance. 
 Unfortunately, many of the experiments were made 
 on persons wholly unaccustomed to the use of spiritu- 
 ous drinks ; but if one wishes to reach a satisfactory 
 conclusion in regard to their bad effects, this method 
 is just as impossible as it would be to determine the 
 injury from using tobacco simply by setting persons 
 wholly unaccustomed to it to the task of smoking
 
 12 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 cigars. Although this line of reasoning is so self- 
 evident, it is a fact that the great majority of ex- 
 periments in question were made on persons who for 
 some time had been total abstainers or of whom it is 
 not stated what had been their previous relation to 
 the use of alcohol. 
 
 Professor Dr. Med. Axel Hoist, who has made a 
 searching examination of most of the important ex- 
 periments under consideration, found that in seven- 
 teen of them nothing is known so far as five are con- 
 cerned about the previous relations to alcohol of the 
 subjects of the experimentation. The participants in 
 three other experiments had been total abstainers, or 
 practically so, for several years. Of the participants 
 in one of the experiments, one had long been an ab- 
 stainer while the other had kept abstinent for some 
 time, and had never been habituated to a regular use 
 of intoxicants. In two experiments the participants 
 had foregone the use of alcohol for a definite time 
 prior to the investigation, while nothing is stated 
 about their earlier habits. Six other experiments 
 show similar conditions. In short, out of the total 
 number of investigations analyzed by Professor Hoist 
 that may be of some special significance for every- 
 day life, he found it known only in regard to two that 
 the persons lending themselves to the experiments had 
 previously been accustomed to a regular use of 
 alcoholic drinks. One of these, carried on under 
 Aschaffenburg, related to four typesetters, and the 
 other, by Busch, to the effect of alcohol on eyesight.
 
 EFFECTS OF SMALL QUANTITIES 13 
 
 On the whole, it may be said that the experiments 
 on persons who had been accustomed to the regular 
 use of alcohol gave results less markedly unfavor- 
 able to drink than the others. If it be true that also 
 in these cases the injurious, although less pronounced, 
 effect of alcohol was traceable, it must be remembered 
 that also these experiments were not conducted under 
 conditions corresponding to those ordinarily govern- 
 ing a moderate use of customary alcoholic beverages. 
 When the purpose is to find out by means of an experi- 
 ment on human material what the ordinary effect of 
 the moderate use of alcohol is, it verges upon the 
 absurd to allow the drink to be taken on an empty 
 stomach, or in a highly concentrated form, or to al- 
 low the subjects of the experiment to gulp it down 
 at once. Such procedure affords the best possible 
 conditions for illustrating the harmful effects of al- 
 cohol on the organism, for it enters most rapidly into 
 the circulation of the blood when taken on an empty 
 stomach or at once and in an undiluted form. In 
 every-day life, moderate users invariably take their 
 drinks in a diluted form, and with food ; therefore the 
 same detrimental effects do not occur as when alcohol 
 is used without food, perhaps in the middle of the 
 forenoon or afternoon. 
 
 Strange to say, these commonplace matters re- 
 ceived little consideration in most of the experiments 
 referred to. Of one of them, for instance, it is stated 
 that a large quantity of wine was administered to the 
 persons experimented on late in the afternoon, con-
 
 14 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 sequently on an empty stomach, and that it was con- 
 sumed at once. In another experiment, the equiva- 
 lent of 200 ccm. of whiskey was taken in the course 
 of a few moments, at eight o'clock in the morning. 
 It is, therefore, not surprising to find one of the inves- 
 tigators reaching the conclusion that the most striking 
 result obtained by him was that alcohol has a far 
 more injurious effect when taken without than with 
 food. 
 
 Another objection to several of the experiments in 
 question is that the investigators have utilized them- 
 selves as subjects, a hazardous method in science, 
 or that the persons experimented on have been per- 
 fectly aware of the kind and quantity of alcohol ad- 
 ministered to them, and were thus subject to psychic 
 influences which may have influenced the results. 
 Rivers and others have pointed out this shortcom- 
 ing, and obtained different results when the subjects 
 of the experiments were given alcohol in such form 
 that they were not aware of taking it. Practically 
 without exception, the experiments considered were 
 of too short duration to permit conclusive tests. 
 
 In raising these fairly obvious objections it is not 
 sought to belittle the importance of the investiga- 
 tions carried on by the Kraepelin school. Theoret- 
 ically, they undeniably have great value, and when 
 supplemented by other and more searching experi- 
 ments may prove a helpful guide to the regulation of 
 every-day habits. Perhaps one can sum it up by say- 
 ing, with Dr. Quensel, that the experiments have
 
 EFFECTS OF SMALL QUANTITIES 15 
 
 proved that work and drink do not belong together, 
 especially when the work demands alertness, attention, 
 exactness, and industry; but this is no more than 
 every-day experience teaches. When these investiga- 
 tions are said to prove that " alcohol reduces the 
 ability to carry on mental work logically," this is 
 also something coming within the purview of ordinary 
 observation. 
 
 The earlier and quite commonly accepted theory 
 that alcohol might prove particularly helpful in 
 muscular labor has long since been exploded. To be 
 sure, even Kraepelin admits that the use of alcohol 
 may be rational, especially when the question is less 
 of exertion of strength than of overcoming natural, 
 or under certain conditions, morbid inhibitions, when 
 a matter calls for quick decision. He adds, " This 
 conclusion from the experiments harmonizes, as one 
 knows, with the experience of every-day life." 
 
 Specht holds that the investigations hitherto made 
 cannot be accepted as final proof of the effects of alco- 
 hol on psychic activities, and asks if it may not be that 
 just on account of its influence upon the higher intel- 
 lectual functions it contains a positive factor which 
 in its action upon the mental life may be of no less 
 significance than its negative effects in certain direc- 
 tions. In short, he finds that the question of the 
 value of alcohol as a means of enjoyment is so inter- 
 woven with other questions of an esthetic, cultural, 
 social, psychic, and mental hygienic character that 
 it is exceedingly difficult to answer it, and that it can-
 
 16 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 not be decided on the basis of the data so far at hand. 
 Other investigators for instance, Thunberg have 
 begun to ask whether alcohol in inhibiting certain 
 functions and setting others free, may not in many 
 instances perform a beneficent rather than a harmful 
 service. " It would be well," he says, " if immediate 
 attention were paid to the possibility that some per- 
 sons gain a certain benefit from alcohol without pay- 
 ing too dearly for it, ... and this may be con- 
 ceived in regard to the effect of alcohol both on the 
 subjective moods and on the activity of thought. 
 It is quite possible that the mental life of some per- 
 sons is too largely stamped by inhibitions and resist- 
 ance. And it is not excluded that in some cases al- 
 cohol may in a beneficial way counteract the inhibit- 
 ing forces and, by removing resistance, afford freer 
 play to thought." 
 
 So far, then, experimental investigations, while 
 they may indicate certain injurious effects of alcohol 
 under particular conditions, do not furnish conclusive 
 proof that every use of alcohol is to be condemned, 
 and least of all do they provide a final argument 
 against its moderate use. 
 
 On the other hand, it is not attested by history 
 nor by present-day facts that alcohol-using nations 
 must inevitably succumb to the forces of intemper- 
 ance. It is commonplace that peoples more or less 
 habituated to the use of intoxicants have made incom- 
 parably greater progress in things that are the boast 
 of our civilization than, for instance, totally or
 
 EFFECTS OF SMALL QUANTITIES 17 
 
 partially abstaining peoples, such as the Hindus and 
 Muhammadans. Racial or cultural differences do 
 not account for this condition. One notes, too, that 
 the degree of eminence attained by various European 
 nations does not seem to bear any relation whatsoever 
 to their drink habits. The Great War has served to 
 bring this into light. The endurance and ability to 
 organize shown by France, not to mention her pre- 
 eminence in peaceful pursuits, appear to be unim- 
 paired, although the country is perhaps the most al- 
 coholic in Europe. Both in pacific and military arts 
 the Belgians measure high in the scale, although their 
 consumption of drink is almost twice as great as that 
 of the United States. No nation has developed a more 
 marvelous efficiency and strength than the German, 
 notwithstanding centuries-long extensive use of alco- 
 holic drink. 
 
 As with entire nations so with their leaders. If 
 there have been total abstainers whom different na- 
 tions count as among their foremost men, they have 
 not surpassed their numerous predecessors who were 
 not abstainers. Nor can the average total abstainer 
 be shown to possess any superiority over the average 
 moderate user of alcoholic drink in mental and physi- 
 cal ability and accomplishment. 
 
 It has often been brought forward as an argu- 
 ment for the absolute exclusion of alcohol that a 
 moderate use may easily degenerate into misuse, be- 
 cause the consumption of alcohol is believed to create 
 a desire for it in ever-increasing quantities. Of
 
 18 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 course it is impossible to prove this contention, 
 statistically or by any other evidence. There is 
 abundant reason for the opinion that in our times 
 most persons who take alcohol use it moderately, that 
 is, its use does not lead to abuse. Were it not so, the 
 inroads of intemperance would certainly be far 
 greater, and we should witness the wide world over 
 an inordinate increase in the consumption of intoxi- 
 cants which would defy all control. History, how- 
 ever, records a return to sobriety also in lands that 
 once were fairly inundated by drink, whose people 
 have survived and thrived. Therefore, the fear that 
 a moderate use of alcohol will lead to intemperance 
 lacks justification. 
 
 rv 
 
 ALCOHOL AND DEGENERACY 
 
 Merely the denial of physiologists that alcohol, in 
 the form of beverages commonly used, is to be re- 
 garded purely as an injurious substance or as a 
 ** poison," cannot determine our attitude toward 
 prohibition. We are told to weigh the pleasures or 
 benefits of drink against the misfortunes and social 
 ill-being it causes. Yet, though evidence tell over- 
 whelmingly against alcohol, there still confront us 
 these two fundamental questions: Can national pro- 
 hibition stop or in a notable degree ameliorate the 
 evils resulting from alcoholism? Can the result be 
 accomplished with greater certainty and less risk 
 through other means? The second question will be
 
 ALCOHOL AND DEGENERACY 19 
 
 answered in the last chapter of this book. The reply 
 to the first question must be based on accurate 
 knowledge of the kinds and extent of the injury 
 wrought by the abuse of alcohol, for otherwise we 
 cannot decide wisely about the protective measures 
 to be taken or perceive the sacrifices it may be neces- 
 sary to make. 
 
 Within the slender frame of a single chapter one 
 can hardly attempt more than the most summary 
 consideration of the social conditions and phenomena 
 seemingly bound up with the alcohol problem. Per- 
 haps none is more fundamental than that of the rela- 
 tion of alcohol to heredity. Many have come to 
 regard alcohol as one of the most important causes 
 of a family degeneration which manifests itself in 
 different ways. The evidence is culled from numer- 
 ous observations of families of alcoholists, in which 
 the children exhibit more or less pronounced indica- 
 tions of mental and physical defect. Some go further 
 and hold alcohol responsible for a diminished repro- 
 ductiveness, the frequency of miscarriage, and in- 
 creased infantile mortality. Doubtless the abuse of 
 alcohol is not without influence in these respects ; and 
 most investigators agree to the extent that mentally 
 or physically abnormal children are more frequently 
 found in the families of drinkers than elsewhere. 
 But opinions diverge sharply on the interpretation 
 of the causes that determine such conditions. 
 
 Perhaps no modern investigator has subjected the 
 mass of material relating to this subject to such a
 
 20 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 fair, thorough, and exhaustive test as Dr. Ulrik 
 Quensel, Professor of Pathology at the University 
 of Upsala. 1 The writer therefore feels safe in set- 
 ting forth his judgment on the scientific value of the 
 conclusions reached by writers like Bezzola, Bunge, 
 Forel, Gruber, Legrain, Laitinen, Saleeby, Helenius, 
 and a host of less-known spokesmen for theories 
 about the race-destroying effects both of acute and 
 of chronic alcoholism. 
 
 Dr. Quensel, in summing up, considers whether 
 the a priori assumable direct effect of alcohol in 
 poisoning the sex-cells and their hereditary-bear- 
 ing substance, or the indirect effect of alco- 
 holism on the family and the environment in which 
 the children are reared, is of greater significance. 
 He rejects the theory, advanced by Forel and 
 others, of a direct destructive effect of alco- 
 hol on the germ-plasm, in cases of both acute 
 and chronic alcoholism, saying, " The facts hitherto 
 brought forward do not constitute binding evidence 
 of the general validity of the theory." Its theoret- 
 ical possibilities he does not deny. In particular, 
 moreover, he is skeptical as to the opinion that " even 
 a moderate use of alcohol or a single accidental in- 
 toxication, by its direct effect on the germ-plasm, 
 can cause changes transmissible to the offspring." 
 But he is not blind to the possibility that a chronic 
 misuse of alcohol may have an injurious effect on 
 the organs of reproduction. 
 
 1 Alkoholfragan Fran Medicinsk Synpunkt, 1913.
 
 ALCOHOL AND DEGENERACY 21 
 
 It is frequently the case, says Dr. Quensel, that 
 the alcoholic himself has an inherited psychopathic 
 tendency which made him a drinker in the first in- 
 stance, and which eventually may be transmitted to 
 his children. The statistical literature so largely 
 called upon to prove the transmission of degeneracy 
 and certain forms of mental disease through alcohol, 
 he dismisses by citing the words of the eminent medi- 
 cal statistician, Dr. Weinberg, who says, " Almost 
 everything remains to be done to produce exact 
 workable statistics free from objections." 
 
 Of course, Dr. Quensel is not oblivious to the mani- 
 fold indirect effects alcoholism may have upon family 
 life, and its consequences for the children. The 
 obvious poverty resulting, from alcoholism and the 
 associated unhygienic conditions of living, hardly 
 need mention; but justly to apportion the exact 
 value of all such influences in the individual instance 
 is almost insuperably difficult. 
 
 According to Dr. Quensel, we do not know definitely 
 " that alcohol, as such, diminishes reproductive- 
 ness." The frequently excessive infantile mortality 
 in the families of alcoholics, he finds may be due to 
 a congenital weakness in the children, which never- 
 theless may also be explained by the untoward outer 
 conditions referred to. The assumption that a 
 psychic abnormality in the children of drunkards, 
 especially in the form of feeble-mindedness, idiocy, 
 and epilepsy, results from the parental abuse of alco- 
 hol, he regards skeptically, stating that the causa-
 
 22 
 
 tion in this form of degeneracy is exceedingly com- 
 plicated and not yet demonstrable. On the other 
 hand, he believes that the indirect influences of alco- 
 holism bear widely upon the development of the 
 children, and may suffice to make this development 
 more or less abnormal. 
 
 The prohibitionist conception of alcoholism as 
 the most potent race-destroying agency is therefore 
 wholly untenable. 
 
 The Swedish committee of physicians concludes 
 its chapter on alcohol and heredity as follows : " To 
 speculate about alcohol as a cause of the degenera- 
 tion or dying out of whole nations, is under these 
 circumstances unjustifiable, at least in case one bases 
 its influence upon an assumed effect of the individual 
 on the offspring. That alcohol through its social 
 consequences under certain conditions, for instance 
 among aborigines, may bring a people to the brink 
 of destruction, is certain. But in regard to Euro- 
 pean civilized peoples, an impartial investigation of 
 their relation to alcohol seems to favor the hypothesis 
 that " the organ of heredity," perhaps through selec- 
 tion, has acquired the ability to protect itself against 
 alcohol, rather than the popular assumption that this 
 organ on account of its supposed fine structure 
 is especially exposed to all the poisons circulating 
 within the body and thereby surrenders the genera- 
 tion to destructive agencies of all kinds." 
 1 Alkoholen och Sam/tulle t, 1912.
 
 ALCOHOL AND INSANITY 23 
 
 ALCOHOL AND INSANITY 
 
 Allied to the basic question of alcohol as a direct 
 factor in degeneracy is that of its position as a cause 
 of insanity. The popular picture of its importance 
 in this respect is much overdrawn; and for this ex- 
 aggeration the propagandist temperance literature 
 is responsible. As a rule, the nervous and mental 
 ailments of alcoholic origin are clearly distinguish- 
 able. This is true, for instance, of alcoholic poli- 
 neuritis, which sometimes is associated with mental 
 disturbances. Alcoholic hallucinations and delirium 
 tremens, the commonest, form of insanity caused by 
 drink, are easily recognized. Of less certain etiology 
 are rarer forms of derangement such as " alcoholic 
 paranoia." 
 
 The causative relation of alcohol to other forms 
 of mental disease is even more obscure. In general, 
 the abuse of alcohol appears symptomatically in a 
 number of dissimilar psychoses, such as dementia 
 praecox, maniacal and paralytic conditions of exalta- 
 tion, and others. It is accepted that alcoholism may 
 contribute directly or indirectly to upset the psychic 
 balance of persons predisposed to mental disease and 
 thereby help to give it form. The whole case can be 
 put briefly in this way: The mental diseases occur- 
 ring in intemperate persons are partly of a specific 
 character, partly those in which alcoholism is con-
 
 24 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 tributory, and partly those in which it must be re- 
 garded less as a cause than as an expression of an 
 abnormal psychic constitution which becomes more 
 clearly revealed by mental disease. 
 
 Much of the flatulent statistical material invoked 
 to prove that alcohol is a most prolific source of in- 
 sanity is of the imaginative or made-to-order variety. 
 The United States Census report on the insane in 
 hospitals shows alcoholic psychoses to be the diag- 
 nosis in but 10.1 per cent of the whole number of 
 patients admitted to all hospitals for the insane dur- 
 ing 1910. Yet the inference that none of the persons 
 involved would have become insane except for the 
 abuse of alcohol is not at all permissible. Quite 
 apart from any inclination to exaggerate, and apart 
 from a frequently antiquated classification of mental 
 diseases, the average hospital diagnostician does not 
 or cannot procure the data which invariably enable 
 him to determine whether alcoholism is of a mere in- 
 cidental kind and a symptom of an abnormal make-up 
 or an already existing mental disease, or a true etio- 
 logical factor. 
 
 In curious contrast to the above-mentioned per- 
 centage of alcohol psychoses in all the hospitals for 
 the insane in the United States, is the result of an 
 investigation made in 1915 under the authority of 
 the Massachusetts State Board of Insanity. It re- 
 lates to 793 cases in the State Hospital for the 
 Criminal Insane. Of this number, no less than 340 
 were originally commited from the so-called State
 
 ALCOHOL AND INSANITY 25 
 
 Farm, to which chiefly drunkards, tramps, and others 
 of the same strain are sent; the remainder for the 
 greater part being committed from other penal insti- 
 tutions. Thus the character and past of the inmates 
 would seem to give promise of yielding high percent- 
 ages of alcoholic psychoses. Yet the " probable 
 diagnosis agreed upon " (by the competent alienist 
 in charge of the investigation), in conference with 
 " the Superintendent and other members of the staff," 
 discloses chronic alcoholic insanity in 8.8, acute al- 
 coholic insanity in .3, chronic alcoholism in .1, and 
 feeble-mindedness plus acute alcoholic insanity in .1 
 per cent of all the cases, or a total of 9.3 per cent 
 with stated alcoholic psychoses. Such figures should 
 at least make one very cautious about accepting cur- 
 5*ent statistics purporting to establish alcohol as 
 probably the chief causative factor in insanity. 
 
 On the whole, the statistical material available both 
 in Europe and in the United States, purporting to 
 deal with alcohol as a factor in insanity, is of an un- 
 satisfactory character also because much of it dates 
 from a period in which the classification of mental 
 diseases as well as their diagnosis left much to be 
 desired. Several statistical investigations are at 
 hand, however, which serve to illustrate from a more 
 general point of view the relation between alcohol and 
 insanity. Their general tenor is to raise very seri- 
 ous doubts in regard to the significance of alcohol as 
 a direct factor of disease in mentally healthy persons 
 who are free from psychopathic tendencies, except,
 
 26 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 of course, the alcoholics themselves, who, etiologically 
 considered, form a separate group. Other investiga- 
 tions proceeding from different points of view have 
 likewise yielded results that make one query whether 
 alcoholism is a particularly important cause of other 
 forms of mental disease than those classified as purely 
 alcoholic. 
 
 Already the incontestable fact that women, who 
 universally are far less given to alcoholic indulgence 
 than men, are known to be relatively almost as liable 
 to insanity, bespeaks caution in judging of the sig- 
 nificance of alcohol in the etiology of mental diseases 
 generally. The distribution of males and females in 
 hospitals of the insane in the United States indicate 
 this. Although the males preponderate in them as 
 well as in the general population, the difference is 
 not so great as to be explained on the basis of a single 
 etiological factor. 
 
 An exceedingly important comparison has been 
 made by Dr. J. Scharffenberg, himself a foremost 
 advocate of abstinence, of the relative frequency of 
 mental disease in Norway and Denmark. As is gen- 
 erally known, the consumption of alcohol in Denmark 
 is more than treble that in Norway. Dr. Scharffen- 
 berg says : " If alcoholism were a specially important 
 cause of mental disease, then mental disease should be 
 considerably more frequent among men than among 
 women, and more frequent in countries with a large 
 alcohol consumption than in countries with a low 
 consumption ; but a comparison between Norway and
 
 ALCOHOL AND INSANITY 27 
 
 Denmark shows at once that this is not the case, as- 
 suming the enumerations of the insane to have been 
 just as exact in both countries." He then adduces 
 a table of the insane in both countries per 10,000 of 
 population, classified by age, which shows the ratio of 
 26.69 insane men in Norway as against 16.2 in Den- 
 mark, while the ratio of insane women was 26.40 in 
 Norway and 18.0 in Denmark. 
 
 Dr. Scharffenberg then continues : " The number 
 of insane is thus for both sexes and in all age groups 
 considerably higher in Norway than in Denmark 
 even in the case of men between 20 and 40 years of 
 age about twice as frequent in Norway as in Den- 
 mark and in Norway mental disease is slightly more 
 frequent in men than in women, while in Denmark it 
 is rarer among men than among women in spite of the 
 great extent of alcoholism. . . . The same is true in 
 regard to the relation between alcoholism in parents 
 and idiocy in the offspring. I assume a very skep- 
 tical attitude toward the current belief in such a 
 relation and hold that both idiocy and alcoholism 
 have been an expression of degeneration in the cases 
 on which the assertion has been based that parental 
 alcoholism leads to feeble-mindedness in the off- 
 spring." He shows that per 10,000 inhabitants there 
 were in Norway 22.64 idiotic males as against 14.6 in 
 Denmark, while the ratio of female idiots in Norway 
 was 18.55 and in Denmark 11.7. Dr. Scharffenberg 
 concludes from these figures that Norway thus has 
 considerably more idiots than Denmark, although the
 
 28 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 Danish consumption of alcohol for at least fifty 
 years has been more than twice as large as the Nor- 
 wegian. 
 
 It is finally to be remarked that mental diseases 
 directly attributable to alcohol as a rule pass quickly 
 away. This is particularly true of delirium tremens, 
 and also of hallucinations. Alcoholism, especially in 
 large cities, is " certainly the cause of a large num- 
 ber of mental diseases, but only exceptionally of those 
 which in popular parlance are designated by that 
 name ; and as alcoholic mental derangements are of a 
 temporary character and due to a certain outward 
 and not insuperable cause, they do not have such 
 serious consequences either for the individual patient 
 or for society, as commonly have the other mental 
 diseases." 
 
 If actual conditions pointed to alcohol as one of the 
 chief factors in mental disease, it would necessarily 
 follow that the number of total abstainers among the 
 mentally sick would be relatively low. There is no 
 evidence to this effect, but negative proof may be ad- 
 duced from the statement already made in regard to 
 the great proportion of women among the insane, of 
 whom it may be assumed that the greater number, at 
 least, of those who come from prohibition states, are 
 abstainers. 
 
 Alcoholism frequently gives rise to certain hal- 
 lucinations that deserve attention, although they can- 
 not be designated as mental diseases. Commonly 
 such hallucinations take the form of an unwarranted
 
 ALCOHOL AND INSANITY 29 
 
 jealousy, that is, a groundless suspicion turning, per- 
 haps, into accusation of marital infidelity. Hallu- 
 cinations of this kind often lead to violence and occa- 
 sionally to crime. Erroneous imaginings are fre- 
 quent in chronic alcoholics, not only when they are 
 in a state of acute intoxication, but also when they 
 are sober. 
 
 By far the most common and usually the earliest 
 appearing effect of chronic alcohol poisoning on the 
 brain shows itself in blunted mental powers and a 
 corresponding loss of energy and of inclination to 
 work. It is an every-day observation that the char- 
 acter of the alcoholic undergoes marked changes. He 
 grows irritable and weary of existence; his ethical 
 perceptions become dulled; his sense of shame grows 
 less ; the feeling of family and civic responsibility dis- 
 appears. At the same time he develops more and 
 more into a cynical, brutal egoist. 
 
 That alcoholism is productive of mental conditions 
 to some extent leading to suicide, hardly needs con- 
 firmation. It is, of course, difficult to determine pre- 
 cisely the causative factors in very many if not in 
 most cases of self-destruction, and drink may be only 
 one of several. A comparison of the rate of suicide in 
 different countries with the per capita consumption 
 of intoxicants yields rather contradictory results. 
 In France, Switzerland, and Denmark, a heavy con- 
 sumption of alcohol coincides with a high rate of sui- 
 cide. On the other hand, in the Netherlands the fre- 
 quency of suicide is about equal to that in Norway,
 
 30 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 although the annual consumption of alcohol is about 
 twice as large as in Norway. In Great Britain and 
 Ireland the suicide rate approaches that of Norway, 
 yet the consumption of alcohol is much greater than 
 in the Netherlands. Self-destruction appears to be 
 less in Belgium (the statement refers to conditions 
 prior to the war) than in Sweden, and it equals about 
 one-half of that for Denmark, although the per capita 
 consumption of alcohol in Belgium was about twice as 
 much as that of Sweden, and larger than that of Den- 
 mark. Self-evidently, these facts point to national 
 characteristics and peculiarities of a more or less 
 determinative kind, from which it is impossible to 
 draw hard and fast conclusions. The only thing 
 which can be said with certainty is that care must 
 be taken not to exaggerate alcoholism as a cause of 
 suicide. 
 
 VI 
 ALCOHOLISM AND DISEASE 
 
 The medical literature on alcohol as a factor in 
 disease is perhaps more prolific than conclusive. To 
 begin with, the effect of the abuse of alcohol on the 
 human organism is of such a character that from a 
 pathological-anatomical point of view it is hardly 
 permissible to designate specific diseases as being of 
 purely alcoholic origin. In other words, the disease 
 changes which occur in different organs, and which 
 are more or less conditioned by the abuse of alcohol,
 
 ALCOHOLISM AND DISEASE 31 
 
 should not be regarded as peculiar and independent 
 manifestations of disease, for they may be due to 
 several other causes; they are not necessarily char- 
 acteristic of drunkards, since alcohol is only one of 
 their etiological factors. Some of the " approved 
 text-books " quite overlook this truth. 
 
 Of course, the question at this point is not of a 
 moderate use of alcoholic beverages, for this is con- 
 ceived to mean one without deleterious effect upon 
 the condition of health. That some persons react 
 unfavorably to alcohol in any form and in the small- 
 est quantities, usually points to a psychopathic con- 
 dition or to a peculiar nervous make-up. An analo- 
 gous example is that of otherwise healthy persons 
 who, for instance, cannot use tobacco and coffee 
 without disagreeable consequences, or who are 
 " poisoned " by eating certain foods. 
 
 The immoderate use of alcoholic drink frequently 
 leaves unmistakable traces of its action, but may 
 also be very obscure in its effects. The relationship 
 between excessive drink habits and ill-health is made 
 evident also from the fact that, after a period of 
 complete abstinence, certain notable symptoms of 
 physical derangement to which drinkers are subject 
 may wholly disappear. Moreover, continued abuse 
 of alcohol may reveal symptoms of disease, as well 
 as changes in different organs, that are objectively 
 demonstrable. But the positive connection between 
 alcohol and disease can as a rule be determined only 
 when a complication of different disease-symptoms
 
 32 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 has made its appearance, or when a single manifesta- 
 tion of disease can be viewed in the light of a pre- 
 vious abuse of alcohol. 
 
 Aside from this, ordinary experience tells us that 
 through the economic conditions it creates, and by 
 impairing one's vitality and in other ways lowering 
 the power of resistance, habitual alcoholism predis- 
 poses and exposes to disease. The moral aspect of 
 the case is a different story and does not belong to 
 the present discussion. 
 
 The insistence of current anti-drink literature 
 that alcohol is a direct cause of certain diseases 
 makes it desirable to mention briefly what deduc- 
 tions medical science appears to warrant. 
 
 It is commonly accepted that alcoholism tends to 
 lower the power of the human organism to resist 
 infections generally. This observation rests upon 
 broad experience rather than upon extended scien- 
 tific tests. Among acute infectious diseases the 
 largest attention has been devoted to pneumonia in 
 its relation to the drink habit. The computations 
 made by a number of medical statisticians purport 
 to show an excessive mortality from this disease 
 among drinkers. Its fatality when complicated with 
 delirium tremens is well known. Recent investiga- 
 tions going into greater detail have shown very 
 clearly the prominent part played by delirium 
 tremens as a complicating factor in pneumonia. 
 Thus Karlsson has found that if the delirium pa- 
 tients are excluded, the mortality from pneumonia
 
 ALCOHOLISM AND DISEASE 33 
 
 is not greater among men of the age of 20 to 50 
 years than among women of the same age classes, 
 although the latter are far less likely to abuse alco- 
 hol. Pneumonia thus becomes especially dangerous 
 to drinkers when a new condition of disease is added. 
 Still some of the most recent as well as extensive 
 statistical inquiries have not established any espe- 
 cially prominent influence of alcoholism in pneu- 
 monia cases, for instance the so-called Leipzig in- 
 vestigation (1910). On the whole the available data 
 are somewhat contradictory and generally inconclu- 
 sive, especially the statistics seeming to indicate a 
 greater mortality among men than among women 
 from this disease, which self-evidently may be due to 
 quite other causes than drunkenness. How uncer- 
 tain the inferences drawn from such statistics are 
 appears also from computations of the mortality 
 from pneumonia in relation to the number of persons 
 attacked by it. In Norway, for instance, it has 
 been found that the morbidity was not larger but 
 rather somewhat smaller among men than among 
 women; and the greater mortality among men was 
 due to the circumstance that more men were at- 
 tacked. 
 
 The relation of tuberculosis to alcoholism has been 
 the subject of a vast amount of discussion and no 
 little statistical inquiry. It is commonly assumed 
 that drinkers are particularly exposed and more fre- 
 quently succumb to pulmonary tuberculosis than 
 other persons. Some authorities hold that alcohol-
 
 34 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 ism has the direct effect of weakening the organism 
 and thus diminishing the power of resistance against 
 infection, while others incline to emphasize its in- 
 direct effect both on the individuals and on the gen- 
 eral condition of living. We know that unhygienic, 
 crowded dwellings lacking light, air, and cleanliness, 
 induce tuberculous infection. And as alcoholism 
 makes for poverty and suffering in many families, 
 it contributes indirectly to spread the disease, 
 especially because inebriates frequently are indif- 
 ferent to the commonest demands of personal hy- 
 giene and are underfed if not suffering actual want. 
 In so far as it creates a generally unfavorable envi- 
 ronment, it is therefore clear that alcoholism in many 
 instances is a very active factor in spreading tuber- 
 culosis. Beyond this we have little evidence of a 
 direct relation between this disease and intemper- 
 ance. The statistical studies made are not so ex- 
 haustive or free from objection as to be authorita- 
 tive. Merely to ascertain the alcoholic habits of 
 tuberculous persons is not enough; the investigations 
 must include large numbers of persons who abuse 
 liquor in order to learn the general frequency of 
 tuberculosis among them. 
 
 The pitiful ravages of tuberculosis in this country 
 among rural dwellers of certain nationalities, for 
 instance, the Scandinavian, have long been observed. 
 Since the young of both sexes are equally among the 
 victims, and it can be established that they, as well 
 as their parents, are almost free from alcoholic
 
 ALCOHOLISM AND DISEASE 35 
 
 habits, intemperance appears to be excluded as a 
 causative factor in their case. 
 
 Were the use of intoxicants in itself a factor in 
 tuberculosis, one would expect to find a definite 
 parallelism between the consumption of alcohol in 
 a country or locality and the frequency of tubercu- 
 losis ; but it has not been established. A comparison 
 of the statistics of tuberculosis by Prinzing with 
 statistics of the consumption of alcohol shows the 
 mortality from tuberculosis in Switzerland and 
 Spain to coincide with the very large consumption 
 of alcohol in these countries, while in the Danish 
 cities, in spite of a similar or perhaps larger use of 
 alcohol, the mortality in question is considerably 
 less. The mortality from pulmonary tuberculosis is 
 less also in the Danish than in the Swedish cities, 
 although the consumption of drink in Denmark is 
 twice as large as that of Sweden. The same differ- 
 ence is to be observed between German and Swedish 
 cities. Furthermore, while the mortality from tu- 
 berculosis in 1891-1900 for the whole of Holland 
 was equivalent to or probably only two-thirds of the 
 corresponding mortality for the whole of Norway, 
 the consumption of alcohol in Holland was at least 
 twice as large as that of Norway. Finally, the mor- 
 tality from tuberculosis for the whole of Italy fell 
 below that in Germany, although the consumption 
 of alcohol in the two countries was about equal. 
 
 All evidence at hand warrants the conclusion that 
 the larger or smaller quantities of alcohol consumed
 
 36 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 do not of themselves determine the frequency of tu- 
 berculosis in any country, but that other factors 
 must be taken into account. Also, it is not proved 
 " that a moderate consumption of alcohol affects in- 
 juriously the power of resistance to tuberculosis; 
 but that the question must be one of abuse." 
 
 The exceedingly common conditions of disease due 
 to a hardening of the arteries have been made the 
 subject of an unusual amount of investigation, but 
 without establishing how far alcohol is one of its 
 causative factors. The relation of arteriosclerosis 
 to the occurrence of chronic changes in the heart, 
 kidneys, brain, and other organs is held to be very 
 specific and important. If, then, the contention 
 were true that alcohol, more than anything else, oc- 
 casions arteriosclerosis, the case against drink even 
 in moderate quantities would be very strong, but it 
 does not seem to be supported by any comprehensive, 
 systematic, pathological-anatomical investigation. 
 On the contrary, foremost pathologists have demon- 
 strated conclusively not only that the arteries in cases 
 of pronounced alcoholism may show a complete ab- 
 sence of arteriosclerotic changes, but that the disease 
 does not occur earlier or to greater extent in alco- 
 holics than in others. One may therefore safely say 
 that in this instance as well as in many other manifes- 
 tations of disease, the tendency is to exaggerate 
 rather than to minimize the position of alcohol as a 
 factor. 
 
 Chronic diseases of the kidneys have been held,
 
 ALCOHOLISM AND DISEASE 37 
 
 particularly by English and American physicians, 
 to owe their origin to intemperance; and mortality 
 statistics of most uncertain value are resorted to as 
 proof. Investigations made in various countries 
 (for instance, Germany and Denmark) are not at 
 all in accord about the relation between chronic kid- 
 ney diseases and alcoholism. Recent inquiries made 
 in this country confirm the view (Journal of the 
 American Medical Association, 23-7-1910) that 
 chronic diseases of the kidneys occasionally do arise 
 from alcoholism, but that the frequency of such cases 
 is very doubtful. 
 
 In temperance text-books as well as in general dis- 
 cussion, great emphasis has been placed upon the 
 occurrence of cirrhosis of the liver, which is desig- 
 nated as specifically a drinker's disease, a name, as 
 Dr. Quensel remarks, that with far greater justice 
 could be applied to fatty degeneration of the liver, 
 as the latter is much more common in drinkers and 
 of more regular occurrence than the comparatively 
 rare cirrhosis. This much seems to be established 
 by modern research, partly that cirrhosis in in- 
 ebriates is relatively unusual and, partly, that cir- 
 rhosis of the same character as that found in in- 
 ebriates occurs not seldom without a previous abuse 
 of alcohol. It has also been ascertained that the 
 occurrence or the degree of cirrhosis does not bear 
 direct relation to the amount of alcohol consumed. 
 Moreover, persons who have not misused or have 
 only moderately used alcohol may suffer from the
 
 38 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 disease, even the very young. The doctrine of the 
 supremacy of alcohol among the factors in cirrhosis 
 of the liver is largely mere assertion. One thing only 
 can be said with a degree of finality; that excessive 
 drinking predisposes to this particular disease as to 
 several others. 
 
 It would carry us far beyond the scope of the pres- 
 ent discussion to mention even thus cursorily the 
 other bodily ailments in their possible relation to 
 alcoholism. Those considered are most frequently 
 referred to in arguments for absolute prohibition 
 and have therefore required some attention; exactly 
 what part alcoholism has even in regard to these is 
 quite obscure and uncertain, and, of course, this is 
 far more likely to be true of other conditions of 
 disease less obviously associated with intemper- 
 ance. 
 
 The actual mortality due to drink cannot be 
 stated for any country. Statistical evidence is 
 hardly needed to show that a long-continued exces- 
 sive use of alcohol tends to shorten life. But to 
 what extent this happens we do not know. Neither 
 American nor European statistics can lay claim to 
 especial validity in determining in a general way 
 how far alcoholism is a direct factor in mortality; 
 our own are notably full of omissions and uncertain- 
 ties. Some European investigations indicate, among 
 other things, an excessive mortality within certain 
 occupations in which alcoholism is most likely to be 
 prevalent. This harmonizes with every-day observa-
 
 ALCOHOLISM AND DISEASE 39 
 
 tion and experience, but does not bear with much 
 force on the question of a moderate use. 
 
 Most of the statistics contrasting the mortality in 
 cities and in rural districts and comparing the mor- 
 tality among alcoholics with that of the general 
 population are inconclusive, some of ancient date, 
 and generally open to all manner of objections purely 
 from a statistical point of view. 
 
 If one could establish a definite parallelism be- 
 tween mortality and the quantitative use of alcohol 
 it would provide a strong reason for believing in an 
 excessive mortality due to alcoholism, but it does not 
 seem to exist. It is frequently instanced that the 
 average duration of life in Sweden has increased 
 constantly since the beginning of the year 1800, 
 although the abuse of alcohol in the latter part of 
 the first half of this century was unparalleled and 
 although the consumption still remains compara- 
 tively high. In the same country an astounding 
 variation in mortality has been found within dif- 
 ferent provinces and bearing no relation whatsoever 
 to the known consumption of alcohol. Ovize has 
 shown that in France the extent of mortality in dif- 
 ferent departments seems to be wholly unrelated to 
 the amount of alcohol consumed. When the condi- 
 tions in entire countries are compared the same fact 
 stands out. 
 
 " In order to determine more clearly," says Dr. 
 Quensel, " how far the general mortality in different 
 countries appears to stand in direct relation to the
 
 40 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 consumption of spirits, I have prepared the table 
 given below, in which I show the number of deaths 
 of men per thousand during the years 1891-1900, 
 or for parts of this period. The consumption of 
 spirits is reckoned per capita in liters of absolute 
 alcohol for the same years as covered by the mor- 
 tality statistics (except that in regard to the Nether- 
 lands and Finland the consumption covers a shorter 
 period). 
 
 CONSUMPTION OP AL- 
 
 MOHTALITY AMONG COHOL IN LITERS OP 
 MEN ABSOLUTE ALCOHOL 
 
 Sweden 19.63 5.66 
 
 Norway 19.84 2.85 
 
 Denmark 19.92 11.80 
 
 Netherlands 21.65 6.00 
 
 France 21.86 20.80 
 
 Belgium 22.03 14.00 
 
 England and Wales 22.66 11.00 
 
 Finland 23.31 2.04 
 
 Italy 23.35 15.20 
 
 Germany 24.65 9.50 
 
 Austria 26.48 9.40 
 
 " The table indicates in general that there is no 
 parallelism between the mortality statistics and the 
 consumption of spirits. There are evidently other 
 factors which determine mortality as a whole for the 
 country, among which may be mentioned the influ- 
 ence of infant mortality, of infectious disease, and 
 the general condition of hygiene." 
 
 The returns of life insurance companies have been 
 widely cited to prove that abstainers enjoy a greater 
 longevity than moderate drinkers. An especially
 
 ALCOHOLISM AND DISEASE 41 
 
 liberal use in this respect has been made of the re- 
 turns of the Scepter Life Association and of the 
 United Kingdom Temperance and General Provi- 
 dent Institution. These life insurance statistics have 
 been made the subject of much incisive and to some 
 extent destructive criticism in so far as an effort 
 has been made to construe them as evidence against 
 all use of intoxicants. Without attempting to re- 
 state the objections raised or to enter upon a tech- 
 nical analysis, it may be said that life insurance sta- 
 tistics no doubt confirm the obvious conclusion that 
 the expectation of life is shortest among the habitu- 
 ally inebriate, but this proof of a super-mortality 
 among non-abstainers does not imply a condemnation 
 of every use of alcoholic beverages. It is clear that 
 among insured male non-abstainers there will always 
 be found a number of persons who abuse drink, or 
 who must be regarded as uncertain, and yet serve 
 to increase very considerably the total mortality 
 among the non-abstainers. On the other hand, Eng- 
 lish life insurance statistics show the difference in 
 the mortality rate among abstaining and not totally 
 abstaining women on the whole to be very slight, 
 which strongly contradicts the assumption that a 
 moderate use of alcohol must necessarily be detri- 
 mental to health. If one considers that this differ- 
 ence among the insured women (3 per cent) may be 
 quite accidental, and that in England some women 
 are intemperate while others are uncertain in regard 
 to drink habits, it seems reasonable to infer from
 
 42 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 these statistics that a moderate use of alcohol in 
 general is not injurious to health. 
 
 Recently much attention has been given to the 
 returns of American insurance companies. They, 
 too, yield evidence of a shortening of human life 
 through an immoderate consumption of liquor. Be- 
 yond this, they are of uncertain value. The classi- 
 fications generally followed have been so unsatisfac- 
 tory and open to possible errors that the conclusions 
 drawn are chiefly of speculative interest. Beyond 
 doubt, a great deal still remains to be done in this 
 field, requiring years of patient labor of a much more 
 intensive and continued kind than any hitherto ex- 
 pended, before the wished-for far-reaching conclu- 
 sions can be drawn. 1 
 
 vn 
 
 ALCOHOL AND ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 Undeniably, the abuse of drink results in more or 
 less permanent economic distress, and even a mod- 
 erate use in the individual case may spell an inde- 
 fensible waste. Citations of " national drink bills," 
 however, are not especially impressive evidence on 
 this point, since it cannot be shown that money spent 
 for liquor would invariably be saved were the lawful 
 opportunity for purchase cut off. Moreover, it is 
 
 1 For a summary statement of the inferences to be made 
 from American Life Insurance statistics about the influence 
 of alcholism upon mortality, see Appendix, p. 253.
 
 ALCOHOL AND ECONOMIC DISTRESS 43 
 
 demonstrable that the sum spent annually in the 
 United States on different articles of luxury, such 
 as tobacco, confectionery, soda, tea, coffee, and many 
 others, far exceed the total sum expended for alco- 
 holic beverages. 1 
 
 We know, then, that economic injury wrought by 
 alcohol is very great, but lack definite information 
 about its extent and manifestations in different 
 places and in the different strata of society. Efforts 
 to state statistically the relation between poverty 
 and drink, particularly those of earlier date, are in 
 part faulty and therefore misleading. Whenever 
 the investigators found indications of the drink 
 habit, it was set down as a cause or probable cause. 
 But to-day it is understood that the scientific inves- 
 tigator must inquire, not only to what extent the 
 individual constitutional defectiveness causes both 
 alcoholism and poverty, but also how far alcoholism 
 results from distress occasioned by a variety of eco- 
 
 1 The value of intoxicating liquors of all kinds produced in 
 the United States and imported during a year may be placed, 
 in round numbers, at $610,000,000. The value of the tobacco 
 manufactured and imported, of confectionery and mineral and 
 soda waters produced, and of coffee and tea imported in a 
 year amounts, in round numbers, to $832,000,000. If other 
 articles of luxury produced and imported during a year are 
 considered, such as jewelry, precious stones, millinery and laces, 
 artificial flowers and feathers, $230,000,000 must be added to 
 our bill of luxuries, which thus would reach a total of more 
 than $1,600,000,000. Of course numerous other things can 
 properly be classified as luxuries. The actual selling value of 
 the articles enumerated can only be surmised.
 
 44 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 nomic and social conditions. The results, for in- 
 stance, of the investigation into the relation between 
 poverty and drink made by the Committee of Fifty, 
 which have been received as authoritative, and for 
 which the writer had large responsibility, doubtless 
 need to be revised in the light of modern teachings. 
 All recent facts brought forward by social workers 
 and investigators affirm this. Ignorance about the 
 proportion of distress attributable to excessive use 
 of drink we share with nearly every other civilized 
 country. The most recent study of the subject is 
 one just published by the Alcohol Commission of 
 Norway and made by the Central Statistical Bureau 
 of that country. The inquiry embraced all persons 
 who received public poor relief in 1910. In the 
 cities, drink is stated to have been the chief cause of 
 distress in 4.8, a contributing cause in 1.8, habitual 
 drunkenness during earlier years a cause in 2 per cent 
 of all cases, or a total of 8.6 per cent. The cor- 
 responding numbers for the rural district were 1.2, 
 0.8, and 2.5 per cent, or a total of 4.5 per cent. 
 How far percentages for this country would corre- 
 spond cannot be stated. 
 
 In recent years no extensive study of any magni- 
 tude has been made in this country of the various 
 factors in poverty. We do not even know the extent 
 of economic distress for any one state or for its 
 larger subdivisions, much less how far it is related 
 to drink. It is significant that nowadays profes- 
 sional charity workers are growing more and more
 
 ALCOHOL AND ECONOMIC DISTRESS 45* 
 
 chary of defining the position of intemperance among 
 the causative factors of poverty, recognizing that it 
 frequently has a background of ill-health, crushing 
 economic conditions, and other unfortunate circum- 
 stances from which some persons seek a mistaken 
 relief. 
 
 The technical and inherent difficulties of these in- 
 quiries are so great that mostly a dead statistical 
 material results, which, however, may be useful in 
 refuting popular fallacies. Even if it remains un- 
 charted, the large economic misery caused by alco- 
 holism cannot escape attention. Indirectly, it ef- 
 fects economic injury by impairing the physical and 
 moral capacity for securing improved conditions of 
 living; and a lessened demand for better things pre- 
 vents social development generally from attaining 
 higher levels. Directly, the abuse of alcohol leads 
 to conditions of disease, loss of earning power, and 
 unwillingness to labor. Permanent work-shyness is 
 not under consideration, for that has been shown 
 to result from psychic defects acquired through men- 
 tal ailments rather than from alcoholism itself, but 
 that idleness which frequently occurs after a periodic 
 or sporadic " celebration." 
 
 Cumulative evidence to show that the habitual use 
 of intoxicants during work hours, even if it does not 
 degenerate into drunkenness, tends to lower one's ef- 
 ficiency, is surely not needed. Alcohol and work do 
 not belong together. How far even minute quanti- 
 ties of alcohol retard the normal responsiveness of
 
 46 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 muscle or mind when called upon for definite tasks 
 is another question. So far experiments with the 
 time-reaction of persons under the influence of cer- 
 tain quantities of alcohol and without it, cannot be 
 regarded as conclusive; they have not been carried 
 out on a sufficient scale to warrant generalizations, 
 or with due regard to the tolerance toward alcohol 
 on the part of the object of the experiment, or with 
 the necessary freedom from psychic influences. 
 
 As a factor in industrial accidents, the abuse of 
 liquor or intoxication by no means occupies the place 
 popularly ascribed to it. The widely published state- 
 ment that drink causes more than one-half of all the 
 industrial accidents in the United States is a fabri- 
 cation and an absurdity. After a careful summing 
 up of all available official data on this subject, Mr. 
 Gustavus Myers says : " The returns show that de- 
 liberate recklessness or intoxication is not frequent 
 as the cause of accidents, and in fact is so exceed- 
 ingly slight as not to require serious consideration 
 in the analysis of the immense number of accidents 
 occurring in the United States annually." The 
 relation of drink to industrial accidents has recently 
 been given attention in a study made in this country 
 under the auspices of the British Association for the 
 Advancement of Science. It was found, among other 
 things, says the report, that both output and acci- 
 dent immunity in factories vary inversely to fatigue. 
 
 1 Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Asso- 
 ciation, September, 1915.
 
 47 
 
 " In fact, our figures agree with one another to such 
 an extent, particularly those of accidents, that we 
 are justified in speaking of a * normal ' time-distri- 
 bution of output and of accidents, or considered in- 
 versely, accident-immunity. The shape of the out- 
 put and accident-immunity curves for a five-hour 
 spell may for purposes of illustration be summarized 
 as follows: 
 
 HOUR OF SPELL OUTPUT ACCIDENT IMMUNITY 
 
 1st . small very great 
 
 2nd . 
 3rd . 
 4th . 
 5th . 
 
 very great great 
 great fair 
 
 fair i small 
 i small fair 
 
 " In seeking an explanation of this ' normal ' 
 time-distribution of the accident rate and the output 
 in a spell of manufacturing work, let us concentrate 
 on the illustrative table. Here we find four similar 
 degrees ; very great, great, fair, and small, succeeding 
 one another in both the output and the accident- 
 immunity column, though earlier in the spell with 
 accidents than with output. Now both output and 
 accident immunity vary inversely to fatigue; these 
 four decreasing degrees, therefore, may well be meas- 
 uring an increase in fatigue. 
 
 " The only other possible cause that could by itself 
 explain the rise in the accidents, at any rate, during 
 the morning and afternoon, is the drinking of alco- 
 hol before starting the spell. This explanation has 
 
 i Where there are only four hours in the spell, strike out 
 the last output, but the fourth accident hour.
 
 48 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 been advanced by the Temperance Scientific Federa- 
 tion of Boston, and taken up by certain employers. 
 To prove this contention, however, it would have to 
 be shown firstly that the most debilitating effect of 
 alcohol on control occurs just about four hours after 
 its drinking, and not earlier or later, and secondly 
 that such alcohol drinking is a regular habit among 
 the workers. 
 
 " The first point is far from established either scien- 
 tifically or from every-day but not necessarily per- 
 sonal experience. All that we can say for certain 
 is that if alcohol is taken at all in large quantities, 
 the attention and muscular control that avoids acci- 
 dents is lost immediately, and in the first hour. 
 
 " The second point can certainly not be established 
 at all in some of our records. The women cotton- 
 spinners, the picked men workers at Hans Renolds', 
 at the Cadillac Company, at the National Cash Reg- 
 ister Company, and the girls at Jacob's and Cad- 
 bury's and the Denison Manufacturing Company 
 are all certainly not drinkers, yet all of them show 
 the same accident ' curve ' as other and possibly hard- 
 drinking employees." 
 
 Were alcohol suddenly removed from the world, 
 want and misery would unquestionably grow less in 
 numberless instances; but the day dreams of prohi- 
 
 1 The question of Fatigue from the Economic Standpoint. Interim 
 Report of the Committee drawn up by Mr. P. Sargant Florence 
 for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1915, 
 pp. 21-30.
 
 49 
 
 bitionists would not be fulfilled. We should still 
 have with us the incompetent, the ne'er-do-well, the 
 physically and mentally undersized or sick who are 
 unable to get a strong foothold as workers. Above 
 all, industrial stability and the payment of a living 
 wage are not by-products of prohibition. One might 
 wish that instead of holding out ideal promises, the 
 advocates of sumptuary law would expend a little 
 more energy and wisdom in seeking to better the 
 conditions of living which tend to perpetuate intem- 
 perance, for the roots of the desire for a " grief- 
 breaker " (Sorgenbrecher) are deep and many. 
 
 vra 
 
 ALCOHOL AND CRIME 
 
 The assurance with which intemperance is held 
 responsible for the mass of criminality has at any 
 rate the merit of being quite natural. When an 
 offense is committed in a state of intoxication or by 
 an habitual user of strong drink, the causal relations 
 seem unmistakable, even inevitable, no matter how 
 infinitely complicated the problem appears to the 
 criminologist. The many men and women who popu- 
 late our minor penal institutions on account of habit- 
 ual drunkenness may be dismissed briefly. An unin- 
 telligent community may persist in regarding public 
 intoxication as a crime and punish it accordingly; 
 alienists have shown that the greater proportion of 
 habitual inebriates of this class are congenitally de-
 
 50 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 fective, and that drink is but a symptom of their 
 pitiful state. But they figure heavily in our prison 
 returns, and provide the less conscientious reformer 
 with a plausible reason for incontinent speech. 
 
 Dr. R. W. Branthwaite, Inspector of Retreats 
 and Reformatories under the English Inebriate Acts, 
 says in one of his official reports: 
 
 " Sixty per cent at least of the inmates of the cer- 
 tified Inebriate Homes show defective mental capac- 
 ity, but only about two per cent are suffering from 
 insanity or acute mental diseases; the others have 
 been defective all their lives." 
 
 In the English inebriate reformatories to which 
 persons are admitted who have a previous prison 
 record, the proportion of congenital mental defect 
 is much higher. In another place Dr. Branthwaite 
 says : " Even the most mentally sound amongst 
 them (the inebriates) are not normal persons; the 
 evidences of peculiarity are too definite to be ignored, 
 although its character is difficult to define, and its 
 location obscure. If this be so, it follows that the 
 inebriate is not primarily vicious or criminal, but 
 primarily abnormal, and only secondarily anti-social. 
 Most of the offenses he commits are of passive nature 
 due rather to impaired reason than to wilful inten- 
 tion, or to imperfect control the result of a drunk- 
 enness he partially, or perhaps wholly, is unable to 
 avoid." 
 
 Also in case of well-defined criminality, it seems 
 easy to fix a relation between it andf alcohol, pro-
 
 ALCOHOL AND CRIME 51 
 
 vided we are willing to accept the personal state- 
 ments of offenders at their face value. It is charac- 
 teristic of humanity generally, and particularly of 
 the criminal, to offer excuses for wrong-doing; and 
 when questioned about his drink habits he eagerly 
 offers them as a palliating explanation of his offense. 
 Thus it happened not long ago that more than a 
 thousand convicts in the Eastern Penitentiary of 
 Philadelphia declared drink to have precipitated 
 their downfall, and solemnly petitioned for the enact- 
 ment of national prohibition ! The affair would not 
 deserve serious mention except as a sample of the 
 evidence offered, and doubtless accepted by many, 
 as proof of the intimacy between drink and crimi- 
 nality. 
 
 Unfortunately, most of the current statistical ma- 
 terial both in this country and abroad from which 
 are drawn sweeping generalizations about alcohol as 
 a crime factor, is derived from personal (more rarely 
 parental) histories as told by the offenders them- 
 selves. Until within recent times, evidence of this 
 kind had the excuse that none more trustworthy was 
 available. Modern psychopathic diagnosis, however, 
 reveals, as we shall presently see, so large a propor- 
 tion of sub-normal individuals in our prison popula- 
 tions, that the old methods of establishing causative 
 crime relations are rendered obsolete. Yet institu- 
 tions continue to catalogue their inmates according 
 to alcohol habits, as described by themselves, and 
 sometimes reduce these to percentages for the instruc-
 
 52 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 tion of a public incapable of discriminating the 
 truth. In some states it is prescribed by law that 
 prisoners shall be classified according to their drink 
 propensities. The purpose is self -evidently to fur- 
 nish proof that drink is the mainspring of criminal- 
 ity ; and so successfully has this doctrine been dinned 
 into the popular ear that most men accept it unhesi- 
 tatingly. 
 
 Many crimes are known to be committed by per- 
 sons while intoxicated or because they are intoxi- 
 cated, especially those against the person. But the 
 majority of crimes are offenses against property, 
 which for their success require other habits than those 
 of the confirmed drunkard. Those who prey upon 
 society as gangsters, burglars, pickpockets, and gun- 
 men are far more likely to be drug fiends than alco- 
 holics. Police annals abundantly testify to this, as 
 does the experience of those who are set as guardians 
 over convicts. These are commonplace and rather 
 superficial observations. 
 
 Two circumstances refute the popular view of the 
 intimate causal relation between alcohol and criminal- 
 ity. One is that thousands are annually committed to 
 reformatory institutions at so tender or youthful an 
 age that the drink habit, if indulged in at all, cannot 
 yet have become fixed. At most there might be a 
 question, in such cases, of parental alcoholism, which 
 by affecting the moral as well as the mental and 
 physical stamina of the children may predispose 
 them to a criminal career. At this point, however,
 
 ALCOHOL AND CRIME 53 
 
 the evidence conflicts with the second circumstance; 
 namely, that the young delinquents, particularly 
 those of our greatest centers of population, are ex- 
 tensively recruited from two races, the Hebrew and 
 Italian, which are acknowledged to be among the 
 least alcoholized in the world. 
 
 The other circumstance is that recent psycho- 
 pathic diagnoses disclose criminals to us as 
 beings whose habits and conduct are not susceptible 
 of measurement by normal standards, because they 
 themselves are subnormal. The presence among both 
 juvenile and adult criminals of very many who are 
 feeble-minded has been established beyond peradven- 
 ture for some years. One may be dubious about the 
 extraordinarily high percentages of such abnormal 
 individuals found by certain investigators, and re- 
 fuse to accept extreme conclusions. Yet there is in- 
 dubitable proof of the existence of a multitude of 
 offenders who may be addicted to drink, but in whom 
 the habit signalizes an abnormality, perhaps a con- 
 stitutional defect, and is not the cause of a more or 
 less irresponsible criminality. How far in these in- 
 stances parental alcoholism affords an explanatory 
 moment is largely unknown. The outstanding fact 
 is that our penal institutions, and particularly the 
 houses of correction, are populated by uncounted 
 thousands whose alcoholic habits are but an expres- 
 sion of a deviation from normal conduct, the real 
 cause of which is to be sought in the unfortunate 
 physical and mental make-up of the individual. A
 
 54, SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 competent psychopathic diagnosis of the prison 
 population yields a classification in such contrast to 
 the conception of those who would refer most crimi- 
 nality to an alcoholic origin, that an example or two 
 must be given: 
 
 In a recent survey of the Massachusetts Reforma- 
 tory for Males, Dr. Guy G. Fernald found that of 
 654 inmates, but 42 per cent could be regarded as 
 normal, and of this number only 14, or 2.1 per 
 cent of the total, are classified as alcoholic. Among 
 the deviates there were 61 alcohol degenerates, 
 9.3 per cent of the whole number of inmates, 
 but how many of them had become such through the 
 abuse of alcohol, or in how many drunkenness was 
 but a symptom of a congenital defect, is not known. 
 The morons, feeble-minded, and subnormal psycho- 
 pathies, not to mention other groups of deviates, out- 
 numbered three to one those whose condition ap- 
 peared related to alcohol. 
 
 An examination of the 738 inmates of the Massa- 
 chusetts Reformatory for Women, conducted by the 
 same methods, showed 42 per cent to be normal, and 
 72, or 9.7 per cent of the whole population, are 
 represented as alcoholic. Among the subnormal 
 inmates 95 are classified as alcoholic degenerates, or 
 12.8 per cent of the entire population. The morons, 
 feeble-minded, subnormal psychopathies and epilep- 
 tics, not counting other groups that depart from the 
 normal, number 289, or 39.4 per cent of the total. 
 
 The two Massachusetts prisons do not house a
 
 ALCOHOL AND CRIME 55 
 
 population materially different from that found in 
 penal institutions generally; but the picture they 
 present of conditions that make for crime is in 
 startling contrast to the popular one, and points 
 unmistakably to the subordinate role played by alco- 
 hol as a causative factor in responsible criminality. 
 Because the earlier investigators were ignorant of 
 the great extent to which the criminal population 
 consists of mentally deficient or other subnormal 
 groups, they failed grievously in the effort to gauge 
 the causes of criminality, particularly the part 
 played in it by drink. We may reasonably believe 
 that if alcoholism should disappear there would be 
 less crime in the world; how much less, no one can 
 say. So far from knowing the exact proportion in N 
 which drink is responsible for crime, we are still con- 
 fronted by the question: Assuming that alcohol had 
 never existed, how many and which of the criminal 
 acts perpetrated during a given period would not 
 have been committed? 
 
 In the present heated state of public opinion about 
 the drink situation, he who attempts to differentiate 
 the chaff of exaggeration from the known truth, in 
 writing of its social aspects, must expect to be stig- 
 matized as an advocate of drink. To the open- 
 minded, however, the basic consideration is not how 
 one may apportion the precise percentages of injury 
 done directly or indirectly by drink, the evil is 
 patent enough, but rather to learn by what means 
 it most surely can be abated. And they will realize
 
 56 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 that to fashion safeguards to meet supposed social 
 conditions not in consonance with the facts, is to 
 court an unavoidable disappointment which can serve 
 only to make the path of reform more difficult. 
 
 IX 
 
 THE EXTENT OF INEBRIETY 
 
 It is unfortunate that temperance reformers should 
 regard our circle of knowledge about the alcohol 
 question as having been completed. While this frame 
 of mind prevails, necessary and important investi- 
 gations are not likely to be undertaken; and there 
 is still so much left undone. Although more or less 
 properly assorted evidence is massed to show the evil 
 results of alcoholism, no attempt has been made to 
 measure its probable extent. We do not know ap- 
 proximately the number of inebriates within any 
 given locality, large or small, rural or urban, much 
 less within a whole state. Yet reliable information 
 about the numbers who become victims of the drink 
 habit would not only reveal its relative importance 
 as a social problem but help us to understand the 
 efficacy of preventive and corrective efforts. 
 
 To depend upon the customary statistical evidence 
 purporting to define intemperance as a principal 
 factor in most of our social ailments is to ask one to 
 accept assertion for fact. Just as untrustworthy is 
 the proof adduced from arrests for drunkenness. 
 Ordinarily, statistics of arrest do not discriminate
 
 THE EXTENT OF INEBRIETY 57 
 
 between true inebriates and accidental offenders, and 
 even leave us in doubt about the actual number of 
 individuals concerned, since the same persons may 
 figure many times. As an index of sobriety in any 
 community over a period of years these statistics are 
 for the most part worthless, being collected under 
 varying standards of law enforcement and amid 
 shifting public ideals in regard to the treatment of 
 persons guilty of public intoxication. If inferences 
 from statistics of arrests concerning the state of 
 sobriety in a single locality are open to much ques- 
 tion, a comparison between localities on the same 
 basis is misleading. Hardly two states in the Union 
 operate under the same " drunk " laws. The com- 
 position of the populations varies markedly in dif- 
 ferent localities, as do also public toleration of visi- 
 ble intoxication. Thus in one particular city, ar- 
 rests for this offense may be comparatively few, while 
 in another, because of an insistent public demand 
 that all drunken persons be removed from the high- 
 ways, arrests may reach, abnormal proportions with- 
 out in the least indicating the actual extent of in- 
 ebriety. 
 
 In a few European countries some attempt has 
 been made to find out the probable number of in- 
 ebriate persons. Dr. R. H. Branthwaite, Inspector 
 of Retreats and Reformatories in England, has given 
 the subject attention. He says in a recent official 
 report, " All that is known with any approach to 
 certainty regarding private non-criminal inebriates
 
 58 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 is that somewhere about four thousand persons resi- 
 dent in England and Wales have submitted them- 
 selves to treatment in licensed or unlicensed homes, 
 or have endeavored to find relief by resort to some of 
 the best-known cures during the last three years." 
 He finds, however, that owing to the conditions that 
 govern admissions to institutions and for financial 
 or other reasons, it is unlikely that this figure reaches 
 more than a quarter of those who are qualified for 
 treatment. Most of the managers of retreats and 
 homes for inebriates of all kinds maintain that not 
 more than one out of every ten or twelve persons who 
 apply for particulars are subsequently admitted. 
 " Accepting the first suggestion as more probably 
 correct and as more likely to under-state than over- 
 state the case, a round figure of about sixteen thou- 
 sand is obtained, which is as close an estimate as cir- 
 cumstances permit." 
 
 Turning to the question of the lower-class in- 
 ebriates, who commit offenses as the result of their 
 habits and are constantly in and out of prison in con- 
 sequence, Dr. Branthwaite thinks that there are 
 probably about thirty-two thousand of this class to 
 be found in England and Wales, and he concludes: 
 " This seems to indicate roughly that there are about 
 forty-eight thousand inebriates of all classes in Eng- 
 land and Wales at the present time (1912), or about 
 1.42 per one thousand of population, of which num- 
 ber about sixteen thousand are persons in private 
 life whose habits have not led to convictions in
 
 THE EXTENT OF INEBRIETY 59 
 
 police courts and thirty-two thousand known to 
 have criminal or disorderly tendencies. Dealing in 
 round figures, this means in relation to total popula- 
 tion approximately five per one thousand of the 
 former and one per one thousand of the latter." 
 
 Director N. Rygg, of the Central Statistical Bu- 
 reau of Norway, has recently made an attempt to 
 estimate the number of habitual drunkards in his 
 country. He took as his material the medical certifi- 
 cates of death for 1911, and on the basis of the 
 number of alcoholics among the persons who had died 
 during the year, he endeavored to determine condi- 
 tions among the living population, self-evidently pre- 
 supposing a higher mortality among the alcoholics 
 than in the general population. Of course this is a 
 somewhat insecure method, as definite data are lack- 
 ing for Norway. However, he arrived at the con- 
 clusion that in the whole country there were in 1910 
 14,900 alcoholics, or 2.5 per cent of the men over 
 20 years of age, and 1,300 alcoholics among women, 
 or 0.2 per cent of those over 20 years of age. Nat- 
 urally, conditions were found more favorable in the 
 country districts than in the cities. 
 
 The above calculations, although they are but ex- 
 perimental and cannot be regarded as authoritative, 
 are significant of what may be done in this field, and 
 raise the question whether current ideas about the 
 extent of actual alcoholism, meaning thereby con- 
 firmed inebriates, are not more or less exaggerated. 
 If we should apply to this country the ratio of in-
 
 60 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 ebriates to general population estimated for Eng- 
 land and Wales by Dr. Branthwaite, the number 
 would be approximately 140,000, which is likely to 
 be a considerable over-estimate in view of a smaller 
 consumption of alcohol, and its practical exclusion 
 from vast tracts of rural territory, not to mention 
 the many prohibition cities. 
 
 THE UNKNOWN FACTORS IN ALCOHOLISM 
 
 In its eagerness to delimit the social injury wrought 
 by alcoholism, even the so-called scientific temper- 
 ance literature has paid the scantiest heed to the 
 factors responsible for this malady, or has satisfied 
 itself with wholly superficial indications. Therefore 
 its plea for remedial measures lacks a reasonable fact 
 basis, resting, as it does, on the theory that personal 
 habits, no matter what their origin, can be eradi- 
 cated by law. The earlier temperance agitations 
 were too definitely of a religio-ethical character to 
 be concerned with the question of causative factors. 
 
 During the last decade or two, attention has be- 
 come fixed upon the factor in alcoholism nearest at 
 hand, namely, the alcohol itself, and in its nature 
 and action on the human organism an explanation 
 has been sought of the manifestations which need 
 correction. Attempts to find out why most persons 
 use intoxicating drinks without injury to themselves 
 or society, while others abuse it with the most lam-
 
 ALCOHOLISM'S UNKNOWN FACTORS 61 
 
 entable consequences have been sparse indeed, and 
 have awakened but a passing interest. 
 
 Alcohol is commonly depicted as one of the most 
 insidious and dangerous poisons against which no one 
 is safe. Those who accept this view naturally hold 
 up to scorn the moderate drinkers as incurring the 
 greatest responsibility for the ills others bring upon 
 themselves as well as for failures to enact sumptuary 
 law. It is thus plausible if deplorable that the fac- 
 tors of a social or individual character which serve to 
 generate an abuse of alcohol should have been ig- 
 nored and that so little effort is made to awaken a 
 sense of personal accountability for the use of in- 
 toxicants. 
 
 Of course the inherent difficulty of establishing the 
 causative factors in cases of alcoholism must not be 
 minimized. The springs of human action in a def- 
 inite case cannot be laid bare without a thorough 
 knowledge of the individual concerned, of the envi- 
 ronment in which he lives and of his actions for which 
 a psychological explanation is sought. Frequently 
 we must content ourselves with probabilities. In 
 dealing with groups of persons living under like con- 
 ditions, it is easier to account for impelling motives 
 as one may then look aside from individual peculiari- 
 ties. Yet in order to understand the many it is im- 
 perative to begin with the individual. Only by prob- 
 ing deeply into many individual cases, by viewing 
 them, so to speak, within themselves, by seeking to 
 understand their actions, by being keenly alive to the
 
 62 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 deviations from social prescriptions that are condi- 
 tioned through individual circumstances, is it possi- 
 ble to accumulate evidence wherewith to determine 
 the factors in similar actions attributable to natural 
 divisions of social groups. 
 
 To get close to the causative factors which lead 
 many to a socially detrimental use of alcohol, it is 
 obviously necessary, in the first place, to deal with 
 numbers of alcoholics who have been selected without 
 prejudice and then try to penetrate their lives in the 
 most intimate manner, to reconstruct, as it were, a 
 picture of their earlier development and to gain a 
 clear perception of the actual conditions under which 
 they live, their habits, customs, and the point of view 
 of their environment. To limit the study to the 
 drink habits of the individual is not sufficient and 
 may not even be desirable. When thus it is made 
 possible to establish the driving force which the abuse 
 of alcohol has developed under stated conditions, it 
 remains to ascertain a great many circumstances 
 that have operated as contributory factors and which, 
 in turn, are conditioned by other circumstances 
 whose causative chain is unending. 
 
 A purely scientific study of the factors in alcohol- 
 ism which ignores the practical side will not lead to 
 progress. Proper emphasis must therefore be placed 
 on factors that are not only important in them- 
 selves, but of a kind that yield to control within a 
 reasonable length of time. The factors nearest at 
 hand are not necessarily the most significant, for
 
 ALCOHOLISM'S UNKNOWN FACTORS 63 
 
 they may be far too complex to be clearly differen- 
 tiated. Frequently, a study of more remote condi- 
 tions is necessary in order to gain a point of attack. 
 
 We are accustomed to hear city life, with its many 
 temptations, its false impressions, its bad housing, 
 and unsuitable economic conditions, spoken of as a 
 prolific factor in alcoholism. But how can the city- 
 ward movement of population, one of the most 
 marked cultural trends of the present day, be re- 
 tarded? Surely it defies regulation, and least of all 
 can it be made the object of special solicitude in 
 temperance reform. Wholesome influences can be 
 brought to bear upon certain phases of the crowded 
 city existence, but to be effective they must create 
 conditions making for temperance, and every specific 
 measure taken must aim only at advantages that are 
 commensurate with the sacrifices demanded of soci- 
 ety. In short, all rational social efforts for reform 
 cannot help affecting favorably the anti-social con- 
 sequences which flow from alcoholism. 
 
 From pulpit and lecture platform we are told that 
 many persons become notorious alcoholics through 
 lack of moral perception, a defective sense of re- 
 sponsibility, an uncontrolled desire for pleasure, and 
 the like. But it is not helpful to point out these 
 things as factors, for they refer to conditions that 
 are not susceptible of regulation by legislative expe- 
 dients. The purpose should rather be to get back of 
 such conditions and their consequences, to make the 
 object of study only to seek out their roots so that
 
 64 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 a vantage point may be gained permitting an inquiry 
 into the causative relations to be carried on, and to 
 reach natural conclusions. 
 
 Frequently it is necessary to consider purely nega- 
 tive factors. It is not only the presence of obvious 
 bad conditions, but the lack of actively favorable 
 forces that leads persons to abuse drink. Success 
 in combating intemperance cannot be attained sim- 
 ply by exterminating defective social conditions, 
 since the creation of new conditions is needed to fill 
 the voids which would make themselves painfully felt 
 were the opportunity to get alcohol seriously cur- 
 tailed. 
 
 In attempting a psychopathic diagnosis for the 
 purpose of determining why an individual abuses al- 
 cohol, a very special difficulty is encountered. It must 
 be ascertained whether the drink habit was super- 
 induced by outward conditions (unfortunate impres- 
 sions received during childhood and youth, the actual 
 environment, occupation, social customs and rela- 
 tions, and imperfect regulations governing the sale 
 of alcohol) ; or whether it expresses an individual 
 peculiarity or defect, that is, an inherited psycho- 
 pathic condition. To put it differently, the question 
 is of a possible deviation from psychopathic normality 
 of such a nature and so pronounced that it may have 
 a determinative influence on the power to resist 
 the temptation to drink or on the reaction to al- 
 cohol. 
 
 Just what constitutes psychopathic normality
 
 ALCOHOLISM'S UNKNOWN FACTORS 65 
 
 cannot be defined with exactness. In the effort to 
 determine it as well as in other psycho-analytical in- 
 quiries, the tendency is to pay heed only to actual 
 prominent or important qualities which from their 
 very nature or because of early origin, cannot be ex- 
 plained as being due simply to environment and thus 
 clearly reveal their endogenous character. To dif- 
 ferentiate psychopathic peculiarities is particularly 
 difficult in the case of chronic alcoholics. Often reli- 
 able information cannot be obtained about their early 
 development, the influences under which they grew up, 
 and the history of their parents and their relatives. 
 By so much it becomes the harder to learn whether 
 the defect in question is of a moral or intellectual 
 character, to be considered as the result or as a 
 cause of the abuse of alcohol. When not under the 
 immediate influence of drink, most chronic alcoholics 
 are not quite such normally and intellectually lost 
 beings as their miserable life would lead one to sup- 
 pose. It is possible to question them closely and 
 successfully in regard to themselves. Frequently, 
 too, the alcohol itself helps out by disclosing quali- 
 ties whose endogenous character is patent, for in- 
 stance, in the case of an evident pathological reaction 
 to alcohol. 
 
 Indications of degeneracy in alcoholics must be 
 carefully traced, also, because the usual measures 
 taken with such persons are rarely effective. Alco- 
 holic degenerates need in many instances to be placed 
 under special and continued care. To fill our prisons
 
 66 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DRINK 
 
 with such individuals as has been done is simply 
 inhuman. 
 
 The methods hitherto employed are ill adapted to 
 show how far alcohol is one of the most dangerous 
 foes to the workingman in economic as well as in 
 moral and intellectual respects; reformers simply 
 take it for granted. Nor do they yield a full and vivid 
 insight into its importance as a factor in the deterio- 
 ration of social customs and standards, poverty, etc. 
 
 Above all it is needful to clear up the inner factors 
 that make for an abuse of alcohol, for the role played 
 by excessive drink in society at large is not merely 
 that of a cause of misery but very frequently that of 
 a consequence of misery; in other words, intemper- 
 ance may express a glaring defect both in the indi- 
 vidual and in the conditions of society generally. 
 
 To sum up, there is great need of intensive investi- 
 gations following individual as well as social lines. 
 We must learn more about the drink habits of society 
 and chart the conditions of living in which all indi- 
 viduals entering into the investigations are found, 
 within certain natural boundaries, for instance, 
 neighborhoods alike as to environmental factors in 
 one or more quarters of a city, in different occupa- 
 tions and callings. Then a selection must be made 
 of individuals about whom information is to be sought, 
 whose mode of life must be followed for a certain 
 length of time, and whose early histories must be re- 
 constructed in order to gain insight into their present 
 life. We must obtain cross-sections of society within
 
 ALCOHOLISM'S UNKNOWN FACTORS 67 
 
 well-defined limits, and longitudinal sections of indi- 
 vidual lives that are especially characteristic. Both 
 methods of study complement each other, supply a 
 knowledge of actual conditions not to be gained in 
 any other way, and yield a live statistical material 
 which at the outset might not be very extensive, but 
 would go to the roots.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 DRINK REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 i 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 
 ARE we about to become an alcohol- free nation? 
 Or must the long struggle against intemperance con- 
 tinue until mankind has reached a state of develop- 
 ment in which its present weaknesses have been 
 turned into strength? There is no lack of loud trum- 
 petings in anticipation of an early and final victory 
 over the alcohol enemy. The confident predictions 
 impress the uninformed to the point of belief. More 
 cautious observers are perplexed, while others rush 
 into the fight for their own ends. The attitude of 
 a very large portion of the public toward the pres- 
 ent stage of drink reform in this country is one of 
 drift, more or less marked by uneasy forebodings. 
 Too many lack the bearings to be gained from the 
 history of the temperance movement in its various 
 stages, without which the present trend of things can- 
 not be understood nor can any reasonable forecast 
 be made for the future. 
 
 Moral suasion was the sole reliance of the tem- 
 perance reform in its earliest manifestations. To 
 
 68
 
 HISTORICAL 69 
 
 create and sustain a desire for personal abstinence 
 was the great aim. About a century ago enthusiasm 
 for this virtue surged like a wave over much of the 
 land. But when its force seemed about to wane, there 
 crept into the minds of some men the belief that to 
 pillory the drinker was not enough so long as the 
 purveyor of drink remained unscathed. Then arose 
 a demand for force where suasion appeared to fail, 
 and the idea took root of compelling temperance by 
 prohibiting the manufacture and sale of all intoxi- 
 cants. This idea found its first full-fledged expres- 
 sion in the State of Maine about 1850. Many advo- 
 cates of abstinence deprecated this recourse to the 
 " strong arm of the law " ; but they were given a 
 scant and hardly courteous hearing. And there was 
 need of law, for the saloon, supplanting the old-time 
 tavern, had in many places become a menacing insti- 
 tution. Gradually the battle for temperance shifted 
 from the drinker to the drink-seller and those behind 
 him. Old-style temperance revivals continued for 
 many a year, to be sure, but the suppression of the 
 saloon as the ultimate source of the drink evil be- 
 came the vital issue. Within the decade of 1850- 
 1860 twelve states followed the example of Maine and 
 enacted prohibition, 1 and in the next twenty years 
 (1860-1880) Kansas and Rhode Island, and by 1890 
 the Dakotas, were added to those twelve. Thus in 
 
 * Illinois, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecti- 
 cut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hamp- 
 shire, and New York.
 
 70 DRINK REFORM 
 
 the space of forty years no less than seventeen com- 
 monwealths embraced the prohibition faith. 
 
 During the prohibition campaigns of the earlier 
 periods, as now, the anti-saloon feeling was the main- 
 spring of the agitation. In this detached students 
 of the history of the prohibition movement concur 
 without dissent. We commonly speak of the Ameri- 
 can saloon as the offspring of rough pioneer condi- 
 tions, and such it was more or less. Whether one 
 looked to large urban communities or to the sparsely 
 settled new states, the saloon not only had become a 
 center of inebriety and affiliated vices but had reached 
 coruptingly into political life. How far the deteriora- 
 tion of the saloon and its consequent excesses resulted 
 from its being a proscribed institution which it was 
 sought to control by crude repressive measures, will 
 be discussed elsewhere. Here it is sufficient to re- 
 mark that since the advent of the prohibition theory 
 the keynote of American temperance reform has al- 
 ways been warfare against the saloon, not constructive 
 effort. 
 
 The legal measures for controlling the drink 
 traffic were of the crudest sort poor makeshifts, the 
 results of political compromise rather than of states- 
 manship. But in training the heaviest fire so exclu- 
 sively at the drink-seller, the appeal for personal 
 abstinence became dangerously subordinated in the 
 temperance campaigns. Earnest men and women 
 bewailed this trend but were powerless to stop it. 
 Yet to this blind reliance upon mere law to effect a
 
 HISTORICAL 71 
 
 moral change in the individual, we may trace the 
 undoing of many a seemingly promising prohibition 
 victory, won at great cost. Until this day the idea 
 persists that once the outlawry of drink-selling has 
 legally proclaimed a state of sobriety must follow 
 automatically, and the attempts to induce temperance 
 naturally slacken if they do not cease altogether, or 
 find expression in demands for the enforcement of 
 the law. 
 
 Of the seventeen states which between 1850 and 
 1890 had given their allegiance to prohibition, only 
 three (Maine, Kansas, and North Dakota) have clung 
 to it steadfastly until this day. We need not con- 
 cern ourselves here with the history of the various 
 enactments and repeals. The short life permitted 
 prohibition in a number of states and their failure 
 to renew the experiment after a test are, however, 
 sufficient evidence that the majorities behind the 
 law were more or less of a fictitious character, or that 
 the benefits promised did not materialize. It can 
 hardly be objected that most states which have re- 
 pealed prohibition failed to give it a fair trial. Mas- 
 sachusetts had about twenty years' experience with 
 it; Vermont and New Hampshire, many more; Con- 
 necticut had eighteen years; Michigan, twenty; and 
 Illinois, Delaware, Indiana, and Nebraska, shorter 
 periods, but long enough for a demonstration. Two 
 states may be said to have compromised with their 
 consciences. Iowa, after a long test of prohibition, 
 grew content to " mulct " liquor dealers, a method
 
 72 DRINK REFORM 
 
 which was distinctly contrary to the spirit if not to 
 the letter of the fundamental law of the state. Ohio, 
 although never formally enacting prohibition, pro- 
 vided by a constitutional enactment of 1851 that no 
 licenses to traffic in intoxicating liquors should there- 
 after be granted. This was intended as a species of 
 prohibition, but a compromise was found in the so- 
 called tax law which prevailed until very recent 
 times. Meanwhile, the states that continued to up- 
 hold prohibition did so largely in name. Spasms of 
 enforcement alternated with periods of open viola- 
 tions of the law. 
 
 Yet the struggle of these thirty years had by no 
 means been barren. In spite of obvious failures of 
 prohibition exemplified by repeals of the law, laxity 
 of enforcement, and other troubles, the temperance 
 movement up to this period, aside from any influ- 
 ence on individual lives, had one great achievement 
 to its credit: men began to realize as never before 
 the political as well as social perils of an uncurbed 
 liquor traffic. A return to the conditions which 
 preceded was unthinkable. One result of the search 
 for some constructive remedy was the high-license 
 law of Nebraska, enacted in 1881, which automati- 
 cally reduced the number of licensed places and thus 
 was expected to secure better control. This device 
 was eagerly adopted by a certain class of reformers, 
 and variously expanded, for instance by the statu- 
 tory limitation of the number of saloons and a host 
 of minor restrictive measures, it has remained the
 
 HISTORICAL 73 
 
 foundation stone of those laborious structures, the 
 modern license laws. 
 
 But a far more important and valuable heritage 
 of the earlier temperance movement was the status 
 secured for the principle of local option. While 
 local prohibition was applied both in Europe and 
 the United States prior to the state-wide experiment 
 of Maine, the distinction of legally recognizing the 
 principle that the local community has the right 
 to license or veto the drink traffic belongs to this 
 country. 
 
 For more than a decade subsequent to 1890 the 
 usually troubled waters of temperance reform re- 
 mained comparatively unruffled. The prohibition 
 propaganda had perceptibly weakened, notwithstand- 
 ing the advent of the prohibitionists as a political 
 party. Meanwhile, much new liquor legislation 
 crept into the statute books, though for the greater 
 part of a trivial nature except as it afforded the 
 local-option principle freer play. There was, how- 
 ever, one notable departure from the routine tem- 
 perance propaganda. The State of South Carolina 
 established its dispensary system, whereby the state 
 assumed supreme control of drink-selling for public 
 account. In time this experiment, now practically 
 abandoned, became the entering wedge which eventu- 
 ally rent the solidarity of the liquor traffic in the 
 Southern states. The dispensary system was copied 
 locally by Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina, and 
 bade fair to spread widely. Meanwhile the seemingly
 
 74 DRINK REFORM 
 
 dormant prohibition forces had slowly gathered new 
 strength. In the Northern and Western states the 
 responses to their pleas had become fitful and of less 
 promise. But the South was now ready to lend a 
 willing ear. Several circumstances combined to make 
 it so. The saloons, purveyors of distilled spirits al- 
 most exclusively, had grown notoriously lawless; 
 drunkenness was rampant, and behind all loomed 
 the specter, partly imagined, partly real, of danger 
 from the uncontrolled elements among the Negroes. 
 The dominant religious forces of the South, pecu- 
 liarly fitted to be a vehicle for temperance propa- 
 ganda, lent their full strength to the movement 
 against the saloon. Perhaps more important still, 
 there had come into being an organized force, manned 
 by professional temperance reformers, who took 
 command of the fighting line, namely, the so-called 
 Anti-Saloon League. Victories soon came apace. In 
 the space of a few years Oklahoma, Georgia, Ala- 
 bama, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi 
 outlawed the manufacture and sale of intoxicants. 
 Alabama later recanted her faith for a time, but has 
 once more turned to prohibition. 
 
 The wash of the rising prohibition wave soon 
 reached beyond the South. There the ground for 
 prohibition had been sedulously prepared by a liberal 
 application of the local-option principle. The modus 
 operandi was unconcealed and simple: first, to lay 
 " dry " as much territory as possible by local veto 
 and then to follow up with state-wide prohibition.
 
 HISTORICAL 75 
 
 This method of working toward state-wide prohibi- 
 tion by means of county-option laws has been pushed 
 vigorously and in some places with notable success. 
 
 Of course, as will be more fully noted later 
 on, it results in a prostitution of the principle of 
 local option, which was not originally intended as a 
 device for gaining political ascendency, but as a 
 means to obtain an unhampered expression of the 
 public will in regard to the manner of dealing with 
 the liquor traffic. 
 
 Long ago national prohibition could be discerned 
 as the ultimate aim of the extreme and commanding 
 element of the temperance forces. But now it has 
 become the issue ; it has indeed entered into all the 
 campaigns of the last few years. Still, it would be 
 hasty to declare that this issue was the decisive 
 factor in the most recent victories for prohibition, 
 which have brought to its ranks the states of Arizona, 
 Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, 1 West 
 Virginia, Iowa, Arkansas, Idaho, and South Carolina. 
 In the four states first mentioned the votes of women 
 proved a material aid to prohibition, and in one or 
 two of them the Socialist party seized the opportunity 
 to revenge itself politically on certain liquor interests. 
 In South Carolina, the issue, under law, lay between 
 a retention of the dispensary system, which obtained 
 in but few of the counties, and the adoption of state- 
 wide prohibition ; nearly all the counties had been laid 
 dry under local option. Virginia, and to some extent 
 1 Becomes effective in the Fall of 1916.
 
 76 DRINK REFORM 
 
 West Virginia, emphasized the race question in the 
 prohibition campaigns. Practically all the large 
 urban places in these states returned majorities fa- 
 vorable to license; the rural vote, therefore, won the 
 day, and it must be regarded as on the whole ex- 
 pressing a vivid resentment against the saloon which 
 is not quite analogous to a desire for general absti- 
 nence. Especially in case of the southern states 
 prohibition appears to be enacted for the benefit of 
 " niggers and white trash." 
 
 The most recent prohibition laws are far more 
 drastic than their prototypes, not only in respect 
 to measures for the prevention of illegal selling and 
 penalties but in respect to the privileges of importing 
 drink for personal use. Formerly the home use of 
 intoxicants was not subject to statutory regulation 
 provided the supplies came from without the state. 
 Now the laws ordain minutely the quantity which 
 may be imported for personal consumption within 
 a specified time, and official authority must be secured 
 by the buyer. In effect, this amounts to a crude 
 method of licensing individuals. 
 
 n 
 
 PRESENT CONDITIONS 
 
 Such, in broad outline, is the history of the tem- 
 perance movement in the United States so far as it is 
 reflected in legislation. Of its minor manifestations 
 the campaign for compulsory temperance teach-
 
 PRESENT CONDITIONS 77 
 
 ing, the innumerable restrictive enactments whereby 
 it has been sought to curb excesses of the licensed 
 traffic or to enforce prohibition there is not space 
 to write. When it is asked what has been the actual 
 gain for temperance from the ceaseless agitation, ex- 
 hortation, and forced legislation, an adequate an- 
 swer is far from being simple. On turning to the 
 Year Books of the Anti-Saloon League or of the Pro- 
 hibitionists, we find the case blandly set forth thus: 
 " So many states brought under prohibition rule ; so 
 many square miles of ' dry ' territory in license 
 states; and so many million inhabitants living in 
 areas from which the saloon has been banished," and 
 so forth. Such superficial, if pretentious, evidence 
 is unsatisfactory and hardly merits analysis. One 
 need not rehearse the oft-told sordid tale of per- 
 sistent, gross violations of prohibition law enduring 
 in some states from one generation to another; nor 
 point to the vast populations nominally living in 
 " dry " territory but having abundant facilities for 
 obtaining intoxicants. Over against the extravagant 
 claims that more than half of the population of the 
 United States has for several years experienced the 
 blessings of prohibition in some form, stand the ir- 
 refutable official figures of the production of alco- 
 holic liquors. By successive stages the output of 
 spirits, beer, and wine has risen almost without a 
 halt, and more than kept pace with the growth of 
 population, as shown in the following statement in 
 round numbers :
 
 78 DRINK REFORM 
 
 SPIRITS WITHDRAWN 
 
 YEARS FOR CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION OF BEER 
 
 (MILLION GALLONS) (MILLION BARRELS) 
 
 1900 93 39 
 
 1905 115 49 
 
 1910 126 59 
 
 1914 136 66 
 
 What the actual per capita consumption is in this 
 country no one can tell. To measure it by the total 
 number of inhabitants, with no allowance for non- 
 drinkers, abstainers, children, rural communities, 
 and so forth, is not only ignorant but absurd as a 
 test of the status of temperance. There is, however, 
 one undeniable inference which must be drawn from 
 the official statistics : ^he steady upward movement in 
 the production of intoxicants could not have taken 
 place during these years had both state and local 
 prohibition been truly effective. With more than 
 one-half of the people alleged to live in dry territory, 
 one would logically expect consumption to be re- 
 duced, or at least to fall behind the growth in popu- 
 lation; but the contrary has happened, leaving en- 
 tirely aside the increase in illicit distillation and the 
 growing use of alcoholic home brews. Common sense, 
 no less than experience, discards the explanation that 
 the unquestioned increase in consumption is attrib- 
 utable to the license states alone. It is even less 
 creditable to blame the influx of immigrants, espe- 
 cially when one recalls that those of recent years 
 belong largely to the abstemious races of Europe. 
 
 It must not be understood, however, that the con- 
 sumption of spirits referred to above rose steadily
 
 PRESENT CONDITIONS 79 
 
 from early times until the present. On the contrary, 
 the official revenue statistics show clearly that in the 
 early history of this country the relative consump- 
 tion of spirits was much greater than the present. 
 A decrease set in about 1860 and continued steadily 
 until 1896. After that a continuous rise took place, 
 which by 1906 about doubled the visible consump- 
 tion of spirits. This was not a fortuitous happen- 
 ing, but coincided with the large acquisition of dry 
 territory between 1896 and 1906. The demand for 
 intoxicants showed no signs of diminishing in conse- 
 quence, but it could not be supplied by malt bever- 
 ages, which are not manufactured within dry terri- 
 tory (there are no moonshine breweries), and which 
 are too bulky as a rule to be welcomed by the illicit 
 trade. The rise in the consumption of spirits since 
 1896 is thus one of the results of local and state 
 prohibition, for prior to that year the population 
 living under actual or nominal prohibition was not 
 large enough materially to affect the consumption of 
 intoxicants. 
 
 It may be asked what has caused also the steady 
 rise in the production of beer. The gradual substi- 
 tution of malt for distilled liquors in popular taste 
 accounts for it in part; but the largest factor has 
 probably been the great influx of European immi- 
 grants. The earlier arrivals were generally accus- 
 tomed to beer drinking in their home lands, and those 
 of later dates from wine-drinking countries resort 
 to beer in the United States, notably the Italians,
 
 80 DRINK REFORM 
 
 Hungarians, and Greeks. In other words, each year 
 there were more people who drank beer. The cessa- 
 tion of immigration on account of the Great War 
 and the recent departure of many of the later ar- 
 rivals coincide with the slump in the production of 
 malt liquors at the present time. Other causes have 
 been business depression and the addition of so many 
 prohibition states. 
 
 Fortunately the claims fof temperance reform rest 
 on a more solid basis than the one commonly vaunted. 
 In the face of the larger and more widely distributed 
 use of alcoholic beverages, particularly of beer, one 
 may confidently assert of our country as a whole, 
 
 (1) That there is a growing tendency toward per- 
 sonal moderation and practical abstinence, partly 
 as a result of a keener appreciation of the evils of 
 alcoholism and partly as a result of the amelioration 
 of social standards and habits. 
 
 (2) That the public attitude toward intemper- 
 ance has undergone profound changes which are re- 
 flected in social intercourse, in the demands of trans- 
 portation and commerce and industries, and more 
 and more in legislation against inebriety. 
 
 (3) That the temper of our people as a whole 
 does not support the saloon of to-day as a desirable 
 institution; many who vote against prohibition con- 
 tend that the saloon must be removed from the coun- 
 try villages and cross-roads, and they find support 
 even within the " trade " itself. 
 
 The persistent intemperance that pervaded all
 
 PRESENT CONDITIONS 81 
 
 classes of the population a few generations back has 
 been sufficiently documented. Society now frowns 
 upon drink customs which were then taken as a mat- 
 ter of course. No one who observed popular habits 
 on our various frontiers within memory of the mid- 
 dle-aged, and who has revisited them, can have failed 
 to note the transformation wrought in modes of liv- 
 ing marked by a gradually diminished abuse of alco- 
 hol, whether the communities happened to be under 
 prohibition or under license laws. In particular do 
 the changes for the better in some rural places stand 
 out; but their counterparts in urban life are not 
 wanting. To deny this would be to deny all that 
 observation and experience teaches and to belittle 
 progress in a hundred directions. 
 
 Contrasting these conditions with those of two or 
 three decades ago, we note a measurable progress 
 toward sobriety and cleaner living. 
 
 To whom belongs the credit? Doubtless much, 
 very much, is due the general temperance propa- 
 ganda, which, however, is by no means synonymous 
 with the battle for prohibition. To lay dry so much 
 territory legally is not necessarily to be counted as 
 an achievement for temperance reform when intem- 
 perance remains as rampant as under license, and 
 the illicit traffic gains a hold on the community quite 
 as dangerous as that of legalized traffic. To attrib- 
 ute the advance wholly to a movement which finds its 
 chief expression in denouncing the iniquities of the 
 purveyor of intoxicants and in preaching an ideal
 
 82 DRINK REFORM 
 
 nowhere obtained, an ideal to be gained by force 
 where persuasion fails, is to deny the potency of 
 other forces making for betterment: religion, educa- 
 tion, the demands of industry and commerce, better 
 conditions of living, and so on. And surely these 
 forces are quite as markedly active in license as in 
 no-license communities. If it be given no man to 
 apportion accurately the effect of the manifold 
 factors that contribute to more sober living, one can 
 at least point out the grievous error of ascribing it 
 entirely to a single factor. 
 
 However gratefully we must acknowledge improve- 
 ments, we should not be content with the present 
 state of temperance reform. Usually high planes of 
 living are reached by many a faltering step ; but we 
 are told now that temperance will become an inevita- 
 ble virtue by the simple means of national prohibi- 
 tion. The vociferous clamor for it is a logical out- 
 growth of the temperance movement under its present 
 generalship, yet it compels the admission openly made 
 by a few of its candid adherents that state-wide pro- 
 hibition has not fulfilled the rosy expectations of its 
 sponsors. The superficial reasons for this lie at 
 hand. In defiance of " ironclad " statutes, federal 
 regulations concerning interstate shipments, the 
 limitation of quantities that may be imported for 
 private use, the fidelity in policing, and so forth, in- 
 toxicants have always found their way into forbid- 
 den territories in sufficient quantity to frustrate the 
 object of prohibition completely, or in greater part,
 
 PRESENT CONDITIONS 83 
 
 through illicit sales. For confirmation one need but 
 turn to the sinister figures published annually by the 
 United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue, of 
 the persons who pay the federal tax as liquor-dealers 
 in prohibition states let alone the numbers who 
 avoid such risk and of the immense growth of illicit 
 distillation which the Federal government seems un- 
 able to check, and which, according to official testi- 
 mony, has been a concomitant to the enactment of 
 prohibition in so large a portion of the South. 
 
 At times and in places a periodic degree of suc- 
 cess attends enforcement. Kansas has recently dem- 
 onstrated this after failures extending over thirty 
 years, although the claim that the state actually has 
 been dry since 1912 lacks verification. 
 
 West Virginia just now is making its first effort 
 to the same end. One lesson has come home from the 
 bitter warfare, namely, that liquor-selling can be 
 effectually suppressed in rural districts and small 
 urban communities and this quite independently of 
 the state-wide law by means of local option. In- 
 deed, long before the principle of local option became 
 incorporated into the law, the sale of liquor was ex- 
 cluded from large areas, for instance, in Massachu- 
 setts, by the simple expedient of denying license priv- 
 ileges. There can be no argument about the super- 
 fluity of the country drink place, as it does not meet 
 any irrepressible demand. 
 
 But even in the happier instances of prohibition 
 the willingness to exclude the saloon is largely condi-
 
 84 DRINK REFORM 
 
 tinned by the opportunity to secure liquor for pri- 
 vate use. In truth, nowhere and at no time has abso- 
 lute prohibition been exemplified in this country ; and 
 to assume that with every opportunity to obtain in- 
 toxicants cut off , people would so light-mindedly vote 
 for prohibition, is to flout the fact that human na- 
 ture is essentially the same the country over. 
 
 In forecasting the possibilities of absolute prohi- 
 bition, the committee of the Swedish Medical Society 
 officially deputed to study the question (1912) sim- 
 ply dismisses the American prohibition experiments 
 as wholly inconclusive and therefore valueless as a 
 guidance to other countries. Indeed, impartial and 
 authoritative observers from abroad, like Messrs. 
 Rowntree and Sherwell, Professor Axel Hoist, and 
 many others, have been impressed throughout their 
 personal investigations chiefly by the extent to which 
 prohibition is being violated and circumvented. 
 
 How the situation impresses an impartial foreign 
 observer is told in the following extract from the 
 official report of Professor Hoist, chairman of the 
 Norwegian Alcohol Commission, after a personal in- 
 vestigation made in 1912. He says, among other 
 things : 
 
 " Even when an election shows a majority favor- 
 able to prohibition it is impossible to draw any 
 definite conclusion from the number of the majority 
 votes in regard to the number of the electors who are 
 actual adherents of prohibition. As for that, these 
 may, as a matter of fact, be in the minority. In the
 
 PRESENT CONDITIONS 85 
 
 American prohibition states it has repeatedly been 
 shown that a number of persons who vote for prohi- 
 bition do so not because they are personally 
 convinced of its expediency and intend personally to 
 contribute to its enforcement; but their vote is di- 
 rected by ulterior motives. Partly they vote for the 
 law so that in return through the support of the 
 prohibitionists they may be elected as members of 
 the local government or of the state legislature. 
 Partly they desire to gain the temperance vote when 
 other positions are in question which in the states 
 are filled by popular elections, and that carry eco- 
 nomic advantage or may satisfy one's ambition. And 
 when these persons have attained the positions it 
 is observed partly that they personally violate the 
 law they helped to force through, partly in the main 
 they close their eyes or are not concerned to prevent 
 others from transgressing the law, as they do not 
 intend by their vote to draw down upon themselves 
 trouble or enemies. 
 
 " Under these circumstances it is not strange when 
 in the states one hears talk of so much hypocrisy 
 and so many broken promises that one involuntarily 
 gets the impression that such election pledges and 
 their consequences may be specially prominent in the 
 states. But as appearances of a corresponding kind, 
 so far as one can judge, belong to the shady side of 
 present-day public life generally, they must be con- 
 ceived of as essentially one of the common human 
 weaknesses of modern popular government.
 
 86 DRINK REFORM 
 
 " But in the third place, so far as the states are 
 concerned, politics has to a large extent entered into 
 the prohibition question as well as into temperance 
 reform. Thus at the last election in Maine in 1911 
 prohibition was opposed by the Democratic and sup- 
 ported by the Republican party. This is a direct 
 consequence of modern popular government and is 
 not peculiar to American society. It is also patent 
 that this manner of proceeding involves considerable 
 danger; for when prohibition is given place on the 
 program of a party machine, the guarantee that 
 in case the program carries, the rank and file of 
 the party will live up to it or exert themselves to 
 have the law obeyed, is even less than when the in- 
 dividual citizen pledges himself to vote for it. As 
 already remarked, it will still be a long time before 
 a violation of liquor laws is regarded by the great 
 public on par with a crime." 
 
 in 
 
 OUR EXPERIMENTS IN PROHIBITION 
 
 Habitually, the venders and makers of intoxicants 
 are blamed for these unwholesome conditions. They 
 are guilty in a degree; and we justly pour out upon 
 them 1 a full measure of wrath. No condemnation too 
 severe can be visited upon men who for the sake of 
 filthy profit defy constitutional and statutory law, 
 spreading corruption and misery wherever they go. 
 Yet that they usually find open markets beckoning
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN PROHIBITION 87 
 
 them, and that otherwise decent citizens become their 
 partners in law-breaking by purchase, argues not so 
 much an irrespressible demand for drink as indiffer- 
 ence to the enforcement of prohibition. 
 
 Here is the festering sore spot which prohibition 
 so far has failed to heal. It is caused by the pres- 
 ence of large hostile minorities (sometimes turning 
 into majorities), some of whose members may be- 
 lieve in prohibition to the extent that they frown 
 upon the legalized saloon and yet demand a supply 
 of liquor for private use. Unfortunately, prohibi- 
 tion rarely, if ever, as enacted nowadays, is the ex- 
 pression of an untrammeled public conviction. The 
 methods of the ordinary prohibition campaign do 
 not require this. The paid propagandists who have 
 assumed leadership are content to cajole where they 
 do not persuade, through threat of social and trade 
 boycott, or of political extinction, and by a hundred 
 other devices not necessarily calculated to instil con- 
 viction but effective in gathering votes. They sel- 
 dom fail to recruit strength from self-seeking poli- 
 ticians who would ride to preferment and office on 
 the " water wagon," although they secretly despise 
 it. This blunt but truthful speech by no means ig- 
 nores the very many men and women who vote and 
 work for the extinction of the liquor traffic with per- 
 fect single-mindedness. We are merely seeking ade- 
 quately to explain why prohibition victories are 
 usually short-lived triumphs for temperance. So 
 much detailed evidence, even photographic, of illicit
 
 88 DRINK REFORM 
 
 drink-selling and of public intoxication in prohibi- 
 tion territory, not to mention the substitution of 
 drugs and other stimulants, has been presented by 
 trustworthy publicists that it surely is superfluous 
 to amplify it. 
 
 Everywhere stands out the ugly fact of substan- 
 tial minorities opposed to prohibition, exclusive of 
 persons whose creed permits them to vote for it with- 
 out any intention of helping to secure enforcement 
 of the law. Instances of states repealing prohibition 
 after a trial are numerous ; but its complete vindica- 
 tion by the voters after a satisfactory trial is still 
 wanting. The State of Maine furnishes an illuminat- 
 ing example. When a few years ago its citizens were 
 called upon to declare for or against the resubmis- 
 sion of the constitutional prohibition amendment, 
 only a bare majority could be mustered against it; 
 and had not the issue been clouded by political con- 
 siderations, above all, had not the illicit traffic, 
 aided by wholesale liquor-dealers outside of the state, 
 rallied to the support of prohibition, Maine would 
 certainly have shown a popular vote in favor of a 
 license law. 
 
 The statement has been challenged since it was 
 published in The Atlantic. Documentary cor- 
 roboration is of course not available, but the writer 
 has the information from indubitable sources. More- 
 over, his personal investigations have assured him 
 that the illicit liquor dealers of the state, who form 
 a large and lusty brood, opposed the change to
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN PROHIBITION 89 
 
 license, insisting that notwithstanding the risk, 
 greater profit and political pull may be had under 
 prohibition. It is true that the question of adopting 
 a license policy was not directly placed before the 
 electors; yet every vote for a resubmission of the 
 constitutional prohibition amendment was certainly 
 an expression of opinion favorable to some form of 
 legalized drink-selling. The whole point is that re- 
 submission all but won. Incidentally it may be re- 
 marked that the changes in population in Maine 
 through the addition of foreign elements account 
 significantly for the anti-prohibition sentiment in 
 the last election. 
 
 The mere desire to extirpate the saloon, although 
 professed by a majority of voters, does not suffice to 
 uphold prohibition ; for it is a question fundamentally 
 involving the attitude of the individual toward the 
 use of intoxicants. Until the mass of men in any 
 state have become convinced (of which there is no 
 evidence) that so far as they are personally con- 
 cerned the temperate use of liquor is wrong, or are 
 impelled to personal abstinence through solicitude 
 for weaker brethren, prohibition must continue to 
 suffer from what for the present appears to be an 
 insuperable limitation. Human nature will not take 
 seriously a ban upon an indulgence regarded as per- 
 sonally permissible. The drink question is not a 
 plain moral issue; therefore we submit it to popular 
 vote, a thing never done with matters involving in- 
 herent rights and wrongs. We do not debate whether
 
 90 DRINK REFORM 
 
 various forms of crime and vice shall be suppressed, 
 but only the methods of suppressing them. No one, 
 for instance, challenges the wisdom of forbidding by 
 legislation the sale of habit-forming drugs except for 
 medical use. But prohibition against drink is in no 
 sense analogous, for it denies the liberty to indulge 
 in things which, if used moderately, are not neces- 
 sarily open to condemnation. 
 
 Yet intelligent people insist upon the perfect anal- 
 ogy between prohibiting the sale of alcohol and the 
 sale of drugs, whose moderate use (if there were such 
 a thing) is unqualifiedly injurious. They are un- 
 conscious of their inconsistency in that they are the 
 stanchest upholders of local option, which recognizes 
 it as proper to legalize the sale of intoxicants if a 
 majority favor it a procedure they would not 
 dream of permitting in regard to opium and cocaine. 
 
 Were the line of cleavage what absolutists con- 
 tend, we should not witness the numberless evasions 
 and violations of the law which otherwise straight- 
 walking persons permit themselves. The writer well 
 remembers witnessing a justice of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States persuading a black railway por- 
 ter to break a state prohibitory law because he felt, 
 or imagined, the need of something stronger than 
 water, while passing through " dry " territory. The 
 much perplexed negro offered this defense : " What 
 could ah say wen de co't compel me to ? " The 
 elevated personage in question is but a type of un- 
 told numbers in humbler walks who without com-
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN PROHIBITION 91 
 
 punction break the one law against drink while they 
 implicitly obey others. Patrons of kitchen bars or 
 the more pretentious saloon drug-stores in forbidden 
 places are not alone guilty in this attitude. It is 
 shared commonly by men whose standing no one 
 would challenge, and who not seldom admit an im- 
 pulse to circumvent prohibition whenever they find 
 themselves in dry territory, not from an active crav- 
 ing for drink nor from idle curiosity about the man- 
 ner in which the law may be enforced, but rather 
 from natural resentment against dictation affecting 
 their personal habits. 
 
 Even the great institutions of learning have been 
 known to make exceptions (perhaps for the sake of 
 obviating a greater evil) when confronted with the 
 question of strictly enforcing liquor legislation within 
 their own domain. This compounding with wrong 
 is facilitated by the law itself, which visits its whole 
 strength upon the vender of the forbidden goods, al- 
 though he be in fact but their hired custodian, while 
 the purchaser goes scot free. 
 
 The common lack of whole-hearted acceptance of 
 the very essence of the principle of prohibition is not 
 merely a firm obstacle to rigid enforcement, but proof 
 that men habitually distinguish between the obliga- 
 tions imposed by prohibition and other laws which 
 the community conscience insists shall be respected. 
 Men who speak and vote for prohibition in Congress 
 or in state legislatures do not lose caste in society, 
 because they violate the very statute to which they
 
 92 DRINK REFORM 
 
 have subscribed as soon as it happens to incon- 
 venience them. Yet the same persons would be con- 
 demned for ordinary criminal acts. The strict 
 moralist cannot justify this attitude. We are here 
 purely concerned with the fact that it exists and that 
 it accounts for the inherent weakness of the efforts 
 to change habits and points of view by statutory 
 enactment. Perhaps no more disquieting illustra- 
 tion of the point to be driven home can be found 
 than the frequent political contests in prohibition 
 states centering in the question whether the law 
 against drink-selling shall be enforced or not. Gov- 
 ernors, state legislatures, and numerous local offi- 
 cials are frequently elected on a platform of non- 
 enforcement. It would be shallow-minded to say that 
 such exhibitions of callousness to the dictates of law 
 are due solely to the machinations of those pecuni- 
 arily interested in drink-selling, or to the degrada- 
 tion of this or that political party. No, it is rooted 
 in the fact that so many differentiate between viola- 
 tion of prohibition and ordinary transgressions. In 
 passing, it may be said that we touch here upon one 
 of the fundamental ills engendered by unenforced pro- 
 hibition, namely that it focuses political thought 
 and activity of the community, not upon policies for 
 civic advancement, but, mirabile dictu, upon the ques- 
 tion whether constitutional and statutory enactments 
 shall be respected ! 
 
 There is, then, no real analogy between the viola- 
 tion of prohibition and that of other laws which by
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN PROHIBITION 93 
 
 common consent have become dead letters. In the 
 course of time we slough off considerable legislation 
 without formal repeal, because we have outgrown it, 
 but the fact does not necessarily argue disrespect 
 for law. On the other hand, there is at least a con- 
 stant pretense of enforcing prohibition, and it can- 
 not be openly flaunted without the connivance of 
 officials. 
 
 To some extent conspicuous evils accompanying 
 unenforced prohibition, such as the corruption of 
 the police and other officials, the schooling of entire 
 generations in obtaining a livelihood through viola- 
 tion of law, and the constant presence of alcoholism, 
 are admitted even by the sponsors of this method of 
 temperance reform. Naturally, the blame for such 
 lamentable conditions is laid upon the liquor traffic 
 in other states, as ultimately responsible; and there 
 follows the argument : " Forbid by national law the 
 manufacture and importation for purposes of sale 
 of all intoxicants, break up the legalized liquor traf- 
 fic, and these ills will disappear ; the Federal govern- 
 ment has stamped out slavery and polygamy, and 
 will soon put an end to the drug traffic; it can do 
 the same with liquor." Thus runs the speech, and 
 hardly a day passes without its repetition in some 
 form from the pulpit and platform.
 
 94 DRINK REFORM 
 
 rv 
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 
 
 Let us examine a bit closer this ultimate panacea 
 for the drink evil, not in the spirit of belittling its 
 honest advocates, but in the spirit of one who would 
 sound for possible shoals upon which temperance re- 
 form may yet be stranded. The procedure by which 
 national prohibition might become a reality is pretty 
 well known. The Congress must by a two-thirds vote 
 in both its houses submit an amendment to the 
 Constitution forbidding for all time the manufacture 
 and importation for sale of intoxicants of every kind ; 
 then the amendment must be accepted by three- 
 fourths of the states. Already nineteen states are 
 counted in the prohibition column, and that the 
 seventeen others necessary for the required majority 
 can be won over is of course possible. 
 
 But let us note that the nineteen prohibition states 
 are mainly agricultural communities, only twenty- 
 six per cent of their populations being urban, and 
 that they have outlawed the drink traffic through the 
 rural vote; that is, the areas which under normal 
 conditions would not be encumbered by saloons have 
 held the balance of power. The large cities invari- 
 ably reject prohibition; thus in recent elections 
 otherwise successful, Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, 
 Portland, and Denver voted against prohibition. The 
 likelihood of winning over the greater centers of
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 95 
 
 population elsewhere is far less. In short, the more 
 urban a state is, the greater the probability that it 
 will oppose in particular national prohibition. Now 
 comparatively few states contain an overwhelming 
 or preponderating urban population and one some- 
 what generally distributed. Among them must be 
 counted Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 
 Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and California; 
 also the District of Columbia. These states, sixty- 
 eight per cent of whose population is urban, with the 
 District of Columbia, contain more than forty-five 
 million inhabitants, or very nearly one-half of the 
 total number in the United States, as against twenty- 
 seven million in the avowed prohibition states. Yet, 
 under the rule governing the acceptance of a consti- 
 tutional amendment dealing with a matter of public 
 morals, these twelve " sovereign " commonwealths 
 might be coerced to accept prohibition, and that 
 principally by a more or less remote rural 
 vote! 
 
 To legislate the saloon out of country districts is 
 comparatively simple and does not require a national 
 amendment. But drink-selling is primarily a city 
 problem which will not disappear merely because 
 rural majorities say it shall, regardless of the wishes 
 of the city folk. From the very nature of its object, 
 prohibition is inherently difficult to enforce and when 
 it is foisted upon a community from without its ill 
 fate is foreordained. The philosophy of the present-
 
 S6 DRINK REFORM 
 
 day temperance leaders does not contemplate such 
 affirmation of every-day experience, for it is built 
 upon the doctrine that sobriety can be created by 
 law, i.e., coercion ; hence the marshaling of the rural 
 forces against the urban minorities. 
 
 Moreover, it may conservatively be assumed that 
 even in the prohibition states one-third of the popu- 
 lation is opposed to forced abstinence, and that the 
 same proportion holds good in the seventeen states 
 which it is necessary to win over to secure national 
 prohibition. These thirds, added to the number in 
 the states one must anticipate as opposed to prohibi- 
 tion, would equal sixty-three millions of the total 
 population. Thus a constitutional amendment might 
 be secured against the expressed will of a large ma- 
 jority of the citizens of the United States. This is 
 by no means a fanciful speculation, but a condition 
 confronting the intelligent voter which should lead 
 him to ask whether such temperance reform by com- 
 pulsion does not carry the germ of its own destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 There are, however, more obvious barriers to the 
 success of national prohibition. Under it the now 
 legal manufacture of liquor for sale would automat- 
 ically cease. The seal placed upon the distilleries and 
 breweries of to-day by the Federal government 
 would not be broken. Customs inspectors would 
 guard against the illicit importation of liquors 
 through the usual channels. Yet should we thereby 
 overcome the evils for which the legalized liquor traf-
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 97 
 
 fie is cursed corruption and political graft, and 
 above all else the scourge of alcoholism? 
 
 Other tremendous factors are to be reckoned with 
 in every community that is hostile or even lukewarm 
 to national prohibition. In the first instance there 
 is the ease with which alcohol is produced and the 
 consequent extraordinary temptation to make " easy 
 money " through its sale. The material for the pro- 
 duction of alcohol is well-nigh universal. At the cost 
 of a few cents, a gallon of alcohol can be obtained 
 from peat. Nothing is simpler than to make and 
 operate home apparatus for distilling spirits from 
 potatoes or grain. The fruits of the orchard and the 
 inexhaustible supplies of berries of the woods and 
 fields, plus sugar, will yield alcoholic beverages of 
 deadly strength. And let us bear in mind that the 
 home manufacture of alcohol would be legal under 
 the proposed amendment to the Constitution so long 
 as the product is not placed on sale. The Federal 
 government has already proved its inability to sup- 
 press " moonshining," especially in the prohibition 
 states ; and to assume that, at a time when even fiscal 
 interest in preventing illegal distillation would be 
 lacking, it could close the million avenues through 
 which alcohol in its most noxious forms might find 
 the way to the consumer, requires an optimism born 
 of sheer ignorance. The era of home distillation 
 was the period of the greatest intemperance Sweden 
 ever knew. It was in part to prevent the ever-grow- 
 ing home manufacture of vodka and the consequent
 
 98 DRINK REFORM 
 
 appalling drunkenness that Russia undertook the 
 monopoly of the manufacture of this drink, which 
 it has lately abandoned only to find that the illegal 
 production is once more becoming a menace. 
 
 The great issue is to prevent alcoholism ; and this 
 is not to be accomplished simply by allowing con- 
 sumption under a different form. The present ac- 
 quiescence in so-called prohibition in certain states 
 is largely conditioned by the fact that alcohol has 
 always been accessible through private importation, 
 state liquor agencies, patent medicines, and so forth, 
 not to mention illicit selling. Imagine the now 
 legally accessible sources of supply cut off, but with 
 every facility for home production of intoxicants 
 left, and one can easily forecast a disaster to actual 
 temperance reform which could hardly be repaired. 
 
 Under national prohibition the illicit sale of alco- 
 holic drinks would be proportioned to the ease with 
 which they are produced. The lure of gain is 
 stronger than fear of an unpopular law. Certainly 
 the Federal government could not employ an army 
 vast enough to prevent illegal selling, even if it had 
 authority to usurp the police power of the local com- 
 munity or state. The local police would prove a 
 vain dependence in the hundreds of municipalities 
 opposed to the law. They, too, would be set upon 
 by temptation or cease activity in the face of juries 
 hostile to conviction. This is not a fantastic picture 
 of probable conditions, but one drawn from long ex- 
 perience of prohibition under circumstances much
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 99 
 
 more conducive to fair success. Professor Hoist ob- 
 serves : " It is only human that several of the con- 
 ditions mentioned before quite apart from what has 
 been said about the sheriffs and corruption must 
 have its influence on the functionaries of the police. 
 In spite of the result which the popular election 
 relative to prohibition had for the respective com- 
 munities, it is simply human that the higher officials 
 of the police in American prohibition cities are loath 
 to take measures against violations of the law, when, 
 for instance, even members of the local government 
 circumvent it. And regardless of the result of the 
 election, it is quite as human that also the lower 
 members of the police force are reluctant to be more 
 active than absolutely necessary since the social cir- 
 cles which they frequent when off duty are inimical 
 to the law." 
 
 The demand for stimulants is not amenable to a 
 fiat of the law; and whenever demand lags, one can 
 trust the illicit vender artificially to stimulate it. He 
 will not depend solely upon the cravings of the alco- 
 holic, which contrary to the popular conception 
 quickly cease in the absence of what they feed upon 
 The young and the weak would be found as ready 
 victims to the seductions of alcohol as they are now ; 
 and these seductions would reach them under forms 
 far more tempting and dangerous than at present. 
 
 Were the habitual or occasional demand of mil- 
 lions for alcoholic stimulants merely fictitious, it 
 could be made to disappear by legal magic and the
 
 100 DRINK REFORM 
 
 battle would have been won long ago. But the affair 
 is not so desperately simple. Physiologically as well 
 as psychologically, it is unthinkable that the transi- 
 tion of millions from the habitual consumption of 
 alcohol to sudden abstinence, can be effected without 
 revolutionizing the very mode of life. This is a con- 
 dition that defies law. There lies in this considera- 
 tion no plea for the continuance of bad habits, but 
 simply a question as to the means by which they can 
 be abated without inviting greater evils. 
 
 " It is a curious fact," says Professor Patrick, in 
 his Psychology of Relaxation, 1 " that in the thou- 
 sands and hundreds of thousands of books, articles, 
 and writings of every description relating to the 
 many phases of the alcohol problem, this simple and 
 fundamental question Why do men desire alcohol? 
 has until recently never been carefully considered 
 at all, and even now has not been answered. The 
 belief that the desire for alcohol is due to total de- 
 pravity or original sin seems to be about as far as 
 we have got in answering this question. One author 
 wrote a serious article not long ago to show that the 
 cause of drinking is to be attributed to bad cooking 
 in the home! He evidently did not appreciate the 
 fact that the desire for alcohol, as well as its use, 
 is at least as old as the Lake-dwellers of the Neo- 
 lithic age." Professor Patrick states the psycho- 
 logical view of alcohol as follows: 
 
 1 Psychology of Relaxation by George Thomas White Patrick, 
 Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy in the State University of Iowa.
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 101 
 
 " We thus trace the desire for alcohol to the in- 
 herent need of mind and body for relaxation, a need 
 normally supplied by all the varied forms of play 
 and sport. Psychologically it is the expression of 
 the desire for release from the tension of the strenu- 
 ous life. In a sense, therefore, it is the strenuous 
 life which is responsible for the alcohol impulse, but 
 it should be noted that the word ' strenuous ' is 
 here used in a broad sense. It does not refer neces- 
 sarily to an exciting, active, high-pressure life, but 
 refers rather to any condition of unrelieved tension, 
 where sustained effort is demanded with little oppor- 
 tunity for complete rest and relaxation. While these 
 conditions are, perhaps, most often encountered in 
 the high-pressure life of our cities, they are also 
 present in the unrelieved toil of the industrial worker. 
 
 " We are in this way able to understand some of 
 the facts which, as we have shown, must be consid- 
 ered in any theory of the alcohol motive. We may 
 understand not only the increased desire for alcohol 
 in modern life, but also the lesser need for it on the 
 part of woman. Woman is less modified than man 
 and presents less variation. Her life is calmer and 
 more even. She is more conservative, representing 
 the child type, which is the race type. Her life is 
 less strenuous. She is not keyed up to so high a 
 pitch, and hence has less need of relaxation and feels 
 less demand for play and sport. Man, on the other 
 hand, represents variation. The mental powers 
 peculiar to advancing civilization are more developed
 
 102 DRINK REFORM 
 
 in him. He has to be in the vanguard of progress. 
 With him, therefore, the stress of life, the tension, 
 the excitement, are greater, and he feels more the 
 need of the harmonizing action of alcohol. 
 
 " Again, we can understand why even the primi- 
 tive man finds alcohol a relief, for the tension of his 
 life is great as compared with the lower animals, and 
 we can understand why the desire increases with the 
 progress of civilization and the corresponding in- 
 crease of tension. The stress of life is greatest among 
 the Anglo-Saxon people and greatest of all, per- 
 haps, in American cities at the present time. In this 
 country, especially, the intense life of concentration, 
 of effort, of endeavor, of struggle, of rapid develop- 
 ment, has for its correlate an intense longing, not 
 for stimulants, for our life, our climate, our envi- 
 ronment are surely stimulating enough, but for 
 rest, for relaxation, for harmony, for something to 
 still, temporarily, the eternal turmoil. 
 
 " Does the fact that the desire for alcohol is in- 
 creased by the indulgence in it and the apparent fact 
 that those who fall victims to its excessive use are 
 not always those most in need of its harmonizing 
 action present any difficulty in this theory? Prob- 
 ably not. The desire for relaxation is not necessarily 
 increased by the use of alcohol, but onJy the ever- 
 renewed demand for that which produces the longed- 
 for effect, and, again, it is not certain that those who 
 fall victims to its excessive use are those most in 
 need of its harmonizing action. Here the element of
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 103 
 
 prudence and self-control must be taken into account. 
 Excessive users may be those having lesser control 
 or greater opportunity, not those experiencing 
 stronger desire. While the desire for alcohol is in- 
 creasing with the complexity of society, it is actually 
 true that drunkenness is decreasing, and it is possi- 
 bly true that the number of total abstainers is in- 
 creasing. These things are determined by custom, 
 by individual environment and education, and by the 
 power of self-control. But the steady increase in 
 the desire for alcohol is shown not merely in the 
 steady increase in its consumption, but still more in 
 the fact that it increases in the face of public and 
 private sentiment, legal statute, and social effort. 
 
 " We see, also, why the use of alcohol has com- 
 monly followed the law of rhythm. Among primi- 
 tive tribes drinking was periodic, wild orgies of in- 
 toxication following considerable periods of the plod- 
 ding life. This periodicity is seen in convivial drink- 
 ing of all times and is a familiar fact in every 
 community at present. The power of self-restraint, 
 strengthened by public sentiment and private pru- 
 dence, deters from the use of alcohol up to a certain 
 point, when the cumulative force of the desire, which 
 is the cumulative need of release from painful ten- 
 sion, overthrows all barriers, and excess and complete 
 relaxation follow for a season. 
 
 " So it appears that the effect of alcohol is a kind 
 of catharsis. But, just as we have seen in the case of 
 play and sport and laughter and profanity, it is a
 
 104 DRINK REFORM 
 
 catharsis only in a very limited sense, not in the 
 Aristotelian sense of purification by purging some- 
 thing away, but only in the sense that it affords rest 
 and relaxation. Truer, perhaps, it would be to say 
 that alcohol is a kind of escape. It is not in itself 
 desired ; often enough it is hated. But the user finds 
 himself under the rule of an imperative, an insistent 
 idea, a tormenting presence, and this presence is his 
 whole deep human personality crying out against 
 the eternal urge of the ' will to live.' The spirit of 
 the age proclaims that we must be efficient. 
 Efficiency, and ever more efficiency, is demanded, and 
 the desire for alcohol is the desire for rest, for re- 
 lease from the tension, for freedom and abandon- 
 ment. . . . 
 
 " But now, if this theory is correct, what is the 
 conclusion? Is alcohol a means of purification 
 through relaxation? Just so far as it affords rest 
 to the wearied brain and relief from the tyranny of 
 the will, it is a means of purification, but unfor- 
 tunately, it is at the same time a poison, bringing in 
 its train a heavy residuum of damage not only to 
 society, but to the individual. The imperative need 
 of relaxation is apparent, but, while play and sport 
 are relaxing and recreative, alcohol is relaxing and 
 destructive. The colossal evil of its excessive use is 
 evident to every one, but there is reason to believe 
 that even its moderate use detracts from the sum 
 total of well-being of the individual in exact propor- 
 tion to the amount used. It is possible, however,
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 105 
 
 that the case is still worse. Let us suppose that al- 
 cohol were not a poison, that it had no effect beyond 
 a slight paralysis of the higher brain. What will be 
 the cumulative effects of such action upon the indi- 
 vidual and the race ? This question cannot at present 
 be answered. . . . 
 
 " To the psychologist it would appear that the 
 method of substitution will have more satisfactory 
 results in the end than the method of direct suppres= 
 sion. Merely to suppress the sale of alcohol is like 
 putting a lid on the teakettle to prevent the steam 
 from escaping. As long as the fire burns brightly 
 beneath and there is water in the kettle, something 
 will probably happen to the lid. If the lid is screwed 
 on tightly enough, something will probably happen 
 to the kettle. We must either provide some way for 
 the steam to escape or else remove the fire. So we 
 must either provide some substitute for alcohol, such 
 as healthful forms of relaxation, or else, by a dif- 
 ferent kind of education or a different manner of 
 social life, bring about such a harmony in the human 
 personality as to make unnecessary the resort to 
 temporary expedients." 
 
 Still another uncontrovertible item in the cata- 
 logue of " outs " about national prohibition must be 
 mentioned. The real warfare over it would begin 
 with the efforts at enforcement. We should then 
 witness, on a nation-wide scale, the spectacle that 
 we have already observed in miniature locally, the 
 blighting power of avowed disobedience to law dom-
 
 106 DRINK REFORM 
 
 inating political battles. The paralyzing influence 
 that overtakes a community when it condones the 
 violation of fundamental laws, the utter demoraliza- 
 tion of public officials, and the corroding of the social 
 conscience, are inevitable evils under prohibition not 
 enforced; and it is for the conscientious voter to 
 weigh how far they offset any measurable gains for 
 temperance. 
 
 The contrast to be kept in mind is not between 
 possible shortcomings of prohibition and the out- 
 rages of the existing drink traffic, but between un- 
 checked intemperance plus the evils of non-enforce- 
 ment and the employment of new effective principles 
 of restriction. One can join heartily in the anath- 
 emas against the saloon and decry alcoholism as a 
 world-disease, while conscientiously rejecting the 
 proposed cure-all. For this reasonable state of 
 mind the extremists show pitying contempt or even 
 suspicion. And now that the question has become a 
 firebrand in national politics, its consideration upon 
 its actual merits grows increasingly difficult. Daily 
 we observe political fortune-hunters, whose belated 
 conversion to temperance advocacy is not altogether 
 convincing and who befog the real issues at stake. 
 They trade upon the pleasing fiction that the de- 
 mand for national prohibition springs from the peo- 
 ple as a whole because it no longer thirsts ; they mis- 
 construe the very real outburst of indignation against 
 the saloon, as if that alone provided a suitable foun- 
 dation for absolutism.
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 107 
 
 It is not easy, of course, to differentiate the genu- 
 ine from the spurious or manufactured sentiment 
 underlying the agitation, since not all its motive 
 power is clean from self-seeking and since its methods 
 in large part have become coercive. 
 
 This much is certain: any sudden enthusiasm for 
 reform is apt to lack depth. The alleged ripeness of 
 the country for national prohibition is not the frui- 
 tion of physiological-statistical teachings about the 
 effects of alcohol. The masses are not moved by sci- 
 entific conceptions. Happily, sound instruction in 
 principles of hygiene has become a powerful weapon 
 in fighting intemperance; but this fact does not re- 
 duce the drink problem to a physiological basis, 
 much less excuse the palpable exaggerations and the 
 confusion of values put out in the name of science. 
 It is a social, not a physiological, question, and to be 
 solved not by sifting the conflicting dicta of scien- 
 tists, not as a matter of abstract morals, but by a 
 gradual progress backed at each forward step by 
 an enlightened public sentiment. To insist -that 
 in a space of years a hostile attitude will become 
 reconciled to national prohibition is to beg the 
 question, for then the mischief to be averted will 
 already have been done a too frequent expe- 
 rience when legislation outstrips public convic- 
 tion. 
 
 These elementary observations are naturally re- 
 pudiated by the type of reformer who regards the 
 mere act of supplying intoxicants as immoral, and
 
 108 DRINK REFORM 
 
 therefore refuses it legal sanction under any condi- 
 tion. And yet he would permit others to drink ; for 
 one sees that the proposed constitutional amendment 
 aims to preserve this " personal liberty," as well as 
 the manufacture and importing for private use of 
 the most noxious beverages. Or is this merely a 
 " joker " intended to make the amendment more 
 palatable, and to be got rid of by subsequent per- 
 fecting amendments? The distinctions made in the 
 case are curious. Since at bottom the question is of 
 stopping the sources of intemperance, how can those 
 who brand as immoral the manufacture for sale of 
 all alcoholic drinks consent to their uncontrolled and 
 unlimited production for home use? The profes- 
 sional temperance agitator must perforce take an 
 extreme stand. Fulminations against the inherent 
 sinfulness of making and selling drink are part of his 
 stock in trade, and for him to admit the possible 
 morality of supplying liquor of any kind, under any 
 legal auspices would for self-evident reasons be a 
 disastrous face-about. 
 
 What a strange perversion it is of temperance re- 
 form to subordinate the fundamental question of 
 weaning the nation from excessive drink habits to 
 the mere legal prohibition of the manufacture and 
 sale of intoxicants, since under the liberty of import- 
 ing and of making it for home use there can be no 
 reasonable guarantee that access to alcohol will ap- 
 preciably be diminished. How absolutely simple the 
 problem would become if the desire for drink were
 
 NATIONAL PROHIBITION 109 
 
 conditioned solely by the legal production of the 
 means for its gratification. 
 
 Some other significant aspects of national prohi- 
 bition, although not essentially basic, such as its eco- 
 nomic bearings, the eventual compensation to a dis- 
 possessed trade, which in some lands is accepted as 
 an obligation, and its relation to government, will be 
 discussed in another chapter. 
 
 It has been necessary to dwell thus at length upon 
 the prohibition issue because it is the present storm- 
 center of temperance reform and held by many to 
 be its beginning as well as its consummation. Per- 
 haps, in a far-away future, society will outgrow the 
 menace of alcoholism. Practically universal prohi- 
 bition may be in store for the world. Meanwhile it 
 behooves us to inquire for a safer, shorter road to 
 the hoped-for millennium than that which crosses the 
 pitfalls of national prohibition, and along which men 
 are to be driven when they refuse to go willingly. 
 
 It is not true that we have exhausted the means 
 for an effective control of drink-selling and the sup- 
 pression of alcoholism, and that, therefore, national 
 prohibition is the only alternative. We have merely 
 woven into our statutes a fabric after the crazy-quilt 
 pattern which does not hold together because it lacks 
 a body of sound principles. The need is not for 
 more law, but for a radically different law, the con- 
 trolling motive of which must not be solely to end 
 the present unholy alliances of the drink traffic and 
 sweep away all the rottenness of the saloon, but
 
 110 DRINK REFORM 
 
 gradually to dry up the real sources of intemper- 
 ance a law that recognizes an inexorable demand 
 and meets it under conditions leading away from, 
 not to, excesses. We need not become pathfinders in 
 the wilderness of temperance reform in order to 
 establish this ; but it is necessary that we should see 
 things as they are, divested of prejudice, and clearly, 
 as in r, glass without a wrinkle.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 i 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 So much prejudice and finality of opinion surround 
 the question of drink reform that he who approaches 
 it judicially risks being misunderstood both as to the 
 purpose and the bearing of the argument. It is not 
 a welcome task to paint the shadow sides of a move- 
 ment absorbing so many men and women whose purity 
 of intention is beyond cavil. But where is the au- 
 thenticated story of " human wreckage saved by pro- 
 hibition " ? 
 
 The writer is conscious that truth-telling has 
 earned him the lasting enmity of prohibition leaders 
 and a place on the blacklist of thousands who follow 
 them blindly. For the sincerity of their convictions 
 he has but respect, believing that in all things they 
 intend well. He wills the same great end as they 
 temperance but would strive for it through other 
 means. He also ventures to hope that in criticism as 
 well as in suggestion he has, however imperfectly, re- 
 flected the sense of many people who see, perhaps, 
 more clearly than he that a social millennium will 
 
 111
 
 112 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 not dawn until we have been made ready for it, not 
 by force but by persuasion. 
 
 Lest new misconception arise, it must be said that 
 criticism of the extreme prohibition wing is not di- 
 rected against all who hold by sumptuary law as a 
 cure for intemperance. If there be general assent 
 among them to the ultimate object, there is pro- 
 nounced dissent about ways and means of achieving 
 it. Therefore, it were unjust to hold the mass of 
 prohibitionists accountable for all the activities and 
 vagaries of more or less self-constituted leaders. 
 This avowal is perhaps especially needful when the 
 relation of the prohibition movement to government 
 is under discussion. Personal motives and intentions 
 are not to be scrutinized, but merely the inexorable 
 consequences of a misguided propagandism. If now 
 and then extreme instances are cited to illustrate very 
 present perils, they must stand to the credit of those 
 who provide them or who undertake their defense. 
 
 The prohibition method of drink reform in its 
 radical manifestations, is indictable because it tends 
 to pervert both the theory and the practice of gov- 
 ernment. This assertion doubtless will seem singu- 
 larly harsh and unjust to the men and women who 
 devoutly believe that the overshadowing tyranny of 
 the liquor traffic is the real bane of our body politic. 
 They have graven on their minds the image of an 
 alcohol octopus whose paralyzing tentacles draw 
 legislators and civic authorities of whatever name 
 into a deadly embrace and which rules to ruin. The
 
 INTRODUCTORY 113 
 
 picture, however magnified and distorted, is not one 
 of pure fancy; the liquor interests at times and in 
 places have imposed a deadening weight upon gov- 
 ernment and corrupted where they should have 
 obeyed. Domination, real or attempted, in political 
 affairs, interference in elections, tampering with the 
 police and other public officials, and general disregard 
 of law have justly been charged against the liquor 
 traffic. Such evils have been largely of a local na- 
 ture, quite amenable to correction through an en- 
 lightened community sentiment, but have helped won- 
 derfully to point the argument for prohibition. 
 
 The opposition to prohibition is invariably as- 
 cribed by its promoters to the machinations of the 
 trade. Naturally, the powerful liquor organizations, 
 like any other concern, resent interference with their 
 business, especially when they are faced with the 
 possibility of its utter destruction without com- 
 pensation. But the suggestion is that " by some 
 obscure influence they induce others who have not 
 the same interest to join in fighting their battles." 
 The belief of temperance reformers that they need 
 only reckon upon the opposition emanating from the 
 trade simply reveals their ignorance of the forces 
 with which they have to deal. They would dam the 
 stream without studying its origin and source. First- 
 hand knowledge of the saloon and the social want it 
 meets, they scorn. That actualities show alcoholic 
 indulgence to be far too deep-rooted in humanity to 
 be dug out by any summary process, they deny.
 
 114 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 Particularly in this land of compulsory virtue, re- 
 formers have come to live in an atmosphere of 
 phrases untempered by facts. The " solution of the 
 liquor problem " is one of them. By this, of course, 
 is meant general prohibition, that short-cut to virtue, 
 which shall accomplish by a wave of the legislative 
 wand that which all the efforts of the saints and 
 sages have failed to achieve in a score of centuries. 
 To those who pay more attention to words than to 
 actual life the saloon incarnates all the evil powers 
 of the world, and warfare against it becomes a holy 
 crusade justifying any weapon or mode of attack, 
 since they believe emotionally that the salvation of 
 the world hangs by the one issue. 
 
 But in the comfortable glow of reform people are 
 apt to forget that in combating the oppression of 
 an overreaching traffic, it is possible to invite an- 
 other species of tyranny more inimical to govern- 
 ment because it is subtler, less tangible, and more 
 enduring in its effects, the tyranny of political and 
 social coercion exercised in the name of public morals. 
 The use of force to obtain a " sanctified " end is as 
 ancient as history, soiling the pages of Christianity 
 itself. The prohibition propaganda merely illus- 
 trates a peculiar phase of such coercion, and the ap- 
 plication of methods that are the more dangerous 
 because of their apparent innocence. A slight re- 
 flection on our theory of government should make 
 this clear. 
 
 It is an accepted article of our political faith that
 
 INTRODUCTORY 115 
 
 the success and durability of a just form of govern- 
 ment require the consent of the governed. To deny 
 this concept or to circumvent it is to invade the very 
 fundamentals of liberty. But this sound underlying 
 theory of democracy is easily subject to perversion. 
 As President Hadley of Yale University puts it in 
 his Standards of Public Morality, " Not content 
 with saying that all just government is based on the 
 consent of the governed, the enthusiastic advocates of 
 democracy hold that if you could only find what a 
 majority of the governed wanted, you could easily 
 incorporate it into law. Never was there a greater 
 practical error. Public law, to be effective, requires 
 much more than the majority to support it. It re- 
 quires general acquiescence. To leave the minority 
 at the mercy of the whims of the majority does not 
 conduce to law or good government or justice be- 
 tween man and man. Even Rousseau, the leading 
 apostle of modern democracy, saw this most clearly. 
 He said in substance: " A majority of the people is 
 not the people and never can be. We take a major- 
 ity vote simply as the best available means of ascer- 
 taining the real wishes of the people in cases when 
 it becomes necessary to do so." 
 
 These elementary political principles are lightly 
 brushed aside by those who strive for sumptuary 
 legislation. Yet coercion through a crude illegal 
 use of the police power is not a whit more subversive 
 of ideals of government than the enactment by fab- 
 ricated majorities of statutory and constitutional
 
 116 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 laws that violate what millions regard as inherent 
 personal rights. Still the pursuit of that will o' the 
 wisp public virtue to be attained by compulsion 
 continues. That experience has showed it to be a 
 costly phantom is forgotten or wilfully denied, and 
 a vacuous belief is maintained in the usefulness of 
 law as such, provided it has a seemingly beneficent 
 object. 
 
 It is axiomatic that when law reflects general con- 
 sent in regard to public needs, " its enforcement 
 takes care of itself." But when law is enacted by 
 insincere majorities, particularly a measure that 
 undertakes to regulate personal habits and modes of 
 life, its fate is foredoomed. The greatest obstacle is 
 not the active hostility of bad men to such a law, but 
 the unreadiness of good men to support it, for a 
 widespread passive opposition suffices to destroy its 
 vitality. Illustrative of this attitude toward prohibi- 
 tion is the reply of a prominent physician to the ques- 
 tion whether he had read any of these articles as they 
 appeared in The Atlantic. " No," said he, " I never 
 read anything about alcohol ; I am afraid of being 
 deprived of it." 
 
 Oftentimes an obnoxious law, by common consent, 
 becomes a dead letter, and its enforcement is not 
 even publicly advocated. But the preservation of 
 liberty by means of a general permission to ignore 
 law does not point to a wholesome social condition. 
 Prohibitory laws, however, are not permitted to die 
 after the manner of other legislation which a com-
 
 INTRODUCTORY 117 
 
 munity may have outgrown. Even the tolerant citi- 
 zen will grow apprehensive over the prospect of a 
 complete liberation of forces that stand athwart 
 order and decency. Outwardly, at least, prohibition 
 is always upheld; and from time to time occur sin- 
 cerely enthusiastic and some locally successful at- 
 tempts at enforcement. The proper redress when pro- 
 hibition is shown to be a failure is, of course, to se- 
 cure its repeal by existing legal expedients. But just 
 as many men allow social and political considerations 
 to override the conviction that prohibition should not 
 be attempted, so, from the same motives, they ac- 
 quiesce in its habitual violation rather than advocate 
 the repeal of the law. Then there are everywhere 
 large minorities personally hostile to the policy of 
 prohibition, whose existence alone can account for 
 the huge scale upon which it has been and is being 
 violated. From circumstances like these arise condi- 
 tions that are destructive of the social order we call 
 government. Let us see how these generalizations 
 fit the prohibition propaganda as well as the enforce- 
 ment of prohibition laws. 
 
 The adoption of prohibition as a state's policy 
 need not occur in response to an overwhelming volun- 
 tary demand for the extinction of drink selling; for 
 the present-day prohibition cult is not a spontaneous 
 growth but a condition of mind requiring constant 
 and artificial nurture. The advocacy of prohibition 
 does not even necessarily connote enthusiasm for total 
 abstinence as a personal habit. It will be observed
 
 118 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 that abstinence or temperance societies of the old 
 pattern are not the leaders of the national move- 
 ment, nor is its promotion the reason for their being. 
 In the early days of the prohibition agitation 
 genuine fervor directed the majorities in several cam- 
 paigns. For the most part its fires burned out 
 quickly, leaving scarce a trace. Of later years it has 
 become increasingly evident that such embers as still 
 remain must be fed with specially prepared fuel if 
 they are to be fanned into flame; and the task has 
 finally become the paid occupation of a certain class 
 of reformers. This does not imply a prevailing luke- 
 warmness toward temperance. Only a blunted sense 
 of the public feeling round about the country could 
 lead one to deny a very active, wholesale resentment 
 against the saloon and the methods of its backers; 
 but to identify this feeling with an unconquerable 
 desire for prohibition is to read it sadly amiss. For 
 instance, the recent return to prohibition by the 
 state of Alabama would probably not have taken 
 place except to avenge the high-handed interference 
 by the liquor interests in municipal affairs. In gen- 
 eral, were this not so, we should not have witnessed 
 the remarkable upward trend in the consumption of 
 liquor during the past decade ; nor would it be neces- 
 sary to build up elaborate local state and national 
 machinery to deal with every trick and device of 
 coercive campaigning in order to foster the neces- 
 sary sentiment. The old-line prohibition party was 
 not adapted to the work, as experience in the United
 
 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 119 
 
 States has shown that a political temperance party, 
 pure and simple, whose vision of public policies is 
 bounded by prohibition is not enduringly an efficient 
 factor in state or national affairs. Therefore, in 
 order to gain the momentum in the prohibition cam- 
 paign desired by the extremists, a new agency became 
 necessary, and the Anti-Saloon League was fashioned 
 to supply it. 
 
 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 
 
 The recent manifestations of the prohibition move- 
 ment, particularly in its bearings upon government, 
 cannot be thoroughly understood without knowing 
 what the Anti-Saloon League stands for, its char- 
 acter, purposes, and methods. Ostensibly, it is " a 
 federation of churches and temperance societies to 
 promote public morals," and has also been described 
 as representing a " militant church movement." This 
 is true in the sense that it finds its main support 
 within certain large Protestant denominations the 
 Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and, to an extent, 
 the Lutheran (chiefly the smaller English-speaking 
 portion) and naturally finds adherents within lesser 
 church organizations. These great religious bodies 
 have their strength in rural and semi-rural districts, 
 whence also the prohibition movement recruits its 
 force. 
 
 On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church,
 
 120 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Jewish 
 congregations, counting together about as many 
 members as the others just mentioned, have their 
 stronghold in the cities ; but they are not identified 
 with the prohibition movement as such, much less 
 affiliated with the Anti-Saloon League. Indeed, their 
 most promiment spiritual leaders have declared 
 against the prohibition agitation as a religious propa- 
 ganda and stand aloof from it as a political measure. 
 In all the prohibition states, except Arizona, Colo- 
 rado, and Maine, the majority of church communi- 
 cants belong chiefly to the Methodist, Baptist, and 
 Presbyterian bodies, yet in more than half of all the 
 states the Roman Catholic is the religion of the 
 plurality, and in nearly one-half of all the states it 
 has a larger membership than the combined denomi- 
 nations which are said to support the program of 
 the Anti-Saloon League, but among whose members 
 there assuredly are many who refuse it indorsement. 
 Moreover, only two-fifths of our population are reck- 
 oned as communicants of any church, and only fif- 
 teen per cent of the population belong to the par- 
 ticular denominations which the Anti-Saloon League 
 would claim for its own. Therefore, does it not savor 
 of a recrudescent Know-Nothing spirit, when this 
 organization presumes to call its propaganda an 
 American church movement, and to speak in the name 
 of the people of the United States? 
 
 To be sure, the Anti-Saloon League is of ecclesi- 
 astical origin; it was given life by a wandering
 
 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 121 
 
 Methodist preacher some twenty years ago; the 
 active workers are drawn from churches ; pulpits 
 are its forum, and tribute is received from Sunday 
 collections. In many respects, however, it seems 
 to be singularly worldly and wholly undemocratic. 
 In spite of its ramifications and ubiquitous agents, 
 it is a markedly centralized body. Supreme con- 
 trol is vested in the General Superintendent. He 
 assigns the State Superintendents; local or state 
 groups have no choice in the matter. In brief, head- 
 quarters select, direct, and pay all of its officers, 
 including the legislative superintendent at Washing- 
 ton, who conducts the campaign on Congress. 
 
 The Anti-Saloon League is thus a very compact, 
 practically self-perpetuating, and, in a public sense, 
 irresponsible group which knows no political fealty 
 to other principles than that of prohibition, but seeks 
 to bind all parties to its chariot. The corps of pro- 
 fessional workers employed in every state is not amen- 
 able to local discipline or control. Its lack of public 
 responsibility apparently covers the expenditure of 
 vast sums of money (one and one-quarter millions per 
 annum is admitted), contributed by churches, indi- 
 viduals, and corporations for political purposes, 
 which are not regularly accounted for as such. It is 
 this organization, backed by its own professional 
 publications and dominating no small portion of the 
 general press, that under the emblem of religion has 
 obtained control of the propaganda for state and 
 national prohibition.
 
 122 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 The methods followed by the new type of work- 
 ers in ordinary prohibition campaigns, the frequent 
 proscription of candidates for office who choose to 
 follow their own convictions, the intimidation of 
 voters through implied threats of social and business 
 boycott, the frank appeal to the emotions of voters 
 instead of to their understanding through the em- 
 ployment of women and children as special pleaders 
 for the cause, all of which makes for unstable ma- 
 jorities are tolerably well known. Let us turn to 
 the national aspects of the situation. 
 
 The attitude of the Anti-Saloon League toward 
 Congress has recently been stated by Mr. William 
 H. Anderson, State Superintendent for New York, 
 than whom no one can speak with greater authority, 
 as follows : " The Anti-Saloon League is not asking 
 any member of Congress to declare that he is in 
 favor of National Prohibition, but simply that he 
 shall not become an avowed exponent and protector 
 of the liquor traffic by refusing to vote to allow the 
 people of the Nation, by states, through their repre- 
 sentatives, to determine this question in the manner 
 provided therefor by the framers of the Constitu- 
 tion." 
 
 Many very specific instances have been published, 
 with names and dates, which seem to disprove this 
 assertion, not to mention the openly avowed inten- 
 tion of seeking the defeat of candidates in the next 
 elections to Congress who refuse " to permit this 
 question to be settled by reference to the states, so
 
 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 123 
 
 that the people may elect legislatures pledged for or 
 against ratification." 
 
 Note, also, the assumption that he who refuses 
 assent to the proposed constitutional amendment 
 thereby becomes " an avowed exponent and protec- 
 tor of the liquor traffic." Yet for the most part it 
 is accepted in silence. Is this simply through indif- 
 ference, the traditional American willingness to sub- 
 mit to political manipulation rather than to oppose 
 it, or does courage really fail? So long as the Anti- 
 Saloon League successfully dangles the bugbear of a 
 moral issue before the public conscience, eternally 
 but wrongfully declaring the prohibition issue to be 
 one between right and wrong and not one of social 
 expediency, it is perhaps natural that many should 
 become frightened. Politicians, both large and small, 
 are thus made to seek cover, or, when in extremity, 
 to enter into prohibition servitude as a means of 
 safety and preferment. Then, too, it is so easy to 
 represent that the question lies solely between tem- 
 perance workers and the liquor interests, for only 
 those directly connected with it would humanly show 
 the same intense zeal as the temperance agitators 
 themselves. As Mr. Fabian Franklin says, " the 
 opinion that nobody is concerned in the matter except 
 the prohibitionists on the one hand, and those who 
 make money out of liquor on the other, is not only 
 false but so monstrously false that its almost un- 
 challenged currency must be set down as one of the 
 1 The Portland (Oregon) Journal, Dec. 18, 1915.
 
 124 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 most interesting and instructive of psychological 
 curiosities." 1 
 
 But the pronouncement cited of the attitude of 
 the Anti-Saloon League toward Congress is of far 
 greater import than in the respects just discussed. 
 To quote Mr. Franklin again, " A doctrine more 
 dangerous, more subversive of the spirit of represent- 
 ative government than that here laid down concern- 
 ing the duties of members of Congress in relation to 
 the most solemn responsibility they are ever called 
 upon to discharge, it would be difficult to imagine." 
 
 Nothing less is contemplated than a de facto 
 reversal of the process by which amendments to the 
 Federal Constitution are intended to be made. The 
 provision of the Constitution that the Congress, 
 by a two-thirds vote in both houses, has power to 
 propose amendments to the Constitution, which be- 
 come effective when ratified by the legislatures of 
 three-fourths of the states, necessarily implies a de- 
 liberative act on the part of the Congress and imposes 
 a solemn obligation for the nature of the amend- 
 ment proposed. The requirement that an amendment 
 must be submitted to the several states for ratifica- 
 tion, is merely in order that there may be a suffi- 
 cient check upon any action of the Congress. But 
 the Anti-Saloon League would have the chosen repre- 
 sentatives of the nation abdicate as a deliberative 
 body, efface personal conviction, and forego their 
 greatest responsibility so that " the people of the 
 1 The Unpopular Review, Oct.-Dec., 1915, p. 296.
 
 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 125 
 
 nation " may determine the question of national pro- 
 hibition, under threat that he who refused to do so 
 becomes an " avowed exponent and protector of the 
 liquor traffic." 
 
 The transparent plea is made that " the people of 
 the nation " through its legislatures should be al- 
 lowed to decide. In reality this is an appeal for 
 coercion through a minority of the population. For 
 in ratifying a proposed amendment to the Constitu- 
 tion the votes of the different state legislatures are 
 equal units, no matter how great the disparity of 
 the populations they represent. Thus the four least 
 populous states in the Union would have just as 
 much weight as the four most populous containing 
 thirty times as many inhabitants. As stated in the 
 second chapter, a situation might arise in which 
 thirty-six legislatures representing less than one-half 
 of the population imposed their will on twelve states 
 representing the majority. Yet we are adjured to 
 " let the people decide." The true implication is, 
 let the rural minorities say how the urban majorities 
 shall live. The expedient lies in passing up the de- 
 cision to the legislatures, in many of which, how- 
 ever, the large city populations proportionally to 
 their members have a smaller representation than 
 the rural. Logically, if " the people " are to decide 
 in the sense the Anti-Saloon League would have 
 us interpret its plea, a referendum should be had 
 to the whole country for the guidance of the Congress 
 as well as of the state legislatures.
 
 126 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 The prophecy is frequently made that national 
 prohibition will become law within ten years. The 
 reasoning behind it is plain: Should Congress sub- 
 mit the national prohibition amendment, a state legis- 
 lature may act on the question of ratification when- 
 ever it sees fit, without any time limit ; and naturally 
 every effort would be made to seize upon the right 
 moment for securing a favorable majority. If ratifi- 
 cation should fail at the first attempt, a legis- 
 lature may presumably reverse its action at a 
 subsequent session; but whether a legislature can 
 reverse its act of ratification is dubious and can- 
 not be definitely known until the Supreme Court 
 has passed on the question. Many hold that it 
 cannot. 
 
 Thus it may be needful only to accumulate during 
 an indefinite period the ratification votes of thirty- 
 six state legislatures, the requisite majority for an 
 acceptance of the amendment ; and if ratification once 
 made is irrevocable, any subsequent revulsion of pub- 
 lic sentiment and how rapidly it shifts the history 
 of the prohibition movement teaches us would be 
 of no avail. The reason for urging the Congress to 
 stand aside and delegate its responsibility to the 
 state is therefore evident, since it foreshadows " the 
 clear possibility of the adoption of the most momen- 
 tous or radical of changes in the organic law being 
 brought about by the vote of the legislatures of a 
 handful of states previously disinclined to it, at a 
 time when an indefinite number of the states previ-
 
 THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 127 
 
 ously favorable to it had experienced a reversal of 
 sentiment on the subject." 
 
 If the country should wish to repeal the proposed 
 amendment, it would be necessary to secure a two- 
 thirds majority for repeal in both houses as well as 
 the consent of three-fourths of the state legislatures. 
 But any thirteen states and there are more than 
 that number within the prohibition party to-day 
 would have the power, by refusing their assent, to 
 make repeal impossible, no matter how insistent and 
 sincere might be the demand for it throughout the 
 other thirty-five states. And a governmental policy 
 fraught with such incalculable consequences, reach- 
 ing into the very depths of our political and social 
 life, the well-spring of ceaseless strife and of corrup- 
 tion, should be left to chance legislatures in the name 
 of a public opinion they cannot truly voice ! 
 
 What hypocrisy may lurk behind the phrase " let 
 the people decide ! " Is, then, representative govern- 
 ment as exemplified by the Congress opposed to the 
 interests of the people because it is a deliberative 
 body, bound by certain rules, forms, and account- 
 ability for its actions? There is something humor- 
 ous in the suggestion that a state legislator drawn 
 from goodness knows what patch in the hinterland 
 must possess a better sense of a national policy than 
 he who is charged with specific responsibility for it, 
 and who now is virtually being asked to delegate his 
 authority.
 
 128 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 in 
 
 PROHIBITION ATTITUDE TOWARD ADMINISTRATION 
 
 The attitude of the Anti-Saloon League toward 
 government is more clearly revealed through its prac- 
 tices under prohibiton. Of later years, perhaps 
 emboldened by many successes, this body under- 
 takes not only to secure sumptuary legislation but 
 to dictate how it shall be enforced. Under local self- 
 government, the function of making penal acts ef- 
 fective belongs to the established police authorities, 
 co-operating with the proper judicial tribunals. 
 Somehow these usual custodians of order do not 
 seem to meet the exigencies of prohibition since it 
 is held necessary to create extraordinary police 
 agencies charged with the single duty of enforcing 
 the edict against drink. In Maine, a few years ago, 
 the scandalous inactivity of the sheriffs and the po- 
 lice became too notorious even for that state to 
 endure, and a commission was established with rov- 
 ing powers to visit every part of the Commonwealth 
 and supplement or rather supplant the work of the 
 local police forces. Bitter resentment against this 
 interference with local self-government, admixed of 
 course with political considerations, before long put 
 an end to the experiment. Recent prohibition legis- 
 lation would anticipate all these difficulties. 
 
 The state of West Virginia wrote into her pro- 
 hibition law open distrust of existing police powers
 
 PROHIBITION ATTITUDE 129 
 
 when she established a prohibition commissioner en- 
 dowed with authority on a par with that of the 
 State's Attorney-General and the right to appoint a 
 practically unlimited number of deputies to assist 
 him in upholding the new law. This innovation in 
 government has at least been welcomed by place- 
 seekers; West Virginia is overrun by deputies armed 
 with extraordinary power to interfere with personal 
 liberty, as illustrated by their searching the baggage 
 of inoffensive travelers, perhaps through-passengers, 
 and haling them before some magistrate upon the 
 discovery of a small quantity of contraband goods, 
 or on pure suspicion. Merely to provide the pay of 
 these deputies has become a notable drain upon the 
 already meager state treasury; but that is a detail. 
 The core of the situation is what the effect must be 
 upon government when in order to vindicate a single 
 piece of legislation it is thought necessary to brand 
 the usual police authorities, chosen by the people or 
 locally appointed, and who are sworn to execute all 
 laws for public safety and welfare, as incapable of 
 trust in the one respect of enforcing prohibition. 
 What a singular travesty on methods of securing 
 community order and decency ! Incidentally, what 
 a commentary on the assumption that in West Vir- 
 ginia, for instance, prohibition is backed by an all- 
 pervasive and sound public sentiment ! 
 
 This resort to specially devised agencies for the 
 purpose of compelling obedience to a single law is 
 illustrated in other prohibition states by the appoint-
 
 130 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 ment of "state rangers" (Tennessee), and "liquor 
 deputies," or whatever name they may enjoy. The 
 introduction of such elements into the governmental 
 machinery of the state and their maintenance self- 
 evidently denotes a control of offices in the interest 
 of no other public policy than that of prohibition; 
 for its enforcement, especially in some Southern 
 states where it is attempted, has become the pivot 
 on which the whole scheme of government revolves. 
 In view of the recent rampant criminality in some 
 of the Southern states, one wonders whether their 
 quest of public order and respect for law has no 
 other meaning than the enforcement of legislation 
 against drink. 
 
 Perhaps the most sinister phase of the enforce- 
 ment work is the pressure brought upon the courts, 
 the undisguised efforts to influence their action in 
 trials for violations of the liquor law. The practice 
 of intimidation of this sort may even be threatened 
 before the prohibition law in a given state goes into 
 effect. For example, in the Portland (Oregon) 
 Journal (December 18, 1915), we read, under the 
 caption " Dry League Chief Tours East-State," the 
 following story: 
 
 " Superintendent R. P. Hutton of the Anti- 
 Saloon League of Oregon is now making a tour in 
 Eastern Oregon, explaining the prohibition law, tell- 
 ing ' what is in it,' and * how to get the good of it.' 
 ' The proposed law and the proposed officials will 
 secure more results with a bunch to back them, than
 
 PROHIBITION ATTITUDE 131 
 
 the best law and the best officials can get if only an 
 unorganized public sentiment is behind them.' 
 
 "That is the burden of Mr. Hutton's message, and 
 he is arranging for organized demonstrations of pub- 
 lic backing for enforcement to be made in the court 
 room when the first half dozen trials come up in each 
 county or in the local community." 
 
 The violation of the sanctity of the courts by 
 means of " organized demonstration " of public back- 
 ing for enforcement is an expedient borrowed from 
 Southern prohibition states where it has been exten- 
 sively used. Instances of mobs showing noisy hos- 
 tility to prisoners on trial for ordinary offenses 
 fortunately are exceedingly rare; and everywhere 
 such offenders would be summarily punished. But in 
 Southern prohibition states it appears to be allow- 
 able not only to exact public pledges from judges 
 and prosecuting officials in regard to the enforce- 
 ment of prohibition (as to other laws they are pre- 
 sumably to be trusted), but to instruct a judge in 
 open court, ask him to set aside any doubt that may 
 attach to the possible guilt of the defendant and to 
 demand that the full penalty of the law shall be 
 imposed. 
 
 To what length such intimidation of the courts 
 may be carried was shown in Chattanooga, Tennes- 
 see, not many years ago. The local superintendent 
 of the Anti-Saloon League served notice, through the 
 public press, that at a given time he and others would 
 call on the judge of the criminal court and find out
 
 132 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 why the prohibition law was not enforced. To be 
 sure, past grand juries had returned several hundred 
 indictments against violators, and many fines and 
 workhouse sentences had been imposed. Still, the 
 judge permitted the self-constituted delegation to 
 appear before the bench, listened meekly to the 
 harangue against his administration of justice, and 
 acceded to the demand that all holders of Federal 
 special-tax certificates as liquor dealers should be 
 summoned before the open court. In Tennessee, as 
 in many other prohibition states, the possession of 
 such a certificate is prima facie evidence of a viola- 
 tion of the law. The court surrendered to the mob 
 and issued an order for the holders of these certifi- 
 cates to appear at a given time " for further instruc- 
 tion." In the end the tax certificates were surren- 
 dered not to the court, which had no legal right to 
 receive them, but to the local superintendent of the 
 Anti-Saloon League ! And the farce proceeded 
 " while a large audience sat amazed at the outrageous 
 spectacle." 
 
 Tennessee, however, is not the only state that has 
 suffered frequent degradation of her criminal courts at 
 the hands of prohibitionists. Coercive tactics against 
 the courts have been employed also in Georgia, 
 Alabama, and North Carolina " organized demon- 
 strations " for enforcement, is the polite name for 
 this species of intimidation. It is easy to blame the 
 judges for cowardice, but it requires a stiff back- 
 bone to stand up against onslaughts by those who
 
 PROHIBITION ATTITUDE 133 
 
 have it in their power to end one's official career and 
 scruple not at the means. 
 
 To keep perpetual watch on the criminal courts is, 
 however, an irksome occupation and cannot fully 
 meet the needs of enforcement which may be blocked 
 by negligent prosecuting officials, and, moreover, re- 
 quires the co-operation of other officials, especially 
 that of the municipal authorities in large centers. So 
 the infamous " ouster " law was invented for the 
 removal of officials whose activities or inactivities 
 have become obnoxious to some people. This instru- 
 ment of prohibition, manufactured and demanded 
 solely in support of sumptuary law, is revolutionary 
 since it would substitute court-made for representa- 
 tive government. 
 
 Under the " ouster " act of Tennessee, which pro- 
 hibitionists elsewhere seem eager to emulate, the 
 prosecuting attorney of the state, or of any city or 
 county, may file a motion in the circuit or criminal 
 courts for the removal of a public official from office 
 for cause ; or a suit to the same effect may be entered 
 on the petition of ten citizens. Should the courts 
 sustain the motion, they may remove officials elected 
 by the people and substitute for them men who would 
 be rejected at the polls. This is not fiction but fact. 
 At this writing the cities of Memphis and Nashville 
 are ruled by court-made mayors. The mayor of 
 Memphis, for instance, was removed from office by 
 ouster process, but in the meantime he was re-elected 
 to serve a new term beginning with the present year.
 
 134 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 The prohibitionists, however, by the aid of the courts 
 succeeded in restraining him from holding the office 
 to which he had been legally chosen, and he is at pres- 
 ent replaced, through court order, by a man who has 
 not been elected. A more violent usurpation of the 
 powers and prerogatives which our Constitution has 
 lodged in the hands of the voters has rarely been 
 witnessed. What hold the courts, when thus array- 
 ing themselves against the people, can have upon pub- 
 lic confidence, it is for the prohibitionists to say, the 
 sponsors of the ouster theory which was put into 
 practice at their behest, and solely intended as an 
 adjunct in enforcing prohibition. Until its inven- 
 tion, known processes of law were thought sufficient 
 to safeguard the public against inefficient or corrupt 
 government. 
 
 It is probable that the ouster law will eventually 
 prove its own undoing. When political faction is 
 arrayed against political faction it proves an ex- 
 ceedingly convenient club wherewith those who are out 
 of office may wreak vengeance upon those who are in. 
 In several counties in Tennessee ouster proceedings 
 have been begun against county officials by their 
 political opponents and on the most flimsy pretexts, 
 involving such questions as that of public road- 
 building. Meanwhile, popular government becomes 
 a by-word, and turbulence, strife, and bitterness suc- 
 ceed peaceful order. Over the whole spectacle is 
 written in large letters PROHIBITION. 
 
 That persons whose ruling idea is to make opera-
 
 PROHIBITION ATTITUDE 135 
 
 tive laws directed against one evil may, in their effort, 
 become the spokesmen of essential lawlessness is an 
 easily understandable mental phenomenon. Accus- 
 tomed to interfere with the course of justice and with 
 representative government, it is natural that they 
 should lack respect for property when it belongs to 
 the liquor traffic. Therefore they demand its confis- 
 cation. In the absence of express provisions in our 
 laws guaranteeing that no man shall be deprived of 
 property rights that have enjoyed legal protection, 
 without compensation, the question of the legality of 
 confiscation may be purely academic. The economic 
 significance of the interests involved is not the real 
 issue, although, purely from a business point of view, 
 reasonable people may regard apprehensively their 
 prospective obliteration, for the capital involved in 
 the production of liquors consumed in this country 
 exceeds eight hundred millions of dollars, and its 
 disbursements for materials, taxes, transportation, 
 wages, and other objects during one year amount to 
 nearly the same sum. All this is exclusive of the 
 retail trade, the sum of whose capital, outlay for 
 wages, rent, and supplies other than liquors, exceed 
 one billion dollars per year. These figures far tran- 
 scend ordinary comprehension, and the sudden extinc- 
 tion of the property and employment they represent 
 would self-evidently cause financial disturbances on 
 a scale rarely witnessed, affecting agriculture, indus- 
 try, commerce, and banking throughout the land. 
 But even if it could be shown that this industry
 
 136 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 and the trade under it comprehend the sum total of 
 the social and political ills from which we suffer, the 
 confiscation of its property without compensation 
 would lack all justification. The expropriation of the 
 entire retail business could, of course, not be contem- 
 plated. It is a commonplace thing to state that the 
 traffic in intoxicants has not only enjoyed the same 
 legal sanction and protection as other business, but 
 has been utilized liberally for purposes of taxation 
 benefiting all citizens alike. No public murmur is 
 raised against participation in this " blood money," 
 and an instance is probably yet to be recorded of a 
 prohibitionist who has refunded to the local, state, or 
 national government his pro-rata share from the 
 taxes levied on the trade in order that he may not 
 profit in any sense from the iniquitous traffic. Not- 
 withstanding all this, the ruthless destruction of all 
 the property involved is demanded as an act of jus- 
 tice, or is there a motive of retribution? 
 
 In other countries ethical principles in similar 
 cases are followed when there is no direct legal re- 
 quirement of compensation. So far as the liquor 
 industries themselves are concerned, there seems to 
 be no question. France even granted the manufac- 
 turers of absinthe compensation, and Switzerland 
 reimbursed the growers of the plant from which the 
 poison is distilled ; Russia compensated the producers 
 of vodka upon the abolition of the state monopoly; 
 England expropriates ancient rights to sell liquor 
 for a reasonable consideration ; and in countries where
 
 PROHIBITION ATTITUDE 137 
 
 the underlying principle has recently come up for 
 discussion, as in Norway and Sweden, there appears 
 to be no disagreement about the equity of compen- 
 sation even for old selling privileges. The United 
 States stands alone, and, may we not say, in the un- 
 enviable position of being willing to derive a large 
 part of its revenue for state and Federal purposes 
 from the liquor traffic, in long years representing bil- 
 lions of dollars, but ready to destroy by vote the crea- 
 ture of its own protection and profit without a cent 
 in return. The might is there, also the " legal " 
 right, but where the justice? If the principle of 
 confiscation without compensation be generally defen- 
 sible, we might, as the next step, at the behest of Anti- 
 Tobacco leagues prohibit the growing, manufacture, 
 and sale of tobacco, which also form an important 
 item of revenue to the Federal government, and let 
 those made to suffer bear their own losses. 
 
 The final element in considering the relation of pro- 
 hibition to government is how its non-enforcement 
 affects the public mind. The introduction to the first 
 volume published by the Committee of Fifty sketches 
 this aspect of the situation as follows: 
 
 " There have been concomitant evils of prohibitory 
 legislation. The efforts to enforce it during forty 
 years past have had some unlooked-for effects on 
 public respect for courts, judicial procedure, oaths, 
 and law in general, and for officers of the law, legis- 
 lators, and public servants. The public have seen 
 law defied, a whole generation of habitual law-
 
 138 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 breakers schooled in evasion and shamelessness, courts 
 ineffective through fluctuations of policy, delays, 
 perjuries, negligences, and other miscarriages of jus- 
 tice, officers of the law double-faced and mercenary, 
 legislators timid and insincere, and candidates for 
 office hypocritical and truckling, and office-holders 
 unfaithful to pledges and to reasonable public expec- 
 tation. Through an agitation whicn has always had 
 a moral end, these immoralities have been developed 
 and made conspicuous." 
 
 The day before Christmas of 1915, a news dispatch 
 was sent broadcast over the country telling that the 
 saloons of Portland, Maine, had been closed by the 
 chief of police. No surprise was expressed that such 
 institutions should still exist after sixty years of pro- 
 hibition; nor was it intimated that they would be 
 suppressed for good and all. Only two questions 
 were asked : First, When will the dealers open again, 
 and second, the more significant of the two, What is 
 the political move behind the order to close? The 
 Republican State Convention in Maine, held at Port- 
 land in March, 1916, indorsed national prohibition 
 and during its session the saloons of Portland were 
 ordered to keep closed. These instances are com- 
 monplace enough, but it illustrates abundantly the 
 demoralization that seizes upon society at large when 
 it tolerates such conditions. 
 
 A community whose public policy centers about 
 the question whether prohibition shall be enforced 
 loses its political sanity. The sense of right becomes
 
 PROHIBITION ATTITUDE 139 
 
 warped when habitually in elections the fitness of a 
 candidate is measured by his stand in relation to en- 
 forcement, and schooling in evasion and hypocrisy 
 becomes an equipment for public affairs. Disrespect 
 for public service, all too frequent in American life, 
 augments ten-fold, and low standards are taken for 
 granted. 
 
 High-minded individuals may writhe helplessly 
 under such a condition; the political parties do not 
 heed it as they jockey for position. But a party 
 creed declaring absolute loyalty to a law while totally 
 indifferent to its violation in letter as well as in spirit, 
 is no choicer than the party creed definitely op- 
 posed to the same law or actively aiding its evasion. 
 When enforcement is made a constant issue, the in- 
 fluence upon the public is bad enough, but when com- 
 plete apathy settles upon a community, or the patrol 
 wagon makes an occasional trip merely in search of 
 revenue, decent respect for the government has ceased. 
 A prominent publicist and investigator told the 
 writer that he had remained a steadfast prohibition- 
 ist for many years until he came to live for a while 
 in a prohibition state and observed the corroding 
 effect on the public mind that is dominated in all its 
 relations to government by the consideration whether 
 fundamental and statutory laws shall be honored. 
 
 Gravely we are told to make light of such disquiet- 
 ing symptoms, to discount the aberrations of the 
 2ealots who really mean to vindicate pure government 
 although their actions may seem to belie it. For
 
 140 GOVERNMENT AND PROHIBITION 
 
 when the sun of national prohibition rises it will melt 
 away all the impure ice that encrusts sumptuary law 
 unenforced; its rays will make virtue spring up in 
 the habitation of vice, dissolve all hostile opposition, 
 and cause personal and civic morality to flourish in 
 barren places. Does the picture allure by its veri- 
 similitude, or shall we face the pitiless facts? 
 
 What the future may hold in store we can only 
 forecast from the present, and so far, unfortunately, 
 the promises of prohibition have far outstripped per- 
 formance. Some day no doubt society will be ready 
 for measurement by new standards; but until then 
 progress is not made by adding new evils to those that 
 now burden us.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 DRINK REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 ONE of the significant by-products of the great 
 European war has been the emotional outburst 
 against alcohol le delirium anti-alcoolique, as the 
 eminent economist, M. Yves Guyot, calls it. The 
 appellation is not undeserved. Several lands have 
 latterly exhibited a species of hysteria about drink 
 which augurs ill for the stability of some of the sup- 
 pressive steps taken, after the alarms of war have 
 died out. Much has already been written on the 
 subject, but very little in an informing vein. Fertile 
 imaginations have played with it; publicists have 
 glorified the new-found zeal for abstinence in co-bel- 
 ligerent countries ; and often the writings reveal the 
 clumsy hand of the propagandist, who does not hesi- 
 tate to make capital even out of desperate conditions. 
 
 The war measures against drink abuse are only in 
 a limited sense outcroppings of the world temper- 
 ance movement. They have sprung from extraordi- 
 nary circumstances of a more or less temporary char- 
 acter. Instead of indicating the high-water mark of 
 advance, they tend to obscure the solid temperance 
 progress as well as the means by which it has been 
 achieved, and so far as they overreach the aim, point 
 
 141
 
 142 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 to an uncomfortable reaction. Since war measures 
 against alcohol have been uppermost in the public 
 mind, it is reasonable to begin with an examination 
 of the status of liquor legislation and reform in the 
 belligerent countries, and follow with a cursory view 
 of the legislation and progress of reform in other 
 foreign countries. 
 
 RUSSIA AND FINLAND 
 
 The abolition of the government vodka monopoly 
 stands out as the most spectacular event in social legis- 
 lation incident to the war. The time was peculiarly 
 adapted for it. Periodic as well as habitual intem- 
 perance has long been a sore trouble in Russia, espe- 
 cially in the peasant villages. Whether it had been 
 fostered by the vodka monopoly, which replaced a 
 practically unrestricted home distillation, may well 
 be doubted. We know that production of vodka in- 
 creased, thanks to the industry of the landed gentry 
 controlling the distilleries, and that the government 
 coffers swelled in proportion. In the years immedi- 
 ately preceding the present war, the government had 
 persistently clung to its drink monopoly and issued 
 many a publication purporting to show its benevolent 
 character as a means of counteracting drunkenness, 
 both through the control of sales and by substituting 
 tea-houses, theaters, and other places of recreation 
 for the vodka shop. Why, then, this sudden reversion
 
 RUSSIA AND FINLAND 143 
 
 of policy? The Czar's ukase abolishing the monopoly 
 bears certain marks of impulsiveness rather than of 
 calm deliberation. The underlying motives appear to 
 have been mixed. It was vitally important to prevent 
 a repetition of the drunken orgies which had marred 
 and hindered the mobilization of troops in the Russo- 
 Japanese war. But there was more back of it than 
 military caution. A great wave of emotion swept 
 over the country, partaking of the nature of a re- 
 ligious frenzy. No sacrifice was too great for the 
 cause of Holy Russia. Psychological conditions were 
 opportune for a drastic step, and the thing was done. 
 The population at large, including officials and even 
 the formidable temperance party, was taken by sur- 
 prise. There was no time for discussion, much less 
 for a readjustment of affairs; and clear prevision 
 of events is not a characteristic of a despotic form 
 of government which exacts blind obedience and dis- 
 courages questionings. 
 
 Sufficient time has elapsed since the abolition of the 
 government vodka monopoly to form a reasonable 
 judgment about the effects, although it is difficult to 
 forecast accurately the future trend of Russian liquor 
 legislation. The evidence relied upon by the writer 
 is partly contained in personal communications from 
 Russian officials, and in reports from different lega- 
 tions of neutral countries at Petrograd, and is largely 
 obtained from a systematic search of representative 
 Russian publications, some of them, like the Novoye 
 Vremya, stanch supporters of the prohibition policy,
 
 144 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 and none of them daring probably to dish up false- 
 hoods about the situation. 
 
 It is the common opinion that the government will 
 never revive the vodka monopoly. Whether the sale 
 of this article and of spirits generally will remain 
 under absolute prohibition after the war is another 
 question. The purposes of the imperial council are 
 not clearly defined. Local conditions in many in- 
 stances are chaotic. The production and sale of 
 vodka are forbidden by an imperial ukase, but the 
 local communities, through town or provincial coun- 
 cils (zemstvos) enjoy the privilege of local option in 
 regard to other alcoholic drinks. In the first flush 
 of enthusiasm prohibition carried the larger part 
 of the country. To be sure, in some instances, gov- 
 ernors refused to give effect to the will of councils. 
 Thus, in Kaluga, the governor twice vetoed the pro- 
 hibition regulations adopted by the council. And 
 exceptions were made in favor of hotels, restaurants, 
 and clubs. But the mujik and the laborer, whose 
 sole indulgence is in vodka, were made to feel all 
 the rigors of prohibition. 
 
 During the first weeks there seems to have been 
 some ardor for the unaccustomed virtue of absti- 
 nence. But the spacious claims spread throughout 
 the world about a Russia sober and regenerated have 
 not been verified. Amiable publicists like Mr. Stephen 
 Graham and others, out of love for their allies, in- 
 cline to draw on imagination rather than on facts in 
 picturing the new Russia. In truth, no sooner had
 
 RUSSIA AND FINLAND 145 
 
 the country begun to realize the wide bearing of the 
 drink rescript than all the ills accompanying unen- 
 forced prohibition sprang up, from the Baltic to the 
 remote Asiatic east. Perhaps the region least af- 
 fected was the Caucasus, where wine is the staple 
 drink. The story has such a familiar ring! What 
 the government denied the people, it soon began 
 to supply by illicit means. According to the reports 
 of the Minister of Finance, during the six months 
 following the prohibitive measures revenue officers 
 discovered 1,825 secret distilleries manufacturing a 
 special brand of whiskey known as Jcumusha; 160 dis- 
 tilleries fitted out with the most modern machinery 
 for making vodka; 92 distilleries especially designed 
 for filtering lacquer and varnish; and 60 distilleries 
 engaged in filtering denatured alcohol. 1 
 
 Another drink manufactured on a large scale is 
 known as Jchanza and consists of wood alcohol, pep- 
 per, and other spices. Even more popular is the 
 so-called kvasok, made from cider, wild hops, dry 
 yeast, a little alcohol, and snuff. It is reported sold 
 in huge quantities, and its effect is explained by cit- 
 ing the peasant saying: "Spill something on a pig's 
 tail and it will get bold." 
 
 So widespread has illicit distilling become, not 
 only in the populous centers like Petrograd and Mos- 
 cow, but in many distant provinces, even in Irkutsk, 
 that the government has increased the amount of the 
 fine from 2,500 to 6,000 rubles and the term of im- 
 1 Ryetch, Petrograd.
 
 146 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 prisonment from two months to one year and four 
 months. Still the traffic shows no abatement, and in 
 Russia immunity from arrest is a purchasable com- 
 modity. So insistent has been the demand for alco- 
 hol that substitutes in the form of denatured alcohol, 
 eau de cologne, politura, and the like have been con- 
 sumed in large quantities despite their dangerous 
 effects. From Kiev, Riga, Tambou, Penza, Simbirsk, 
 Vilna, Nijny Novgorod, Charkov Kursk, Moscow, 
 Petrograd, and innumerable other places come reports 
 of deaths and poisonings from these liquids. Medical 
 societies have found it necessary to caution the public 
 against the use of denatured alcohol, and have even 
 asked permission to post notices of warning in the 
 streets and other public places. A commission of the 
 Petrograd Ophthalmological Society reports that 
 there had been treated at two named hospitals, up 
 to April 15, no less than 2,882 persons whose sight 
 had been impaired by drinking denatured and wood 
 alcohol, varnish, and so forth. Of this number 27 
 died. During the same time, 138 persons had been 
 brought to the eye departments of two Petrograd 
 hospitals, who had become blind or suffered a marked 
 loss of sight from the same cause. Dr. Novoselski, 
 writing in the Ruski Vratch (Petrograd), cites the 
 official returns of deaths from delirium tremens and 
 remarks, " Before prohibition the mortality figures 
 varied and changed without definite regularity ; after 
 prohibition they show a regular and constant in- 
 crease. As prohibition regulations became stricter
 
 RUSSIA AND FINLAND 147 
 
 and at last complete, the mortality from alcoholism 
 increased." He argues from the mortality statistics 
 that substitutes for vodka " are used not only by 
 confirmed drunkards, but generally by those classes 
 who before prohibition used to drink moderately." 
 The recent victims of alcoholism in Petrograd were 
 " persons of all ages and all occupations." 
 
 Such is the saddening answer to the well-intended 
 prohibition of vodka, for which no substitute was 
 offered. It agrees ill with the popular conception of 
 general sobriety throughout the Russian dominions 
 which has universally been applauded. The story of 
 it carried abroad by the press unhappily belongs to 
 the claptrap of war times. At first there were some 
 superficial signs of general abstinence. Our news- 
 papers have featured the intelligence that drunken- 
 ness had disappeared from the streets of Petrograd. 
 And now? The RyetcTi reports that during six 
 days in April and May, of 1915, 783 persons were 
 sentenced for being drunk on the streets. The severe 
 penalty the fine of 100 rubles or a month in jail, 
 or both does not seem to have a deterring influence. 
 
 A writer in the Hyetch comments thus on the gen- 
 eral situation : " The sun of sobriety has set before 
 it reached the zenith. . . . The village folk had 
 hardly time to wear out the boots in which they 
 marched after the coffin of the ' monopoly ' before 
 tens of thousands of illicit distilleries of liquors, fac- 
 tories of all kinds of strong drink, came into exist- 
 ence. ... It would be naive and ruinous to regard
 
 148 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 the work of reform as completed. On the contrary 
 the task is all ahead. . . . Vodka played a great 
 part in our peasant life, and its disappearance creates 
 a greater or less vacancy which in some way or other 
 must be filled. . . . There also come reports that the 
 village folk are becoming addicted to gambling and 
 that a passion for it is seizing the whole mass of 
 peasantry. In short, everything points to the fact 
 that the sobering of the people cannot be accom- 
 plished by the simple discontinuance of the traffic in 
 liquor. It is necessary to occupy their leisure in 
 some interesting and instructive manner; otherwise 
 the reform, so grandiose and full of beautiful pos- 
 sibilities, will yield negative results." 
 
 In the same strain speaks the Novoye Vremya, 
 which is a strong adherent of prohibition : " It must 
 be admitted that the great historical act by which 
 the traffic in liquor was forbidden found the country 
 far from prepared to replace the drunken haze by 
 sober pastime. . . . But only now [ten months later] 
 has the question occurred, how to fill the spare time 
 thus gained. . . . Just a bare prohibition of vodka 
 after the war would be only an injunction which 
 could be circumvented. It is necessary to divert the 
 population from vodka, to cultivate a taste for a 
 different employment of their leisure." 
 
 How the government will cope with the many un- 
 foreseen difficulties that have arisen remains to be 
 seen. Well-informed opinion inclines to the belief 
 that while the ban on vodka will remain, the sale of
 
 RUSSIA AND FINLAND 149 
 
 beer may be permitted and that of wine be made 
 free; for Russia, it should be remembered, is sixth 
 among the wine-producing countries of the world. 
 A complication is likely to occur through her posi- 
 tion as a large debtor nation to France. It would be 
 a serious blow to the powerful distilling and wine- 
 growing interests of France to find the Russian mar- 
 ket closed. On the other hand, were France per- 
 mitted to flood Russia with cheap brandies and 
 liquors, prohibition would get another setback. 
 Meanwhile local communities seem increasingly in- 
 clined to exercise the option granted by law and pro- 
 vide for the sale of fermented beverages. This has 
 been done in Minsk, Bobroysk, Igumen, Riga, and 
 many other places. Except on the part of the dis- 
 tillers and similar interests there seems to be no dis- 
 position to advocate a return to the manufacture 
 and sale of vodka. At a public conference held in 
 Petrograd during the spring of this year, the per- 
 petual prohibition of the sale of whiskey was advo- 
 cated. Beers and wines, however, especially wines, 
 were held to have a desirable effect on village life, 
 and the ministry was requested to act accordingly. 
 The Minister of Commerce has already recom- 
 mended that the sale of beer and wine containing not 
 more than sixteen per cent of alcohol be permitted. 1 
 Information received from Russia since the above 
 was written confirms the statements made about the 
 difficulties of enforcing prohibition. The Ryetch 
 1 Birzhevya Vyedomosty, Petrograd.
 
 150 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 (Petrograd) of October 7, 1915, gives an extended 
 account of a session of the Petrograd Municipal 
 Commission to Combat Drunkenness. Among the 
 many witnesses a medical inspector of the city testi- 
 fied that in spite of the prohibition of vodka drunken- 
 ness has continued, and that while the administration 
 had made efforts to prevent it by passing special laws, 
 it had not succeeded. In Petrograd alone, according 
 to a statement of the Revenue Department, the drug 
 stores (119 in number) and hospitals had purchased 
 more than 154,000 gallons of pure alcohol between 
 January 1 and September 1, 1915, while cologne 
 and cosmetic establishments during the same period 
 had bought more than 217,000 gallons of pure alco- 
 hol. The activities of druggists dispensing not only 
 pure alcohol but various tinctures containing it, ap- 
 pear to continue in spite of the legal restrictions. 
 Many noxious substitutes for vodka are used. Co- 
 logne seems to be one of the favorites. During the 
 month of August, 1915, no less than sixty new places 
 were opened for the manufacture of cologne. The 
 Ryetch concludes that the sale of alcohol is growing 
 rapidly and that the demand for it in the prepara- 
 tion of cologne is increasing. 
 
 The Budget Commission of the Duma at its De- 
 cember session discussed at length " the war on 
 drunkenness and other questions growing out of the 
 abolition of vodka." Evidently none of its members 
 was disposed to advocate the legalization under any 
 form of the sale of vodka; but it was equally ap-
 
 RUSSIA AND FINLAND 151 
 
 parent that there is among them a profound dissatis- 
 faction with the way in which prohibition has worked 
 out. One member of the Budget Commission (M. A. 
 Karaulov) declared that " the measures adopted to 
 combat drunkenness do not accomplish their object." 
 Another member (E. S. Kliuzhov), said, "If the 
 Government really wants to abolish drunkenness it is 
 up to the Minister of Finance categorically to declare 
 that the sale of vodka will not be renewed after the 
 termination of the war," and added, " Prohibition is 
 not enough to sober the Nation." Some of the criti- 
 cisms made by other members were stricken out of 
 the newspaper reports by the Censor. Finally, the 
 Minister of Finance (M. Bark), replied, " I find it 
 important categorically to announce that all sus- 
 picion that the Government intends to renew the sale 
 of vodka is unfounded. I categorically announce that 
 the Government will support prohibition, and that 
 there is no chance of a return to the former state 
 of affairs. , . . The question of permitting the sale 
 of light drinks (beer and wine) has not received any 
 final action, as this matter is left in the hands of 
 the city councils." 
 
 In his recommendation to the Duma of laws impos- 
 ing penalties for violations of the revenue statutes 
 and for public intoxication, M. Bark wrote: "On 
 the restoration of normal life after the close of the 
 war, there is no doubt that the present extraordinary 
 measures for preserving sobriety will be revised. Up 
 to the present time the changes that will follow can-
 
 152 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 not be determined, and their consideration is a mat- 
 ter for the future." 
 
 This somewhat cryptic utterance is hardly to be 
 considered as a hint that the government will re- 
 sume the sale of vodka in some form although it has 
 been so understood. In approving the estimates 
 which included a million rubles in aid of societies 
 whose object is to prevent drunkenness, the Budget 
 Commission recommended the preparation of a law 
 providing for permanent prohibition in Russia. 
 
 The Government still manufactures alcohol and 
 carries about 8,000 employees on the pay-rolls 
 of the distilleries, having discharged about ten 
 times as many. There is a goodly supply of vodka on 
 hand owned by the Government about eighty mil- 
 lion vedros (a vedro equals 3 1-4 gallons). There 
 is considerable uneasiness about this. One deputy 
 recommended that the vodka be destroyed, " since 
 the losses brought about by the embezzlement of the 
 vodka might be greater and more important to the 
 Government and the community than the losses in- 
 curred by destruction " (here the Censor deleted 
 some lines). The Budget Commission recommended 
 the removal of the stored vodka from the war zone, or 
 if that proved impracticable its destruction, also 
 that its exportation and use for technical purposes 
 be encouraged. The Agricultural Department has 
 recommended that the Duma enact laws to prevent 
 development of opium smoking and suggests a pen- 
 alty for it of imprisonment for one year and four
 
 RUSSIA AND FINLAND 153 
 
 months, together with a fine of 500 roubles. This 
 is regarded as " necessary in view of the prohibition 
 of the opium traffic in China and its development in 
 our far Eastern states where peasants rent land to 
 the Chinese for the purpose of raising poppies from 
 which opium is extracted." The habit of smoking 
 the drug is beginning to develop in Russian cities, it 
 is said. In certain quarters much has been made of 
 statements from Russia concerning the increase in 
 savings bank deposits as evidence of economic im- 
 provement since the abolition of the vodka monopoly. 
 It is, of course, impossible at this distance to judge 
 how far sobriety has been the most important factor. 
 Statistics of wealth are notoriously of uncertain value 
 in gauging the state of sobriety in any community. 
 Applied to our own states, they make it possible to 
 prove the most absurdly contradictory conditions. 
 It seems probable, however, that in the country dis- 
 tricts of Russia there may have been a greater sav- 
 ing because less money was being spent for vodka. 
 
 Russia is learning lessons that should have become 
 trite in this country. Perhaps the chief among them 
 is this: if sumptuary legislation creates voids in so- 
 cial and community life without seeking to fill them 
 by acceptable substitutes, its ends are sure to be de- 
 feated. In the space of less than one year Russia has 
 suffered most varieties of ills resulting from prema- 
 ture prohibition. But fortunately they are recog- 
 nized and fully acknowledged by temperance reform- 
 ers. Herein lies the promise that the evils will be
 
 154 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 overcome by limiting prohibition to vodka and its 
 equivalents. That done, the abolition of the govern- 
 ment monopoly will stand as a momentous achieve- 
 ment. But the experience of Russia illustrates that 
 even in an autocracy a social reform cannot be 
 effected merely by ukase when public opinion refuses 
 to support it. 
 
 Finland: In no European country is the per 
 capita consumption of alcoholic drinks so low as in 
 Finland which, although it is a Russian province, has 
 hitherto enacted its own legislation for the control 
 of the drink traffic. Given in terms of pure alcohol, 
 the per capita consumption amounted to 1.56 liters 
 for the years 1906-1910. After long times of per- 
 sistent temperance agitation the Finnish One-Cham- 
 ber Parliament in 1909 passed in its final form a law 
 prohibiting the manufacture, importation, transpor- 
 tation, and sale of " alcoholic fluids " except for 
 technical, medicinal, and scientific uses. The law was 
 refused sanction by the Russian Government al- 
 though the Russian military force in Finland was dis- 
 tinctly exempted from its provision. It is inter- 
 esting to observe that even this drastic law per- 
 mitted the use of alcoholic beverages containing less 
 than two per cent (volume) of alcohol: 
 
 Under the existing license law all sale of spirits is, 
 with some minor exceptions, confined to the towns. 
 The rural districts are practically under prohibi- 
 tion so far as the sale of spirits is concerned. In 
 the towns no spirits may be served except with hot
 
 FRANCE 155 
 
 food. Licenses are granted for three years at a time 
 by the municipal council and may be renewed or with- 
 drawn as circumstances demand. The licenses may 
 be turned over to private disinterested companies 
 which may turn over some of its privileges to hotels 
 and restaurants but exclusively for the sale of im- 
 ported spirits. The laws governing the traffic in 
 spirits apply generally to the sale of wine and beer. 
 It is absolutely forbidden to serve beer and porter 
 in rural districts except at hotels which have been 
 granted the privilege of selling to travelers. 
 
 The traffic in light malt drinks (containing not 
 over 2 1-2 volume per cent of alcohol) is open to 
 any one permitted to engage in trade. In practice 
 the exemption holds good in regard to beer contain- 
 ing less than four-volume per cent of alcohol. While 
 the war lasts the sale and serving of all spirits is 
 prohibited except at first-class restaurants. The 
 same appears to be true in regard to wine ; but per- 
 sons who can present a satisfactory certificate from 
 the police may buy beer, not exceeding a stipulated 
 quantity. 
 
 FRANCE 
 
 In France, too, the war has helped to draw the 
 public mind to the drink problem. Economic inter- 
 ests and military considerations have given it promi- 
 nence. The question of drink reform has gained 
 impetus also from the favorable publicity given the
 
 156 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 Russian experiment as well as from the characteristic 
 British growl about the effects of drink upon the 
 productiveness of the laboring classes. Of course, 
 the temperance politician has utilized the unusual op- 
 portunity for agitation; and the inevitable alarmists 
 have preached abstinence as the price of final victory. 
 It does not appear, however, that the military con- 
 ditions have been complicated by the drink situation. 
 Commanders are given ample authority to take the 
 necessary precautions without making over the 
 habits of the soldiery. 
 
 The one great forward step in France has been 
 the abolition of absinthe, but, contrary to popular 
 belief, this was not a war measure. The country at 
 large had become convinced of the ravages of this 
 toxic drink, and steps to do away with it antedated 
 the war. At the various sittings of the French As- 
 sembly since the beginning of hostilities the question 
 of restricting the liquor traffic has been freely de- 
 bated, but so far there is no prospect that radically 
 constructive laws will be passed. The most recently 
 introduced bill would give prefects or departments 
 authority, while the war lasts, to regulate, limit, and 
 even forbid the sale of alcoholic beverages except 
 wine, beer, cider, perry, and hydromel. Of course, 
 this is a war measure pure and simple; it does not 
 go to the root of the drink issue, and in consequence 
 has been bitterly assailed by les temperants, who in 
 this instance cannot be called apostles of an empty 
 enthusiasm.
 
 FRANCE 157 
 
 Within three generations the drink habits of France 
 have undergone profound changes. It was one of the 
 soberest countries of Europe and has become the 
 most alcoholic. According to Dr. Bertillon, the con- 
 sumption of alcohol has increased about sixfold in 
 sixty years. Various forms of distilled liquors have 
 supplanted wine as a national beverage. Some have 
 tried to connect this phenomenon with the growth of 
 the absinthe habit ; it is, however, a product of the 
 unrestricted liberty to sell spirits. In France there 
 in one drink-shop, in which alcohol of all kinds can 
 be sold, to 82 inhabitants; while in England there is 
 one to 430, in Sweden one to 5,000, and in Norway 
 one to about 10,000 inhabitants. Only the Belgium 
 of ante-bellum days could vie with France in the 
 number of drink-shops. 
 
 During the forty years preceding 1908 the estab- 
 lishments selling intoxicants had increased by 91,240, 
 or twenty-four per cent, which was far in excess of 
 the growth of the population. In some districts there 
 was one license to 38 inhabitants, women and chil- 
 dren included. One village in Cambrai had one drink- 
 shop to 10 inhabitants, and the Commune Dehiries 
 of twenty-one qualified electors had five places in 
 which liquor was sold. 
 
 The real factor back of this extraordinary con- 
 dition is the distilling interest. There are more than 
 1,300,000 distillers in the country, says Dr. Bertil- 
 lon, who estimates the number of wine-growers to be 
 even greater. Practically there is no restriction
 
 158 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 upon the distillation of spirits from cereals and fruit. 
 Under the law any householder may produce five 
 gallons of spirits for home use free of taxes; but in 
 reality thousands take advantage of lax supervision 
 to manufacture spirits for sale. It has been asserted 
 that there are upward of a million places through- 
 out France more or less engaged in this fraudulent 
 practice. Whatever the number may be, we know 
 that over large rural areas the peasantry not only 
 make and drink spirits, but offer it for sale at in- 
 credibly low prices. 
 
 The outcry against drink in the France of to-day 
 has therefore grim reality behind it. Visible drunken- 
 ness may be less than in several other countries, but 
 spirits, in the shape of aperitifs, liqueurs, and so 
 forth, are now so much a part of the daily diet of 
 the peasantry, and of laborers in particular, that 
 they have become a national menace. This discovery 
 is not new, nor are temperance reformers and scat- 
 tered scientists the only ones who have drawn at- 
 tention to it. In May of 1915 the syndicalist 
 workmen groups of all trades represented at the 
 Nantes Labor Exchange (Loire-Inferieure) unani- 
 mously declared that the " multiplicity of drink- 
 shops and the diversity of harmful products dis- 
 played are a real and ceaseless provocation " to 
 alcoholism, which, they say, bears especially hard 
 upon workmen's families. Therefore they indorse the 
 edict against absinthe and " approve the suppression 
 of all similar substances and the special privileges
 
 FRANCE 159 
 
 accorded distillers." The same resolutions were 
 adopted by the dockers at Havre. 
 
 Solicitude over the drink situation is likewise 
 marked among the intellectual classes. The French 
 Academy of Medicine has long labored with it. 
 France was one of the prime movers in the formation 
 of the International Committee for the Scientific 
 Study of the Alcohol Question, under the presi- 
 dency of ex-President Loubet, while M. Alexandre 
 Ribot, now Minister of Finance, is chairman of the 
 French section, which counts many distinguished 
 members. France also possesses a varied, if not espe- 
 cially significant, anti-alcohol literature. Why, then, 
 does temperance reform progress so slowly? It has 
 been said that " No French minister of the present 
 day is bold enough to stand up against the wine- 
 growing industry or the 1,378,000 distillers." That 
 may be an exaggeration, but skirts close to the truth. 
 It is no secret that the powerful distilling interests 
 have directed French diplomatic objections to the 
 enactment of prohibition in other countries, in Fin- 
 land, for instance, and that they have insisted upon 
 the right (much against the advice of the colonial 
 administration) to sell cheap brandies among the Mo- 
 hammedan population of North Africa, the Negroes 
 of French West Africa, and the people of French 
 Indo-China, Madagascar, and other places. These 
 interests are undoubtedly the mainspring of the 
 " curse of alcoholism " both at home and abroad. 
 
 Then in France, as in many other countries, the
 
 160 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 cause of sobriety suffers from the intemperate zeal of 
 certain reformers. The rise of a political temperance 
 party is not welcomed, with its aspirants for political 
 honors who are willing to bend their necks to that 
 species of temperance servitude without conviction 
 which is so ingloriously exemplified in our own coun- 
 try. Even in the stress of war, any interference with 
 personal habits is peculiarly obnoxious to Frenchmen. 
 Wrathfully M. Guyot exclaims apropos of the pro- 
 posed drink regulations: 
 
 " Les temperants, atteints d'un * delirium,' pire 
 que le * delirium tremens,' pietinent, dechirent, et 
 saccagent les principes elementaires de la liberte in- 
 dividuelle et du respect de la propriete ! Leur intoxi- 
 cation intellectuelle et morale est autrement dan- 
 gereuse que toutes les intoxications alcooliques." 
 
 Of prohibition as a policy there is little discus- 
 sion. To be sure, the National Council of French 
 Women recently declared for the complete prohibi- 
 tion of the sale of spirits, but only as a war meas- 
 ure, apparently. 
 
 Reasonable leaders of the temperance movement, 
 like M. Joseph Reinach, recognize that the French 
 people will not surrender freedom of action to legis- 
 lation and cannot be coerced into greater sobriety. 
 Therefore its program is limited to a restriction 
 of selling privileges and a better control of the dis- 
 tillation of alcohol. In 1911 the French Senate, fol- 
 lowing the recommendation of M. Reinach, adopted 
 a law permitting one licensed place to 200 inhabi-
 
 FRANCE 161 
 
 tants ; the effect of which would be to reduce the total 
 number to about 180,000. Towns and country dis- 
 tricts with less than 600 people would be restricted 
 to three licenses. The law also contained certain 
 limitations in regard to the sale of spirits contain- 
 ing more than twenty-three per cent of alcohol ; and 
 some exceptions were made in favor of places selling 
 only " hygienic drinks," wine and beer. Under this 
 law the prefects and departmental health boards were 
 made the licensing authorities and not the mayors 
 and municipal councils as previously. This law was 
 accepted by the Chamber of Deputies but did not be- 
 come operative until 1915. Apparently it was super- 
 seded by military regulations. In order to limit 
 distillation some communes have established their 
 own distilleries. The real temperance campaign in 
 France is directed against distilled liquors, which are 
 held responsible for the alcoholism from which France 
 has suffered. There is no thought of stopping the 
 sale of beer and wine. Rather the effort is to encour- 
 age their use as the accustomed and natural beverages 
 of the people in its temperate days. War times 
 seem to have diminished drinking generally, but not 
 through law. The soldiers still receive their ration 
 of rum, says an undoubted authority, though it is 
 not acknowledged officially. M. Vidal, of the Academy 
 of Medicine, recently asked for a resolution demand- 
 ing the regular distribution to all soldiers of a hy- 
 gienic beverage wine or beer. And Professor Lan- 
 douzey has called attention to the deficiency of the
 
 162 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 French army ration in carbohydrates, which he would 
 equalize by adding an allowance of wine. 
 
 That the French temperance movement has been 
 stimulated by the war is patent. What its final 
 direction will be cannot be predicted, for as yet it 
 has not recorded notable triumphs. 
 
 ra 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 The recent heroic onslaughts upon the drink traffic 
 by Mr. Lloyd George and others ended tamely. 
 England did not respond to the call for prohibition, 
 or show any patriotic enthusiasm for personal ab- 
 stinence. The castigation of the workmen, whose 
 drink habits were blamed for delay in producing war 
 materials, and for general inefficiency, reacted unfa- 
 vorably. Other shortcomings were brought to light, 
 although gross intemperance among laborers could 
 not be denied, and quite likely it had been stimulated 
 by the peculiar circumstances caused by the war. 
 
 When a coalition government was formed, all 
 prospects of radical drink laws waned. The Liberals, 
 who profess a leaning toward temperance reform, 
 had proved unequal to the task ; and since the Union- 
 ists and Conservatives, as parties, do not incline to 
 drink reform, the visions of national prohibition faded 
 rapidly. The agitation and turmoil of weeks yielded 
 as a net result the establishment of a commission 
 endowed with large discretionary power in control-
 
 GREAT BRITAIN 163 
 
 ling liquor selling within munition and transporta- 
 tion areas. Mr. Lloyd George's proposal to national- 
 ize the drink traffic was not laid before Parliament. 
 The more extreme temperance interests did not ap- 
 prove it ; the cost and financial risk were prohibitive ; 
 and to instigate a country-wide fight on the drink 
 issue during the war might mean a political disaster. 
 Nor was it found practicable at once to close the dis- 
 tilleries and stop the sale of spirits, for this demanded 
 a compensation to the trade to which the teetotalers 
 generally object. 
 
 The work of the Board of Control seems to have 
 given a reasonable amount of satisfaction. The 
 earlier closing hours, stricter supervision, and curtail- 
 ment of other privileges appear to have had a whole- 
 some effect. How much is attributable to better regu- 
 lations and how much to the sobering conditions of 
 war it is difficult to say. The attempt to arouce en- 
 thusiasm for personal abstinence at least during war 
 times cannot be said to have been especially success- 
 ful. Whether the experiences with the new method 
 of controlling the liquor traffic have been sufficiently 
 encouraging to warrant the eventual nationalization 
 of the business, as some hope for, is another question. 
 
 At this writing (March, 1916), however, a very 
 radical step has been taken which promises to have 
 a wide effect in diminishing the consumption of 
 spirits. Under the Defence of the Realm Act Mr. 
 Lloyd George has taken over most of the distilleries 
 in Great Britain, to the number of more than eight
 
 164 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 hundred. Their output is to be utilized, so far as 
 needed, for technical purposes incident to the war. 
 Another purpose is probably to conserve the grain, 
 corn, and potatoes used in distilleries. Although 
 large stocks of spirits remain in the hands of dealers, 
 the increase in price and the cessation of a new supply 
 will necessarily result in a greatly reduced consump- 
 tion. Especially will the sale of gin be curtailed, 
 which in England is perhaps the most prolific source 
 of alcoholism. According to Mr. Lloyd George the 
 apprehensions for drunkenness have decreased by 
 about forty per cent. How much of this is due to 
 abnormal conditions of the population on account of 
 the war and how much to the restriction of drink- 
 selling it is impossible to say. 
 
 The drink evil is undeniably acute in England; 
 that Mr. Lloyd George's major proposals were de- 
 feated does not prove the contrary. The teetotalers 
 have made comparatively little progress ; and because 
 they are merely repressive, the liquor laws of Eng- 
 land have failed to check intemperance. In licensing, 
 the practice of the justices lacks certainty and uni- 
 formity. The many and complex laws as well as local 
 regulations are merely restrictive to prevent ex- 
 cesses on the part of the vender. Constructive prin- 
 ciples, without which drink reform is but a trans- 
 parent show, are wholly wanting. Perhaps the worst 
 feature of the situation is the so-called " tied-house 
 system." It means that the trade has acquired about 
 ninety per cent of the licensed drink-places in the
 
 GREAT BRITAIN 165 
 
 country and furnishes the retailer his capital, so 
 that " though he is a tenant in name, he is often but 
 a slave in fact." The sole object of a tied house is 
 to push the sale of drink, for that alone gives it value 
 to the owner; and legislation helps on this condition 
 by making the size of the house, not the quantity of 
 liquor sold, the basis of taxation. In other words, 
 the law holds out a premium to the licensee who can 
 sell the greatest quantity of alcohol in the smallest 
 possible selling space! Diversions and attractions 
 other than drink are not encouraged, and in some 
 places are absolutely forbidden. It is said that the 
 technicalities of the licensing system can hardly be 
 understood by a layman ; it seems in part to assume 
 a tied-house system and helps to perpetuate it with 
 all its faults. 
 
 The licensing statistics of England point to an 
 increase rather than a decrease in drunkenness dur- 
 ing the past three or four years. There has been a 
 reduction of licensed places, but they have to a con- 
 siderable extent been replaced by clubs which are 
 exempt from license, limitation of hours of sale, and 
 inspection. The situation is undoubtedly serious, 
 and although sane suggestions are not wanting, there 
 is little prospect of effective remedial legislation. 
 The trade is conservative and will not yield. 
 
 Meanwhile England affords examples of practical 
 reform through private enterprise in the so-called 
 Public-house Trust companies. The trust system 
 is in brief the Gothenburg system adapted to Eng-
 
 166 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 lish conditions. Its cardinal principle is the elimina- 
 tion of private profits from the retail sale of alcoholic 
 beverages, the business being conducted by paid man- 
 agers under the control of directors who receive no 
 pecuniary benefit other than a fixed maximum rate 
 of interest upon the capital shares held by them, the 
 surplus being devoted to objects of public utility. 
 The managers get a commission on all sales except of 
 alcoholic drinks, and thus have every incentive not to 
 push that side of the business. Various amusements 
 and other attractions are provided. 
 
 The experiments with the Public-house Trust sys- 
 tem began at Aberdeen in 1895. Under the leader- 
 ship of Lord Grey it has been extensively developed 
 during the past fifteen years, although at the outset 
 it was fought by the trade, misrepresented by the 
 temperance party, distrusted by the officials and the 
 public, and, as a voluntary affair, remained unas- 
 sisted by legislation. Experience and capacity for 
 the business had to be acquired by degrees. Yet the 
 system grew and flourished : if a few companies failed, 
 others were amalgamated and became the stronger. 
 At present more than 320 houses are operated on the 
 trust plan. One of the largest, known as the Home 
 Counties Public-house Trust, manages 60 houses, 
 " in town and country, slum and village, colliery and 
 other industrial areas, and in lonely districts." As 
 a business venture it has been successful. Beyond 
 this it is sufficient to relate that " the company em- 
 ploys approximately 900 managers and assistants,
 
 GREAT BRITAIN 167 
 
 and during its ten years' existence has served more 
 than eleven millions of customers. During the whole 
 of this period not a single employee has been con- 
 victed of a breach of the Licensing Acts or in respect 
 of any other offense." In these years " the non- 
 alcoholic receipts have risen from less than ten per 
 cent to more than forty-eight per cent of the whole." 
 
 The Public-house Trust system exemplifies what 
 so many seem still to doubt that drink-selling can 
 be made respectable and be surrounded with a whole- 
 some atmosphere. Of course, the ultimate object of 
 Lord Grey, Mr. Arthur Sherwell, M.P., and other 
 exponents of the company system idea may be to 
 nationalize the retail sale of drink. Meanwhile they 
 have provided a highly important object-lesson in 
 practical methods of counteracting intemperance 
 through the institution of " disinterested " for " tied- 
 house " management in the public houses. An increas- 
 ing number of temperance reformers is said to believe 
 in it, but of course it is rejected by all who are 
 obsessed with the idea of absolute prohibition as the 
 only legislative measure they can countenance. 
 
 On a much smaller scale the disinterested com- 
 pany system has been tried both in Scotland and in 
 Ireland. Scotland has also a licensing act of quite 
 recent date which seeks to correct some ancient abuses 
 and is said to have diminished drunkenness quite per- 
 ceptibly, particularly by restricting the hours of sale. 
 The law originated in 1912 and proposed, among 
 other things, that on the petition of twenty per cent
 
 168 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 of the voters an election must be held on these three 
 issues : (1) a continuance of licensing as before ; (2) a 
 reduction in licenses (twenty-five per cent) ; and (3) 
 no license. The first and second questions are to be 
 decided by simple majorities; but in order to estab- 
 Ijsh a no-license policy the majority must equal 
 thirty per cent of the electors. If the election is in 
 favor of no license the local authorities may never- 
 theless continue the old and grant new hotel licenses, 
 which, however, permit sales only to resident guests. 
 If the votes cast for no-license do not represent the 
 prescribed qualified majority for local prohibition 
 they are reckoned as being cast for a reduction of 
 licenses. New elections may be demanded every third 
 year. 
 
 The law was finally adopted in 1913, with few 
 changes. Certain minor portions became operative 
 in the following year, but those governing elections 
 will not be in force until June, 1920. In order to 
 secure no-license a majority is required of fifty-five 
 per cent of the votes cast, which must constitute 
 thirty-five per cent of the whole number of qualified 
 voters. 
 
 TV 
 
 GERMANY 
 
 In Germany, the Great War does not seem to have 
 aroused special concern about intemperance. Mili- 
 tary safeguards have been adopted, and for economic
 
 GERMANY 169 
 
 reasons the output of beer and spirits has been cur- 
 tailed. The soldiers in the field have been allowed 
 beer and wine, with modest quantities of spirits dur- 
 ing the severe winter days, at least so one gathers 
 from private letters and newspapers. 
 
 But Germany, of course, has a drink problem ; the 
 statistics of consumption attest that, and in the eyes 
 of many people it looms large. There, as elsewhere, 
 the use of spirits causes the mischief. How the ex- 
 tent of known alcoholism compares with that of other 
 countries cannot be determined. There is no evi- 
 dence, however, that either the economic or the mili- 
 tary powers of Germany have been greatly impaired 
 by drink. 
 
 There are many active abstinence organizations, 
 whose leadership is, in some instances, in the hands 
 of men of note and scientific attainments. Their 
 efforts are chiefly directed to teaching personal hy- 
 giene and advocating abstinence. The idea of pro- 
 hibition in the American sense of the term is wholly 
 foreign to the German people, to whom beer and, in 
 some states, wine form an important part of the daily 
 diet. And as prohibition is not an issue, the numer- 
 ous political groups are still without a temperance 
 party. 
 
 In 1915 the distillers were restricted to sixty per 
 cent of their usual output of spirits, and sixty-five 
 per cent of the whole quantity was ordered to be de- 
 natured, so that only thirty-five per cent remained 
 for human consumption. The hours of sale have
 
 170 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 been restricted and in Berlin orders were issued not 
 to serve spirits of any kind to persons in uniform. 
 In other parts of the country even severer regula- 
 tions appear to be in force. The prescriptions of 
 the Sanitary Division of the Army contain special 
 warnings against alcohol indulgence which have been 
 emphasized in orders of the general staff. 
 
 It is strangely difficult to obtain a complete pres- 
 entation of the liquor legislation for the entire Ger- 
 man empire. The Society Against the Abuse of 
 Spirituous Drinks has for some time been engaged 
 upon a large work intended to supply the need. The 
 basic principle followed in licensing places to sell 
 intoxicants is whether there is public need of it. 
 Prior to the War the Reichstag had under considera- 
 tion some changes in liquor legislation. The most 
 important were: (1) Persons desiring to conduct a 
 hostelry or to sell wine and beer as well as non-intoxi- 
 cants, must have a license; (2) A license is to be de- 
 nied when the petitioner for it is shown to be untrust- 
 worthy or liable to abuse the privilege in various 
 ways ; when the quarters to be occupied do not satisfy 
 the requirements of the police ; and when no necessity 
 for the license has been shown. (3) Retail of spirits 
 must not be carried on in connection with the sale of 
 non-spirituous drinks or with the restaurant business. 
 For the rest, the central State authorities are given 
 a wide latitude in prescribing special regulations 
 in the interest of civil control and the prevention of 
 excesses. For liquor businesses existing at the time
 
 ITALY 171 
 
 when the proposed law becomes operative the right 
 to continuance expires twenty-five years after the 
 adoption of the law, even if no special license had been 
 required. 
 
 If the German liquor laws offer little of interest to 
 American students, much may be learned from the 
 method of operating licensed places. The fact that 
 specially fermented liquors are generally sold in 
 family resorts in the best sense of the term no doubt 
 has been a great help to sobriety; but this custom 
 springs from national characteristics rather than 
 from law, although legislation may be said to encour- 
 age it an instructive contrast to our legal contri- 
 vances for " diminishing temptation." 
 
 Germany is perhaps the largest contributor to the 
 scientific study of alcohol, and from the varied litera- 
 ture on the subject both prohibitionists and other 
 temperance reformers derive their arguments. 
 
 ITALY 
 
 Italy is beginning to have a drink problem, influ- 
 ences from the United States and the Argentine shar- 
 ing the dubious honor of having helped to create it. 
 So long as the Italians remained a wine-drinking peo- 
 ple, "they were counted among the most temperate 
 in Europe, notwithstanding the fact that the per 
 capita consumption, when considered in terms of 
 pure alcohol, reached a very high figure. As in Spain
 
 172 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 and Portugal, the habitual use of natural wines did 
 not produce alcoholism and its brood of evils; but 
 in recent years returning emigrants have transplanted 
 the whiskey habit to what appears to be a 
 congenial soil, for the Italian government has felt 
 obliged to enact new laws curbing the traffic in 
 spirits. 
 
 Previously opportunity to traffic in all kinds of 
 spirituous drinks was practically unlimited. But in 
 1913 a law was adopted, to become effective January 
 1, 1915, which aims to restrict the abuse of alcohol. 
 It provides, among other things, that no drinks con- 
 taining more than twenty-one per cent of alcohol may 
 be sold without a special license. Their sale is also 
 absolutely forbidden on Sundays and holidays, as well 
 as on days preceding elections. Licenses are granted 
 by the communal authorities and a commission is 
 established for each province. In communes or parts 
 of communes in which the number of places for the 
 sale of beer, wine, or alcoholic drinks of any kind 
 exceeds one to five hundred inhabitants, no new li- 
 cense for retail use may be granted. The produc- 
 tion, importation, and sale of absinthe is prohibited. 
 
 VI 
 AUSTRIA-HUNGAEY 
 
 In Austria-Hungary, which is a conglomerate of 
 heterogeneous nationalities, the drink habits vary 
 greatly ; also in regard to the kinds of beverages most
 
 BELGIUM 173 
 
 favored. Some provinces are chiefly beer- and wine- 
 drinking; in others the use of distilled spirits is most 
 prevalent. The per capita consumption of spirits 
 for the whole empire is very high (see Appendix) and 
 betokens a drink problem of great dimensions. The 
 present liquor legislation is not effectual in coping 
 with it and offers little that is instructive. 
 
 vn 
 
 BELGIUM 
 
 Prior to the Great War liberty in regard to the 
 sale of alcoholic beverages was perhaps greater than 
 in any European country. The law of 1912 had, to 
 be sure, introduced a species of licensing system, but 
 it did not require special moral or administrative 
 qualifications on the part of the licensees except that 
 persons guilty of certain crimes or having a prison 
 record or having objected to pay taxes were denied 
 selling privileges which were issued by a commis- 
 sioner of taxation. The license tax fee varied 
 from 300 to 1,000 francs according to the den- 
 sity of population in the place where it was to be 
 used and was paid in advance once for all. When 
 this law went into effect there were 212,000 licenses 
 in force and the tax did not seem to diminish their 
 number. It is stated that in 1913 the total number 
 of places at which alcoholic drinks could be obtained 
 was 240,000, or one to every 83 inhabitants. But 
 as women and children were included in this num-
 
 174. REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 her there would be one drink-shop to every 12 
 adult males. The income of the state from the 
 drink traffic was reckoned to constitute about one- 
 sixth of its total income. 
 
 vin 
 
 THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 
 
 The temperance movement in the Australian col- 
 onies is interesting because of its intensity and the 
 experimental legislation rising out of the effort to 
 introduce local option and general prohibition. 
 The sentiment for abstinence was quite recently re- 
 flected in a resolution by the Federal Parliament 
 providing for the establishment of a new capital of 
 the Commonwealth in which the sale of intoxicants 
 is not to be permitted. It is said that none of the 
 old cities were selected because they all grant li- 
 censes. At the present time each state is supreme 
 in regulating the liquor traffic, although effort is 
 being made to have it placed under Federal control. 
 In the following we shall concern ourselves chiefly 
 with the laws relating to local option and prohibi- 
 tion. 
 
 New South Wales: Local option may be exer- 
 cised in the following manner: At every parlia- 
 mentary election the liquor question must be voted 
 upon. Both women and men are entitled to vote 
 and are called upon to decide: (1) For or against 
 the continuation of liquor selling; (2) For or
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 175 
 
 against a reduction of the number of licenses; and 
 (3) For or against no license. 
 
 In case the traffic is continued, all who are li- 
 censed to sell intoxicants within the election dis- 
 trict may keep on with their business as before. 
 But if a majority favor a reduction of licenses, a 
 commission of three, of whom one must be a judge, 
 decide which establishments shall be closed. The 
 acceptance of prohibition self-evidently results in 
 the cessation of all kinds of liquor selling, but pro- 
 ducers may continue with their business for sale out- 
 side the prohibition district. 
 
 In order to obtain prohibition or the re-establish- 
 ment of licenses, three-fifths majority is necessary 
 and thirty per cent of the votes of the electors. A 
 simple majority suffices to secure a reduction or a 
 continuation of the traffic. The votes cast for pro- 
 hibition when not sufficiently numerous to carry it 
 are regarded as cast for a reduction of licenses. 
 When prohibition is voted it becomes operative three 
 years after the election. During the interim the li- 
 censes are called in gradually. 
 
 South Australia: In local option elections the 
 number of licenses may be reduced in each local 
 option district. First, however, 500 electors cor- 
 responding to one-tenth of the total number in 
 the district, must appeal to the governor, asking 
 that an election be authorized. An increase in li- 
 censes may similarly be petitioned for. At elections 
 it may be voted to reduce the number of licenses,
 
 176 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 to continue the prevailing number, and to increase 
 it. A simple majority is enough to decide a diminu- 
 tion in licenses. 
 
 Tasmania: A law which becomes effective in 
 1917 prescribes, among other things, that the num- 
 ber of licenses existing in 1908 may not be increased 
 unless a majority of men and women entitled to 
 vote who live within a radius of one mile from the 
 center where it is proposed to establish a drink 
 place decide that the increase is demanded because 
 of the growth of population. 
 
 In every civil subdivision (urban or rural) hav- 
 ing more than one license an election is obligatory 
 every three years, beginning in 1917, for the pur- 
 pose of deciding whether the existing number of li- 
 censes shall be retained or reduced. In order to 
 make the vote effective it is necessary that the ma- 
 jority consist of at least twenty-five per cent of the 
 total number of electors. 
 
 Queensland: A law of 1912 which only became 
 effective in 1914 makes no provisions for local op- 
 tion elections. Until 1925 only the question of re- 
 ducing licenses comes before the voters. In 1916 
 the question is of a reduction of one-fourth of all 
 the existing licenses; in 1919 that of a further re- 
 duction of one-fourth, and in 1922 of a reduction 
 of another one-fourth. At each election one-tenth 
 of the qualified electors must vote and a simple ma- 
 jority is sufficient to make the reduction effective. 
 In 1925 prohibition may be voted on, but its ac-
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 177 
 
 ceptance requires a three-fourths majority and 
 thirty-five per cent of the total number of electors. 
 
 West Australia: Local option will be introduced 
 in 1921. A three-fifths majority is necessary for 
 the adoption of local prohibition. 
 
 Victoria: This colony has largely copied the 
 liquor legislation of New Zealand. Beginning with 
 the year 1917 it may be decided at local elections 
 to prohibit, decrease, or continue the traffic in in- 
 toxicants. At the present time Victoria has a so- 
 called reduction committee which has authority to 
 close all superfluous drink-places. It has been very 
 active and during the years 1906 to 1912 closed 
 613 places. 
 
 New Zealand: In connection with the general 
 elections to Parliament the voters are called upon 
 to decide how far within each election district li- 
 censes shall or shall not be granted. In districts 
 where licenses are in force it may be voted that for 
 the future no licenses shall be granted or that the 
 present regulations shall be continued. The ques- 
 tion on the ballots is so worded that a vote is cast 
 for or against a local return to the license system. 
 In a license district a three-fifths majority of the 
 votes cast is necessary in order to introduce pro- 
 hibition; it is furthermore required that at least 
 one-half of the qualified electors shall have taken 
 part in the election. The same majority is required 
 to enable a district to return to license. 
 
 In connection with local option elections a vote
 
 178 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 is also taken on the question whether prohibition 
 is desired for the entire state. In order to obtain 
 state-wide prohibition the same requirements are 
 prescribed in regard to majorities as in case of 
 local option elections. If prohibition is adopted it 
 becomes operative four years subsequent to the elec- 
 tion and will cover the sale, manufacture, importa- 
 tion and possession of alcohol. Although prohibi- 
 tion may be adopted, it is necessary to vote every 
 third year on the question whether it should be re- 
 tained or repealed. 
 
 New Zealand was the first of the Australasian 
 colonies which adopted the principle of popular 
 election for or against licensing the sale of intoxi- 
 cants. The first election took place in 1904, and 
 resulted in a decisive defeat of prohibition. In that 
 year all adult persons, women and men, were given the 
 franchise. After five elections, in which the number 
 of votes in favor of prohibition gradually increased, 
 a majority for it was obtained in 1908. A large 
 number of districts gave a majority for prohibition, 
 but liquor selling was continued, as the necessary 
 three-fifths majority had not been reached. In 
 twelve districts liquor selling was voted out in 1911, 
 the vote on state-wide prohibition stood 259,000 
 for and 205,000 against, or in favor of " national 
 continuance." In 1914, 250,000 votes were cast for 
 national continuance as against 247,000 in favor of 
 national prohibition. In four years there has thus 
 been a change in sentiment represented by 65,000
 
 CANADA 179 
 
 votes. During the same period there has been a very 
 marked increase in the vote favoring a continuance 
 of licensing within the local option districts. 
 
 Under local prohibition certain exceptions are 
 made permitting the sale of intoxicants in military 
 canteens, the sale at public auctions in amounts of 
 not less than five gallons, the sale in the restaurant 
 of the Parliament Building (an exception made in the 
 case of one or two of the other Australasian colonies), 
 and the sale for consumption off the premises of 
 native wine made from grapes or fruit in quantities 
 of not less than two gallons. 
 
 DC 
 
 CANADA 
 
 Canada: The Canadian liquor legislation ap- 
 proaches our own in essential respects. The only 
 Dominion law is the so-called Canada Temperance 
 Act of 1878, with certain changes made in 1908, 
 which is effective in a number of counties and 
 municipalities. For the rest, the sale of intoxicants 
 is chiefly regulated by provincial laws. It does not 
 appear that war conditions have necessitated far- 
 reaching new regulations. A brief statement follows 
 of the laws now in force in the various provinces. 
 
 Prince Edward Island: Is under general prohibi- 
 tion. 
 
 Nova Scotia: A prohibition law was passed in 
 1915, applying to all of the provinces except the
 
 180 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 city of Halifax. It was defeated so far as this city 
 was concerned by the casting vote of the speaker, 
 but by a vote taken in March, 1916, Halifax will 
 come under prohibition. The law is administered by 
 the provincial government through deputy inspectors. 
 
 New Brunswick: The total number of licensed 
 places remaining last year was 135, mainly dis- 
 tributed among cities and towns. Local option laws 
 after the American pattern are available for small 
 municipalities, and in some counties the Canada 
 Temperance Act is enforced. 
 
 Quebec: Under a local option law passed before 
 confederation about 900 parishes, almost two-thirds 
 of the total number, have been laid dry. 
 . Ontario: The Canada Temperance Act is in 
 force and a local option law which requires a three- 
 fifths vote for the abolition of the sale of liquor. In 
 January of 1915 there were 535 dry local commu- 
 nities out of a total of 828; 328 were under local 
 option, 45 under the Canada Temperance Act, and 
 162 were without licenses through administrative or 
 other act. This number has since been increased. 
 About 290 communities in the province still permit 
 the sale of liquor. At the last session of the Legis- 
 lature an Act was passed providing for a provincial 
 license commission with wide powers. It gives the 
 government almost a free hand, and the commission 
 is said to have done valuable work in regulating the 
 traffic and punishing offenders. 
 
 Manitoba; Not far from one-half of the local
 
 DENMARK 181 
 
 communities have availed themselves of the local op- 
 tion law to exclude drink selling. Both political 
 parties are committed to the abolition of bars in 
 saloons. A recent election points to the adoption of 
 prohibition. 
 
 Saskatchewan: A law went into force in July, 
 1915, which cancels all wholesale and retail licenses 
 with the exception of the so-called " shop licenses " 
 which the government avails itself of, following the 
 methods of the dispensary system. No popular vote 
 was taken before the law was enacted. It is pro- 
 vided, however, that the whole system of licensing 
 may be re-established by referendum vote at the end 
 of the War but not before December 1, 1916. 
 
 Alberta: The province adopted prohibition by 
 popular vote in 1915. It does not go into effect 
 until July of 1916. 
 
 DENMARK 
 
 For many years the consumption of spirits and 
 beer has been notably high in Denmark. The law 
 regulating the manufacture and sale of liquors had 
 practically undergone no change from 1857 to 1912. 
 Then after a careful study of the situation under 
 the admirable leadership of Dr. S. Ussing, formerly 
 Chief Justice of the Danish Court of Appeals, a 
 new law was adopted. The principal changes 
 adopted may be summarized as follows: A body of
 
 182 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 independent legislation has been acquired governing 
 the manufacture and sale of intoxicants. All alco- 
 holic drinks containing more than 2^ pr cent 
 (weight) of alcohol have been placed under the same 
 conditions in regard to sale. The communal coun- 
 cils have been constituted the licensing authorities, 
 which means that public opinion now can make its 
 influence felt in the selection of persons to be placed 
 in control also of the drink traffic. 
 
 At the outset the law was regarded with more or 
 less suspicion by the total abstinence party, but the 
 opportunity to influence both the communal councils 
 and the police administration has reconciled it. 
 One effect of the law is to do away with the drink- 
 ing clubs in rural districts that were established os- 
 tensibly for some beneficent object but really in- 
 tended to give individuals a chance to sell drink 
 without restriction. It also put an end to the dis- 
 tribution of liquors in stores, at public auctions, etc., 
 where formerly it was permitted to give away 
 liquors, from which much drunkenness resulted. It 
 is assumed that the law will bring about a large re- 
 duction in licenses although previously their exces- 
 sive number in proportion to population was not ac- 
 companied by a corresponding increase in the con- 
 sumption of alcohol. Beer containing 9^ weight 
 per cent of alcohol is free from taxation. An in- 
 creasing number of brewers is engaged in producing 
 it and show a continuous growth of output.
 
 HOLLAND 183 
 
 XI 
 HOLLAND 
 
 Although the consumption of spirits has always 
 stood at a high figure in Holland, the fact does not 
 seem to have occasioned a demand for very rigid 
 temperance reform. Licenses to sell or serve spirits 
 are granted by the magistrate and mayor of the re- 
 spective communes except that hotel and club priv- 
 ileges are obtained from the provincial commission. 
 The law establishes a maximum number of licenses in 
 proportion to population, hotels excepted. In com- 
 munes with a population of less than 10,000 there 
 may be one license to 250 inhabitants, with a rising 
 scale for more populous communes until those having 
 more than 50,000 population are reached, in which 
 there may be one license to 500 inhabitants. Licenses 
 are granted for a year at a time and the license fee 
 would be reckoned low from an American point of 
 view. The qualifications demanded in licensees and 
 the general restrictions prescribed by law are not of 
 special interest. It is the duty of the Minister of the 
 Interior to secure the enforcement of the liquor leg- 
 islation. Inspectors and assistants appointed and 
 discharged by the government aid him in his duties. 
 In addition, the law of 1904 establishes communal 
 commissions elected for a period of three years who 
 serve without pay and whose duty it is to make the 
 drink law effective. They are especially intended
 
 184 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 to call attention to licenses which ought to be with- 
 drawn by the licensing authorities. 
 
 The manufacture, importation, and sale of ab- 
 sinthe is forbidden. 
 
 In order to serve beer, wine, and alcohol-free 
 drinks no special license is required, but simply a 
 commission from the same authorities that grant 
 spirit licenses. The same general regulations govern 
 the sale, but there is no limitation upon the number 
 of places. 
 
 xn 
 
 ICELAND 
 
 This colony of Denmark, with less than 80,000 
 inhabitants, is the only country in the world legally 
 under absolute prohibition. Except for an unsuc- 
 cessful experiment in the Swedish Lapmark years 
 ago, this is the first known attempt of its kind. Al- 
 ready, in 1900, the manufacture of alcoholic drinks 
 was forbidden, and in 1908 a general election was 
 held in which 4,645 votes were given for total pro- 
 hibition and 3,181 against, only males voting. 
 The new prohibition law became wholly effective 
 January 1, 1915, and forbade the manufacture, im- 
 portation, and sale of all spirituous drinks contain- 
 ing more than %!/ weight per cent of alcohol. An 
 exception is made in regard to the importation of 
 alcohol for medical and industrial purposes, and 
 communion wine may be imported by certain ec-
 
 ICELAND 185 
 
 clesiastical officials. Very strict regulations are in 
 effect to prevent a misappropriation of alcohol 
 under the exemptions mentioned. Dealers who at 
 the time the law went into force had alcoholic goods 
 left over were obliged to make a report of this fact, 
 whereupon the goods would be placed under seal and 
 the owner obliged to remove them from the country 
 within 12 months. Private persons who on the 1st 
 of January, 1915, were in possession of spirits were 
 not obliged to export them but had to declare the 
 goods to the chief of police; at the beginning of 
 each year a similar declaration must be made until 
 the goods have been used up. 
 
 Drastic penalties are imposed for illicit sale. If 
 spirits are found in the possession of any person 
 who is incapable of or refuses to explain how he 
 obtained them, he is considered guilty of violating 
 the law. Severe penalties are also imposed upon 
 doctors for improperly making out prescriptions 
 for alcohol. Intoxicated persons are obliged to 
 declare to the court where they obtained the 
 liquor. 
 
 The prohibition law had not been long in force 
 before the usual signs of its violation and circum- 
 vention appeared. According to newspaper re- 
 ports there has been considerable smuggling of 
 liquor brought to Iceland in fishing boats and other 
 vessels. In the absence of an extensive revenue and 
 police service the opportunities would appear to be 
 many. The law has not had a sufficient test, how-
 
 186 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 ever, to allow a definite conclusion in regard to its 
 operation. 
 
 xra 
 
 SWITZERLAND 
 
 Each canton has its own separate laws govern- 
 ing the sale of liquor; while they are very similar 
 their enforcement varies. Licenses to deal in intoxi- 
 cating beverages granted by the Department of 
 Finance upon recommendation of the communal dis- 
 trict councils. 
 
 One of the chief clauses in the Swiss alcoholic 
 legislation is the portion in regard to " necessity." 
 It is assumed that no license shall be granted unless 
 it meets a well-defined public demand, and new li- 
 censes are denied in case there is reason to suppose 
 that they may work harm to the community. 
 
 The number of licenses permitted in proportion 
 to population varies greatly. For instance, in 
 Thurgan one is permitted to 100 inhabitants, but 
 in Aargau there may not be more than one place 
 for serving spirits to 250 inhabitants. In many 
 places a high-license system has been introduced. 
 
 In Switzerland the manufacture of spirits is a 
 state monopoly, and ten per cent of the profits are 
 distributed directly among the different cantons for 
 the purpose of combating alcoholism. It amounts 
 to about half a million francs a year. During 
 1914-1915 it was not permitted to distill spirits.
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 187 
 
 The selling of spirits by the monopoly for human 
 consumption has apparently been given up for an in- 
 definite time. An exception is made of a very lim- 
 ited quantity for use by apothecaries in preparing 
 medicine. This is, of course, a war measure. Pre- 
 caution has also been taken to prevent the military 
 troops in service from using spirits while on duty. 
 
 XIV 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 
 
 Sweden and Norway, practically alone among the 
 countries of the world, illustrate the power of ra- 
 tional liquor legislation to reduce the consumption 
 of alcohol. The interesting history of this legisla- 
 tion must be passed by, nor is there space to tell 
 its operation in detail. Both must be sought in the 
 voluminous literature of the subject, which has long 
 been accessible in English through official reports 
 and private studies. 
 
 During the greater part of the first half of the 
 last century Sweden permitted practically free 
 trade in the manufacture and sale of spirits. The 
 consumption of spirits rose to extraordinary pro- 
 portions and with terrible effects. " The very mar- 
 row of the nation was sapped; moral and physical 
 degradation ... all those grim legions of evils 
 that ever range themselves under the banner of in- 
 temperance took possession of the land." In the 
 rural parishes the conditions were transformed by
 
 188 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 the simple act of 1855 forbidding home distillation, 
 while other distilleries were subjected to a high ex- 
 cise tax and the rural communities were given a 
 local veto over sales. The towns, which suffered 
 perhaps even more from drunkenness, offered a dif- 
 ferent problem; but it was not thought practicable 
 or expedient to try to place them under prohibition. 
 A bold remedy for a desperate situation was found 
 in the organization of a private bolag, or company, 
 in the city of Gothenburg, which gradually took 
 over licenses for spirit-selling on the condition that 
 the shareholders should not derive the slightest ad- 
 vantage from sales beyond the ordinary rate of in- 
 terest on the capital invested, and that the profits 
 should be devoted to charity or public uses. This 
 was the genesis of the famous Gothenburg system, 
 which in the course of time became extended to the 
 whole of Sweden and eventually reached its fullest 
 development and fairest trial in Norway. 
 
 It has frequently been said that in legislation rel- 
 ative to the company system Norway began where 
 Sweden left off. To an extent this is true. Norway 
 had the immense advantage of availing itself of the 
 Swedish experience and of thus avoiding some of the 
 mistakes made by the pioneers in an untraversed field. 
 Especially at the outset the Gothenburg system in 
 its home land was not without its failures, but they 
 were of a kind that point the way to progress. In 
 Norway the drink situation was less acute than in 
 Sweden and the obstacles of ancient privileges and
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 189 
 
 rights to dispense intoxicants were far less formida- 
 ble. For this and other reasons legislation in Nor- 
 way has progressed more rapidly and made it pos- 
 sible for the company system to develop at its best. 
 Throughout its history the temperance party has 
 given support to the samlags and been instrumental 
 in promoting legislation in regard to it. The ex- 
 tremists, of course, have always been in opposition, 
 yet the consensus of opinion is that the samlag sys- 
 tem has been the chief means of temperance reform. 
 One of the most knotty problems has been the dis- 
 tribution of the profits accruing from the sale of 
 spirits. The early method of devoting a portion to 
 the reduction of the tax rate was found inherently 
 objectionable, as it carried a temptation to extend 
 instead of restricting sales. As we shall see later, 
 a proper solution has been found and no criticism is 
 raised against the Norwegian system on the score 
 of improper use of the profits. 
 
 Perhaps extravagant friends of the Scandinavian 
 system have overpraised it; they have at least rea- 
 son on their side, which is wanting in the bitter at- 
 tacks upon it by the uncompromising prohibition- 
 ists. For in its home lands the system has demon- 
 strated that it (1) divorces drink-selling from poli- 
 tics and thus removes this obstacle to reform; (2) 
 places an " inherently dangerous traffic " under ef- 
 fective restriction and control, but in keeping with 
 the expressed sentiment of the locality; (3) makes 
 possible the reduction of the number of licensed
 
 190 EEFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 houses to the lowest safe limits that public opinion 
 will tolerate, and thus simplifies all restrictive meas- 
 ures; (4) secures the profits on sales to the locality 
 and enables the establishment of counter attrac- 
 tions; (5) appeals to an enlightened public opinion, 
 enlists the co-operation of good citizens, and paves 
 the way for progressive temperance legislation. 
 
 Let us see how these generalizations fit the evi- 
 dence offered by the history of the company system 
 in Norway. The complete divorce of the samlags 
 from politics hardly needs mention, for they are 
 managed by reputable, disinterested citizens pledged 
 to conduct sales with an eye to the public good, 
 who have no interest in pushing sales, as their only 
 profit is a modest interest on the capital invested, 
 which is fixed by law. Merely the elimination of pri- 
 vate profits from the business precludes any mix- 
 ing with politics. 
 
 From the very beginning it has been the con- 
 sistent policy of the samlags to hedge about the 
 sale of spirits with increasingly severe restrictions. 
 These have taken the form especially of drastic lim- 
 itations of the hours of sale, numerous precautions 
 in serving spirits, and a persistent effort to reduce 
 the number of sales-places so far as is compatible 
 with the evident needs of the community. In as- 
 suming the monopoly of licenses to sell spirits the 
 samlags at once effected an enormous reduction of 
 licensed places and have continued it consistently. 
 In 1904 the law became operative which gives the
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 191 
 
 different communes power to decide for themselves 
 whether the sale of spirits shall be continued or not. 
 The charge that the system tends to perpetuate the 
 sale of spirits is thus entirely unfounded. 
 
 Instead of allowing the profits from the sale of 
 alcohol to flow into the pockets of private indi- 
 viduals, the law regulating the samlag system pro- 
 vides that of the net profits fifteen per cent shall 
 be given to the municipality in lieu of the former 
 license tax, and twenty per cent divided among the 
 company and the department under which it sorts, 
 to be distributed for charitable and useful objects 
 not supported by taxation, while the remainder is 
 paid into the State treasury. 
 
 That the maintenance of the samlag or company 
 system does not stand in the way of progressive tem- 
 perance legislation is witnessed by the mere fact of the 
 reduction in licenses that has taken place under it. 
 In 1896 there were 51 municipalities maintaining 
 companies for the retail sale of spirits. In 1913 there 
 were but 27 out of a total of 62 municipalities, and 
 in 1914 but 12 (to some extent a result of the war), 
 exclusive of two places in which the courts are called 
 upon to decide the legality of the vote for the pro- 
 hibition of spirits. Under the law of 1904 local pro- 
 hibition when accepted by a state remains in force for 
 six years. Since the private companies monopolize 
 the sale of spirits in the cities, it will be seen that a 
 very large reduction in the business has taken place 
 within a few years. There remain, to be sure, some
 
 192 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 old privileges to sell spirits. In 1914 there was a 
 total of seven in the country, but only three of these 
 were actively in use. 
 
 No license whatsoever is issued for the sale of 
 spirits in the country districts and of the former 
 licenses there remain only two. 
 
 The number of persons permitted to sell and 
 serve beer and wine has been reduced from 1,722 to 
 888, that is, about half, during the years 1900 to 
 1911. The persons in the rural districts who had 
 the right to sell beer and wine numbered only 206 in 
 1900, and in 1911 had been reduced to 134. Fur- 
 thermore, in 1914 there were 19 of the 62 cities and 
 500 of the 612 rural communes in which no license 
 for the sale of liquors of any kind had been 
 issued. 
 
 In the municipalities, the total number of general 
 licenses was reduced during the years 1896 to 1914, 
 from 466 to 269, and limited licenses to serve ordi- 
 nary beer and wine from 243 to 194. On the other 
 hand, the limited licenses to serve only the lightest 
 beer (that is, beer containing less than 2.25 per cent 
 alcohol and exempt from taxation), increased from 
 10 to 173. These facts suffice to refute the allegation 
 that the company system serves to perpetuate liquor 
 selling in general. 
 
 The grievance has frequently been directed against 
 the company system in Norway that it does not neces- 
 sarily include a monopolization of the sale of wine 
 and beer. Provisions exist, however, under which
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 193 
 
 a company may acquire the right to retail sale 
 of beer for a definite period during which no other 
 vender in the place may be licensed. 
 
 Many well-informed people regard it as making 
 not for, but against, sobriety to place the retail 
 sale of fermented beverages quite on the same foot- 
 ing with that of spirits. Recent legislation has lib- 
 eralized the sale of the least alcoholic beers through 
 a system of progressive taxation whereby the light- 
 est beverages of this kind are subjected to the lowest 
 tax. Beers containing less than 2.25 per cent of 
 alcohol are free from taxation, which, as in other 
 countries where it has been tried, serves greatly to 
 stimulate the use of this harmless drink. 
 
 Under the samlag system the consumption of 
 spirits (whiskey of fifty per cent alcohol) has been 
 reduced about one-half. In 1876 the consumption 
 of spirits stood at 6.66 liters per inhabitant as 
 against 3.64 in 1913. The fear so frequently ex- 
 pressed that the gradual repression of spirits would 
 result in an inordinate consumption of beer has not 
 been realized. The quantity of beer consumed per 
 inhabitant in 1913 (21.1 liters) was almost precisely 
 the same in 1876; while during the decade 1891 
 to 1900 the consumption of beer averaged consider- 
 ably higher than during the decade from 1904 to 
 1913. According to the total consumption of alco- 
 holic drinks measured in terms of pure alcohol, Nor- 
 way ranks as the most temperate country in Europe 
 except Finland, whose consumption of spirits, how-
 
 194 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 ever, is not much below that of Norway. 1 That these 
 unmatched results could have been attained in Nor- 
 way under any ordinary license system is not 
 credible. Prohibitionists from other lands have 
 wasted much effort in seeking to discredit the Nor- 
 wegian samlag system and have been seconded to 
 some extent by outside representatives of the 
 " trade." The truth is that the system has gained 
 support from the abstainers precisely because it 
 makes temperance reform easy. In 1915, after a 
 labor of four and a half years, the Norwegian Alco- 
 hol Commission, an official body under the chairman- 
 ship of Professor Dr. Axel Hoist, and, almost need- 
 less to say, consisting of men of high scientific attain- 
 ments and standing issued its report, which will be 
 laid before the next Storting. A minority consisting 
 of avowed prohibitionists, one of whom is the well- 
 known temperance leader, Provincial Governor S. 
 Aarrestad, does not favor the abolition of the com- 
 pany system, but would restrict it in several ways, 
 while hoping eventually to win the whole country for 
 prohibition by the extension of local option. 
 
 After most exhaustive investigations the majority 
 of this commission find that prohibition is likely to 
 increase home distillation and greatly to stimulate 
 the illicit traffic. They base this judgment in part 
 upon the experience with local prohibition, which 
 shows the number of persons sentenced or under 
 prosecution for illegal selling to be three and a half 
 1 See Appendix.
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 195 
 
 times larger in cities without samlags (under pro- 
 hibition) than in the others. The evidence of public 
 intoxication is taken to indicate " so intense a 
 craving for stimulants among the male population 
 of our cities that it cannot be expected in the near 
 future to cease obtaining gratification solely through 
 the adoption of a prohibitive law." The police au- 
 thorities of the principal cities are reported as prac- 
 tically unanimous in the belief that total prohibition 
 cannot be enforced. The same opinion is voiced by 
 the state revenue department. The police officials of 
 Christiania say, " Already now it is most difficult to 
 secure evidence in cases of violations of the alcohol 
 law," and it has such a familiar sound! that in 
 different strata of the population it is considered 
 quite proper to give untruthful explanations and try 
 to deceive the police and the courts in liquor cases. 
 Personal investigation in the United States has per- 
 suaded members of the Norwegian commission that 
 our examples of prohibition ought not to be imitated. 
 It must not be understood, however, that the Nor- 
 wegian Alcohol Commission was in any sense oblivious 
 to the social damage from alcoholism, or that it ad- 
 vocates letting well enough alone. It endeavored to 
 view the situation from every possible angle, and 
 made the most thorough study undertaken in any 
 country of alcoholism in its relation to various 
 social troubles. The entire work breathes a desire 
 to promote temperance, but always with the clear 
 perception of the dangers attending legislation for
 
 196 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 which the public is not yet ripe. The most impor- 
 tant points in the legislation recommended by the 
 majority of the Norwegian Alcohol Commission may 
 be summarized as follows : 
 
 Distillers and rectifiers must confine their sale of 
 domestic spirits to samlags. Only the samlags have 
 the right to import spirits from abroad, except for 
 technical, medical, and scientific purposes. The sale 
 and serving of spirits are confined to the towns and 
 may only be undertaken by samlags. 
 
 Before a samlag can be established within a com- 
 mune, all voters (women as well as men over 25 
 years of age) decide by ballot whether the estab- 
 lishment of a samlag (or its continuance) shall find 
 place. The outcome of the election remains valid 
 for six years. The regulations governing the ac- 
 tivities of a samlag must be approved by the city 
 council and confirmed by the general government, 
 after the opinion of the " Sobriety Commission " has 
 been heard. ( The creation of such a commission is 
 recommended, to consist of five members to be ap- 
 pointed by the King for a period of three years ; its 
 duty shall be to have supervision of the business of 
 the spirit samlags and to be concerned with alcohol 
 legislation generally.) The chairman of a samlag 
 is nominated by this commission, and of the remain- 
 ing members one-half are to be elected by the city 
 authorities and one-half by the samlag members. The 
 number of places for retail sale and serving of spirits 
 is to be determined by the city government. The
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 197 
 
 shareholders in a samlag are restricted to an interest 
 of five per cent on the capital invested. In the coun- 
 try districts the serving of spirits can only take place 
 under special license on the recommendation of the 
 local government authorities >and is restricted to 
 hotels and restaurants at health resorts which may 
 not serve others than tourists and guests. Such spe- 
 cial licenses may be for a part of the season. (One 
 reason for this exemption is to stop illicit selling.) 
 
 " The activities of a samlag must be so ordered 
 that the least possible harm is done by the sale and 
 serving of spirits, and that temperance be promoted 
 in the best possible manner. For this purpose the 
 company shall try to prevent the sale of spirits to 
 any one of whom it may reasonably be assumed that 
 he will abuse it or help others to abuse it, nor shall 
 spirits be sold in such quantity that supposedly it is 
 intended for abuse." Among other restrictions may 
 be noted that no sale of spirits may take place be- 
 tween the hours of 6 P.M. and 10 A.M. and not after 
 1 P.M. on the day previous to Sundays and holidays, 
 nor on these days. No serving of spirits may take 
 place between seven o'clock P.M. and ten o'clock A.M. 
 
 For serving beer, wine, fruit wine, and mead, a 
 license is required, except that to serve beer contain- 
 ing less than 2.25 volume per cent of alcohol does 
 not require a license but merely the approval of the 
 police. In country districts the licenses in ques- 
 tion are granted by the local government board and 
 in towns by the city government. In selecting li-
 
 198 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 censees the most important consideration shall be 
 that they are not likely to abuse the privilege. A 
 license to serve the fermented beverages under con- 
 sideration may be granted a samlag for a period of 
 not exceeding six years at one time, provided its by- 
 laws are approved by the local authorities and con- 
 firmed by the general government. At the same 
 time it may be determined that a general license to 
 serve fermented drinks may not be awarded to any 
 one else. The general provisions governing the ac- 
 tivities of a samlag are applicable in such a case. 
 The maximum regular license fee for serving fer- 
 mented drinks is 600 kroner in rural districts and 
 1,200 kroner in the towns. Special regulations 
 govern the sale of fermented drinks for consumption 
 off the premises. This is subject to license, except 
 the wholesale trade. 
 
 In regard to the distribution of eventual profits 
 from the business of a samlag, the proposed law pro- 
 vides that in the first year after it becomes opera- 
 tive twelve per cent of the net profits are to be paid 
 to the respective communes, eight per cent to the sam- 
 lag, and seven per cent to the government for dis- 
 tribution among the different districts of the province 
 in proportion to population. In the second year 
 after the law goes into effect the above-mentioned 
 percentages are fixed at nine, six, and four per 
 cent; for the third year at six, four, and three per 
 cent. For the fourth year three per cent accrues 
 to the commune of the samlag and two per cent to
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 
 
 the samlag itself. The moneys due to the samlag and 
 the communes of the province are to be used for 
 objects of public utility and charity which the com- 
 munes are not obligated by law to provide for. Of 
 the moneys paid into the State treasury an amount 
 corresponding to sixty-five per cent of the net profits 
 is until 1920 to be added to the fund for sickness 
 and old-age insurance. The remainder is to consti- 
 tute a so-called sobriety fund which is to take care 
 of the expenses incurred by the Sobriety Council and 
 in the expropriation of older selling privileges and 
 for other purposes designed to counteract drunken- 
 ness and to compensate for the loss of State revenue 
 which results from it. 
 
 The commission mentions at length and favorably 
 the so-called Bratt or Andree system of individual 
 licensing control which originated in Sweden and 
 aims to prevent persons from buying spirits who are 
 known to abuse it. But evidently the commission 
 is not ready to incorporate the system into law, pre- 
 ferring first to subject it to experiment. 
 
 For many years the central object of liquor legis- 
 lation in Sweden has been to prevent the abuse of 
 spirits. The introduction of the company system 
 and its progressive monopolization of the retail sale 
 (including the serving) of spirits represent salutary 
 changes. It is enough to say that the consumption 
 of spirits which in the five-year period 1871 to 1875 
 stood at 11.8 liters had been reduced to 6.8 liters in 
 the period 1906 to 1910. Simultaneously, the con-
 
 00 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 sumption of beer has greatly increased. Yet the per 
 capita use of all alcoholic beverages put into terms 
 of pure alcohol had been reduced during the period 
 in question from 6.8 to 4.9 liters per inhabitant. 
 The enormous growth in the use of tax-free malt 
 drinks (containing not more than 2^4 volume per 
 cent of alcohol) is especially noteworthy. 
 
 The Swedish Temperance Committee, an official 
 body, has recently proposed new legislation govern- 
 ing the sale of alcoholic drinks which aims to do 
 away with some of the obstacles to reform which 
 have stood in the way of the desired development of 
 the company system. Outside of the companies, a 
 large business has been carried on in intoxicants 
 without the necessity of a special license. Thus ex- 
 empted from license has been wholesale traffic in 
 spirits (in quantities of 250 liters and above) ; the 
 importation of spirits, wine, and beer has been ab- 
 solutely free; agents for foreign firms have been un- 
 restricted in seeking orders ; the purchasers of beer 
 and wine have had the right to sell at retail; in 
 addition, a few personal privileges to sell spirits have 
 not been expropriated and in the rural districts 
 many tavern keepers have the right to sell beer with- 
 out a license. 
 
 The new legislation proposed by the temperance 
 committee gives expression to the following prin- 
 ciples: (1) No private individual can obtain a license 
 to sell intoxicants of any kind at retail. The right 
 to serve may be awarded a private individual but
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 201 
 
 only through the bolag, which is gradually to ex- 
 propriate the still remaining private privileges. 
 (2) There shall be no private wine or spirit mer- 
 chants and no private sale of beer. (8) The bolag, 
 or company, is thus assumed to be the only medium 
 of sale monopolizing the whole retail traffic and all 
 places where drink is served are obligated to buy 
 goods from the bolag. (4) The business of the 
 bolag is to be so arranged that it knows to whom it 
 sells and how much it sells. The last point refers to 
 the so-called Bratt or Andree system mentioned 
 above. This system has been in practice in Gothen- 
 berg since 1912 and in Stockholm since 1914, and 
 will soon be introduced in numerous other Swedish 
 cities. By a law of May, 1915, it became mandatory 
 for the whole of Sweden so far as all retail sale of 
 spirits is concerned. The system is one of indi- 
 vidual control or licensing. Before it can become 
 operative the managers of the companies having a 
 monopoly of the sale of spirits obtain information 
 from the police, courts, guardians for the poor, and 
 others concerning persons who on account of their 
 alcoholic habits should not be allowed to buy whiskey. 
 All other persons over twenty-one years of age may 
 purchase, but only in limited quantities during a 
 stated period. In Stockholm the maximum quan- 
 tity which may be bought is one liter of spirits every 
 fifth day ; and in Gothenberg eight liters per month. 
 The reason given for keeping the limit at a figure 
 which some may regard as high is the desire not to
 
 02 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 drive people to resort to substitutes for alcohol and 
 the general belief that it is necessary to proceed 
 slowly with so radical an innovation. 
 
 Although the maximum quantity is so large and in 
 spite of the fact that it has hitherto been possible 
 to import spirits without the consent of the bolag, 
 this individual license system has proved a very ef- 
 fective adjunct in promoting temperance. It is said 
 that since the introduction of the Bratt system in 
 Stockholm, arrests for drunkenness decreased about 
 one-third, after the system had existed but a year 
 and a half, and it is still in the experimental stage. 
 In Gothenberg arrests for drunkenness have de- 
 creased only fifteen per cent since the Andree sys- 
 tem came into force. The police insist, however, that 
 the showing is really better than indicated because 
 the places for detaining drunken persons have not 
 been so crowded as previously, so that really a large 
 number of intoxicated persons are placed under ar- 
 rest who formerly were let go for lack of some 
 place in which to keep them. 
 
 In Stockholm every would-be purchaser of spirits 
 receives a pass-book in which the quantity of each 
 purchase is noted. In Gothenberg certificates are 
 distributed which must be presented by the purchaser 
 or his representative, and the quantity bought is 
 entered at the place of purchase. Each buyer is re- 
 stricted to a certain sales place which he must patron- 
 ize. A new law prescribes that no one may import 
 spirits from abroad except with the consent of the
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 203 
 
 company, which will make the practice of individual 
 control much easier. 
 
 Although very great caution was exercised in pre- 
 paring a " black list " of persons excluded from the 
 privilege of buying spirits in any quantity, the 
 Gothenberg list for October, 1912, contained over 
 2,000 names, and a year later more than 1,000 others 
 were added. In Stockholm 10,000 applications for 
 pass-books according the privilege of buying whis- 
 key from the bolag were refused. To this must, of 
 course, be added a large number of persons who did 
 not make any application because they were sure to 
 be denied it. Their number is estimated at from 
 5,000 to 10,000. There has been discussion of ex- 
 tending the individual license to cover also fermented 
 drinks, but at present this is neither feasible nor de- 
 sirable. 
 
 The great innovation in the recommendations of 
 the Swedish Temperance Committee is the proposal 
 to introduce local option or the right to decide by 
 popular vote against the licensing of every kind of 
 spirituous drink. While in Norway the local veto in 
 its direct form provides for popular election in re- 
 gard to the sale of spirits by the companies and the 
 sale of other alcoholic beverages can only be abol- 
 ished indirectly through the action of the local au- 
 thorities, Sweden would make no exception but would 
 make all drink-selling subject to option. The Com- 
 mittee was not quite in agreement on essential points. 
 A majority would require a two-thirds majority for
 
 204 REFORM IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 the introduction of local prohibition and a like ma- 
 jority in order to rescind it, and the initiative for a 
 new election would have to be taken by those who are 
 opposed to prohibition. Two members of the com- 
 mittee would make local option law effective for five 
 years, after which a new election would be obligatory, 
 and would require two-thirds of the majority of the 
 electors of the commune for the continuation of local 
 prohibition. 
 
 Aside from things actually accomplished in the 
 way of effective legislation, the American observer 
 of European methods can but note (with a degree 
 of humiliation) that they do not leave the intricate 
 problems associated with liquor laws to the mercy of 
 the propagandist and the inexperienced or interested 
 legislator. Europeans attempt at least to clear the 
 way through scientific inquiries by men of eminence 
 and authority. Our progress in drink reform is 
 bound to be slow so long as popular wisdom about it 
 is drawn from the politician on the stump, or from 
 unscientific temperance federations. 
 
 But in Europe, too, the liquor issue is beginning 
 to be used by the politician as a ladder wherewith 
 to reach place. And once he takes up the yoke of 
 temperance servitude, there is apparently no escape. 
 There is a curious fatalism about swearing allegi- 
 ance to the tenets of prohibition: it seems almost 
 invariably to produce a deviation from normal 
 thought and ideals. Are they fit to lead who regard 
 the b'quor problem as the one vital question, who
 
 NORWAY AND SWEDEN 205 
 
 aver that the sum and substance of human ills are 
 bound up in it, and therefore demand, even in the 
 midst of a world-conflagration, that it must be given 
 the right of way over all the problems that perplex 
 society ?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 CONSTRUCTIVE TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 i 
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE SALOON 
 
 THE cupidity of liquor-dealers, the stupidity of 
 legislation, and the misdirected zeal of reformers are 
 responsible for the American saloon. Its evolution 
 from the old-time tavern or inn in which drink- 
 selling was an incidental if important function, to 
 an institution having no other reason for being, 
 was swift. In the days when the Atlantic border 
 marked the frontier, and until post-colonial times, 
 neither the law-making nor the law-enforcing power 
 seemed to be greatly disturbed over excesses by the 
 innkeepers, who were, so to speak, the community 
 hosts at the few places of public refreshment. The local 
 ordinances governing drink-selling were very simple 
 and intended as a check upon disorderly conduct 
 generally rather than upon the individual's consump- 
 tion of drink. The imposition of any other penalty 
 than a moderate fine was seldom thought necessary. 
 No doubt there was room for complaint, but the inn- 
 keepers of that period were rarely local freebooters 
 even in regard to illicit traffic in rum with the Indians. 
 
 206
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE SALOON 207 
 
 Liquor-selling was very far from being regarded as 
 an inherently disreputable occupation, much less the 
 manufacture and importation of rum, which played 
 so large a part in the early commerce. 
 
 The first great outcry against the drink evil which 
 arose in the early part of the last century did not 
 expend its force in denouncing the sellers of intoxi- 
 cants. As strong drink at that time was an article 
 of pernicious daily household use, both on glad and 
 sad occasions, the problem as then viewed was one 
 of influencing personal habits rather than of repress- 
 ing the drink-seller. The driving force of the primi- 
 tive temperance movement was a semi-religious en- 
 thusiasm for abstinence which could not indefinitely 
 be maintained at fever heat. Gradual-ly it began to 
 cool, but the drink-selling institution remained, and 
 before long it became the object of reform. This 
 shift in the point of attack (one may date it from 
 the early thirties of the last century) gave a direc- 
 tion to temperance activities that not only has per- 
 sisted but has become more and more accentuated 
 in the course of time. Some of the unlovely traits 
 commonly associated with drink-selling (other than 
 that of intoxication) had surely cropped out; they 
 became full-blown, however, only after the saloon had 
 been declared a social outlaw. Far-sighted men 
 among the early temperance advocates clearly saw 
 the danger of staking the future of reform on a re- 
 pression of the drink-seller to the neglect of improv- 
 ing social customs and personal habits. For a time
 
 208 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 there was a strong minority party among the re- 
 formers having " moral suasion " as its watchword ; 
 but the prohibition idea gradually superseded it. 
 This was a perfectly natural evolution of the move- 
 ment. To fight for a moral abstraction is much less 
 appealing to the ordinary mind than to single out a 
 concrete object for scorn and condemnation. To- 
 day the temperance propaganda abounds much more 
 in rage against the saloons than in solicitude for 
 personal hygiene and abstinence as a virtue. This 
 one-sided and purely repressive character of drink 
 reform needs to be emphasized because it helps to 
 explain the development of the American saloon. 
 
 It is fallacious to regard the saloon as a peculiar 
 outgrowth of rough pioneer life, with its self-made 
 code and ready forgiveness of debauchery. For 
 quite obvious reasons drink-selling appears at its 
 worst under conditions which attract the adven- 
 turous and lawless elements chiefly bent on gain 
 who lack the softening influences of the well-ordered 
 community accustomed to all manner of restraint. 
 The most recent illustration of this comes to us from 
 the settlement of Alaska. Perhaps the American 
 tavern had deviated from its English prototype, but 
 the real departure began when its extinction was de- 
 clared to be the ultimate goal of reform. The fron- 
 tier had not pushed far beyond the Alleghenies be- 
 fore the drink-seller was forced into a fight for legal 
 existence which since has been incessantly waged in 
 different parts of the country. He entered it pri-
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE SALOON 209 
 
 marily for defense; soon, however, he found it ad- 
 vantageous to attack, and thereby hangs the long 
 unclean story of the saloon in politics over which 
 good men so often have moralized. As drink-selling 
 privileges were apportioned and supervised by local 
 authorities, it was inevitable that the saloon-keeper 
 should seek to make them his political creatures ; and 
 having obtained safety, he next tried to utilize the 
 position for gain and non-interference. When fate- 
 ful threats of prohibition impended, the saloon- 
 keeper reached out into the wider fields of politics. 
 The point of vantage was often his, for the saloon 
 offered a natural meeting-place to those who were 
 troubled about local political destinies. The taste of 
 power fed the cupidity which the saloon-keeper 
 shares with most men. 
 
 There is, however, little logic in the reasoning that 
 it is reprehensible per se for the liquor interests to 
 promote the election of candidates opposed to pro- 
 hibition so long as it is done by proper means. For 
 under license both manufacture and sale of intoxi- 
 cants are legally sanctioned and are a traffic to which 
 most men pay tribute and from which they derive a 
 certain pecuniary benefit in the form of taxes. To 
 insist upon this view is, of course, not to excuse any 
 high-handed dictation to political candidates, much 
 less to excuse any unlawful interference in govern- 
 mental affairs. 
 
 The domination of the saloon in many places, its 
 shameless perversion of local government, its open
 
 210 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 defiance of law and the rapacity accompanying it, 
 are ugly chapters in our civic history; but let it be 
 remembered that it was not the saloon at its worst 
 against which the early reformers rose, for this is a 
 growth of later days; and one who wishes to under- 
 stand its gradual deterioration must carefully in- 
 quire how far this resulted from the environment 
 created for it by legislation and reform efforts. 
 This statement involves neither an apology for the 
 lawlessness and political chicanery laid to the saloon, 
 nor a reflection on the motives of reformers. Of 
 course, in many instances, a callous public permitted 
 the inherently dangerous traffic to go on unfettered 
 in spite of legal prescriptions, and with the usual bad 
 results. But the large view to be kept in mind is 
 that the whole trend of temperance legislation has 
 been repressive, with absolute prohibition as the final 
 aim, on the assumption that general moderation 
 throughout the land cannot be attained by any other 
 means. 
 
 One searches in vain the whole turgid mass of 
 license laws in this country for leading constructive 
 principles that may at once serve to curb excess 
 while meeting a popular demand and easily lending 
 themselves to progressive restriction as soon as the 
 public is prepared for it. Instead, the statutes bristle 
 with the one idea of repression, and behind them 
 lurks the one accepted alternative, namely, prohibi- 
 tion. 
 
 Yet is temperance so fragile a virtue that it will
 
 LOCAL OPTION 211 
 
 not thrive unless shielded by sumptuary legislation? 
 Such is the working hypothesis of its strenuous advo- 
 cates. They ignore the improvements that have 
 taken place, not in consequence of repression or 
 force, but through a complexity of influences that 
 draw a community up to the higher levels. That the 
 trend is toward moderation and that the alcoholic ex- 
 cesses of the forefathers have passed, they overlook. 
 The saloon remains and typifies to them the one su- 
 preme evil which cannot be modified or progressively 
 corrected. They conceive of alcohol as in itself a 
 veritable monster that cannot be exorcised but must 
 be destroyed. Therefore, they heap contumely upon 
 constructive efforts and hold out the strait-j acket as 
 symbolizing the highest form of appeal, wholly suited 
 to win a self-respecting nation. Failing its volun- 
 tary or compulsory acceptance, they recognize but 
 one principle in liquor legislation, that of repression. 
 Herein lies the reason for the disappointments of 
 temperance reform as exemplified in the United 
 States. This broad assertion requires some explana- 
 tion in detail of the workings of our legal restrictions 
 other than state-wide prohibition. 
 
 ii 
 
 LOCAL OPTION 
 
 The finest fruit garnered from a multitude of ex- 
 periments in curbing the liquor traffic is the right of 
 local option, but we have stunted its growth and
 
 212 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 tried to plant it in wrong places. If the principal 
 of local option is not an original discovery, we have 
 patent-righted it and furnished examples of its 
 proper uses as well as of its abuses. The right of 
 the local community to decide for itself whether the 
 sale of liquor shall be licensed or not is no longer 
 in dispute. As we have shown elsewhere, it has al- 
 ready been recognized in the legislation of several 
 lands, for instance, Canada, the Australian colonies, 
 Norway, and Scotland, and in the near future will 
 probably be included in the Swedish laws. The appli- 
 cability of this right however, is distinctly limited. In 
 rural districts and smaller urban communities, local 
 prohibition can be made a success and has vindicated 
 itself in many instances, in response to the public 
 sense that the saloon has no place in villages and at 
 country cross-roads, because it does not meet an ir- 
 repressible want. The utility of local prohibition in 
 larger urban centers is generally conditioned by their 
 proximity to some place under license which operates 
 as a " safety valve " to the purchasers of intoxicants 
 who will not be denied ; and upon easy access to drink 
 very often depends the willingness to accept local 
 prohibition. 
 
 But where repeated trials clearly show that no de- 
 cided majority exists for local prohibition, and that 
 there is a constant shift from it to license, the actual 
 gain for temperance is infinitesimal. The laws them- 
 selves are at fault because they permit local prohibi- 
 tion to ensue from a mandate of a majority, no mat-
 
 LOCAL OPTION 213 
 
 ter how small it is and how unrepresentative of public 
 sentiment. 
 
 Conditions roundabout the city of Boston furnish 
 the most instructive illustration. By maintaining li- 
 cense this city of 725,000 population provides an 
 outlet for adjacent cities and towns, the most impor- 
 tant of which are separated merely by artificial 
 boundary lines, and contain a population about equal 
 to that of Boston. The inhabitants of these places 
 habitually and wisely vote to exclude drink-selling; 
 but they could scarcely be persuaded to follow this 
 policy unless Boston provided a base of supplies and 
 served as an outlet for the saloon-going part of the 
 communities. In such instances the no-license vote 
 does not by any means signify a desire for the enact- 
 ment of prohibition. Examples of similar kind are 
 found in other parts of the country, for instance, in 
 the vicinity of the city of Chicago. In prohibition 
 states, too, it happens that people are content to 
 keep the saloons from their own streets so long as 
 they need but cross a bridge to reach them in another 
 state or perhaps in their own. A classical example 
 of the last-mentioned condition is found in Maine 
 where the city of Auburn insists upon the enforce- 
 ment of prohibition while the city of Lewiston on 
 the other side of the river permits drink-selling openly 
 except for an occasional period of enforcement. 
 
 Local prohibition has been reasonably well ob- 
 served in numerous communities and benefited some 
 of them greatly. This does not mean that the use
 
 214' TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 of intoxicants has ceased in such instances, but that 
 the consumption in the homes has largely replaced 
 saloon drinking. Occasionally a no-license victory is 
 gained in a large city, but so far there probably has 
 not been a single example showing that in such a 
 case local prohibition has been successfully enforced 
 or maintained for any length of time, unless, of 
 course, such a city has been adjacent to another city 
 under license. 
 
 That it is easy, artificially, to propagate votes in 
 the name of morality is as common an experience as 
 it is disheartening. If the adoption of this or that 
 policy did not derive its value from the force of con- 
 viction back of it, the situation would be different. 
 But in local-option elections, as in prohibition elec- 
 tions, we cling to the demonstrable fallacy that a 
 mere majority, no matter how obtained, is enough 
 to secure a stable policy in dealing with the liquor 
 question. It is not even thought necessary that the 
 vote cast in such elections should constitute a stated 
 proportion of the total electorate. Thus it may hap- 
 pen that on a given question only a fraction of the 
 electorate expresses its opinion. The result, how- 
 ever, is as binding as if the last man had turned out 
 at the polls. Of course the more rudimentary the 
 legal requirements are to make the outcome of an 
 election valid, the easier it becomes to force prohibi- 
 tion upon an unwilling community. Other countries 
 have recognized this weakness in our local-option 
 legislation and have sought to remedy it in their own.
 
 LOCAL OPTION 215 
 
 Most of the Australian colonies, for instance, require 
 a three-fifths majority for or against license and re- 
 quire that from 35 to 50 per cent of the qualified 
 electors must vote on the question. The new Scottish 
 law which becomes operative a few years hence, con- 
 tains similar provisions ; and in discussion of the local 
 veto, as it is commonly called abroad, the official 
 Swedish Temperance Committee expressed a prefer- 
 ence for a two-thirds majority in order to carry an 
 election for local prohibition. 
 
 In some states local-option elections occur annu- 
 ally, on the ground that they serve to keep alive the 
 temperance interests. The grave circumstance that 
 neither one policy nor the other can get a fair trial 
 in the course of one year, and that the opportunity 
 for frequent changes serves to perpetuate an ele- 
 ment ready to embark in the liquor traffic by legal 
 means when possible, or to some extent by illegal 
 means during dry periods, is ignored. 
 
 Some states provide for biennial local-option elec- 
 tions, but even this scarcely affords sufficient time to 
 try out the policy. 
 
 In foreign countries three- or even six-year periods 
 are thought brief enough. Another thoughtful pro- 
 vision is that whatever the outcome of an election 
 it does not become operative until the lapse of con- 
 siderable time so that the community may have time 
 to adjust itself to the new conditions. Our legisla- 
 tion, as a rule, does not reflect the idea that any 
 time is needed (the lapse of a few months is hardly
 
 216 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 to be counted), even when a transition to state-wide 
 prohibition impends. The State of Virginia set the 
 exceptional and valuable example in decreeing 
 that on the acceptance of prohibition the law should 
 not become operative until the expiration of about 
 two years. The principle of local option is really 
 not in favor with the out-and-out prohibitionist ex- 
 cept as it helps to remove obstacles to state-wide 
 prohibition. So long as the principle is taken to 
 imply the right of a community to continue the liquor 
 traffic, the radical prohibitionist ought not to up- 
 hold it, for he professes that liquor-selling is wrong 
 under all conditions. If it is inherently wrong, why 
 should he petition for the right to decide the ques- 
 tion by ballot? This slight inconsistency does not 
 seem to trouble the most violent denunciators of the 
 use as well as of the sale of liquor in any form. Per- 
 haps they find an excuse in the utility of local option 
 as a means of gaining dry territory with general 
 prohibition as the ultimate aim. It may be said in 
 passing that if it be right for a local community to 
 exercise option periodically in regard to licensing 
 and forbidding the liquor traffic, the same right 
 should be enjoyed by a whole state. The legislation 
 of other countries recognizes this and provides for 
 an expression of opinion at certain intervals as a test 
 of the sentiment behind prohibition. We proceed 
 upon the natural theory that once it is accepted, 
 state prohibition, unlike local option, must remain 
 immutable and that the public sentiment expressed
 
 LOCAL OPTION 217 
 
 for it remains a fixed quantity. Hence the strong 
 effort to write prohibition into the constitutions, 
 both state and national. These contradictory atti- 
 tudes toward principles that in essence are the same 
 cannot be reconciled. 
 
 A remarkable example of the change that may take 
 place in public sentiment occurred in Vermont at an 
 election held in March, 1916. The question of re- 
 taining the present local-option law or re-enacting 
 prohibition was referred to the voters. Vermont 
 had been under prohibition from 1852 until 1903, 
 when it was repealed by a majority of 729 votes. In 
 the election of 1916 the state, by a majority of 
 13,464, refused to re-enact the prohibitory amend- 
 ment. Every county but one decided in favor of 
 continuing under the local-option law. It is not 
 known that much heavy campaigning was done prior 
 to the election except by the anti-saloon forces. 
 Many towns that rejected prohibition refused per- 
 sistently to grant licenses. Only twenty-three cities 
 and towns at the last election voted to issue saloon 
 privileges. 
 
 Some local-option devices for example, regula- 
 tions as to petitions in pursuance of which elections 
 are held make it possible for adroit manipulators to 
 lay dry a community against its will. An excuse for 
 such a prostitution of the local-option principle is 
 found in political expediency, since each victory is 
 held to be a step toward state-wide prohibition. 
 County local option particularly lends itself to this
 
 218 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 purpose, on account of the legislative representation 
 which may be secured. 
 
 Unquestionably much of the strenuous campaign 
 for no license has been far less marked by solicitude 
 for temperance than by a desire to gain political pre- 
 ponderance. Once an election district is made dry 
 its representative in the legislature will self-evidently 
 incline to the prohibition side even at the cost of per- 
 sonal conviction. This kind of compromise with 
 one's self for the sake of place is so common a feature 
 of public life that it scarcely attracts attention ex- 
 cept in very flagrant instances. But when legisla- 
 tion which in a very special sense demands the support 
 of a mature public opinion, is acted upon by men 
 who themselves secretly spurn it, the cause of moral- 
 ity is not likely to be benefited. 
 
 If rightfully applied, there can be no quarrel with 
 the choice of the county as the unit in local-option 
 elections, provided it is populated chiefly by rural 
 inhabitants or by village folk. Indeed, within such 
 units one may hope to find a uniform and healthy 
 sentiment which makes local option both attainable 
 and desirable. But when a county contains a muni- 
 cipality of considerable importance, and the extra- 
 mural vote is utilized for the purpose of overcoming 
 the known majority for license in the city, the very 
 essence of the law, the right of choice, is violated. 
 Very many instances of this kind have occurred, for 
 instance in the Middle Western states with their 
 numerous and rapidly growing municipalities.
 
 LOCAL OPTION 219 
 
 Scores of these have had a taste of local prohibition, 
 not from choice but under compulsion by the rural 
 vote. Then, as a rule, hateful violations of the law 
 begin, perhaps accompanied by disorder and blood- 
 shed, and persist until abated by a return to license. 
 The local police are not likely to curry disfavor by 
 ruthlessly hunting down the illicit traffic; and its 
 tolerance would not infrequently follow but for the 
 employment of private " spotters " by certain pro- 
 hibition organizations. Meanwhile civic authority 
 generally, as well as ardor for temperance, is certain 
 to have suffered. A city returning to license after 
 such an experience is the poorer for it; besides, the 
 transition to the old order of things is often marked 
 by a reaction for the worse. A counter-part of the 
 folly of coercive prohibition enactments is the wanton 
 campaigning for license in a community which is 
 clearly opposed to the liquor traffic. The instances 
 of it are all too frequent and the interests respon- 
 sible deserve the severest rebuke. The trade in in- 
 toxicants may in many places be a necessity, but it is 
 not per se desirable and least of all to be foisted 
 upon a community. 
 
 On the other hand, liquor-dealers can hardly be 
 censured for seeking to regain territory which has 
 been won for local prohibition by devious means and 
 contrary to the known wishes of its citizenship. 
 
 It belongs to the credo of the prohibition confes- 
 sion that all beverages with alcoholic properties are 
 equally harmful. The suggestion that, if some dis-
 
 220 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 tinction were made, greater continuity might be 
 gained for a no-license policy will, therefore, be 
 scorned as a subterfuge for undermining the very 
 object of local prohibition. Scientists, to be sure, 
 agree that beverages containing less than 2 or 2*4 
 per cent of alcohol are non-injurious; and in coun- 
 tries whose progressive liquor legislation is largely 
 shaped by teetotalers, beverages of this kind are 
 exempted from taxation and declared non-intoxicat- 
 ing. 
 
 The fact that the exclusion of harmless drinks 
 may stimulate the substitution of the most noxious 
 distilled liquors or even chemical preparations, as is 
 witnessed the country over, does not seem to move 
 our reformers. Nor are they actuated simply by 
 fear that a drink containing insignificant traces of 
 alcohol must necessarily create a lasting appetite 
 for the intoxicating kind. They appear to derive a 
 peculiar moral satisfaction from condemning alcohol 
 in all its forms. The abstract hatred of it is reck- 
 oned as a virtue and may by some even be regarded 
 as an element in religion. This mistaken identifica- 
 tion of values is strongly reflected in some legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 American laws forbid the use of certain liquors 
 even if they are not intoxicating! Thus, in West 
 Virginia, all malt-brewed drinks, " whether intoxi- 
 cating or not," are prohibited. The State of Wash- 
 ington, in its new prohibition law, bars all liquors 
 " which contain any alcohol and which are capable
 
 LOCAL OPTION 221 
 
 of being used as a beverage." North Dakota defines 
 among the forbidden drinks, not only malt liquors of 
 any description, but " all so-called fruit ' ades,' imi- 
 tation ciders, and beverages under whatever name or 
 description," and forbids them to " be manufactured 
 and sold to be used as a beverage or a substitute for 
 intoxicating liquors." 
 
 The same sort of legislation is made to apply to 
 the dry areas of license states. For example, in 
 Indiana it is not lawful to sell any malt liquor in 
 local-option territory even if it is non-intoxicating. 
 In Iowa long ago the courts upheld this view : " A 
 beverage containing alcohol is an intoxicant, regard- 
 less of whether the quantity of alcohol contained in 
 it is or is not of itself intoxicating." In Wisconsin 
 the sale of malt liquor containing alcohol is made 
 an offense in local prohibition districts, " though the 
 beverage is a non-intoxicant." 
 
 The assumption of the law is that there cannot be 
 any proper substitute for intoxicating liquor, re- 
 gardless of its percentage of alcohol, or even when 
 it has no trace of alcohol so long as it is labeled by 
 the terrifying name of " malt." Presumably, the 
 singular theory is that even harmless drinks must 
 needs create an appetite for alcohol provided they 
 suggest an affinity with the intoxicating kind. Cur- 
 rent legislation thus systematically repudiates the 
 lesson of experience, namely, that by forbidding 
 non-injurious fermented drinks one invites the use 
 of the most dangerous intoxicants. Hence the dis-
 
 222 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 quieting rise in the production of distilled liquors 
 during the years in which the most notable victories 
 for state and local prohibition were won. 
 
 Of course our legislation has been inconsistent in 
 making distinctions between various kinds of intoxi- 
 cating beverages. There would be interference with 
 a farmer who brewed a weak beer for home use, but 
 he may produce an unlimited quantity of cider which 
 in its " hard " form is highly intoxicating, as many 
 of our rural districts bear witness. Also in France 
 a great deal of alcoholism in rural places is attrib- 
 uted directly to the inordinate use of cider. And 
 while the usual alcoholic beverages are contraband, 
 patent medicines, rich in the vilest forms of alcohol, 
 have had unrestricted sale in prohibition territory. 
 The pure-food law, which requires a statement of the 
 alcoholic contents of each bottle of medicine, has 
 probably helped to diminish this source of drunken- 
 ness ; but still the evil is there. The point is merely 
 this, that our legislation over-emphasizes relatively 
 unimportant things and still makes certain compacts 
 with alcohol. 
 
 m 
 
 TAXATION OF ALCOHOL 
 
 Like prohibition legislation, our efforts to develop 
 effective systems of license control are vitiated 
 through false concepts. Under favorable conditions 
 two motives struggle for mastery in shaping license
 
 TAXATION OF ALCOHOL 223 
 
 policies : one is the desire for as much revenue as the 
 traffic will bear; the other, the desire to prevent in- 
 temperance. As the two motives are hostile, if not 
 mutually exclusive, a poor compromise results. 
 
 We have steadfastly clung to the inherited con- 
 ception of the liquor traffic as a singularly profitable 
 business and therefore to be taxed heavily, altogether 
 subordinating the consideration of taxation as a pos- 
 sible means of promoting temperance. The Federal 
 government sets a bad example. In declaring every 
 beverage containing more than one-half per cent of 
 alcohol subject to taxation, it confuses the definition 
 of intoxicants and makes difficult the substitution of 
 the lighter for the more alcoholic drinks. In levy- 
 ing taxes on the usual alcoholic drinks, the Federal 
 government makes a distinction as to kind between 
 distilled and fermented liquors, but solely for the 
 purpose of revenue and based upon the amount that 
 production will stand. The idea of employing the 
 tax-levying power to discourage the use of distilled 
 liquors as the real generators of alcoholism is foreign 
 to our Federal legislation. The true reason why 
 spirits escaped the latest war tax was the fear that 
 an extra impost would curtail production ! Further- 
 more, fermented liquors are taxed merely according 
 to quantity, not according to kind. The least alco- 
 holic and most wholesome beers are made to share 
 the same burden as the heavy ales. Doubtless the 
 Federal government would be severely put to it were 
 it deprived of all income from the manufacture and
 
 224 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 sale of liquor; but must the good of society be 
 wholly divorced from systems of laying taxes? 
 
 European temperance legislation, as is explained 
 in the preceding chapter, without dissenting voices 
 among the avowed prohibitionists, puts a premium 
 on the production of malt drinks containing not 
 more than 2^4 per cent of alcohol by exempt- 
 ing them from license fees and making their sale 
 free to all. Even Iceland, the only country in the 
 world under absolute prohibition in the sense that 
 not only the manufacture and sale but also the im- 
 portation of liquor is forbidden, makes this excep- 
 tion. Occasionally prohibitionists on the other side 
 disagree as to whether the limit of alcohol in the 
 tax-free drinks should be placed at 2 or 2^4 per 
 cent, but they subscribe to the general principle 
 that certain light alcoholic drinks are harmless and 
 believe that their substitution for the heavier kinds 
 is a practical temperance measure. 
 
 The fatuous pattern of Federal legislation is more 
 or less reflected in state laws: the desire for revenue 
 has been allowed to dominate. Self-evidently, the 
 liquor interests fight for low taxes. Their natural 
 opponents have proceeded on the theory that, since 
 the traffic does so much harm, the greatest possible 
 number of dollars should be extracted from it in 
 reparation ; and legislators generally are eager to 
 grasp at an excuse for seeking additional revenue. 
 To be sure, the system of high license has been 
 evolved on the ground that a heavy fee would serve
 
 HIGH LICENSE AND RESTRICTION 225 
 
 to weed out superfluous saloons, facilitate supervi- 
 sion, eliminate the less responsible and unsubstantial 
 dealers, and thus elevate the whole tone of the trade. 
 But experience has not vindicated this theory except 
 in minor details. 
 
 IV 
 HIGH LICENSE AND RESTRICTION 
 
 A fundamental defect of the high-license system 
 from the taxation point of view is that a uniform 
 fee is exacted, and not one based upon the amount 
 of alcohol sold. Another just as fatal defect is that 
 high-license legislation fails to recognize the taxing 
 power as a means of promoting temperance by en- 
 couraging the sale of the least alcoholic beverages. 
 The suggestion that there could be any choice be- 
 tween alcoholic " poisons " is extremely repugnant 
 to extremists, who regard all liquors as equally 
 typifying the " demon alcohol," and refuse to recog- 
 nize a mid-road between prohibition and excess 
 moderation to which a rational license system 
 should lead. 
 
 As at present operated, the high-license system 
 acts as an incentive to push sales in order to show 
 profit, and, unhappily for temperance, under the 
 usual method of classifying licenses the temptation is 
 particularly to push the sale of distilled liquors. In- 
 deed, saloons given over solely to fermented drinks 
 lead a precarious existence in high-license places, for
 
 226 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 the big profit lies in selling whiskey. This neglect 
 of elementary but far-reaching principles, which 
 characterizes most of the license legislation, must be 
 weighed against the largely illusory advantages sup- 
 posed to be incident to high fees the simplification 
 of control, the close observance of rules on account 
 of the cost of the privilege, the greater inducement 
 for men of substance, and therefore of responsibility, 
 to enter the trade, and so forth. 
 
 That high license puts many saloons out of exist- 
 ence is not an inherent merit, for this can be done 
 by statutory limitation of licenses such as exists in 
 several states, and by a proper regard for reason- 
 able public demands in granting selling privileges. 
 Meanwhile, the resulting concentration of the emolu- 
 ments from the traffic into fewer hands tends to 
 unify an undesirable power. 
 
 To impose a substantial fee for the exercise of a 
 privilege beset by palpable dangers is a thoroughly 
 reasonable method of procedure; but to gauge the 
 value of a license system by the amount of the fee 
 charged is thoroughly illogical. If large weight 
 must be given the damage resulting from drink which 
 puts the community to certain expenses, then the 
 only reasonable method is to levy taxes not simply 
 upon the place but according to the amount of alco- 
 hol sold. 
 
 Of the endless variety of restrictive measures 
 drafted upon license systems, it may be said in pass- 
 ing that a few are obviously useful, many trivial,
 
 HIGH LICENSE AND RESTRICTION 227 
 
 some stupid, and still others merely irritating. 
 Whatever makes for concealment invites circumven- 
 tion of the law and should not be permitted; and 
 no one can sensibly advocate relaxing restrictions 
 against selling to minors and intoxicated persons, 
 or those governing hours of sale, or regulations gen- 
 erally intended to hold the traffic in check. But la- 
 borious enactments prescribing whether drink may 
 be consumed standing or sitting at a table, with or 
 without food and excluding the most harmless forms 
 of diversion; and a multitude of others which aim, 
 in brief, to make the saloon a drink-shop pure and 
 simple, not only belong to the unessentials but di- 
 rectly hinder constructive effort. They are merely 
 the expression of the extreme view that drink-selling 
 is in itself an immoral occupation. 
 
 Among reformers of the rational type there is a 
 diversity of views in regard to the desirability of 
 divorcing drink-selling from every form of attrac- 
 tion and restricting it solely to the one business of 
 selling intoxicants. The English exponents of the 
 company system seek to reduce the temptation to 
 indulge in alcoholic beverages by a liberal provision 
 of counter-attractions in the form of soft drinks, 
 appetizing foods, and the like. In Norway, on the 
 other hand, the places in the control of the samlags 
 offer but one inducement, the opportunity to buy 
 liquor. The customer is not invited to remain, nor 
 is he offered other forms of refreshment. No hard 
 and fast principles can be laid down in regard to
 
 228 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 the particular auspices under which drinks should 
 be served. What suits one nation may be wholly 
 unsuited to another with different customs and 
 habits. Our own population is so diversified that 
 rules in regard to the method of serving drink which 
 in one place might conduce to greater sobriety would 
 in another probably lead to the patronage of illicit 
 places. 
 
 Moreover, intemperance is not such an extraneous 
 thing that it is appreciably affected by the simple 
 expedients that we have discussed. It may, indeed, 
 be a grave mistake to give too great weight to them 
 in legislation. A striking example of this kind is 
 furnished by the so-called Raines Law of New York. 
 In its original form it proposed to attack the drink 
 evil, among other things, by turning the saloon? into 
 hotels, the theory being that when necessarily asso- 
 ciated with catering and other appurtenances of a 
 hostelry the ordinary saloon would have to go be- 
 cause it could not stand the economic strain of com- 
 plying with the law in regard to the number of 
 rooms and kitchen conveniences. The result of this 
 legislation was to call into life the infamous Raines 
 Law hotels, so called, which for a large part degen- 
 erated into disorderly houses of the most malignant 
 type, from which the city of New York in particular 
 suffered. " When the Committee of Fourteen at- 
 tempted to suppress the Raines Law hotels, which 
 was the purpose of this organization, by removing 
 the advantage given the hotel keeper by the liquor
 
 LICENSING AUTHORITIES 229 
 
 law, the amendment proposed was defeated by those 
 opposed to the liquor traffic, because the amend- 
 ment would have legalized the traffic in liquor on 
 Sunday in saloons. To the opponents, an extension 
 of the legal hours of traffic was a greater evil than 
 the disorderly hotels." 
 
 LICENSING AUTHORITIES 
 
 Some hold the crux of liquor legislation to be the 
 choice of authorities vested with power to grant and 
 revoke selling privileges. A sense of this is reflected 
 in the numerous experiments with different already 
 existing or specifically created bodies to whom juris- 
 diction in licensing has been intrusted. From the 
 diversity of legislation upon this subject as illus- 
 trated in different states, and from the experience 
 it has led to, some general conclusions can be drawn. 
 
 Local political bodies such as city councils or 
 county commissioners are often tempted beyond their 
 strength when awarded control of liquor licenses, 
 which in a peculiar way requires freedom from ap- 
 proach and a desire to set public good above self- 
 preferment. Locally appointed boards have been 
 found to be too easily " reached." To give elective 
 police officials the authority to confer privileges 
 which they are set to watch over is merely an in- 
 sidious invitation to graft. Licensing boards ap- 
 pointed by the governor of a state for specified lo-
 
 230 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 calities have given a measure of success, of which 
 perhaps Boston furnishes the most notable example. 
 Of course this method appears to be a perversion of 
 accepted principles of local self-government. 
 
 The experience with state boards as licensing 
 bodies is too limited to warrant significant conclu- 
 sions. Except for short-lived experiments in a few 
 states, Ohio is at the present time the only one oper- 
 ating under this form of licensing the liquor traffic. 
 A central authority established primarily for the 
 purpose of collecting revenue is hardly to be recom- 
 mended, for the larger object should be to prevent 
 licenses from getting into the hands of bad men and 
 to exercise close supervision over the traffic gener- 
 ally. In a large state this would seem to be an in- 
 superable task for a single board; and there is 
 danger in superseding the initiative and responsi- 
 bility of the local authorities by state officials who 
 must first acquire the necessary knowledge of the 
 needs and peculiarities of the place in which licenses 
 are to be exercised. Then there is the question ever 
 present under our form of government of prevent- 
 ing political considerations from overruling the de- 
 sire for a strict regulation of the saloon traffic. In 
 this instance, the temptation to play politics would 
 perhaps be unusually strong. 
 
 In some states the courts grant licenses notwith- 
 standing the reasonable theoretical plea that execu- 
 tive functions should be absolutely divorced from 
 the judicial. In practice, this plan is perhaps of
 
 LICENSING AUTHORITIES 231 
 
 unequal value ; but where best developed, as in Penn- 
 sylvania, it has on the whole proved an efficient 
 method of licensing, and it has been adopted in a 
 few states. The hearing of applications for licenses 
 as well as of remonstrances in open court is helpful, 
 particularly when the law prescribes that in grant- 
 ing licenses the needs of the community shall be a 
 primary consideration. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that in Pennsyl- 
 vania the legal profession has expressed much dis- 
 satisfaction with the existing law, which makes the 
 judges of the Court of Quarter Sessions the licensing 
 authorities. Their complaint, aside from the valid 
 theoretical objection, is that the courts are liable to 
 be tainted by " liquor politics." Unfortunately, 
 there have been so-called " liberal " judges who in 
 return for pre-election aid have proved lax in their 
 duties and issued licenses indiscriminately. Occa- 
 sionally, also, judges have paid for the support of 
 the temperance element by refusing to grant licenses 
 within their jurisdiction. Under an appointive sys- 
 tem of judges such shortcomings should disappear; 
 but so long as a judiciary is elective, politics, both 
 of the liquor and other varieties, may influence it. 
 The danger under consideration is evidently intensi- 
 fied when the lowest courts are in question. 
 
 Probably no system of licensing authority can be 
 devised that will wholly satisfy grasping dealers and 
 prohibition zealots. Dissatisfaction with the numer- 
 ous experiments, except that involving the judiciary,
 
 232 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 which had not been tried, finally led the state 
 of New York to adopt its present tax law, which 
 practically eliminates the judicial function in grant- 
 ing licenses. The weighty objection to it is, how- 
 ever, that it tends to over-emphasize the importance 
 of the liquor traffic as a source of revenue. The 
 more a state is made to realize the ease with which 
 millions in tribute can be levied on drink-selling, the 
 less it will be disposed to subordinate the desire for 
 a low tax-rate to the application of measures where- 
 with to conquer alcoholism. 
 
 The whole problem of licensing authorities would 
 become greatly simplified by the adoption of other 
 principles than those of repression and regulation 
 now followed. Nevertheless there are encouraging 
 examples of faithful and efficient service by licensing 
 authorities under laws that are manifestly imperfect 
 in principle and difficult of execution. 
 
 VI 
 
 ESSENTIALS OF PROGEESSIVE REFORM 
 
 This hasty review of some of the principal ele- 
 ments in our liquor legislation but inadequately por- 
 trays the chaotic conglomeration of statutory provi- 
 sions which from year to year is accumulated in the 
 name of temperance control which is never really 
 achieved, since it proceeds on outworn and mistaken 
 principles. The crude output is a logical result of 
 current methods, for the persons chosen to draft
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 233 
 
 liquor laws seldom need qualify through general fit- 
 ness or knowledge of many intricate questions. It is 
 a hit-or-miss job amid the distracting bustle of a 
 busy legislative session. 
 
 To complicate the situation there are always two 
 outside elements to be reckoned with: First, those 
 who reform for hire, abetted by well-meaning ob- 
 structionists whose wisdom in liquor legislation is 
 bounded by a desire to harass the traffic which the 
 law assumes to protect when it is legalized ; secondly, 
 the liquor interests, which fight obstinately, partly 
 to hold their own, partly to ward off new financial 
 burdens or irksome regulations. 
 
 It is highly significant that the outcome of legis- 
 lative effort commonly is hailed as a victory for the 
 " drys " or the " wets," as the case may be, and that 
 when new statutory regulations have been adopted 
 we almost studiously refrain from searching out 
 their effect. The inarticulate public, the long-suf- 
 fering patient upon whom this or that legal nostrum 
 is to be tried, usually remains dumb, from fear of 
 incurring the enmity of either side, or from indif- 
 ference, or because it does not see that, as between 
 license legislation of proved incapacity to promote 
 temperance, and prohibition, there is a third choice 
 the choice of tried experiments based upon a ra- 
 tional conception of the many elements that consti- 
 tute the whole problem. 
 
 That the forces who shape our liquor laws should 
 not consult the public is perhaps natural; but that
 
 234 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 they, especially the temperance wing, should ignore 
 the very existence of the public, is a psychological 
 phenomenon. For after all it is the great drink- 
 consuming public that is hurt or helped by legisla- 
 tion; it is the public, not the liquor dealers or tem- 
 perance hosts, in whose hands it lies to make or mar 
 the law. So long as we proceed without proper re- 
 gard for the public, its needs and expressed wants, 
 we shall continue to legislate ineffectually or disas- 
 trously. 
 
 Progressive temperance reform demands that the 
 patchwork of rusty principles underlying our pres- 
 ent liquor legislation be, in part, discarded, in part 
 rebuilt from the bottom up. The following para- 
 graphs indicate summarily the objectives in law-mak- 
 ing adapted to our needs: 
 
 1. In dealing with the liquor traffic, the desire 
 for revenue must give way to the employment of 
 the tax-laying power as a means of minimizing the 
 drink evil. Since the " curse of alcoholism " flows 
 from spirits and not from beers and light wines, the 
 heavy hand of the tax-gatherer should in the first 
 instance be laid on distilled liquors to the point of 
 their utter repression. So drastic a measure would 
 defeat its own purpose unless legislation at the same 
 time encouraged the substitution of fermented drinks 
 in place of the distilled, through a system of care- 
 fully graduated taxes upon fermented liquors in pro- 
 portion to their alcoholic strength. 
 
 Thanks to a false temperance doctrine, we habitu-
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 235 
 
 ally place all alcoholic drinks on par with regard to 
 their injurious effects and legislate accordingly. 
 The objection that any discrimination tends to per- 
 petuate the drink evil is both untrue and short- 
 sighted. If, in the course of its development, the 
 country should be made ready for complete absti- 
 nence, the fact that it had suppressed the worst 
 enemy would be a step toward that end. The plea 
 that the toleration of the sale of beer and wine will 
 perpetuate a politically as well as socially danger- 
 ous trade is not in point, for under rational efforts 
 it can be made amenable to law; it now faces the 
 choice between decent respect for public interests 
 and extinction. 
 
 Physiologically, there is a wide gulf between the 
 possible injury from the ordinary use of pure light 
 beers, and the indubitable damage to the individual 
 as well as to society through a habitual indulgence 
 in distilled spirits. The recent Alcohol Commission 
 of Norway says on this point : " At the outset it 
 must be conceded that the danger to society from al- 
 coholic drinks differs utterly according as their alco- 
 holic strength is large or small. Furthermore, it 
 seems clear that while the strongest of them that 
 is, whiskey must be subjected to particularly se- 
 vere regulations, the opposite is true of the weakest 
 drinks of this sort. Quite on the contrary, the lat- 
 ter should be subjected to lenient regulations, since 
 an increasing extension of their use will serve to re- 
 place the stronger beverages, and therefore, in the
 
 236 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 opinion of the majority, represents an essential 
 means in the warfare against the abuse of alcoholic 
 beverages." 
 
 This view has obtained recognition in the laws, 
 not only of Norway but of Sweden and Denmark, 
 where beers containing 2.25 weight (equaling 2.8 
 volume) per cent of alcohol are exempt from taxes. 
 The result has been greatly to stimulate their pro- 
 duction and gradual substitution for stronger alco- 
 holic drinks. In Denmark at one time the manufac- 
 turers protested against this innovation as a ruinous 
 experiment, declaring that wholesome beer of such 
 a low percentage of alcohol could not be produced ; 
 but experience proved them wholly wrong. Their 
 chief energy now appears to be directed to the manu- 
 facture of the tax-free grade of beers. In Norway, 
 malt beverages for purposes of taxation are divided 
 into three classes, the lightest being exempt from 
 imposts and the others taxed in proportion to their 
 alcoholic strength, with a limit of five and one-half 
 per cent, above which no beers may be manufactured. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that even the prohibi- 
 tionists represented on the Norwegian Alcohol Com- 
 mission conceded the wisdom of freeing the lightest 
 malt beverages from imposts, but would limit the 
 exemption to those not exceeding two per cent in 
 volume of alcohol. The consensus of opinion there- 
 fore is that certain malt drinks must be regarded 
 as non-intoxicants and should be dealt with accord- 
 ingly. Only persons whose vision is wholly blinded
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 237 
 
 by prejudice or obscured by the cobwebs of igno- 
 rance are expected to enter a denial. 
 
 In any scheme of liquor-tax reform the Federal 
 government must necessarily lead the way. Is that 
 an insuperable circumstance? Congress has not 
 shown itself impervious to a consideration of the 
 moral aspects of the drink question, and may be 
 persuaded to employ the one safe method of counter- 
 acting the use of the real intoxicants. The sugges- 
 tion that the Federal government can best accom- 
 plish this by monopolizing the manufacture of dis- 
 tilled liquors seems perilous under our political con- 
 ditions; but an expropriation of the distilled-liquor 
 interests might be effected without a direct burden 
 on the government, through an extra tax on beer, 
 covering, however, a definite period of time. 
 
 It would be altogether equitable that the liquor 
 interests which survived should help to bear the 
 losses incurred by those that may be suppressed. 
 There is no question of favoritism, but merely what 
 best conduces to sobriety and the general good of 
 society. 
 
 The principle of taxing liquors with the object 
 of promoting temperance must be carried into the 
 liquor legislation of each state, particularly in re- 
 spect to the classification of license privileges and 
 the fees exacted. Locally, the makers of beer should 
 not pay a uniform license fee, but one based upon 
 the nature of their product, always exempting malt 
 drinks under a specified strength. Selling-places
 
 238 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 should pay license fees in proportion to the amount 
 and kind of liquor sold. The prevailing inelastic 
 methods of imposts virtually make it impossible for 
 the vender of fermented drinks alone to subsist. In 
 a perverted enthusiasm for repression, we have thus 
 actually put a premium on the sale of " hard 
 liquors," since under high-license systems they are 
 the really profitable articles of sale. As the con- 
 stant object should be to discourage the use of dis- 
 tilled beverages, they must be placed under excep- 
 tional restrictions, and might conceivably be alto- 
 gether forbidden as an article of consumption on 
 the premises; or the number of places in which they 
 could legally be sold might be restricted to the low- 
 est limits consistent with the suppression of an illicit 
 traffic. 
 
 Perhaps it would be wise to repress the distribu- 
 tion of distilled liquors gradually as an article of 
 consumption except for technical and medical pur- 
 poses. Always it must be remembered that legisla- 
 tion which outruns the support of public opinion 
 may result in stimulating the illegal traffic beyond 
 the bounds of control. 
 
 Although we are not yet a wine-drinking nation, 
 it is likely that a gradual suppression of the manu- 
 facture and sale of distilled liquors would lead to 
 an increasing use of wines. Special regulative meas- 
 ures would have to be enacted governing the pro- 
 duction and sale of vinous products. There is no 
 reason in equity why wine production, including the
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 239 
 
 so-called fruit wines, should not be subject to taxa- 
 tion after the manner of other fermented drinks. 
 Governmental supervision is needed to prevent adul- 
 teration and the manufacture of spurious articles. 
 
 As wines enter the retail trade, they must be sub- 
 ject to restrictions placing the heaviest sorts in a 
 class with distilled liquors. For the rest, taxes 
 should be levied, as in the case of beers, according 
 to alcoholic strength. The displacement of whiskey 
 would fail of its purpose unless the substitution of 
 noxious imitation wines is prevented. This method 
 would operate as a reward to the trade in the lightest 
 grades of wine and therefore the least objection- 
 able. 
 
 Finally, especially severe restrictions should be 
 placed on alcohol distributed in the form of patent 
 medicines which present a grave and insidious danger 
 to sobriety. 
 
 2. The employment of the tax-laying power in 
 the interests of temperance would be a vain en- 
 deavor under loose or inadequate apportionment 
 and supervision of the privileges to sell intoxicants. 
 The essential details of an ideal licensing system 
 cannot be developed in a few sentences. The starting- 
 point is the selection of licensing authorities. In 
 general, the choice seems to lie between the local 
 judiciary and a state agency. As between the two, 
 in view of the extraordinary complications into 
 which state machinery may be thrown through polit- 
 ical manoeuvers, it is likely that in most states the
 
 240 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 judiciary would render the better service. The sys- 
 tem should, so far as possible, be uniform for the 
 entire state. Local licensing bodies, through their 
 almost inevitable entanglements with politics, re- 
 spond poorly or not at all to their duties. 
 
 Our states differ so greatly in their legal tradi- 
 tions, the character of their population, and the pub- 
 lic attitude on the drink question, that to suggest 
 a uniform scheme of licensing authorities supposed 
 to be applicable to all would be a vain attempt. This 
 much, however, may be said: New and improved 
 conditions of dealing with the traffic in liquor would 
 greatly ease the burden of issuing and supervising 
 licenses. It is taken for granted that any licensing 
 body should have wide discretionary powers in pre- 
 scribing general conditions of license and in revok- 
 ing or suspending privileges for violations of the 
 law. 
 
 The control of the retail traffic by producers of 
 liquor is directly harmful and makes for a tied- 
 house system comparable to that of England. 
 It makes no real difference whether the trade owns 
 saloons outright or controls them by supplying 
 capital to the nominal proprietor which enables him 
 to engage in the business. In practice either method 
 of control produces unwholesome conditions and 
 renders it difficult to fix responsibility where it be- 
 longs. The retailer should not be the slave of a 
 master whose one motto may be to push sales, but a 
 free agent responsive to public influences. Besides,
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 241 
 
 the temptation to use saloon control for political 
 purposes must be eliminated in every way. That 
 some producers insist upon decorum and strict obe- 
 dience to law in the saloons owned or controlled by 
 them does not in the least prove that proper observ- 
 ance of public welfare can best be obtained through 
 their proprietorship. One notes with interest that 
 brewers round about the country are beginning to 
 realize the unsoundness of a policy which not only 
 puts the odium of bad saloon conditions on their 
 shoulders, but provides an incentive to antagonize 
 efforts for betterment. An association of producers 
 in Indiana recently went on record as favoring the 
 absolute separation of the retail trade from control 
 by the producing interests. 
 
 A discussion of the many checks that have been 
 invented to keep drink-selling within desirable 
 bounds would carry us too far afield. Besides, a few 
 of them are basic. The usefulness of proper closing 
 hours and their strict enforcement, the prevention 
 of sales to minors and intoxicated persons, rigor- 
 ously excluding loose women from the premises, etc., 
 do not require extended mention. The general prin- 
 ciple to be followed must be not to harass dealers 
 with trifling rules, but to make it a condition of 
 license that preventable disorder and indecencies of 
 all kinds result in the suspension or revocation of 
 the privilege to sell. The licensing authorities must 
 see to it that the privilege to serve intoxicants is 
 kept in responsible hands. In all matters of special
 
 242 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 rules and restrictions, the well-defined needs of the 
 community must be consulted. 
 
 The saloon has survived as a social institution, 
 not as some reformers seem to think, because brewers 
 and distillers require an outlet for their wares, but 
 because it meets the instinct for fellowship and social 
 intercourse, and the use of drink is but incidental to 
 this instinct. No other institution in the larger cities 
 furnishes a common meeting-place imposing so few 
 obligations upon the visitor. The substitutes in- 
 vented for the saloon have so far failed to displace 
 it, just because they are artificial establishments and 
 cannot be patronized without a sense of obligation. 
 To infer a widespread craving for intoxicants as 
 accounting sufficiently for the popularity of the 
 saloon is most superficial. If all the more or less 
 habitual saloon frequenters became drunkards, alco- 
 holism would long since have swamped us. 
 
 There can be no defense whatsoever for the bad 
 features that have so terribly characterized saloon 
 life, but it is another matter to stamp out the institu- 
 tion itself. To put the nation on a milk and water 
 diet will not extinguish the demands for stimulants and 
 that companionship which the saloon supplies. The 
 real question is to replace the bad saloons by well- 
 ordered places and under auspices subject to com- 
 petent control. It is useless to sprinkle rose-water 
 on the Bowery. Until it is made over, human nature 
 will have its way, but legislation can help to direct 
 it from straying too far. Unless in formulating the
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 243 
 
 laws for the regulation of drink we are willing to 
 forego the abstract ideal with an eye to the life that 
 pulsates about us, we shall only record disheartening 
 failures. No restrictive measures can turn the saloon 
 into a Sunday-school, but it can be shorn of features 
 that have made it a by-word. 
 
 One essential duty is to prevent those who 
 notoriously abuse drink from the opportunity 
 to purchase it on every hand. Mention has 
 been made of the system of individual licensing which 
 lately has obtained legal sanction in Sweden. Briefly, 
 the plan consists in " blacklisting " all persons 
 known or found to be alcoholics and strictly 
 forbidding all sales of spirits to them; all others 
 must present official credentials before being per- 
 mitted to buy distilled spirits in limited quanti- 
 ties. So far the policy has yielded highly promising 
 results. That an inquisitorial procedure is part of 
 this policy can hardly be more repugnant to the in- 
 dividualist than prohibition with its incessant " Thou 
 shalt not." In some of our states rudimentary legis- 
 lation has been enacted with the object of preventing 
 sales to inebriates ; its success, if any, has been very 
 mild. Perhaps the Swedish system of individual li- 
 censing would not prove very practicable in connec- 
 tion with our present system of selling liquors which 
 leaves so many loop-holes for evasion of the law. 
 Under improved legislation it might be useful, and 
 its institution under the company system of selling 
 liquor will be comparatively simple.
 
 244 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 Much of our liquor legislation, especially in re- 
 gard to restrictions on the saloon, has suffered from 
 the parochial opinion that what fits conditions in a 
 village which really should be without saloons, is 
 just as applicable to a metropolitan center. Occa- 
 sionally, our systems of control break down from 
 sheer rigidity. There should be enough elasticity 
 to allow for the varying needs of the local com- 
 munity. 
 
 3. The local-option privilege must be maintained, 
 but the legislation that has grown up around it needs 
 to be recast in important respects, so that in prac- 
 tice local option shall mean what the term implies, 
 and not become a subterfuge for seeking political 
 ascendency or coercing the local community to adopt 
 a given policy against its will. 
 
 Three things seem to be especially needful in order 
 to make local prohibition successful. First, the vote 
 should be taken at intervals of not less than three 
 years, so that the plan decided upon may be thor- 
 oughly tested. Second, much more than a majority, 
 perhaps a two-thirds vote, should be required to 
 determine the issue. It has been shown elsewhere 
 that the legislation of other countries recognizes that 
 a simple majority is not sufficient to guarantee the 
 stability of a no-license policy. 
 
 It is instructive to observe that the Norwegian 
 Alcohol Commission in its recent report recommends 
 that in all local-option elections those who abstain 
 from voting shall be counted as against prohibition,
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 245 
 
 on the theory that its advocates will be sure to ap- 
 pear at the polls, and in order to prevent a stam- 
 pede against license contrary to the desire of most 
 of the voters. 
 
 It may be urged in objection to this suggestion 
 that in many places local prohibition is won by so 
 narrow a margin that any other plan than a simple 
 majority would bring about a marked return to 
 license. The answer is, of course, that without a pre- 
 ponderance of public sentiment representing more 
 than a majority of a small proportion of qualified 
 voters, the necessary support of no license will not 
 be sufficient to insure proper enforcement of the law ; 
 and in such cases the usual see-saw between the two 
 policies will occur which, as a rule, proves highly de- 
 moralizing. Communities that have successfully ex- 
 cluded the saloon for a period of years should not 
 experience great difficulty in obtaining more than a 
 majority vote for no license. Another wholesome pro- 
 vision in local option elections is that at least thirty- 
 five per cent of the qualified electors must participate 
 in it in order to make the result valid. To foist 
 local-option elections upon a community on the peti- 
 tion of a handful of voters and to compel the accept- 
 ance of the verdict rendered by another handful of 
 electors does not constitute a proper test of public 
 sentiment. 
 
 Third, the units in local-option elections must be 
 so defined that urban (not village) communities may 
 get their preference respected. It is mere travesty
 
 246 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 of the local-option principle and a perverted use of 
 power when, for instance, under the county-unit sys- 
 tem, an important municipality within the county 
 finds its wishes in licensing matters overridden by the 
 rural population from remote parts. 
 
 A fourth element might be recognized in legis- 
 lation, namely, giving the voters a choice between 
 absolute local prohibition and the exclusion from 
 sale of all alcoholic beverages above a specified 
 strength. It means a logical extension of the prin- 
 ciple upon which the taxation of liquors should be 
 based, and would insure a continuity of the no-license 
 policy now lacking in many places, besides offering 
 a safeguard against the too common violations of 
 prohibition. The suggestion naturally will be re- 
 garded as dealing a death-blow to local prohibition 
 by those who conceive that all alcoholic liquors are 
 equally of the devil, harmful to use and sinful to 
 sell; and the commonplace but wholly unsubstantial 
 objection will be raised that the slightest relaxing of 
 prohibition conditions would soon destroy the whole 
 structure. 
 
 4. One cardinal principle in liquor legislation un- 
 fortunately has not yet intrenched itself in our 
 statutes, that of permitting the local community 
 to award a monopoly of drink-selling to a private 
 organization or company which shall undertake it, 
 not for private gain, but for the public good. It 
 marks the one long forward step in drink-regulation 
 of a century. Rudimentary experiments with this
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 247 
 
 method of control have taken place, to be sure, in 
 certain of our Southern states, but under imperfect 
 regulations or practically under no law at all. 
 
 In Sweden and Norway and already on a consider- 
 able scale in England, as mentioned in the preceding 
 chapter, the company system has vindicated its use- 
 fulness in several fundamental respects. It has shown 
 itself to be the only arrangement for selling under 
 which the consumption of distilled spirits gradually 
 diminishes and alcoholism to that extent is lessened. 
 It places the responsibility for an inherently dan- 
 gerous traffic on citizens of high standard and in- 
 tegrity, who by law are made disinterested in sales, 
 and against whom not a breath of scandal or sus- 
 picion blows. The company system, instead of being 
 inimical to progressive liquor legislation by serving 
 to perpetuate an undesirable industry, step by step 
 clears the way for restrictive measures of increasing 
 intensity, without denying due personal liberty, and 
 permits far-reaching experiments because it substi- 
 tutes the public good for the motive of private 
 profit. 
 
 To call the company system un-American and 
 repugnant to our sentiment about drink-selling, and 
 to say that good people could not be induced to 
 direct it, is merely to beg the question. The bald 
 truth came to the surface some years ago when a 
 permissive act, which would have enabled experiments 
 with the company system, came within one vote of 
 passage by the Massachusetts legislature. A coali-
 
 248 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 tion of prohibitionists and liquor-dealers defeated it. 
 Indeed, the prohibitionists can claim the credit, for 
 they protested loudly and incessantly against the es- 
 sential immorality of doing aught to prevent alco- 
 holism, so long as it included the perpetuation even 
 under the severest restrictions of the sale of liquor 
 of any kind and in any form. How rarely our 
 theoretical squeamishness translates itself into prac- 
 tice, conditions in the prohibition states show. 
 
 To what extent the company system, or a modi- 
 fied adaptation of it to American conditions, is ap- 
 plicable to large centers of population cannot be 
 decided offhand. But its desirability for smaller 
 urban communities can no longer be doubted. At the 
 outset we should be content with permissive laws 
 enabling one community after another, voting license, 
 to award a private company a monopoly of all sell- 
 ing privileges. Once the system had vindicated its 
 effectiveness on a modest scale, the demand for its 
 wider application would become irresistible. 
 
 One frequently hears the criticism made when the 
 introduction of the company system in America is 
 advocated, that responsible citizens will absolutely 
 refuse to have aught to do with the sale of liquor 
 even under the most ideal auspices. The objection 
 does not hold. In the Southern states, under the 
 voluntary practice of the dispensary system, no diffi- 
 culty of this sort was experienced. Moreover, the 
 number of intelligent and public-spirited men and 
 women who do not believe in prohibition as the one
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 249 
 
 remedy is sufficiently large in all populous centers 
 to insure that enough could be found to act as spon- 
 sors for a private company undertaking a monopoly 
 of licenses to sell intoxicants. 
 
 Opponents of the company system have argued 
 that its logical sequence is the eventual nationaliza- 
 tion of the drink traffic. The objection is fanciful; 
 even in the home-lands of the system such an event 
 seems very remote. For us, whose government is 
 often strained to the breaking point by simpler af- 
 fairs, it would be the rankest folly to seek national 
 control of drink-selling. Other things aside, the 
 difficulties of adjusting our dual form of government 
 to the work would be almost insurmountable. 
 
 The suggestions offered toward a program of con- 
 structive temperance reform bear the hall-mark of 
 experience gained through generations, and of re- 
 spect for human nature even in its frailties. The 
 general adoption of this program and so happy 
 an event is conceivable would not make the nation 
 proof against alcoholism. There are no legal for- 
 mulas by which men can be made sober. The pro- 
 hibition doctrine of coercion has failed because it 
 postulates that the habits and appetites of mankind 
 are amenable to regulation after the manner of some 
 inanimate mechanism ; and mistaken attempts at 
 wholesale reform entail more social breakage than 
 salvage. 
 
 Why should an almost infantile helplessness and 
 despair about the liquor problem possess so many
 
 250 TEMPERANCE REFORM 
 
 minds? We have learned that laws defective in de- 
 sign as well as in execution cannot cope with it. 
 Truly constructive legislation we lack. It remains, 
 therefore, to adopt better ways, although they be not 
 easy and will cost bitter struggle into which men are 
 loth to enter. The extremists so easily make us cow- 
 ards, by branding those who venture to disagree as 
 dangerous to society or as henchmen of the liquor 
 interests. 
 
 Measures for the effective control of the liquor 
 traffic require collective effort and support. There 
 is no excuse for delegating the whole question to the 
 self-elected body of reformers who undertake to 
 represent a public sentiment largely fictitious or of 
 their own creation. On a closer view the real enemies 
 of progressive liquor legislation are found to be a 
 compact group of men who live not only for but by 
 the advocacy of prohibition ; who are given irre- 
 sponsible control of sums so large that they must sow 
 corruption ; who are not oblivious of earthly ambi- 
 tions in their solicitude for temperance; and whose 
 own reason for being is unending : national prohibition 
 would not terminate it, for that opens endless vistas 
 of occupation in enforcing the law. 
 
 The public is alive to the claims of temperance, 
 yet weary of the age-long strife over the means 
 whereby it should be promoted. The idea of more 
 repression fills thoughtful men with troublous fore- 
 bodings, for they know that willingness to abide by 
 unpopular laws is a frail human endowment. To
 
 ESSENTIALS OF REFORM 251 
 
 many, temperance reform spells merely a frantic and 
 unwholesome endeavor to gain the unattainable; but 
 it takes on a new meaning when constructive effort 
 lies at its base.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 RELATIVE DEATH-RATES OF SELF - 
 DECLARED ABSTAINERS AND MODERATE 
 DRINKERS FROM THE ACTUARIES' 
 VIEW-POINT 
 
 BY EDWARD BUNNELL PHELPS * 
 
 THE author recapitulates the evidence cited by him as 
 follows : 
 
 " In this paper I have endeavored to present, within 
 reasonable limitations, a fairly complete summary of 
 actuarial evidence and conclusions as to the probable ap- 
 proximate relations of the death-rates of abstainers and 
 non-abstainers, in so far as they are to be measured by 
 life insurance experience. I have tried to present a 
 compact resume of all the papers on the discussions of 
 the subject which I have come across in my search of the 
 published transactions of the various actuarial societies, 
 summarizing to the best of my ability any and all points 
 of seeming importance made in any of the papers or dis- 
 cussions, whether they tended to support or controvert 
 my own opinions on the subject. I have not quoted the 
 figures of the various comparatively small British life 
 companies which maintain separate departments for ab- 
 staining and non-abstaining members, with the exception 
 of those for the United Kingdom Temperance and Gen- 
 
 1 From The American Underwriter, New York, June, 1915. 
 253
 
 254 APPENDIX 
 
 eral Provident Institution presented by its actuary, Mr. 
 Moore, in his paper which was summarized at the very 
 outset of this paper, for the reason that as the greater 
 includes the less none of the other ' temperance com- 
 panies ' has come in for any serious attention in the 
 actuarial discussions. Furthermore, I gave considerable 
 space to the figures of the United Kingdom Temperance 
 and General Provident Institution in a previous paper of 
 mine, published under the title of ' The Supposed 
 Death-Rates of Abstainers and Non-Abstainers and 
 Their Lack of Scientific Value,' in 1910, and know of 
 no reason for covering the same ground again, espe- 
 cially as this paper is practically restricted to the ac- 
 tuarial discussion of the subject. 
 
 " To summarize in the briefest possible form the prin- 
 cipal points of the actuarial discussion herein recorded, 
 in his inaugural address as President of the Institute of 
 Actuaries, the late Mr. William Hughes, on December 
 24, 1Q02, expressed the wish that the Institute might be 
 ' favored by contributions proving the truth of the oft- 
 repeated assertions as to the effect of total abstinence 
 upon the duration of life,' and expressed the opinion that 
 these ' assertions rest at present upon somewhat uncer- 
 tain ground.' 
 
 " Less than a year later, on November 30, 1903, Mr. 
 Roderick Mackenzie Moore, actuary of the United King- 
 dom Temperance and Provident Institution, complied 
 with Mr. Hughes's wish and presented before the Insti- 
 tute of Actuaries a paper ' On the Comparative Mor- 
 tality Among Assured Lives of Abstainers and Non- 
 Abstainers,' in which he reviewed the 61 -year history 
 of his company up to 1901, and showed that the mor- 
 tality in its temperance section had been lower by about
 
 APPENDIX 255 
 
 26 per cent than had the mortality in the non-abstaining 
 class, the inference being, according to prohibition 
 advocates, that this practically fixed the excess of mor- 
 tality due to alcohol in the world at large, at least in 
 the case of moderate drinkers as compared with total 
 abstainers. 
 
 " This assumption, which has since reverberated 
 around the world in text-books of physiology and all 
 sorts of other mediums controlled by the Woman's 
 Christian Temperance Union and other prohibitionist in- 
 fluences, was by no means accepted by the Fellows of 
 the Institute of Actuaries who participated in the discus- 
 sion following the reading of Mr. Moore's paper. Mr. 
 H. W. Manly, for instance, pointed out that ' the mem- 
 bers must not be led away into too wide a generaliza- 
 tion from these comparisons,' as there were other tables 
 in existence showing even lower death-rates than those 
 of the abstainers in Mr. Moore's company, for instance, 
 in the Clergy Mutual from 1829 to 1887 and the 
 Equitable, of London, from 1863 to 1893. 
 
 " Mr. A. Levine recalled the fact that the abstainers 
 and non-abstainers' departments of the New Zealand 
 Insurance Department showed substantially identical 
 mortality experiences, and Mr. George King confirmed 
 this statement on the strength of his experience, with 
 Mr. R. P. Hardy, in actuarially advising the New 
 Zealand Department and in examining its mortality, 
 citing the fact that on two valuations the non-abstaining 
 policyholders had received larger bonuses than had the 
 abstainers, and on two other occasions equal bonuses, 
 the abstaining policyholders only once receiving a 
 slightly larger bonus. Mr. King added that he thought 
 there was danger in the discussion of the subject of
 
 256 APPENDIX 
 
 the evening of placing the cause for the effect, or vice 
 versa. 
 
 " Mr. T. P. Whittaker, M.P., for many years Chair- 
 man and Managing Director of the United Kingdom 
 Temperance, said that many of the Company's abstain- 
 ing members were life-long abstainers, and sons of ab- 
 stainers, and suggested that these facts largely accounted 
 for the better experience of its Temperance Section, and 
 supported the contention that abstinence did lead to 
 longer life. 
 
 " The President of the Institute, Mr. Hughes, sounded 
 a warning note as to the uses to which he clearly foresaw 
 the figures in Mr. Moore's paper would be put, saying 
 that ' enthusiastic temperance advocates would say that 
 the favorable comparison between the two sections was 
 entirely due to abstinence from alcohol. He wished to 
 say that the paper, whatever it proved, did not prove 
 that/ 
 
 " In his paper presented before the Insurance and 
 Actuarial Society of Glasgow, on February 1, 1909, 
 under the title of ' Some Observations on the Compara- 
 tive Death Rate of Abstainers and Non-Abstainers 
 in Life Assurance Companies,' Dr. Ebenezer Dun- 
 can remarked that ' every person who is acquainted 
 with the average insurer is aware that in the non- 
 abstainers' section a certain proportion of persons are 
 known to drink alcoholic beverages to excess, and often 
 to the extent of at least partial intoxication. These 
 bad lives must necessarily bring down the average length 
 of life in that section/ He estimated that this element, 
 together with those who habitually overdrank, would 
 approximately amount to 20 to 25 per cent of the in- 
 surers in the General Section of insurance offices, and
 
 APPENDIX 257 
 
 that not more than 75 or 80 per cent of the members of 
 that section could really be described as ' moderate 
 drinkers.' He thought there was a great field for some 
 life company to open a real temperance section, to be 
 restricted to men who should be compelled annually to 
 declare that they did not exceed a conservative daily 
 average of from 1 to 1 Yz glasses of whiskey or 20 
 to 30 ounces of beer, according as their occupations were 
 sedentary or outdoor pursuits. 
 
 " In his paper ' On the Rates of Death Loss among 
 Total Abstainers and Others,' presented before the Ac- 
 tuarial Society of America on April 25, 1895, Mr. Emory 
 McClintock, the distinguished actuary of the Mutual 
 Life of New York, reviewed that company's experience 
 with the two classes from 1875 to 1889, and showed that 
 the abstainers, according to their declarations in their 
 applications had had a mortality of but 78 per cent of 
 the expected, whereas the non-abstainers' ratio had been 
 96 per cent, if the experience from the issuance of the 
 policies was taken into account. After the policies had 
 been in force four years, the difference in ratios had 
 narrowed down to 10 per cent, or 8 per cent in the case 
 of American-born policyholders, and Mr. McClintock 
 was satisfied that by no means all of that difference was 
 due to the influence of alcohol. In the case of beer drink- 
 ers he thought pretty much all of the extra loss must be 
 attributed to constitutional defects. 
 
 " In the discussion of his paper, which followed at the 
 meeting of the Actuarial Society in October, 1895, Mr. 
 John B. Lunger, actuary of the Prudential Insurance 
 Company of America, took issue with Mr. McClintock on 
 this latter point, and showed by Dr. John S. Billings's 
 report on the Vital Statistics of New York and Brook-
 
 258 APPENDIX 
 
 lyn in 1890 that, despite the supposed fact that alco- 
 hol materially increased the mortality from rheumatism 
 and Bright's disease and liver troubles, the mortality 
 from these causes among the beer-drinking German popu- 
 lations of both cities was materially lower than that of 
 the whiskey-drinking Irish populations. Mr. Lunger 
 thought that the occupations of men in the abstaining and 
 non-abstaining classes might have a good deal to do with 
 their differing mortalities. Mr. Walter S. Nichols, actu- 
 ary of the United States Industrial Insurance Company, 
 of Newark, N. J., was inclined to agree with Mr. Lunger 
 as to the probable importance of occupation as one factor 
 figuring in the different mortality of the two classes. 
 
 " According to the tabular showings of the Medico- 
 Actuarial Mortality Investigation of the experience of 
 43 American and Canadian life companies in the years 
 1885-1909, the policyholders who, according to their own 
 statements, had a daily drinking average of two or more 
 ounces of alcohol had a mortality of 186 per cent of the 
 expected, as compared with a mortality of only 118 per 
 cent in the case of the men whose daily average was not 
 supposed to exceed two glasses of beer or one glass of 
 whiskey. 
 
 " These figures for the 42,000 cases in all 43 com- 
 panies are at decided variance with those of the North- 
 western Mutual Life's experience with all of its 166,694 
 policies written between 1886 and 1895, inclusive, 
 brought down to 1900, the entire difference between the 
 death-rates of abstainers and all non-abstainers in the 
 case of this fourth largest ordinary life company in the 
 United States being but 11.15 per cent, and the death- 
 rate of the drinkers of whiskey and other spirits being 
 but 23 per cent higher than that of presumably light
 
 APPENDIX 259 
 
 drinkers, those who claimed to drink only beer and wines. 
 The Northwestern Mutual having always been excep- 
 tionally careful in its selection of risks, and having up 
 to a very recent date exercised special precautions against 
 mortality due to excessive drinking, it would seem that 
 its experience with 166,694 policies written by one com- 
 pany, with a constantly-followed uniform policy of 
 selection, is fairly entitled to greater consideration than 
 the experience with 42,000 policies in the case of no less 
 than 43 different companies, with differing policies of 
 selection, especially in view of the fact that the hetero- 
 geneous mortality experience thus classified apparently 
 shows a vastly greater difference between the death-rates 
 of self-avowed light and slightly heavier drinkers than 
 does the Northwestern Mutual's experience with total 
 abstainers and all classes of non-abstainers. 
 
 THE SEEMINGLY INEVITABLE CONCLUSION 
 
 " In a word, to my mind, the inevitable conclusion to 
 which this abstract of actuarial experience and opinion 
 leads is, that the probable difference between the death- 
 rates of abstaining and non-abstaining life insurance 
 policyholders is still utterly problematical, but that 
 the tabulated experience of the Northwestern Mutual 
 Life, now for the first time published in detail, comes 
 much closer to an approximation of the actual difference 
 than have any other figures previously published. As to 
 the probable difference between the death-rates of total 
 abstainers and moderately-drinking non-abstainers out- 
 side of the realm of life insurance experience, of course 
 there is no sound basis whatsoever even for mere 
 guesses."
 
 THE ANNUAL PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION IN 
 A NUMBER OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES OF 
 WHISKEY, BEER, AND WINE DURING THE 
 YEARS 1906-1910: 
 
 PURE 
 
 WHISKEY BEER WINE ALCOHOL 
 
 COUNTRIES (LITER 50%) (LITER) (UTER) (LITER) 
 
 Norway 2.87 18.43 1.16 2.37 
 
 Sweden 6.8 23.8 0.5 4.9 
 
 Denmark 10.44 36.16 1.50 6.82 
 
 Finland 2.31 7.82 0.61 1.56 
 
 European Russia 6.09 6.52 0.86 3.41 
 
 German Empire 7.29 104.98 4.76 7.47 
 
 Netherlands 7.16 27.28 1.55 5.01 
 
 Belgium 5.47 220.82 5.16 10.58 
 
 Great Britain and 
 
 Ireland 4.17 123.06 1.23 9.67 
 
 France 8.82 71.66 144.00 22.93 
 
 Spain 3.24 84.05 69.50 14.02 
 
 Portugal 1.04 0.95 92.58 12.59 
 
 Switzerland 3.82 69.01 55.65 13.71 
 
 Italy 1.02 1.63 128.58 17.29 
 
 Austria-Hungary .... 8.20 34.16 19.84 7.68 
 
 Roumania 5.50 2.39 23.62 5.20 
 
 Bulgaria 0.62 3.48 25.74 3.02 
 
 Servia 8.10 3.68 20.21 
 
 Greece 1.68 0.82 100.04 13.87 
 
 British South Africa. 1.91 5.71 3.76 1.85 
 
 Australia 4.04 55.56 2.33 5.65 
 
 New Zealand 3.97 44.78 0.94 4.61 
 
 Japan 0.60 0.47 15.14 2.36 
 
 United States 5.51 76.25 2.37 6.89 
 
 Canada 4.23 22.61 0.42 3.31 
 
 Brazil 1.44 4.71 
 
 Argentine 8.44 3.14 41.56 10.21 
 
 Chili 12.26 91.24 
 
 The above table was compiled by Dr. J. Gabrielsson 
 on behalf of the Swedish Temperance Committee. It is 
 
 260
 
 APPENDIX 261 
 
 probably as near an approach to accurate statistics of 
 consumption as can be obtained at the present time. 
 In a number of instances, particularly in regard to some 
 of the less important countries, the calculations are not 
 uniformly for the five-year period shown in the table, 
 and in some cases other drinks than those specially 
 mentioned are included. Thus in the case of France, 
 the quantity of cider used is included under beer.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 In spite of its enormous proportions, the literature 
 dealing with the manifold phases of the alcohol question 
 contains few works of permanent value that are popu- 
 larly useful. By this is meant works that combine 
 scientific knowledge with an impartial examination into 
 the present-day status of the drink problem in one or 
 more countries, and attempt a constructive program of 
 reform. Unfortunately, some of the most recent and best 
 publications of this kind are not accessible in English. 
 Of late years no specially noteworthy and authoritative 
 books of a general character have appeared either in the 
 United States or in England. Among the older publica- 
 tions in English the following deserve special mention: 
 The Works of the Committee of Fifty. Published 
 by Houghton Mifflin Company. The Liquor Prob- 
 lem in its Legislative Aspects; Economic Aspects 
 of the Liquor Problem; Substitutes for the Saloon; 
 Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem; 2 
 vols. The Liquor Problem; A Summary of Investi- 
 gations Conducted by the Committee of Fifty, 1893- 
 1903. 
 
 The Temperance Problem and Social Reform. 
 By Joseph Rowntree and Arthur Sherwell. Hod- 
 der & Stoughton, London, 9th ed., 1901. Contains 
 in addition to a presentation and constructive sug- 
 gestions of the British drink question an excellent 
 study of the American experiments in liquor legis- 
 lation. 
 
 262
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 263 
 
 Of new works in foreign languages first rank should 
 be given the following: 
 
 Report of the Norwegian Alcohol Commission. 
 In 7 parts. Christiania, 1913-1915. A most com- 
 plete and thorough study of the legislative, social, 
 and economic aspects of drink. 
 
 Report of the Swedish Temperance Committee. 
 In several parts. Stockholm, 1912. Similar in 
 scope to the report of the Norwegian Alcohol Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Alkoholen och Samhallet. Stockholm, 1912. 
 This work prepared under official auspices by a 
 committee of the Swedish Medical Society contains 
 probably the best popular study of the socially in- 
 jurious effects of the misuse of alcohol, together 
 with proposals for reform. 
 
 Alkoholfragan fran Medicinsk Synpunkt. By 
 Dr. Ulrik Quensel, Professor of Pathology and 
 Hygiene at the University of Upsala. Two 
 volumes. Stockholm, 1913. His studies of the 
 pathology of alcoholism embrace a most searching 
 examination of the extensive scientific literature; 
 it nevertheless contains many observations of a gen- 
 eral nature and is intended for popular use. 
 
 La Lutte Contre L'Alcoolisme. By Dr. L. Viaud 
 and H.-A. Vasnier. Paris, 1907. Two memoirs 
 awarded prizes by L' Academic des Sciences, 
 Morales, et Politiques. 
 
 For bibliographical references the following works 
 may be consulted: 
 
 Rosenfeld: Der Einfluss des Alkohols auf den 
 Organismus. Wiesbaden (Bergmann), 1901.
 
 264 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 Abderhalden: Bibliographic der gesamten wis- 
 senschaftlichen Litteratur tiber den Alkohol u.d. 
 Alkoholismus. Berlin och Wien, (Urban u. 
 Schwarzenberg), 1904. 
 
 Hoppe: Die Tatsachen tiber den Alkohol. Ein 
 Handbuch der Wissenschaft vom Alkohol. 4 Aufl. 
 Miinchen (Reinhardt), 1912. 
 
 Among the studies of the Gothenberg System, in addi- 
 tion to the many special articles found in the periodical 
 literature, mention may be made of: 
 
 Public Control of the Liquor Traffic. By Joseph 
 Rowntree and Arthur Sherwell. London, Grant 
 Richards, 1903. 
 
 The Gothenberg System of Liquor Traffic. By 
 E. R. L. Gould. Fifth special report of the Com- 
 missioner of Labor. Washington, 1893. Out of 
 print. 
 
 Massachusetts Commissioners' Report on the Nor- 
 wegian System to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 
 1894. Out of print. 
 
 For a selected bibliography of the older general litera- 
 ture, see 
 
 Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem. Com- 
 mittee of Fifty. Houghton Mifflin Company. Bos- 
 ton, 1899.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aarrestad, Gov. S., 194. 
 
 Absinthe, abolition, 156; pro- 
 hibited in Italy, 172; man- 
 ufactures of, 156. 
 
 Abuse of alcohol, antiquity 
 of, 2; extent of, 3; in In- 
 dia, 2. 
 
 Accident statistics, 46-8. 
 
 Ach, 10. 
 
 Actuaries, views on relative 
 death rates, 253. 
 
 Alabama, historical, 73-4; and 
 liquor interests, 118. 
 
 Alberta, reform in, 181. 
 
 Alcohol and Crime, 49; and 
 degeneracy, 18; and eco- 
 nomic distress, 42; a so- 
 cial disease, 3; nutrition, 6; 
 small quantities effects of, 
 7. 
 
 Alcohol-free races, 1. 
 
 Alkoholen och Samhallet 
 
 Alkoholfragan Fran Medi- 
 cinsk Synpunkt. Quensel, 
 20. 
 
 Alcoholic beverages all harm- 
 ful, 219. 
 
 Alcoholism and disease, 30; 
 unknown factors, 60. 
 
 Alcohology, 2. 
 
 Algeria, 2. 
 
 American Saloon, the, 216. 
 
 American Tavern, the, 208. 
 
 American Underwriters, the, 
 253. 
 
 Anderson, W. H., 122. 
 
 Annual consumption, whiskey, 
 beer, wine, 1906-10, 260. 
 
 Anti-saloon league, 77, 119. 
 
 Aperitifs in France, 158. 
 Appendix, 253. 
 Arizona, historical, 75. 
 Arkansas, historical, 75. 
 Arterial sclerosis, 36. 
 Aschaffenburg, 10, 12. 
 Atlantic, The, v. 
 Antiquity of the danger, 2. 
 Auburn, Me., conditions in, 
 
 213. 
 
 Authority, the appeal to, 5. 
 Australia, Reform in, 174; 
 
 requirements in, 215. 
 Austria-Hungary, reform in, 
 
 172-3. 
 
 Bark, M., in Duma, 151. 
 
 Beer and wines, v; alcohol in 
 Russia, 149; annual con- 
 sumption, foreign, 260. 
 
 Belgium, use of alcohol in, 
 17; reform in, 173; law of 
 1912, 173; licenses, 173. 
 
 Bertillon on alcoholic con- 
 sumption in France, 157. 
 
 Bezzola, 20. 
 
 Bibliographical notes, 262. 
 
 Biennial local option elections, 
 215. 
 
 Blacklisting alcoholics, 243. 
 
 Blindness of advocates, 3. 
 
 Boston, conditions, 213; li- 
 censing boards, 230 
 
 Branthwaite, Dr. R. W., 50, 
 57-8 
 
 Bratt and Andrge system, 
 199-202 
 
 Budget Commission of the 
 Duma, 150. 
 
 265
 
 266 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bunge, 20. 
 
 Busch, on eyesight, 11, 12. 
 
 Canada, reform in, 179. 
 Causative factors, 62. 
 Ceylon, 1. 
 
 Chicago, conditions, 213. 
 Children taught effects, 4. 
 Churches stand aloof, 120. 
 Cider, hard, 222. 
 Cirrhosis of the liver, 37. 
 Cities reject prohibition, 94. 
 Coercion, 115. 
 Colorado, historical, 75. 
 Committee of Fifty, 137. 
 Committee of Fourteen in N. 
 
 Y., 228. 
 Company system, the, 167, 
 
 246-9 
 Compensation for privileges, 
 
 136-7. 
 
 Concealment and circumven- 
 tion, 71. 
 
 Connecticut, historical, 71. 
 Consent of governed, 115. 
 Constitutional Amendment, 
 
 125-7. 
 
 Constructive temperance re- 
 form, 206. 
 Consumption, per capita, 78; 
 
 foreign, 260. 
 
 Contradictory attitudes to- 
 wards principles, 217. 
 Control, retail traffic, by pro- 
 ducers, 240. 
 
 Corruption of officials, 113. 
 County local option, 217. 
 Courts, pressure on, 130; de- 
 cisions in Iowa, 221. 
 Credo of prohibition, 219. 
 Crime and alcohol, 49. 
 Crux of liquor legislation, 
 
 supposed, 229. 
 Cyrenaica, 2. 
 Czar's Ukase, 143. 
 
 Dakotas, the, historical, 69, 
 71. 
 
 Danger differs with kind of 
 drink, 235. 
 
 Death rates of drinkers and 
 abstainers, 253. 
 
 Degeneracy and alcohol, 18-22. 
 
 Delaware, historical, 71. 
 
 Dementia praecox, 23. 
 
 Denatured alcohol, 146. 
 
 Denmark, 26; reform in, 
 181-2. 
 
 Denver, 94. 
 
 Deputies of West Virginia, 
 129. 
 
 Desire for alcohol, its cause, 
 100-103; growth of, 17-8. 
 
 Diagrammatic statistics, 4. 
 
 Dispensary system, 73, 248. 
 
 Distillation, art of, 1. 
 
 Distilled liquors to be re- 
 pressed, 238. 
 
 Distilling, illicit, 97-8. 
 
 Distress, economic, 42. 
 
 Disease and alcoholism, 30. 
 
 Dogma of universal prohibi- 
 tion, 5. 
 
 Drink Reform, Experiments, 
 86 ; foreign countries, 141 ; 
 historical, 68; national pro- 
 hibition, 94; present condi- 
 tions, 76. 
 
 Drink-selling, a city problem, 
 95; methods, 207; opinions 
 of, 227. 
 
 Druggists' activities in Russia, 
 150. 
 
 Duma, Budget Commission, 
 150-2. 
 
 "Easy money," 97. 
 
 Economic Distress, 42. 
 
 Egypt, 2. 
 
 Elections, recent, 94. 
 
 Epilepsy, 21. 
 
 Essentials of progressive re- 
 form, 232. 
 
 European temperance legisla- 
 tion, 224. 
 
 Evasion of laws, 90, 91.
 
 INDEX 
 
 267 
 
 Exact investigation, 4. 
 Experiment with alcohol, 12; 
 
 with prohibition, 86. 
 Extent of abuse, 3, 56. 
 Eyesight, Busch on, 11, 12. 
 
 Fanaticism, v. 
 
 Fatigue from the economic 
 standpoint, 48. 
 
 Feeble-mindedness, 21. 
 
 Federal Government, as 
 leader, 237; income from 
 liquor, 224; spirit legisla- 
 tion, 223; quality of law, 
 224. 
 
 Fernald, Dr. Guy G., 54. 
 
 Finland, reform in, 142, 154; 
 prohibitory laws, 154; li- 
 cense laws, 154-5; liquor 
 traffic, 155. 
 
 Florence, P. Sargant, 48. 
 
 Food value of alcohol, 6. 
 
 Force or persuasion, 122 
 
 Forel, A., 6, 20. 
 
 France, absinthe, 156; Acad- 
 emy of Medicine, 159; al- 
 coholic habit in, 157; aperi- 
 tifs, 158; effect of war, 155; 
 endurance, 17; law of 1915, 
 161; licenses, 157; Moham- 
 medans, 159 ; National 
 Council of Women, 160; 
 negroes, 159; peasant man- 
 ufacture, 168; reform in, 
 155; soldiers' rations, 161; 
 statistics, 157. 
 
 Franklin, Fabian, 123. 
 
 Frontier, Drink on the, 208. 
 
 Fiirer, 10. 
 
 Gabrielson, Dr. J., tables, 
 260. 
 
 George, Lloyd-D., 162 
 
 Georgia, historical, 73-74. 
 
 Germany, abuse of spirituous 
 drinks, 170; aids to so- 
 briety, 171; distillers re- 
 stricted, 169; legislation, 
 
 170; reform in, 168; So- 
 ciety against the abuse of 
 spirituous drinks, 170; state 
 authority, 170; use of al- 
 cohol, 17; war measures, 
 168-170. 
 
 Gothenburg system in Eng- 
 land, 165. See " Company 
 System." 
 
 Government and prohibition, 
 111. 
 
 Graham, Stephen, 144. 
 
 Great Britain, agitation, 162; 
 licensing, 164; Public 
 House Trust, 165-8 ; " tied " 
 houses, 164; war measures, 
 162. 
 
 Greece, 80. 
 
 Grey, Lord, 166. 
 
 Gruber, 20. 
 
 Guyot, M. Yves, 141, 160. 
 
 Hadley, A. T., Pres., 115. 
 
 Hallucinations, 28. 
 
 Harmless drinks, exclusion of, 
 220. 
 
 Hartwich, Dr., 1. 
 
 Hatred of alcohol, 220. 
 
 Havre dockers, 159. 
 
 Helenius, 20. 
 
 Hereditary influence of alco- 
 holism, 5. 
 
 High license and restriction, 
 224-5. 
 
 Hildebrandt, on will power, 
 10, 11. 
 
 Hindoos, 17. 
 
 Holland, reform in, 183-4. 
 
 Hoist, Axel, 12, 84, 194. 
 
 Home distilling, 97. 
 
 Hours for drink selling, 241. 
 
 Hungarians, 80. 
 
 Iceland, reform in, 184-6. 
 Idaho, historical, 75. 
 Idiocy, 21. 
 
 Ilicit distilling, 97; in Russia, 
 145.
 
 268 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Illinois, historical, 71. 
 
 Immigrant as factor, 79. 
 
 Immorality of manufacture, 
 106-8. 
 
 India, 1, 2. 
 
 Indiana, historical, 71; laws 
 on intoxicants, 221. 
 
 Indians, illicit traffic with, 
 207. 
 
 Inebriety, extent of, 56. 
 
 Infantile mortality, 21. 
 
 Inhibition of function, 16. 
 
 Insincere majorities, 116. 
 
 Insurance statistics, 40-42. 
 
 Intensive investigation needed, 
 66 
 
 Internal Revenue statistics, 
 83. 
 
 International Committee for 
 the Scientific study of the 
 Alcohol Question, 159. 
 
 Iowa, historical, 71, 75; court 
 decisions, 221. 
 
 Ireland, company system in, 
 167. 
 
 Islamites, 1. 
 
 Italy, 79; absinthe prohibited, 
 172; law of 1915, 172; li- 
 censes, 172; reform in, 171; 
 wine drinking, 171. 
 
 Judges, pressure on, 130, 131. 
 
 Kansas, historical, 69, 71; 
 
 dry, 83. 
 
 Karaulov, A., in Duma, 151. 
 Karlsson, 32. 
 Kidney, diseases of, 36-7. 
 Klinzhov, E. S., in Duma, 151. 
 Kraepelin, 10, 14, 15. 
 
 Lack of studies in casu, 3. 
 
 Laitinen, 20. 
 
 Law, the kind needed, 109; 
 
 non-enforcement of, 131- 
 
 40. 
 
 Lawlessness, 209-10. 
 Legislation, 221-4. 
 
 Legrain, 20. 
 
 Leipzig investigation, 33. 
 
 Lewiston, Me., conditions, 213. 
 
 Licensing authorities, 229 ; 
 boards, 229; laws of Amer- 
 ica, 210; policies, 223; rela- 
 tive value of systems, 226; 
 systems preferable, 237-9. 
 
 Liquor; Interests, in politics, 
 209; practices of, 113; sell- 
 ing by monopoly, 246-7; 
 taxation of traffic, 223. 
 
 Local Boards, 229. 
 
 Local Government, perversion 
 of, 209. 
 
 Local Option, 73, 211-22; 
 privileges upheld, 244-6. 
 
 Lloyd-George, 162. 
 
 Luxuries, statistics of, 43. 
 
 Maine, the Maine Idea, his- 
 torical, 69, 71. 
 
 Maniac conditions, 23. 
 
 Malacca, 1. 
 
 Malt-brewed drinks excluded, 
 220; favored by Norway, 
 236. 
 
 Manitoba, reform in, 180. 
 
 Massachusetts, historical, 71 ; 
 Reformatory for Males, 54; 
 Reformatory for Women, 
 54; State Board of Insan- 
 ity, investigation, 24. 
 
 Masses not moved by scien- 
 tific conceptions, 107. 
 
 Medicine, 5. 
 
 Mental Disease, 23. 
 
 Michigan, historical, 71. 
 
 Mississippi, historical, 74. 
 
 Moderate use, 10, 253; does 
 not lead to intemperance, 
 18. 
 
 Monopoly, for public good, 
 246. 
 
 Moral suasion, 208. 
 
 Morocco, 2. 
 
 Mortality among drinkers and 
 abstainers, 253-7; by coun-
 
 INDEX 
 
 269 
 
 tries, 40; rural and urban, 
 
 39, 42. 
 
 Muhammedan habits, 2, 17. 
 Myers, Gustavus, 46. 
 
 National Council of French 
 Women, 160; prohibition, 
 94. 
 
 Nantes Labor Exchange, 158. 
 
 Nebraska, historical, 71, 72. 
 
 Negroes, 74. 
 
 New Brunswick, reform in, 
 180. 
 
 New Hampshire, historical, 
 71. 
 
 New South Wales, reform in, 
 174. 
 
 New Zealand, reform in, 177. 
 
 Non-intoxicants excluded, 220. 
 
 North Carolina, historical, 73, 
 74. 
 
 North Dakota, definitions, 
 221. 
 
 Norway, Alcohol Commission, 
 vi, 26, 84, 194-200; Bratt 
 and Andr6e system, 199; 
 Denmark compared, 26, 27; 
 malt beverages, 236. 
 
 Norway and Sweden, Com- 
 pany system, 191 ; Gothen- 
 burg system, 188; law of 
 1855, 188; law of 1904, 191 ; 
 licenses, 192; reform in, 
 187-205 ; samlag system, 
 193. 
 
 Nova Scotia, reform in, 179. 
 
 Novoselski, Dr., 146. 
 
 Nutritive values of alcohol, 6. 
 
 i 
 
 Objectives in law-making, 
 234. 
 
 Ohio, historical, 72; State 
 Board, 230 
 
 Oklahoma, historical, 74. 
 
 Ontario, reform in, 180. 
 
 Opium in Russia, 153. 
 
 Opinion, expressed at inter- 
 vals, 216. 
 
 Oregon, historical, 75. 
 Ovize, on mortality, 39. 
 
 Patent Medicines, 239. 
 
 Patrick, T. W., 100. 
 
 Pearson, Karl, 5. 
 
 Pennsylvania, licensing sys- 
 tem, 231. 
 
 Percentages of alcohol in 
 drinks, 220-4, 236. 
 
 Personal Rights, 116. 
 
 Persia, 2. 
 
 Persuasion versus force, 112. 
 
 Perversion of Temperance 
 Reform, 108. 
 
 Petrograd Municipal Commis- 
 sion, 150. 
 
 Petrograd Ophthalmological 
 Society report, 146. 
 
 Phelps, E. B., Appendix, 253. 
 
 Physiology, 5. 
 
 Physiological effects, 4. 
 
 Pneumonia, 32, 33. 
 
 Police Corruption, 93; dis- 
 trust of, 129; officials and 
 power, 229. 
 
 Politics and drink-selling, 
 209; and local option, 218; 
 and reform, 87-8; corrup- 
 tion of, 113; devices in local 
 option, 217; "pull," 89; 
 State Boards, 230. 
 
 Popular opposition, 96. 
 
 Portland, Ore., 94. 
 
 Portland, Me., saloons closed, 
 94, 138. 
 
 Practical temperance policy, 
 a, 3. 
 
 Prejudice of opinion, v, 111. 
 
 Present conditions, 81. 
 
 Prince Edward Island, re- 
 form in, 179. 
 
 Principles, contradictory atti- 
 tude on, 217. 
 
 Producers, control by, 240. 
 
 Progressive Reform, the 
 essentials, 232.
 
 270 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Prohibition attitude towards 
 
 administration, 128. 
 Propaganda in schools, 4; in 
 
 public, 4. 
 Psychology of relaxation, 
 
 Patrick, 100. 
 
 Psychopathic diagnosis, 64. 
 Public, the inarticulate, 233. 
 Pure Food Law, 222. 
 
 Quebec, reform in, 180. 
 Queensland, reform in, 176. 
 Quensel, Ulrik, vi, 14, 20, 21, 
 39; on mortality, 39. 
 
 Raines Law of N. Y., 228. 
 
 Reform in Foreign Countries, 
 141; in the U. S. A., 68; 
 one-sided, danger of, 4; es- 
 sentials of, 232. 
 
 Reformers' errors, 211; for 
 hire, 233; irresponsible, 250. 
 
 Reinach, Joseph, 160. 
 
 Relaxation, need of, 100-1. 
 
 Retailer, a free agent, 240. 
 
 Relative Death rates of ab- 
 stainers and moderate 
 drinkers, 253. 
 
 Reproductive organs, 20-1. 
 
 Restrictive license system, 
 226. 
 
 Revenue, desire for, 234; and 
 liquor tax, 224. 
 
 Rhode Island, 69. 
 
 Ribot, Alexandre, 159. 
 
 Rosemann, Dr., 7. 
 
 Rowntree, 84. 
 
 Riidin, 10. 
 
 Rules and restrictions, 240-2. 
 
 Russia, 98; and Finland, 142; 
 beer and wines, 149; eva- 
 sion, 145; Government man- 
 ufacture of alcohol, 152; 
 opium, 153; reform in, 142; 
 revenue statistics, 145. 
 
 Ryetch the; Petrograd, 149- 
 151. 
 
 Rygg, Dr. N., 59. 
 
 Saleeby, 20. 
 
 Saloon, 80, 89; and country 
 districts, 95; and high li- 
 cense, 226 ; anti-saloon 
 league, 17, 119; a social in- 
 stitution, 242; its evolution, 
 206-11; resentment against, 
 118; responsible hands, in, 
 241 ; rules for, 241 ; substi- 
 tute for, 242. 
 
 Santesson, Dr., 8. 
 
 Saskatchewan, reform in, 181. 
 
 Scharffenberg, Dr. J., 26. 
 
 Schnidtmann, 10. 
 
 Scotland, company system, 
 167. 
 
 Seattle, 94. 
 
 Sherwell, Arthur, M. P., 84, 
 167. 
 
 Short cut to virtue, 114. 
 
 Small quantities, effects of, 7. 
 
 Smith, 10. 
 
 South Australia, reform in, 
 175. 
 
 South Carolina, historical, 73, 
 75. 
 
 Southern States, historical, 73. 
 
 Social aspects of drink, 1. 
 
 Social-hygienic problem, 2. 
 
 Socialist Party, 75. 
 
 Specht, on hearing, 11. 
 
 Spokane, 94. 
 
 Standards of Public Morality, 
 by Hadley, 115. 
 
 State Boards, 230. 
 
 State Prohibition, 75. 
 
 Statistical material available, 
 25. 
 
 Statistics, 5, 26, 43, 78; con- 
 sumption, 260; death-rates, 
 253. 
 
 Statutes and repression, 210. 
 
 Stockholm, regulations in, 
 201-3. 
 
 Substitution of noxious liq- 
 uors, 220. 
 
 Suicide, 29, 30.
 
 INDEX 
 
 271 
 
 Sumptuary legislation, 112- 
 115. 
 
 Sweden, 97; Swedish Medical 
 Society, vi ) 84; its system, 
 243 ; Temperance Commit- 
 tee, 8, 22, 200-4; 215; table 
 of per capita consumption, 
 260. 
 
 Switzerland, reform in, 186-7. 
 
 Syndicalist declaration in 
 France, 158. 
 
 Syria, 2. 
 
 Tacoma, 94. 
 
 Tasmania, reform in, 176. 
 
 Taxation of alcohol, 222; on 
 quantity rather than on 
 kind, 223; to promote tem- 
 perance, 237. 
 
 Tennessee, 74. 
 
 Thunberg, 16. 
 
 Trade opposition, 113. 
 
 Travelling exhibits, 4. 
 
 Tripolitaine, the, 2. 
 
 Tuaregs, of the Sahara, 2. 
 
 Tuberculosis, 33-6. 
 
 Tunis, 2. 
 
 Turks of Asia Minor, 2. 
 
 Types of alcoholic persons, 3. 
 
 Tyranny of social coercion, 
 114. 
 
 Underwriters, American, 253. 
 
 Unholy alliances, 109. 
 
 United States Census Report 
 on Insane, 24. 
 
 Unknown Factors in Alcohol- 
 ism, 60. 
 
 Untruths of Temperance 
 
 Doctrine, 3. 
 Urban States, opposition in, 
 
 95. 
 
 Use and abuse, 17, 18. 
 Ussing, Dr. S., 181. 
 
 Vermont, historical, 71; elec- 
 tion in 1916, 217. 
 
 Victoria, reform in, 177. 
 
 Virtue, short cut to, 114. 
 
 Virginia, historical, 75; two- 
 year limit, 216. 
 
 Vituperation, 2. 
 
 Vodka, 97; monopoly, 136, 
 142. 
 
 Votes for morality, 214. 
 
 Vogt, 10. 
 
 War measures, 141; the Great 
 War, 17. 
 
 Washington State, 75; bars 
 all liquors, 220. 
 
 West Australia, reform in, 
 177. 
 
 West Virginia, historical, 75; 
 present conditions, 83; dep- 
 uties, 128, 129; malt liquors, 
 220. 
 
 Western cities and local op- 
 tion, 219. 
 
 Weinberg, 21. 
 
 Whiskey, annual consumption, 
 foreign, 260. 
 
 Wine-drinking, 238-9 ; con- 
 sumption, foreign, 260. 
 
 Women loose, 241.
 
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