UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem A SERIES OF STUDIES IN THE SOURCES OF THE PROBLEM AND HOW THEY RELATE TO ITS SOLUTION BY HARRY S. WARNER PUBLISHED BY THE INTERCOLLEGIATE PROHIBITION ASSOCIATION CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 1909 Copyright 1908 BY Harry S. Warner. PREFACE. "The so-called personal liberty argument in behalf of alcoholic drink loses more and more of its force. Consideration of the public welfare continues to grow and overshadow the rights of the individual. The drink question must be fought out upon the ulti- mate foundation of morals, hygiene and social order — in other words, the public welfare. If the public welfare requires the suppression of the alcoholic drink traffic it should be suppressed." — From an edi- torial in the American Brezvers' Rez'iew. In a debate the first step necessary is to state the question — to agree on a ground on which to disagree. No social or political writer has more correctly stated the basis on which the liquor question is to be fought out, and satisfactory settlement reached, than has this editorial writer on the pro-liquor side of the controversy. On this basis the question is before the American people "on its merits only." In this volume an attempt is made to collect, in systematic and scientific order, for purposes of study and further investigation, very briefly, the main facts of the actual present-day American liquor prob- lem — to get together, on a broad basis, the materials needed by all who would understand the question broadly, and be of lasting service in bringing the great, ugly question to complete solution. Few writers have attempted to get hold of the 3 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. sources of the evil and to base their principles and methods of solution in accordance with all these sources. As far as it is possible, in the intensity and heat of actual reform, this should be done. Whether the attempt here is successful or not it may be said that it has been made honestly and conscientiously. The book does not assume to discuss methods. It endeavors to bring out the broad sociological facts and principles relating to the widespread use of alco- holic liquor on which permanent methods of individ- ual and social reform should be based. To college and university men and women, and to others anxious to be of service to public welfare in the overthrow of drink — in that to which the book frankly leads, its complete banishment, it is respect- fully dedicated. Harry S. Warner. Chicago, 111., April 1, 1909. CONTENTS. (Bibliography by Subjects.) THE SOURCES OF THE PROBLEM. Chapter Page I. Liquor a Social Problem ... 9 1. Intemperance a race characteristic. 2. The origin of the saloon anJ club. 3. Early drinking customs in the U. S. 4. The problem today; what it is. 5. The liquor traffic a social institution. 6. References and authorities 23 II. Sources of the Liquor Evil 25 1. The evil, one of consequences. 2. The sources. (a) The physical. (b) The economic. (c) The social. (d) The political. 3. The relation of the trade to the habit. 4. The welfare of society as a whole. 5. "The social demands." 6. References and authorities 40 II. THE DEMANDS OF SOCIAL WELFARE. III. Alcohol and Public Health; the Physiologi- cal Problem ' 41 1. The attractiveness of alcohol. 2. The source of intoxication. 3. Is alcohol a food? 4. Is beer "a liquid food?' 5. Alcohol as a medicine. 6. References and authorities 57 5 \ SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. IV. Alcohol and Public Health ; the Practical Social Problem 59 — ■ — 1. Alcohol as a source of disease. • (a) Alcoholism itself a disease. (b) The alcoholic diseases. ^ , (c) Reduces the powers of resistance. (d) Insanity and drink. 2. Intemperance as a contributory cause. 3. The source of race degeneracy. 4. Health the first essential. 5. References and authorities 72 V. The Public Cost of the Liquor Habit 74 1. The American drink bill. 2. The first cost in the drink bill. 3. The consequential cost. (a) Loss of time and capacity. (b) Loss of life. (c) Deterioration in personal capacity. (d) Expense in care and support. Relation of liquor to poverty. The burden in care and support. (a) In dependents, defectives, etc. (b) Prosecution and care of criminals. 6. References and authorities 93 VI. Industrial Welfare and the Liquor Problem 96 1. National wealth and social welfare. 2. Industrial prohibition. x:— 3. Liquor and the length of life. *' 4. The economic demands for prohibition. 5. References and authorities 106 VII. The Relation of Liquor to Education 108 CI. The saloon and the public school. 2. Delinquencies and disabilities in school children. '^ 3. The mis-education of the foreigner. 4. Its mis-education of the public. 5. Education and the liquor problem. 6. References and authorities 127 VIII. The Social Phase of the Liquor Problem. 129 1. The Sociability source of intemperance. 2. The saloon as a social center. 3. "The poor man's club." e CONTENTS 4. Counter attractions. 5. "Reform the saloon" — the subway ex- periment. 6. Substitution as a temperance measure. 7. References amd authorities 146 IX. The Ethical Phase 149 '^-" 1. The Social ethics of the saloon. 2. The attitude of the church. 3. Saloon its chief competitor. 4. The traffic in the foreign field. 5. Ethical phase of the license policy. 6. Harmony of government with ethical welfare. 7. References and authorities 174 THE LIQUOR CONFLICT WITH FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. X. The City Problem 177 1. The city problem. 2. The city population. (a) Aggravated intemperance. (b) Political mis-education of foreign- ers. (c) Distorted ideas of personal liberty. (d) Crime. (e) The purchasable vote. (fj Extension of license policy to other vices. 3. The saloon and the housing problem. 4. The city vote. 5. References and authorities 193 XL Drink and the Family 195 1. The family drink bill. 2. The suffering unit. 3. Drink among women. 4. Liquor and national welfare. 5. References and authorities 209 XII. Liquor and the Labor Problem 212 1. The burden of intemperance on labor. ~~2. The relation of drink to wages. 3. The struggles between capital and labor. 7 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. 4. As an employer of labor. 5. References a.'nd authorities 228 XIII. The Conflict of Races 230 -=r 1. The negro and drink. 2. Liquor a factor in race conflicts. (a) In the South. 3. The saloon in political and social as- similation. (a) In the North. (b) Stimulates law-defying spirit. (c) Keeps alive old-world customs. 4. America's problem of races. 5. References and authorities 249 THE SOCIAL BASIS FOR PROHIBITION. XIV. The Social Demands for Prohibition. .. .251 1. The relation of sources to solution. (a) The desire for stimulants — "moral suasion," "substitution," public monopoly, license and regulation, prohibition. (b) The economic. (c) The sociability source. (d) The political. 2. The social basis ; summary. 3. The necessity for complete overthrow. 4. References and authorities 266 Index 268 CHAPTER I. LIQUOR A SOCIAL PROBLEM. 9 Intemperance a Race Characteristic. — Are the social habits and tendencies of a people as a whole transmissible or inherent? Is the manhood character of one generation influ- enced at all by the childhood training and home influences it received in early life from the preceding generation? Then the drink habit is well fixed in a large part of our present American social customs. ^,.-'^fter hundreds of years of practice drunk- ^ enness has become a great national habit. It / is in the blood of all the Anglo-Saxon races of the present day — inherited from the early Saxons. Its consequences, good or bad, reach, directly and indirectly, both the individual in modern society and that society as a whole^ ^ Hundreds of thousands of those who are-peP^ sonally most free from the vice suffer its ef- fects in private life and its consequences upon public institutions. It is therefore a pertinent public social problem. Carlyle says, "If you would know what are the fundamental traits of a race catch it and study it before Christianity and civilization have tamed it." Tacitus describes the ancient Britons as having ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and cheese and heated with strong 9 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. drink. The severe climate and rigors of their life led to wild excesses. Heaven was con- ceived of as a drunken revel and the drinking of blood diluted with wine was a foretaste of Paradise. < The history of England, down even to the present day, is not complete without a mention of the drinking habits prevailing so largely in all classes. Its literature, poetry and song show how widely prevalent was the use of wine, gin and ale. And the more serious writings occasionally give pictures of the awful wretchedness, poverty and social corruption resulting. Lecky, writing of gin drinking in the middle of the eighteenth century, says : "Small as is the place which this fact occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the eighteenth cen- tury — incomparably more so than any event in the purely political or military annals of the country. The fatal passion for drink was at once, and irrevocably, planted in the nation. The average of British spirits distilled, which is said to have been only 527,000 gallons in 168-I, had risen in 1727 to 3,601,000. F'hysi- cians declared that in excessive gin drinking a new and terrible source of mortality had been opened for the poor. The grand jury of Mid- dlesex declared that much the greater part of the povcrt .', the murders, the robberies of London might be traced to this single cause. Retailers of gin were accustomed to hang out painted boards announcing that their custom- 10 LIQUOR A SOCIAL PROBLEM. ^ ers could be made drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two pence and have straw for nothing; and cellars strewn with straw were accordingly provided, into which those who had become insensible were dragged, and where they remained until they had become sufficiently recovered to renew their orgies." The early colonists of America brought with them their love for strong drink and the social \ drinking customs inherited from the earlier / Britons and other Teutonic countries. In the first part of the present century almost every- body drank; it was used by laboring men in winter to keep them warm ; in fact, in New England the fathers thought that nothing but the stronger drinks could ward off of the rigors of that climate ; in summer it was used, as at present, to keep them cool ; farmers fur- nished it to harvest hands in the fields to en- able them to do more work in a day ; gentle- men caroused openly in the public taverns ; preachers drank with their parishioners, and scarcely a social event of any kind occurred in which it was not a factor. It was respectable, not merely to drink, hut to get beastly drunk. It was during the first few years of the American republic, before the temperance agi- tation began, that intemperance was most widely spread among all classes. Since that time a differentiation has been taking place. In 1800 almost everybody drank; at the pres- ent time scarcely one out of four is an habitual or even occasional user of alcoholic liquors. Certain classes of our society drink more ; oth- 11 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. ers drink little or nothing at all. The total consumption of liquors has in no way de- creased ; in fact, it has steadily increased tliroughout the century. By 1840, at which time the active temperance agitation had well set in, and at which time the most accurate figures are first available, the per capita con- sumption of liquors was 4.17 gallons; in 1906 it had increased to 22.27 gallons for every man, woman and child of our 84,000,000 population. A part of this tremendous increase is due to the larger use of beer and the lighter wines, and a relatively smaller use of distilled liquors, yet the total amount of alcohol consumed has increased notwithstanding this substitution. The social fact to be noted here is that even witli the temperance classes vastly in the ma- jority, and growing, among the American peo- ple, the use of alcoholic liquors yet comes dan- gerously near to being a race characteristic — a race blight — as it is of the English, German, Irish and other Keltic and Teutonic nationali- ties. It was from these peoples that our im- migration for the first hundred years came almost exclusively, bringing along their well- fixed drinking habits. Since 1900 the million immigrants arriving each year are recruited very largely from the Italians, Hebrews, Polish ancl Slovaks, people less given in their own countries to drinking than were the earlier North European immigrants. Yet their native physical endurance is less and they more quick- ly sufYer from the vices accompanying the saloons in the poorer parts of our great cities into which they are crowded. 12 LIQUOR A SOCIAL PROBLEM. As a race characteristic the drink habit is a vital pubHc question. Not so much on account of the ininiecHate effects — the drunkards it makes, the crime and poverty that come from it — as because it undermines race vitahty. In this it is the pet danger of the German, French and EngHsh-speaking nations. In Dr. Brin- ton's noted book, "The Basis of Social Rela- tions," drunkenness is described as the most formidable agent of degeneration in modern society. He says : "Its worst effects are not the violence to which it occasionally leads or the frightful nervous diseases which its ex- cessive use entails, but the slow hardening of the 'axis cylinders' in the nerve sheaths, tht immediate consequence of wliich is permanent deterioration of mental activity. Extended throughout a community, this means a lessen-"" ing of its energy and of its finest mental quali- ties. Chronic alcoholism of this kind does not materially shorten life, but it is eminently transmissible, and this soddens the stock." The Origin of the Saloon and of the Club. — ^The saloon of America, or the public house as it is called in Great Britain, is the well-known public institution for the retail sale of intoxicating liquors. It has long served a double capacity to the great advantage of its owner; (i) the place of sale and, (2), to a greater or less extent, a place for social inter- course and social drinking. In this capacity it came to America ready- made. Its origin may be traced back to Anglo- Saxon times, wh-en houses for dispensing hos- 18 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. pitality to travelers kept liquors ; at times these taverns were even compelled by law to do so for the entertainment of their c^uests. The quaint tavern signboard, introduced by the Romans, has become now the distinctive mark of the public house in England. The practice of toasting and drinking to the health came in this same early period. As early as the ninth century the ale house, the real prede- cessor of the modern saloon, began to appear. "Around the cala-hus, the 7ciii-hiis and the tavern, there developed the Anglo-Saxon guild. The members of these social confed- erations were each required to bring a certain amount of malt or honey to their meetings. Delinquencies in this respect were punished with a fine sufficiently heavy to stimulate the memory. These guilds have left their mark upon the public house in giving it a certain respectability as a social club." Ale, a malt drink much resembling beer but with a somewhat higher percent of alcohol, was first introduced as a sort of temperance beverage to take the place of wine. This "sub- stitute" thus got its early grip upon the Eng- lish appetite and holds it until the present day, making that people among the most drunken of all ])eoples. The semi-private club is a contribution of the Elizabethan period. Its first objects seem to be a combination of literary, social and drinking purposes. It differed from the guild in that its membership was received from the select classes and that it supported a well- 14 LIQUOR A SOCIAL PROBLEM. appointed establishment of its own. "The Mermaid was the first of a long series of London clubs and included in its membership such well-known names as Shakespeare, Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher. During the rei,- proximated. The practical point is that each has an important bearing upon tlie final solu- tion of the question, and all must be consid- ered as important factors in dealing with it. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL— The desire for stimulants, when gratified by the use of in- toxicating liquors, grows into an appetite which becomes stronger and stronger as the use of the liquors is repeated. The crav- ing in the first place sometimes comes from diseased physical condition or inherited ten- 87 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. dencies or from abnormal social surroundings. No matter what may have given it the first start the liquor appetite, when once estab- lished, tends to increase gradually, becoming master of its victim, and ending with complete destruction of physical and mental power and spiritual aspiration. In some men the habit never becomes very strong, but in by far the largest majority it does become master, whether they are willing to acknowledge it or not. Taken together, the craving for stim- ulants and the appetite for alcohol, when once created, constitute one of the most powerful causes of the liquor trade. THE ECONOMIC— The liquor business, as any other business, is run for the money there is in it. It is very profitable, giving large returns for comparatively small invest- ments. The capital devoted to manufatcure goes chefl}' into fixed property. The expense of production, compared with other factory products, is quite light, since the number of laborers employed, usually the largest item of expense, is smaller than in any other of the great industries. In the retail trade, op- portunity is given for the employment of a large number of men and these are well or- ganized for the protection and advancement of their business. The saloonkeeper usually makes moiicy rapidly. A market is furnished for a small amount of grain and fruit, and thus the farmer becomes involved among those re- ceiving financial gain from the trade, while the government takes an unusually high tax 28 SOURCES OF THE LIQUOR EVIL. or license fee from the finislied product and its sale and so shares in its dividends. Mod- ern methods of capitalization and monopoly have unified the business and made it ex- ceedingly powerful, while modern advertising has been exhausted to increase its extent and fasten the use of intoxicating liquors upon the public as a permanent social custom. THE SOCIAL. — One powerful source of the liquor evil, frequently overlooked or min- imized by temperance workers, is the wide- spread custom of their use as a means to sociability and social enjoyment. The use of liquors in clubs and at banquets, in business as a means of interesting prospective pur- chasers, in every-day life, as an expression of good fellowship and in many similar ways has created a strong demand for them. This is an important source of the trade and its power. Without regard to whether this means to social friendship might not readily be sub- stituted by any one of many others which do not have the inherent evils of alcoholic drinks the fact remains that at present this is a prom- inent feature of the question. The saloon is the chief representative of this social phase ; it is a place where men come together for va- rious reasons, among them that of meeting other men and being in their company. It has frequently been called "the poor man's club," and, in large cities, there is good rea- son for the application of this name. THE POLITICAL.— One great source of the liquor traffic as it actually exists to-day, 29 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. a public social institution is very often over- looked entirely by students of the problem. That is government sanction. It is true that this is not one of the fundamental traits of human nature, such as the desire for stimu- lants, economic gain or social enjoyment, to which strong drink administers. But it is a direct source of power to the liquor traffic as a social and practical question and so nec- essarily involved in a discussion of it. In- directly, also, it adds to the force of private greed and social custom in causing intem- perance. // «• tlie most unexcusablc of all the sources of the liquor trade and its evil con- sequences. By governnaent sanction is meant the so- cial prestige asid political influence given the trade by the laying upon it of special revenue taxes and license. From the strictly legal point of view, license is not intended to give any privileges which the business would not pos- sess if running as free as any other trade. Legally it gives it the same standing as any other business. But the practical social effect is to give it unusual power and sanction. This is true bolil to the public and to the men en- gaged in Uie business. The legal aim is lost in the wider social principle that the interest which contributes most largely in taxation de- mands most in government protection. The liquor dealer takes additional liberties and assumes rights which, strictly speaking, he does not have, but against which the public is unable to protect itself so long as the license 80 SOURCES OF THE LIQUOR EVIL. policy remains. The fact that one-fourth of the entire national income is from such reve- nues, makes it inevitable that there should be close relations between the government and the trade which yields this immense tax. This is the secret of saloon power in politics. The Relation of the Trade to the Habit. — It is a prevailing opinion that there are two distinct liquor problems, the "drink habit" and "the drink traffic," the latter merely admin- istering to and supplying the former. Rather, these are two phases, or opposite views, of the same problem, acting and reacting on each other mutually as cause and effect. Under ordinary economic law demand creates supply ; the need for an article, its habitual use or the customs calling for its consumption, lead to the production of that article in sufficient quantities to supply the need. With every-day necessities and even conveniences this rule is all there is to it. But with luxuries the tendency to create demand, where there is none normally, and to extend it to an almost unlimited degree begins. With narcotic drugs, such as opium, alcohol. tobacco, cocaine, which have a natural tenden- cy when used more than very rarely, to create an increasing demand for themselves, the or- dinary operation of this rule of political econ- omy is yet more distorted. There is no such thing as a normal appetite for narcotics in health ; it must first be created. The fact that the first taste is usually disagreeable is nature's protest against the introduction of a danger. 31 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. The growing demand is new and abnormal. Liquor men have so well recognized this that in state conventions they have declared that nickels spent in treats to boys is missionary work that will return its hundreds of dollars later on the investment. Small bottles have been distributed free among boys in the public schools or orders handed them reading "Give Bearer Glasses of Beer," and signed by a brewing company desiring to create a future market for its wares among these young American citizens. There is doubtless a call for alcoholic drinks based upon the usual laws of supply and demand totally irrespective of their more or less harmful effects. Social custom has demands for their use as an expression of friendship, and as a means of recreation, in beer gardens, in the "social center" saloon or the "poor man's" club, the banquet hall, in business and even in the homes of certain classes of people. But beyond this ordinary use as a supposed necessity, or luxury, com- paratively small in actual amount, is the created demand, the usual law of economics working backward, and the agents creating that supply, brewer, distiller and saloon-keep- er, voluntarily establishing an entirely new, artificial and vicious call for their goods. Habit and trade becoming mutually cause and effect a vicious circle is established that leads to drunken excess. The increase in the per capita consumption of liquors in the United States from 6.43 gallons in i860, just before the organization of the trade and its political 32 SOURCES OF THE LIQUOR EVIL. power began, to 22.27 gallons in 1906 must be largely due to this artificial stimulation of the demand. If the ordinary laws of demand and supply had operated alone during these 46 years the only increase would have been the influence of the large foreign immigration during the period bringing in heavier drinking habits. But this would have been more than counteracted by the tremendous temperance agitation, pledge-signing crusades and temperance in- struction in the public schools of almost all the states and territories. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to say that the activities of the liquor trade, in creating the habit, is responsible for the 347 per cent increase in drinking during the last 46 years. This reversal of economic law makes the trade itself a powerful secondary source of the whole American liquor problem. As Dr. Crane puts it: "The licensed liquor traffic is here in viola- tion of the economic law of supply and demand. It confesses this when it pays ex- horbitant license fees, and we are impressed by the same fact when we remember that most of our trouble comes from the supply and not the demand. The seller is the one who is a political power — who is a lawbreaker and who is the pusher of the business. There is a demand, but it is created by the supply. The demand is artificial and is better denied than supplied." "The great central power in the liquor busi- ness in America is the brewery... .They have 83 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. a distinct policy: — if there are not as many saloons as there can be, supply them. This is what has been done in Chicago. Fully nine- ty per cent of the Chicago saloons are under some obligation to the brewery ; with at least eighty per cent, this obligation is a serious one, "The brewers employ special agents to watch continually every nook and cranny in Chicago where it may be possible to pour in a little more beer.. ..If a new colony of foreigners ap- pears, some compatriot is set at once to selling them liquor. Greeks, Lithunians, Poles — all the rough and hairy tribes which have been drawn to Chicago, — have their trade exploited to the utmost. Up to last year, no man with two hundred dollars, who was not subject to arrest on sight, need go without a saloon in Chicago; nor, for that matter, need he now. The machinery is constantly waiting for him. With that two hundred dollars as a margin, the brewery sorts out a set from its stock of fix- tures, pays his rent, pays his license, and sup- plies him the beer. He pays for everything in an extra price on each barrel of beer. The other supplies of his saloon, — liquor and cigars, — are bought out of his two hundred dollars cash capital. Under this system of forcing, Chicago has four times as many saloons as it should have from any standpoint whatever, except, of course, the brewers' and the whole- salers'. ..There is now one retail dealer to every two hundred and eighty-five people ;... .every man, woman and child in Chicago drank, in 1906, two and one-quarter barrels of beer — three and one-half times the average consump- 34 SOURCES OF THE LIQUOR EVIL. tion in the United States. Each also drank about four gallons of spirituous liquor — two and one-third times the average. The main object of the brewing business, the thorough saturation of the city, especially the tenement districts, with alcoholic liquors, is well ful- filled." ' The retail dealers are so bound by contract to the brewer who started them in business that they can not quit, even should they want to do so, without incurring heavy damages. They dare not buy from another but are bound hand and foot to the firm that started their "place." Brewery ownership and control of saloons is responsible for the starting of many in resi- dence sections, new parts of a town, or in temperate communities where as yet there are few drinkers, when it is not prevented by law. A poor man is set up in business, he is paid a salary, furnished fixtures and beer and goes to work to create a drinking constituency for himself. The big liquor firm can support such "missionary" effort when the private dealer could not. The rivalry among the different brewing firms accounts largely for the solid lines of saloons, five, six or seven long, in some of our large cities. Many a man who would resist the inducements of a single saloon has not will-power sufficient to pass a whole line of shops where he sees attractive games going on within. The side attractions of the saloon, its re- ports of the ball-games, prize fights, free lunch, music, games and free-for-all conversation are intended simply to increase the sale of liquor. 85 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. They are designed to create the demand in those who do not care for intoxicants and to draw the man with "the habit" within the range where his craving will lead him to spend all his earnings. "The public saloon and saloon system is a vast organized inciter of human appetite." " If it existed merely to supply some inborn desire there would be no need for such expensive attractions. The Welfare of Society as a Whole. — The first duty of government is to provide for public safety. It must protect the indi- vidual in his private rights, guard against crime and preserve order at all times. When- ever any individual exceeds his private rights by interfering with the enjoyment of the same rights by others he must be restrained or pun- ished. A business or trade which is dangerous to the public welfare must be suppressed. This power of the state is known as the police power. It is fundamental and must be exer- cised whether the government does anything else or not. All trade is essentially social in its nature, depending for its protection and sanction upon government and so coming very directly under it as to its regulation and control. John Stuart Mill says, "Trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of goods to the public does what affects the in- terests of other persons and of society in gen- eral and thus his conduct, in principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society." It is in this capacity that the government passes laws 36 SOURCES OF THE LIQUOR EVIL. restricting, regulating or prohibiting the liquor traffic. The only rational basis for legislation against the liquor traffic is social welfare. It is not the province of government to make men good by law even if it were possible to do so. It is, no doubt, its duty to remove undue and unnecessary temptation to do wrong, and, as Gladstone said, to make it as "easy to do right and hard to do wrong" as possible. But the true purpose of such laws is not reform of moral conduct. It is not the promotion of personal temperance on the one hand, or the restriction of personal liberty on the other. If temperance is pro- moted, as it undoubtedly is by prohibitory laws, it is a secondary result, no matter how desirable in itself. On the other hand, if personal freedom either of the would-be liquor dealer or drinker is restricted, this, too, is contingent and while not at all desirable in itself, is unavoidable and no valid objection against the exercise of government powers in this respect. The true purpose is the pro- tection of society as a whole. This furnishes a sound ethical basis in political science for restrictions upon the traffic extending through any degree of severity to total prohibition. "If drinking at the dram-shop is inimical to social safety, it may properly be made the object of legislative attack. If private drink- ing is poisonous to the system, and by the influence of heredity corrupting to the whole body politic, the strong arm of the law may 87 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. rightly put a stop to it. It is not because drunkenness is a sin, but because it endangers the community that the state takes cognizance of it. The only sound doctrine, therefore, on which prohibitory law can be founded is that the state, in the exercise of its police powers, has the right to suppress the liquor traffic as a social evil, and that its suppression is expe- dient in the interests of national well being." Conflict between public welfare and private interest comes in three ways : 1. Injury or destruction of the property of the liquor dealer. Legally it has long been decided that there are no vested rights in property when its use becomes offensive to public safety or welfare. 2. Interference with the freedom of the drinker to procure the gratification of his appetite or to use his accustomed means for social enjoyment. Wise legislation does not or will not interfere with these further than absolutely neessary to protect the public. But when that conflict does arise the general welfare requires the surrender of the private privileges. No man has liberties which inter- fere with the enjoyment of equal privileges by others. And no man may inflict upon society, unrestricted, the results of his own self- injury. 3. Even the moderate, self-controlled drinker may be compelled to surrender the privilege which he does not abuse on account of the serious danger to society resulting from the general prevalence of intemperance and ss SOURCES OF THE LIQUOR EVIL. the activity of the saloon and the liquor traffic. "The Social Demands."— Summarizing in- temperance is generally known as a wide- spread, serious and deeply-rooted vice with consequences which are both individual and social. The drink trade is a public social insti- tution which, in addition to supplying alco- holic liquors for a normal economic demand to those who do not go to excess, administers to the vice of intemperance and numerous attend- ant evils, by supplying the necessary means. While private individuals and public philan- thropy are endeavoring to cure the personal and social evils by every known method of amelioration, what shall be the attitude of organized society, government, toward the whole liquor problem ? A complete answer will depend upon the following fundamental facts: (i) The effects of the use of liquors, and of the liquor trade, upon society as a whole; as the sociologists say, upon the ends of social welfare, public health, wealth, knowledge, so- ciability, beauty and Tightness; or upon what common law recognizes as the object of the police power of the state, the public health, wealth, morals and safety. (2) Whether the evils are contingent and capable of being remedied by regulation and control, or whether they are inherent and shall require, in addition to temperance meth- ods, that the trade shall be banished in order to free society from the burdens resulting from the habit and the political and social vice traceable to it. 80 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. References and Authorities. The Liquor Evil ; One of Consequences. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 26-29, ?)^-37- Pitman, "Alcohol and the State," 1 10-129. "The Ethics of Prohibition," International Journal of Ethics, Vol. IX, 350-359. Committee of Fifty, "The Liquor Problem," 137- 142. The Sources. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 139-171. Cyclopedia of Temperance and Prohibition, 360- 362. Calkins, "Substitute for the Saloon," 1-24. Stevens, "Prohibition in Kansas," 126-129. The Relation of the Trade to the Habit. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 172-177, 299-303. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 5-7. Turner, "The City of Chicago; A Study of the Great Immoralities," McClure's, April, 1907. Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 43-46. Ely, "Political Economy," 154-159. ' Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClure's, April, 1907. ^ Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 302. The Welfare of Society as a Whole. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 7-27, 36-37, 56. "The Ethics of Prohibition," International Journal of Ethics, IX, 350. Lilly, "The Saloon Before the Courts." Bascom, "Sociolog^y," 194-202. 40 CHAPTER III. ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH : THE PHYSIOLOGICAL PROBLEM. The Attractiveness of Alcohol. — Mankind enjoys drinking alcoholic liquors. He has done so for thousands of years, ever since he discovered the art of agriculture and entered upon the cultivation of barley and grapes. Almost every sort of fruit or grain or vege- table substance has been made to produce some variety of fiery drink, as has, also, honey, the sap of trees and even meats. Nearly all races of savages, from the natives of America to the blacks of Central Africa, have discovered some kind of intoxicant and devised a way to make it. But it was not until civilization was fully grown that drunkenness became systematic and its evils a far-reaching danger to social wel- fare. Crude methods of distillation always limited the supply among savages while their out-door life enabled them to throw off the effects more rapidly. Long before there was any such thing as a saloon or "poor man's club," long before liquors were used at social gatherings and be- fore there was a "liquor trade," intoxicants were made and drunk because there was some- thing in them that people wanted. Alcohol, for centuries, has served as a means of gratify- 41 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. ing a certain physical craving for stimulants. There must be a physiological explanation underlying this fact whether there is an equally scientific justification for it, or not.' Throughout all history mankind has han- kered after some exciting agent to make him feel good and to enable him to forget his aches and pains. He cries out for some means of es- cape from mental suffering, sorrow and trou- ble. And he does not hesitate to use external intoxicating agents when they will serve this end. The craving for stimulants seems to be inborn, instinctive, but the specific craving for alcohol is acquired. Nature demands excite- ment of a more healthy kind ; man has used alcohol because it happened to be near at hand and it, in turn, has created a growing and abnormal craving for itself. If he had never learned the efifects of alcohol he would have no desire for it. The p]i)'siological action of alcohol is such that it furnishes quick relief to mental suffer- ing. It stirs the emotions and fires the imagi- nations. It does not matter that the relief is but temporary. Ever since its discovery alco- hol has been used as a short cut to short-lived happiness. No one can see a tipsy man with- out noticir.g his jovial freedom from care, his return to almost primitive enjoyment. He is, for the time being, although doubtless disgust- ingly so, perfectly happy. "Clearly, then, the essential factor in the attractiveness of alcoholic drinks is their power to intoxicate and narcotize, a conclusion which is further suggested by the fact that mankind 42 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. shows a disposition to indulge in a variety of intoxicant and narcotic substances (such as opium, hasheesh) which have nothing but their drug effects to recommend them." ' Occasionally people drink liquors to allay thirst of a perfectly normal kind ; sometimes because of the agreeable taste and frequently because of ill-health. But these attractions are but secondary. Many drinks as now com- bined may be very good to the taste but this is not the essential factor. The taste of beer, the most widely used of all, is not agreeable to most people but, like the crude drinks of very early days, seems to attract, not because of, but in spite of its unpalatableness. Again, while many malt liquors and wines contain a large amount of water and a relatively low percent of alcohol, no one imagines for a mo- ment that their every day use is for the pur- pose of quenching any other than the peculiar alcoholic thirst. Men use alcoholic drinks be- cause of their effects upon the mental and emotional faculties.* It is intoxication which they are after and which they get. The Source of Intoxication. — The variety of alcoholic drinks in common use is very large but the characteristic ingredient of all of them is the same, ethyl alcohol. It is always pro- duced by the fermentation of starch or sugar. Alcoholic liquors may be divided into four classes : ( i ) malt liquors, used in largest quan- tities ; (2) wines; (3) distilled liquors ; (4) unusual alcoholic preparations, such as those sold popularly as "medicines," "tonics," "nerve stimulants," "bitters," "celery compound," etc., 43 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM, often containing a very high percent of alcohol, and those with a low i)ercent, such as root beer and koumiss, the latter being- made from milk. The actual amount of alcohol in different drinks varies greatly, and in the same drink to a considerable extent. A fair average, by weight, of the amount in some of the most common is as follows : Beer varies from i to 7 percent, the average in American beers being about 4.4 percent alcohol ; ale and porter about 5 percent. Among the wines French clarets contain 8 percent, French white wines 10.3 percent, sherry 17.5, Maderia 15.4, champagne, 10, American red wine 9, sweet catawba 12. The distilleil liquors contain the highest amounts, American best whiskey being about 43 percent alcohol, American common 35, Scotch and Irish 40, rum 60, gin 30 and ab- sinthe 51. Alany popularly advertised "pat- ent" medicines are little else than alcoholic liquors with various flavors and some medi- cinal additions. They are used, often innocent- ly, for the same stimulating effect that attracts the ordinary drinker of whiskey to the saloon. An analysis of some of these by the Massa- chusetts State Board of Health shows how very large is the amount of alcohol they con- tain. Boker's Stomach Bitters was found to be 42.6 percent alcohol ; Parker's Tonic, "pure- ly vegetable," recommended for inebriates, 41.6; Green's Nervua 16.1 ; Hostetter's Stom- ach Bitters 44.3 ; Paine's Celery Compound 21; Avar's Sarsaparilla 26.5; Hood's 18.8; Brown's 13.5; Peruna 28.59. The dose rec- 44 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. ommended upon the labels varied from a tea- spoon full to a wine glass full and, in fre- quency, from one to four times a day "increas- ing as needed," which means, as the craving for intoxicants grows in intensity. Peruna is so much of an intoxicant that its sale is for- bidden by the government to the Indians on the same ground that the sale of whiskey is prohibited. The more highly flavored wines contain stimulating ethers as well as alcohol ; their intoxicating action is even greater than that of alcohol alone. All of the common drinks are intoxicating, the degree depending pri- marily upon the total amount of alcohol taken in successive draughts. The term intoxication is in itself significant. It is derived from a word meaning poison and implies that one intoxicated is suffering from the effects of poison. It is exceedingly important to know what is the source of intoxication; what are the constituents of alcoholic beverages that cause it and the serious physiological and other evils resulting from it. There have been two classes of investigators of this question. First, those who believed that the greatest harm comes from the by-products of distillation, the higher alcohols, flavoring in- gredients created in manufacture or added afterward and from adulterations. A great many people believe that if "pure" liquors only were made and sold the largest part of the evils of alcoholism would be prevented. This opinion is widely current among certain classes of people and it is assiduously cultivated by 45 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. high-class liquor dealers since it means a diverting of temperance sentiment away from their business and applying it against the lower grade dealers. It is claimed that temperance will be best advanced by the passage of laws preventing adulteration and encouraging the production of the so-called pure beverages. The better authority among scientific in- vestigators of the subject shows that it is not the by-products, but the chief constituent, of all alcoholic beverages, the essential part, ethyl alcohol itself, that produces intoxication and nearly all of the other evil results. In quantity it is nearly always so much greater than all the other intoxicating or poisoning constituents put together that the impurities of even the poorest grade of whiskies are insignificant in com- parison. While they do produce evils, they occupy a very secondary role as a cause of alcoholism. Tables have been prepared showing the rela- tive intoxicating and life-destroying effects of the various constituents of the usual alcoholic beverages. It is found by Dr. John J. Abel that one liter of ordinary rum will destroy 64.947 kilograms of animal life, whether dog or man. Of this, 64.102 kilograms is due to the ethyl alcohol contained therein, .258 kilo- grams to the higher alcohols and the .587 kilograms remaining to the by-products and adulterations.* "The by-products are therefore of only secondary importance as toxic agents." Similar tables for the whiskies, wines, etc., would show similar results — that the standard 46 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. alcohol in each case is the really harmful in- gredient. Alcoholism and all its train of evils is due, in short, not so much to impure liquors as to "pure" ones. Occasionally adulterations are added which are more dangerous than ethyl alcohol, but far more frequently they are com- paratively harmless and only help to reduce the strength of the essential intoxicant of all such beverages, alcohol. It must be noted that the chief source of intoxication, from a con- servative scientific standpoint, is itself the chief constituent of all liquors ; it is therefore in- herent. Is Alcohol a Food ? — The question wheth- er alcohol is a food or not has received intense discussion among chemists and physiologists during the past few years. Neither of tiiese classes of scientists have been able to settle it even yet. From neither point of view is there a general understanding as to what con- stitutes a food. The line of demarcation be- tween that which furnishes nourishment to the body in the ]icrformance of its functions and that which hinders and destroys, tiiat is between food and poison, is very indefinite at best and may well be left with these scientific men as a technical question. The deadliest of poisons may at times be of excellent food value while every-day foods in excess or in certain diseases are no better than poisons. Just when a generally recognized poison be- comes of value or a drink or food specific poi- son is a question for the expert knowledge of a physician and his prescription, and not for 47 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the rank and file of every day society. The real question for people generally is the broad- er one, is alcohol a wholesome or practical, every-day or even occasional food? How do its nutrient qualities compare with its well- known evil consequences? Will it take the place of other foods in health? If it does not do this it may be a medicine but it is not a food. The two chief functions of food are the building and repair of tissue and the furnish- ing of energy for work and heat. The essen- tial element of the former is nitrogen, fur- nished by such common foods as bread and meat. Alcohol is certainly not a food in this respect as it contains no mineral or nitrogenous constituents. No one claims that it is a tissue- building food. Under the other class are those which serve as fuel by the combustion of which the heat of the body is maintained, work-power liber- ated and the body tissues preserved from be- ing themselves used up as fuel. Those who call alcohol a food do so because it is in large part oxidized in the body and liberates energy and heat. Authorities differ as to just how much is thus consumed and how much is thrown off unused. There is no question that warmth is produced but whether the force liberated is utilized for the performance of a normal function, or a detrimental one, is not yet ascertained. The oxidizing of alcohol, when in the tissues, does protect them from being broken down as rapidly, as shown by the accumulating fat of the beer-drinker, but 48 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. this sort of protection does not make toward good health as it prevents the eHmination of waste cell matter. Further, alcohol is not held in the body unconsumed for any length of time for further use as are fats and oils. All that is not used soon is excreted as if nature re- garded it as an intruder. While difference prevails among scientific authorities as to how far the oxidized alcohol serves a useful purpose there is no dispute as to its poisonous effects in anything but the most moderate doses. All recognize its ac- companying dangers as a drug, a point in which it differs markedly from current articles of food. The evil effects so over-balance any possible good that might come from the heat- producing qualities that it must essentially be regarded as a poison. It can never take the place of other foods in health, it is very ex- pensive and its excessive use is many times more harmful than the excessive indulgence in other foods. Speaking of its drug effects Prof. Atwater, regarded as one of the most conservative investigators of alcohol as a food states : "At best it is a very expensive source of nutrition. For people in health it is unnec- essary. The moderate use often leads to ex- cess. In the judgment of the writer, its place as nutriment is where the user is unable, be- cause of either debility or disease, to other- wise obtain fitting and sufficient nourishment from ordinary food materials."* Dr. W. S. Hall of Northwestern University Medical School says "If we admit alcohol to a posi- tion among foods on the simple ground of 49 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM, oxidation we must also admit numerous sub- stances universally acknowledged to be toxic." ' Dr. Madden of the Milwaukee Medical Col- lege classes it strictly among the poisons: "If you say that no one claims that alcohol is a food in this large quantity and that it is only a food to the extent that it is oxidized and does no harm, I again answer, so is ether and chloroform, and the alkaloids, and I shall per- sist in saying that these poisons are foods (to a certain extent), as is claimed for alcohol."* It may be said that alcohol is used as a psudo- food merely because it happens to be near at hand, that the habit is acquired on account of environment. As Dr. Ford Robertson says, "I have long maintained that the specific crav- ing for alcohol is never instinctive, never in- born, but always acquired, and therefore that no man ever craves for alcohol who has not had previous experience with it." * Is Beer "A Liquid Food"? — Beer makers and dealers of the present time are vigorously cultivating the idea that beer is a liquor food. They maintain, with some show of reason, that as a part of a mixed diet, it may be substituted readily and economically for other foods, and that it not only contains nourishment itself but also aids in digestion. The following are samples of the way it is put in a flood of newspaper, street-car and poster advertising: "Beer is adapted to the organism of the adult in much the same way as milk is to that of the infant." "Dr. Liebig, the famous German chemist, declares that beer is a liquid food. By this he means a food — full of life-giving, 50 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. health-sustaining qualities." On the contrary Dr. Liebig says, "If a man drinks daily eight or ten quarts of the best Bavarian beer, in the course of twelve months he will have taken into his stomach the nutritous constituents of a five pound loaf of bread." In the summer of 1907 the Pabst Brewing Company of Milwau- kee filled the daily papers with the claim that "The United States Department of Agricul- ture officially declares that beer is the purest and best of all foods and drinks." This brought out a vigorous protest from the Acting Secretary of Agriculture who declared that "No such statement has ever been made by the Department. The Department does all in its power to prevent having its views distorted but I regret that there is no law by which such practices may be reached." Like every half-truth, which often proves to be the most dangerous of falsehoods, there is considerable foundation for the food-theory of beer, aside from the more or less combustion of the alcohol it contains. Thousands of people of German, Dutch, English and Hun- garian descent are convinced that beer serves as a sort of food. For many of the poorest beer and dark bread seem to be their only nourishment for long periods. Brought up from childhood to see its daily use on the table, to "rush the growler" for father, to see hard- working men always going after a can when they open the dinner pail at noon, it is not surprising that the heavy beer-drinking classes as well as many of the dealers, should honestly believe that beer is as necessary as bread. They 51 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. know that whisky intoxicates but "booze" is a temperance drink and helps take the place of meat which is so expensive. Analysis shows that an ordinary glass of beer, measuring about one-half pint, contains by weight 4.46 per cent alcohol, 4.61 per cent extract, .47 per cent albuminoids, .26 per cent free acids/ The solid matter in the beer, the extract, being digestible, serves to build tissue and so may properly be called a food, even if the alcohol, a narcotic poison itself, may not be so called although it is partly consumed. But it is an exceedingly costly, deceptive and vicious "food." Mere oxidation in the body or the furnishing of some slight nutriment is not sufficient to make an article a practical food ; otherwise many well-known deadly poisons might well serve in that capacity. If merely cost alone were considered the bread claims for beer would be preposterous. Five cents worth of flour contains 80 times more proteids, and 61 times more carbo- hydrates than a glass of beer while the latter has no fats at all. Considered with reference to the amount and kind of solid material in beer a working man would have to swallow daily 108 glasses at a cost of $5.40 to supply the necessary amount of proteids needed daily, or 52 glasses to furnish the carbohydrates. This twenty seven quarts would contain twenty-nine ounces, by weight, of absolute alcohol.' If the widest possible food-value of the beer be considered, the heat-producing qualities of the alcohol and the solids taken together, it is 52 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. found that a nickel's worth of beer yields 94.05 calories of heat; five cents worth of flour 2785.84 calories, the ratio being i to 39.62. "Or, in other words, to furnish heat equal to that obtained from a nickel's worth of flour requires the alcohol and solids of 29.6 glasses of beer, costing at five cents per glass, $1.48." ' No workingman can afford to purchase heat- producing power at such a tremendous cost to say nothing of the effects of the alcohol as a drug. This fact that there is some food in beer has been the foundation for the most vicious of popular misunderstandings regarding its common use. Late investigation is tending to show that it is more deceptive and danger- ous than the stronger liquors. Beer inebriates are more incurable than those who get delirium tremens from whisky. The steady beer-drink- er, while the picture of health, is more sub- ject to disease and to criminal insanity. The most dangerous ruffians in our large cities are beer drinkers. Its general use in a community is more liable to entail degeneracy upon the people as a whole. As Dr. Burgen says : "I think beer kills quicker than any other liquor. My attention was first called to its insidious effects, when I began examining for life insurance. I passed as unusually good risks five Germans — young business men — who seemed in the best health, and to have superb constitutions. In a few years I was amazed to see the whole five drop off, one after an- other, with what ought to have been mild and easily curable diseases. On comparing my ex- 68 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. perience with that of other physicians I found they were all having similar luck with con- firmed beer drinkers, and my practice since has heaped confirmation on confirmation." * Its deceptive effects are well shown in the case of sudden contagion or accident ; the beer drinker is almost certain to succumb. He seems to be all one vital part. A worker in the National Temperance Society gives a graphic illustration after a visit to Bellevue hospital in New York : "As we entered the ward, the first sight opposite the door was a surgeon dressing a gangrenous arm. His words to the patient, as we caught them, were: "No, I shall not let you go out; you would get a glass of beer, and that would kill you!" A boy in another bed, motherless, friendless, a stranger in a strange land, speaking no word of ours, had received a slight wound which pure blood would have thrown off; but he was a beer victim, and his hurt, with his poisoned blood, produced erysipelas. Another had scratched his finger, and his hand was in danger of am- putation. And so we went through the list, receiving testimony unexpected to us, almost unasked by us, and almost unconsciously given, that systems clogged with effete matter which beer had prevented passing oflF, were incapable of resisting injury and disease. "Some, if not all, of these, no doubt, had thought the beer was doing them good. Many boast of the good it does them, or of their being strong in spite of the beer. 'I have drank a gallon of beer every day for the last 64 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. thirty years,* said a brewer's drayman, 'and I was never in better health than at this moment.' Yet the very next day he died in a fit of apoplexy. The beer told him that lie, and he believed it." Alcohol as a Medicine. — Alcohol, in near- ly all of its forms, beer, wines, brandies, whis- key, is one of the most common of all drugs used as a medicine. It is prescribed by able physicians ; it is used as a cure-all by second- rate and quack medical men, and it is taken, with an honest view to relief from suffering, by the public generally for all sorts of com- plaints, and without prescription of any kind whatever. As a plan of treating disease it is hoary with age. It was in common usage at the time that bleeding at the arm was the prevailing method of treatment for almost every disease ; the latter has gone showing that even a treatment of disease need not be regarded as best because it is ancient. Alcohol was adopted as a remedial agent in medicine centuries ago when the science was young; it is slowly being outgrown. At the present time fully one-fourth of the best phy- sicians of our own country refuse to employ it at all, while most men of ability regard it as dangerous in many diseases where it was formerly used freely. Many prominent hos- pitals exc4ude it altogether. The sentiment against it is growing steadily; this in itself is significant. "The medical profession as a whole," says Sir Victor Horsley, one of Lon- don's most eminent surgeons, "has a hostile rather than a friendly feeling toward the drug 65 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. we call alcohol. When I was a student alco- hol was the traditional remedy in surgery for post-operative conditions ; it was the tradi- tional remedy for blood poisoning, septicemia and pyemia following operations, and it was the traditional remedy for infectious diseases like pneumonia. What is the practice now? That in all these cases alcohol is no longer used. Forty years ago the seven great hos- pitals of London spent annually about $40,000 for alcoholic liquors, and about $15,000 for milk. Now alcohol and milk have changed places. In the Infirmary at Salisbury twenty- five years ago $1,500 was spent each year on alcoholic liquors. Last year the cost was $35. These changes are due to the increased knowl- edge of the nature and efifects of alcohol." * "If alcohol had become a candidate for recogni- tion years ago instead of centuries ago, it is safe to say that its application in medicine would have been very much more limited than we find it at present." * Considered purely as a medicine, among the best physicians its use is steadily decreasing; other remedies, more specific and witli fewer attendant dangers, are being found. Some even claim that there is not a use to which alcohol is put in medicine for which there are not substitutes less dangerous and equally effi- cacious. But the medicinal aim is too often sadly confused with the beverage use. As with any other powerful drug its administration should be left entirely in the hands of reliable and conscientious physicians. They should decide 66 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. in each specific case whether it is the right medicine and the amounts required. Certainly nothing is more unscientific than for each patient to determine for himself how much alcohol he ought to have, how often he ought to take it, in what form, whether as beer, whiskey, brandy or by any miscellaneous com- bination of mixed drinks that may happen to strike his fancy. The same rules should apply as govern the use of similar powerful drugs. References and Authorities. The Attractiveness of Alcohol. Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 22-93. Committee of Fifty, "The Liquor Problem," Sum- mary 31. Patton, "Economic Basis of Prohibition," Annals of the American Academy, Vol. 2, 59. * Dr. Campbell in Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 38. *Dr, Campbell in Kelynak, "The Drink Problem,' 36. * Billings in Committee of Fifty, Summary, 31. The Source of Intoxication. Billings, "Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem," Vol. 2, 4-26. Committee of Fifty, "The Liquor Problem," Sum- mary, 17-19, 27-28. Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 5-6, 34-39- Wilson, "American Prohibition Year Book" (1907), 25-27. Kerr, "The Disease of Inebriety," Cosmopolitan, Vol. 21, 547. * Billings, "Physiological Aspects," Vol. 2, 26. ^ Report State Board of Health, Public Document No. 34, Commonwealth of Mass. Is Alcohol a Food? Hall, "Relation of Alcohol to Nutrition," Jr. Am. Med. Ass'n, Vol. 35, 65. 67 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Madden, "Food Value of Alcohol," Humanitarian, Vol. 17, 29-33. Committee of Fifty, "The Liquor Problem," Sum- mary, 21-23. Atwater, "Nutritive Value of Alcohol," in Physio- logical Aspects of the Liquor Problem," Vol. 2, 284-315, 341-343- Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 87-89. Martin, "The Human Body," 304-305. ' Billings, "Physiological Aspects," Vol. 2, 343. " Journal American Medical Association, July 14, 1900. ^ Madden, "The Food Value of Alcohol," Humani- tarian, Vol. 17, 29-33. * Robertson, "Alcoholism" (1901); also, Kelynak, 88. Beer a "Liquid Food." Barker "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 38-39. American Prohibition Year Book, 1907, 10-13. American Issue, Prof. G. O. Higley, "Is Beer a Liquid Food ?" Atwater, "Nutritive Value of Alcohol," in Physio- logical Aspects of the Liquor Problem. Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 87-89. ' Prof. G. O. Higley, Ohio Wesleyan University in American Issue. *Prof. Higley. •Prof. Higley. * From speech by Senator Gallinger, Congressional Record, Jan. 9, 1901. Alcohol as a Medicine. (lustafson, "1 he Foundation of Death," 181-225. Wheeler, '■Prohibition," 39-47. Kellogg, "Alcohol Not a Aledicine," New Voice, Aug. 7. 1902. Martin, " 1 he Human Body," 304-5. ' Address of Sir Victor Horsley at annual meeting of British Medical Association, Toronto, 1906, before Dominion Alliance. "Dr. Winfield S. Hall, Prof. Physiology, North- western Univ. Medical School, Chicago. 68 CHAPTER IV. ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH: THE PRACTICAL SOCIAL PROBLEM Alcohol as a Source of Disease.— Every- one that has to do with the welfare of his fellows as physician, minister, or social service worker, as well as the everyday observer, knows by sad experience how vast is the amount of sickness and disease coming in part or wholly from alcohol. Directly and indirectly drink, without doubt, is one of the most pro- lific of all sources of disease, both physical and mental. Not only are there definite alcoholic diseases, as such, but by lowering the powers of physical resistance and vitality or on ac- count of the poverty caused by its excessive use by others, it opens up the way for a thou- sand other ills. Since very few regard alco- holic drinks as a necessity of life it becomes one of the most useless and inexcusable of all the possible causes of public and personal ill h^lth. j(*vVhile physiologists are trying to settle just how much "food" value there is in alcohol, the physician and the practical sociologist, who have to deal with people as they are, have dis- covered the following vital facts : ( i ) Alco- holism is itself a very serious and common dis- ease. (2) There are a large number of other 59 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. common forms of physical ill due directly to the use of alcohol. (3) Those who use liquors even moderately are more liable to sickness, are more difTicult to cure, and die earlier than total abstainers. (4) Intemperance is a chief cause of all forms of mental disease and de- ficiency.-' I. Alcoholism, or inebriety, is the direct re- sult of alcoholic poisoning. It comes from the regular and continuous use of liquors, in small or moderate amounts in some cases, and from deep indulgence at periodic occasions. It attacks first and most prominently the higher nerve centers and is characterized by all sorts of brain affectations. In its severest stages it leads to death in what is known as delirium tremens, a kind of temporary insan- ity. Acute alcoholic poisoning is somewhat, different, since it comes from the taking of very large amounts of alcohol at one time, usu- ally in the form of the stronger distilled liq- uors, and frequently results in almost imme- diate death. There are many forms of this disease known to medical men and called by various names. But in all the liquor appetite, the intense crav- ing for alt ohol, is a prominent feature. This longing for strong drink, which at first was repugnaiit to tlic normal healthy taste, becomes established and grows stronger and stronger with each gratification. The progressive ap- petite for alcohol becomes something more than a habit ; it is both a disease and a symp- tom of disease;l conditions. It is an important social fact to notice that the appetite for in- 60 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. toxicating liquors is not normal, whether it is the result of inherited tendencies or of ac- quired habit. NothiuiT which creates an in- creasing demand for itself can be a hcalthfnl article of food or drink. There are certain people whose disposition is such that they do not acquire any noticeable appetite for intoxicants, even after continuous moderate use. This is the exception, however, rather than the rule. In many of these cases all tile other symptoms of alcoholism may de- velop. Men have died from chronic alcoliol- ism and far more have been seriously injured themselves, or left upon society the biu'dcn of caring for deficient children, who were never noticeably intoxicated or were regnrried as anything more than moderate drinkers by their most intimate friends. Dr. Norman Kerr, one of the ablest students of this subject, says, "Let the world of intel- lect, of science, of morals, of religion, and of statesmanship once grasp the great truth that there is a physical element in intoxication and the strong inijiulse thereto; that the most of those who have gone under, some of them the most highly-gifted and most noble-souled of men and women, have been subjects of a dire disease, and the true way of cure, reform and prevention will speedily be made plain." ' 2. The alcoholic diseases. In addition to what may be termed strictly alcoholism, there are a number of other affectations due directly to alcohol. Chief among these are cirrhosis, or hardening of the liver ; ninety percent of all cases of this disease are so chargeable, 61 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. while some medical men claim that it is due exclusively to intemperance. Most physicians regard alcohol as one of the chief causes of Bright's disease. Various disorders of the heart, with enlargement or the growth of adi- pose tissue leading to early breakdown ; de- generation of the J^lood vessels, resulting in apoplexy, paralysis, etc., have among their chief cause the use of alcohol. It seems to have a special affinity for the nervous system, leading to many diseases that are often com- plicated with inherited defects, due to the use of alcohol by fathers, grandfathers and gener- ations even further back. 3. Reduces the Powers of Resistance. — Perhaps the heaviest charge that can be made against alcoholic intemperance as a menace to public health is the part it plays in reducing the normal physical powers of resistance to disease. The liquor-soaked man is almost helpless. He is the first victim of contagion, the hardest to deal with by physicians, and the most likely to die during an epidemic. He is harder to treat when sick, and ordinarily has fewer chances of recovery. In surgical cases his wounds heal more slowly and are far more likely to "go wrong" or fail to heal at all. It matters little whether alcohol is taken in large saturating quantities or in what is regarded by many as moderation ; in time the system loses its resisting power and falls a ready victim to disease. Malaria and fevers find a ready field. Epidemics, such as cholera, signal out drinkers at their first attack. Doc- tor Cartwright of New Orleans, who served 02 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. through the great yellow fever epidemic there, said afterward, "About 5.000 of them (the regular drinkers) died before the epidemic touched a single citizen or sober man. so far as I can get at the facts." ' Having acquired virulence by feeding upon such material its vicious invasion continued until thousands more of all classes fell — a powerful illustra- tion of the effects that society as a whole must reap from the unrestrained and abnormal ap- petites and habits of a single class. Consumption, "the great white death," was formerly thought to be retarded by alcohol. Now it is known to have the very opposite effect ; indeed, in the crowded poorer sections of great cities it is one of the chief causes of this dread disease. Pneumonia, one of the most prevalent and dangerous of modern af- flictions, is incurable, indeed, it is regarded by the best physicians of Chicago as far more fatal than consumption, when it attacks a man who has been accustomed to the use of liquor in anything more than the most moderate quantities. We need not seek for examples among rare or occasional epidemics, such as cholera. It is right among these most com- mon of all afflictions, the pulmonary diseases, that alcohol gets in its fatal share of work. The milder liquors, such as beer, seem to be no less dangerous as a predisposing cause toward disease than are the stronger alco- holics. The average experience of the able and conscientious physician reads about like this one chosen as a fair sample : "The first organ to be attacked is the kidneys ; the liver soon 63 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. sympathizes, and then comes, most frequently, dropsy or Bright's disease, both certain to end fatally. Any physician who cares to take the time will tell you that among the dreadful results of beer drinking are lockjaw and ery- sipelas, and that the beer drinker seems in- capable of recovering from mild disorders and injuries not usually regarded as of a grave character. Pneumonia, pleurisy, fevers, etc., seem to have a first mortgage on him, which they foreclose remorselessly at an early op- portunity. "The beer drinker is much worse ofT than the whiskey drinker, who seems to have more elasticity and reserve power. He will even have delirium tremens ; but after the fit is gone you will sometimes find good material to work upon. Good management may bring him around all right. But when a beer drinker gets into trouble it seems almost as if you have to recreate the man before you can do anything for him. I have talked this for years, and have had abundance of living and dead instances around me to support my opinions." 4. Insanity and Drink. — The disease of alcoholism itself is little less than a form of insanity. In it are found all forms of mental unbalance from melancholia to imbecility. In- toxication is a sort of temporary insanity. As described by Dr. Arthur MacDonald:' "It be- gins with a slight maniacal excitation ; thoughts flow lucidly, the quiet become loqua- cious, the modest bold ; there is need of mus- cular action, the emotions are manifest in laughing, singing and dancing. Now, the ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. esthetical ideas and moral impulses are lost control of, the weak side of the individual is manifested, his secrets revealed ; he is dog- matic, cruel, cynical, dangerous; he insists that he is not drunk, just as the insane insists on his sanity." As a direct cause of insanity, Dr. Clauson of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum says, "Alco- hol excess is the most frequent single exciting cause of mental disease, and it acts, also, as a predisposing cause in very many cases. Doctor Billings, representing the Committee of Fifty, has made a very recent compilation of reports from numerous insane asylums, which show that not more than from fourteen to thirty-nine percent of all inmates were total abstainers. The average of these reports show that 24.08 percent of all the insanity was attributed by the authorities of these in- stitutions to the influence of liquor. This probably includes those in which the tendency to insanity was inherited and due to use of liquor by parents and those in which it was a contributory as well as a direct cause. "Whatever be its origin, and whatever its relationships, drunkenness is on the way to mental death, and, unless a stronger factor in- tervenes to check the process, or a fortuitous illness anticipates the end, the drunkard and his seed after him are moribund." ^ Intemperance as a Contributory Cause of Disease. — The public health aspects of in- temperance must include the indirect conse- quences of the liquor habit, as well as those directly traceable to it. It has an effect upon 65 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. certain social conditions, these in turn bearing upon the public health. The use of alcohol is often one of several factors in producing pub- lic unsanitary conditions, as well as in causing individual sickness. Some of the most impor- tant of these are : 1. Intemperance induces poverty and con- sequent neglect of health. This is especially true atnong the better classes of laboring men.* Where the head of the family must pay out daily or weekly a large percent of his income for liquors, he cannot have sufficient to spend for necessary clothes, food and shelter. His family must be huddled together in small un- ventilated rooms, fuel is lacking in winter and the thousand pathetic stories of the drunkard's family are the result. And it is often the moderate drinker who thus makes his family sufifer most for his own indulgence. 2. The weight of the drink bill upon the family compels the mother to overwork and neglect her children. The children become mentally and physically weak and a ready prey to acute disease. Boys and girls wlio should be in school must go to work prema- turely in order to help bear the family bur- den ; they suffer physical injury, and the com- munity must bear the burden of their later inefficiency. These problems have become the most difficult of all social difficulties of the day, and the drink habit stands right at the base among their chief causes. 3. Drink and immorality go hand in hand. There is a large class of diseases due directly to immorality, for which the alcohol habit is 66 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. partly responsible. It is a significant fact, worthy of special study, that in Kansas since the prohibitory law has gone into effect, there has been a distinct falling off of venereal and similar diseases. Medical men from various parts of the state testify to this. Says Dr. Wm. B. Swan, secretary Kansas State Board of Health, "It is a fact well known among medical men that a decrease in the consump- tion of intoxicants lessens venereal diseases."* Doctor Menninger of the Kansas Homeo- pathic Society said, "The strict enforcement of the prohibition law in Kansas would re- duce to the minimum the social vice, if not entirely obliterate it.'" If the removal of the general sale of liquors has helped to improve to this extent these social conditions it is cer- tainly a long step toward improving public health. The Source of Race Degeneracy.—" Typ- ically, the action induced in the brain is of the nature of a progressive paralysis, begin- ning with the highest level and its most deli- cate functions and spreading gradually down- ward through the lower. Moral qualities and the higher processes of intelligence are first invaded. Self-control is lost, and the judg- ment defective.'" Thus alcohol strikes first at the highest intellectual and moral qualities ; add to this the tendency to leave its results on later generations, both by the transmission of inferior physical powers and by the educative effects of lowered family and social conditions during childhood, and the alcohol habit be- comes a great source of race degeneracy. 67 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. It is a fact known to everyday observation and thoroughly supported by our best socio- logical investigators that the children of drunkards are not up to par. Moral obtuse- ness and mental dullness are common ; epilep- tic, imbecile and idiotic offspring are more frequent among drinkers than among temper- ate classes ; this is particularly severe where both parents are intemperate ; insanity and / tendencies toward it are more common. Dr. ^ Howe, after careful investigation, fomid that 50 per cent of all the idiots in the state of Massachusetts, examined by him, were the children of intemperate parents.* The persistent use of even small doses of alcohol, taken, as it usually is in beer, tends to produce functional changes. Even the man who is never noticeably intoxicated may be seriously injured in this respect. These changes more readily transmit themselves to the next generation in lowered vitality, mental, moral and physical. Even when the drinker himself does not seem to bear serious results he often initiates degeneracy in the family which in the end will tend to eliminate the tainted stock from the sphere of active life. Many a man who calls himself a moderate drinker is in danger of leaving upon society a greater burden than if he rapidly ruined' himself through excess and threzv himself di- rectly upon its support. Judge Pitman classifies drink's heritage upon society, after completing its work of ruin in one generation, as follows:* (1) Lessens physical and mental force and 68 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. SO reduces the power of industrial production. (2) Entails disease and lowers the tone of public health. (3) By impairment of vital force increases pauperism. (4) By animalizing the moral nature it fos- ters crime. Professor Brinton. in the "Basis of Social Relations." savs: "Its worst effects are not the violence to which it occasionally leads or the frightful nervous diseases which its ex- cessive use entails, but the slow hardening of the 'axis cylinders' in the nerve sheaths, the immediate consequence of which is permanent deterioration of mental activity. Extended throughout a community, this means a lessen- ing of its energy and of its finest mental quali- ties. Chronic alcoholism of this kind does not materially shorten life, but it is eminently transmissible, and this soddens the stock. The white race is most exposed to these mental and nervous effects of alcohol, while the red and black races escape them in large measure." Health the First Essential.— The vital im- portance of the hygienic-physiological phase of the liquor problem can hardly be over- estimated. Health is the very first essential to public well-being and private happiness. All other aims in human welfare, getting of wealth, intellectual enjoyment, social pleasure and even spiritual development, depend upon or are conditioned by it. The very existence of the state is threatened by that which causes degeneracy in any considerable number of its citizens. If personal drinking of alcoholic liquors 69 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. is injurious to health, and the facts show that this is true, it strikes at what is fundamental in society. It is therefore no longer a private matter but a burning public question. Its consequences are passed on to others both by personal association and contact, and by trans- mission, thus entailing a burden upon society in the future. The craving for alcohol is not normal but must be created. When established it becomes the most persistent, useless and always-acting source of the whole complicated problem. While hundreds of thousands continue to drink more or less moderately the beginnings of degeneracy are established in such communi- ties and families. Natural selection does not seem to provide a method by which men may become accustomed to the use of this toxic stimulant. The "fit" who survive are not those who learn to use it with impunity, but those who abstain totally. As Dr. Henry Campbell, President of the London Society for the study of Inebriety, after a careful study of "The Evolution of the Alcoholic," says recently: "We arrive, then, at the con- clusion that whatever adaptation to alcohol has taken place in civilized communities has essentially been by the evolution of a type of individual capable of resisting its allure- ments." ' I. The first instinct of the individual and the first aim of society organized into govern- ment is self-protection. No duty under the police power of the state is more sacred than the preservation of public health; it is one of the duties which always belongs to govern- 70 ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. ment. "Whatever refinements speculative phi- losophy may have taught as to the sphere of the state in regard to public morals," says Judge Pitman," but few have ever been auda- cious enough to question its duty to care for the public health," In order to make even political and economic reforms possible when the American troops took charge of Havana in 1898, the cleaning of the streets and opening of sewers had to be attended to first. To drain the canal zone in order to get rid of the mosquitoes that cause fevers was the first en- gineering problem to be taken up by the Pana- ma Canal Commission when the work was undertaken on a modern scientific basis. How equally more business-like and scientific that government should take a hand in removing the source of so vast and preventable an amount of disease and death, physical and mental, as comes annually from the unlimited use of intoxicating liquors. Getting down to first principles in government "the question of high or low license, local option, and the vast machinery of moral forces that seek relief by the church, the pledge, the prayer, and the temperance society, will be forgotten, and the evil will be dealt with in the summary way in which enlightened communities deal with other ascertained causes of dangerous dis- eases." * 2. With habit as a competing force the or- ganized power of government is necessary to supplement and make successful the work of education against excess and the change of public customs to that of temperance, which must constantly go on. A craving or habit for 71 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. alcoholic liquors "means neither more nor less than that an artificial state has been set up, which can only be changed by a stoppage of the supply of material which feeds the condi- tions. It is useless to moderate the inordinate smoker's tobacco, it must be stopped alto- gether ; so with alcohol, so with opium." ' 3. Society must prevent its own deg^eda- tion at any cost to private liberty to drink in- toxicants. It should protect itself from the burdens of ruinous private indulgences and must defend the innocent members of society. 4. The inherent nature of the evils coming from liquor, with the toxic qualities of alcohol always present in larger or smaller quantities, makes even the moderate use a danger, actual or threatening, to society. There is no way to cure the physical source of intemperance but by making its gratification impossible — limiting the inducements to drink by prohibit- ing the manufacture and sale. References and Authorities. Alcohol as a Source of Disease. Billings, "Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem," Vol. 2, 362-372. Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 52-83. Gustafson, "The Foundation of Death," 127-151. Committee of Fifty, "The Liquor Problem," Sum- mary, 23-27. Kerr, "The Disease of Inebriety," Cosmopolitan, Vol. 21, 547. ' Kerr, "The Disease of Inebriety." Reduces the Powers of Resistance. Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 70-83. Billings, "The Physiological Aspects," Vol. 2, 372. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 40. 7a ALCOHOL AND PUBLIC HEALTH. ^ Dr. Bergen, from speech by Senator Gallinger, Congressional Record, Jan. g, 1901. Insanity and Drink. Henderson, "Dependents, Defectives and Delin- quents," 90-91. Wilson, "Drunkenness," 44-52. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 40-42. Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 97-107, 236-237. Gustafson, "The Foundation of Death," 141-151. Billings, "Physiological Aspects," Vol. i, 34i-3s5. ^ MacDonald, "Abnormal Man," Doc. No. 195, U. S. Bureau of Education. ■ Wilson, "Drunkenness." Intemperance as a Contributory Cause. Warner, "American Charities," 63-66. Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 122-151 ; 238-239. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 37-47- Stephens, "Prohibition in Kansas," loo-i. ^ Warner. "American Charities." 61. " Stephens, "Prohibition in Kansas," lOl. The Source of Race Degeneracy. Warner, "American Charities," 62-66. Booth, "Pauperism," 140-1. Kelynak, "The Drink Problem," 18-9, 229-239. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 42-53- ^ Wilson, "Drunkenness," 15. " Warner, "American Charities," 62-63. ^ Pitman, "Alcohol and the State. Health the First Essential. Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 85-89, 122-151. Crothers, "Shall Prohibition Laws Be Abolished?", Popular Science Monthly, 45 :232. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Prob- lem," 34-41. Pitman, "Alcohol and the State," 41-43. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 40-41. ^ Kelynack, 42. ' Crothers, "Shall Prohibition Laws Be Abol- ished?", Popular Science Monthly, 45:232. ' Shaw in Kelynack, 87. ^ Pitman, "Alcohol and the State," 40. 78 CHAPTER V. THE PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. The American Drink Bill. — The most usual estimate of the mag'nitude of the drink problem is its cost in dollars and cents. The amount of money spent for intoxicants during a single year presents a definite, concrete sub- ject for study and comparison, although the exact amount can not be known positively but must be estimated. Each year, the amount now paid for intoxicating drinks of all kinds at retail exceeds a billion and a half dollars — a sum so vast that the mind can not grasp its significance. The amount of liquors used during 1906, as shown by the Statistical Abstract of the United States, was larger than for any previ- ous year in the history of the nation. The in- crease was not only in the total consumption of 1,874,225,409 gallons, an increase of more than 180,000,000 gallons over that of 1905, but also in the actual amount used per capita, which rose from 20.38 gallons in 1905 to 22.27 gallons for every man, Vi^oman and child in the whole country.* England, Germany and most European states are more drunken, on the average, than are the people of the United States. Yet, in those countries has been for years a steady de- 74 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. crease in the actual amount of liquor used per inhabitant, while in this country, in spite of temperance educational laws, local option and local and state prohibition, the relative and actual increase in the consumption of intoxi- cants has been steady and without variation, for fifty years or more. During the last ten years, tlie period of greatest organization and political power in the liquor trade, as well as the time of greatest temperance activity, the growth has been at an average of 67,000,000 gallons per year. For a hundred years a differentiation in the liquor habit has been going on. Where formerly almost everybody took a drink oc- casionally, or oftener, now only a minority of adults drink regularly or at all. Those who do drink consume a far larger amount each, not only of the less intoxicating malt liquors, but also of whiskies and wines as well. The habit, or social custom, or both, are less popular but more intense each year. The temperance movement of a century has resulted in making a large per cent, of the people total abstainers, and in increasing the number of moderate drinkers, while at the same time, those who have persisted in drinking have added im- mensely to the average amount used. This is partly due to the tremendous growth in the amount of beer used which was 1.36 gallons per capita in 1840 but arose to 20.20 gallons in 1906; it was also partly due to the change in the character of the immigration from Europe which, during the past few years, has been chiefly of the lower and more intem- 75 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. perate classes, but most of all, is it due to the tremendous concentration of the beer industry into the control of fewer and fewer men each year. No claim is made more strongly or persist- ently by liquor men than the one that the milder alcoholics, such as beer with 4.4 per cent, alcohol is rapidly being substituted for the stronger liquors with from 35 to 60 per cent, alcohol. The facts are decidedly against this claim. As a whole, it is true, the increasfed consumption since 1840 has been almost ex- clusively of malt liquors, while the propor- tion of spirits has remained about what it was at that time. From that year, selected because it is the year when official figures are first available, until 1896 there was a slight decrease ; for the last ten years, how- ever, the increase has been steady and un- broken running fom i.oi gallons per capita to 1. 5 1 gallons in 1906." In no sense is beer serving as "a temperance drink," to decease the use of whiskies. The tremendous growth of the drink habit is shown when the figures are brought to- gether in ten-year periods. In 1876, the per capita use of liquors was 8.61 gallons; in 1886, it was 12.92 gallons; in 1896, 17.12 gallons; in 1906, 22.27 gallons, or a total of 1.874,- 225,409 gallons. A very small per cent., not more than five, the Internal Revenue De- partment estimates it at 4^, used in the arts, for manufacturing purposes and in the compounding of medicines. On the other hand, "adulteration or reduction is generally 76 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. practiced, the amount ranging from 50 per cent, upwards. The wholesaler usually makes at least i^^ barrels out of every barrel (of spirits) received from the government. What the retailer adds is not publicly known."' There are many estimates as to the annual national drink bill. There are so many factors entering in, such as adulteration in the saloons, the average number of drinks per barrel or gallon, the prices paid, illicit sales, etc., that the actual first cost to the purchasing public can not be ascertained exactly. We give here two very careful estimates, that of the Amer- ican Grocer, which every year compiles 3S a purely business matter for its patrons statistics covering the retail sales of all liquors, and that of the American Prohibition Year Book, whose estimate is no less carefully made but is somewhat larger. Other equally reliable estimates, even larger, might be given, but the figures are so nearly incomprehensible in any case that nothing is lost in being as conserva- tive as the facts will permit. According to the American Grocer,* the re- tail cost of intoxicating beverages for 1906 was $1,450,855,448, or an average of $17.74 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Cotmting the average family at having five members, it makes a yearly family drink bill of $88.70 for temperate and intemperate families alike. It should be remembered that this is a very conservative estimate made by a magazine more or less interested in the liquor business itself. The Year Book's' estimate takes into account 77 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. adulterations, as far as possible, and puts the annual expenditure at $2,320,319,623, or an average of $27.64 per capita. The family drink bill under this estimate reaches $138.20. These figures are collected by the prohibition- ists interested in overthrowing the evil, but who can have no object in overestimating the size of their task. Certainly the direct annual cost can not be less than a billion and a half dollars and probably it is more than two bil- lions. During the past ten years, it has in- creased at the rate of $50,000,000 per year. By the most conservative figures the expenditure for a single year on drink would dig six par- allel Panama canals. The First Cost in the Drink Bill.— What becomes of the two billion dollars annually spent for liquors? There must be entries on the other side of the ledger ; what are they and what do they indicate ? This immense amount of money paid out each year by the consumer of alcoholic drinks is distributed into three chief but very different channels: (1) to the producers of the mate- rials used in the making of liquors and to the wage-earners employed in its manufacture ; (2) to the trade itself as profits and salaries of dealers, manufacturers, distributors and their employees who are more or less inter- ested in extending the business; (3) the share for the government as internal revenue, duties, taxes, license fees and fines, the Federal gov- ernment alone receiving one-fourth of its entire income from this one source. In the distribution of this $2,000,000,000 78 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. drink bill the first part, a very small share, goes to the farmer. The market furnished the raiser of grains and fruits by the distiller and brewer seems to be a very large one amount- ing in 1905 to $106,230,000.1 It is only when proper comparisons are made that it is seen how insignificant actually is this market. Of the three staple cereals used^ most abundantly in the production of alcoholic beverages in that year this trade purchased, of corn, 34,713,000 bushels, or one and one-fourth per cent, of the yield ; of rye, it used 5,595,000 bushels or only 16.8 per cent of the crop ; of barley, supposed to be raised almost exclu- sively for the making of malt liquors the trade called for only 60,976,000 bushels, or 35 per cent, of what the farmers actually raised, while 65 per cent, was used for feeding cattle and other purposes. In addition a great deal of fruits of various kinds are used in the produc- tion of wines and the hop industry goes quite largely to the brewer. But the grains pur- chased by the liquor makers are often of inferior grade and therefore do not yield as much profit to the farmer as does the share which goes into the food industries which he supplies. The whole liquor business which stands as one of the large industries of the nation, if estimated by the amount of capital invested and the profits it returns, and using for its raw material, the farmer's out-put almost exclusively, furnished a market for only 1.48 per cent, of the total farm produce of the country. Relatively small as this is it would be an appreciable source of wealth to the agri- 79 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. culturalist if the sale of the Hquors manufac- tured therefrom did not seriously cripple the purchasing power of the consumer upon whom the farmer must depend to use the remaining share of his produce. Actually the making of a part of the corn, rye and harley crop of the country into alcoholic liquors, reduces the market, rather than increases it. If the great host of people deprived of food on account of too much drink had spent the same money for bread, meat and vegetables, the demand created would have been much greater since it takes much more of the farmer's products to furnish $1.00 worth of food than $1.00 worth of beer. A man who drinks two glasses of beer per day for a year spends $36.50; to make it re- quires three and three-fourths bushels of bar- ley worth less than fifty cents per bushel.^ This amount of money, $36.50, spent for but- ter, cheese, meat and woollen goods, so often needed in the drinker's family, would have raised prices for the farmer, made trade brisk for all other retail dealers except the saloon- keeper, would have left the ex-beer drinker in better health, so he could have better work and would have left something in the home after the wages had been spent. From a bushel of corn the distiller gets four gallons of whisky which retails at $16.80. It is divided up as follows, the actual producers of wealth, the farmer and the laborer, getting very meager shares indeed : The farmer gets for one bushel of corn. $ .45 The United States government gets .... 4.40 80 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT, The railroad company gets 80 The distiller gets 3.83 The laborer's share is , .17 The drayman gets 15 The retailer and his employees get, . . . 7.00 Total $16.80 The liquor producing industries employ yearly about 55,000 men as wage-earners, the exact number in 1905 being 55,407.^ They were paid in wages $38,201,476, the average being slightly higher than that paid in other manufacturing industries. This was due to the fact that only able bodied men can be used by distillers and brewers while other industries also employ a large number of women and children at lower rates. The actual number of men furnished em- ployment is very small in proportion to either the amount of capital invested or the value of the product turMed out. Official figures* show that $583,500,000 are invested in the manu- facturing of distilled, malt and vinous liquors. On this labor gets only 6 per cent, in payment for its part in production. In the manufac- ture of boots and shoes the share is 22 per cent. The liquor investment goes largely into fixed property while the profits are divided chiefly between the owner and the government. In comparison with the value of the product the share which goes to labor is much smaller yet. Only 1 per cent, of the total value of distilled liquors is so disposed of ; in beer mak- ing the share is a little larger, 5 per cent. ; an average in the great liquor industries of 3 per 81 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. cent. This means that when $1.00 worth of intoxicants are produced for consumption labor gets 3 cents of it, the producer of mate- rials used gets 20 cents and the government and the manufacturer the rest. By the time it reaches the consumer, the dealer's profits, transportation, taxes and Hcense fees have doubled or trebled its value and the laborer's and farmer's shares are proportionately re- duced. "According to the census figures the ratio of wages paid to the value of production in liquor manufacturing has dropped, in the case of distilled liquors from .069 in 1850 to .017 in 1900, and in the case of malt liquors from .15 in 1860 to .10 in 1900."« Which shows that the centralizing and monopolizing in the industry has greatly reduced the call for labor. As compared with the share which goes to the wage-earner in other producing industries liquor makes the following poor showing: $5.00 worth of boots and shoes pays labor.$1.12 $5.00 worth of bread pays labor 89 $5.00 worth of clothing pays labor 1.10 $5.00 worth of furniture pays labor 1.18 $5.00 worth of average products pavs labor \. .88 $5.00 worth of distilled liquors pays labor.$ .05 $5.00 worth of malt liquors pays labor. . . .25 Twenty-five dollars spent for necessary articles stimulates business, contributes $4.40 to labor, creates a demand for more labor and brings valuable supplies to the family. Twen- ty-five dollars spent for liquors gives labor 75 82 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. cents worth of employment, reduces the de- mand for other articles and interferes with the earning capacity of the laborer. Liquor is certainly labor's worst enemy. Illinois, with Peoria as its whisky capitol, has out-whiskied Kentucky and become the champion distilled liquor state of the world. More capital is invested, more men employed and more revenue paid the government than from any other state. Yet this business on which the Federal government depends for 27.6 per cent, of its entire income, and which impresses the public as so gigantic an indus- try, was represented by only 73 proprietors in the state of its greatest strength, according to the Census figures of 1900; it employed only 681 clerks and 4,006 wage-earners. In the same year the manufacturers of agricultural implements in that state employed the labor of seven times as many clerks and officials and four and one-half times as many wage- earners. The making of bicycles required as many men while "the boot and shoe business surpassed the liquor business, both in number of wage-earners employed and in the amount of wages paid ; the building of carriages stood about equal while that of building cars was substantially three times as great. The furni- ture business was substantially twice as great as the making of liquors and the business of the foundries and machine shops six times as great. "^ The Consequential Cost, or the destruction caused by drink. This second great series of financial burdens cast upon society is the most extensive and furnishes the least adequate 83 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. compensation of any that may be charged directly or remotely to alcohol. The first cost, into which three values enter, (1) that of the materials used and labor employed; (2) the profits to the trade, manufacturing, distributing and retail, and salaries paid employees more or less interested in the business, and (3) the part taken by government, is about equal to the annual drink bill of two billion dollars. It is largely a dead loss ; but it is also partly a re- turn to society in wages and payment for mate- rials and taxes, and in social pleasure, of the immense amount of cash abstracted from the pockets of the most ill-affording classes by a vicious and abnormal appetite and the trade which caters to and promotes it. But for the second series of losses there is no compensation. The alcohol burden is not mere- ly a loss of time and materials used in its pro- duction and their withdrawal from wealth-pro- ducing industries which might have added to the total economic advancement of the com- munity. Its extensive use is followed by addi- tional and positively destructive loss in the ex- isting total of wealth which can be compared only with the improper consumption of poisons for such purposes as suicide, or the willful or careless wrecking of railroad trains. It causes an actual destruction of life, producing capa- city, time, energy and wealth. Further, it re- quires that society shall support in idleness and inefficiency its crop of dependents, insane, epileptic and other defectives and criminals. The second series of social losses results from the consumption of liquor ; the first occurs in its production. 84 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. The direct social welfare burden is about as follows : 1. Loss of time and capacity. 2. Loss of life, directly and indirectly. 3. Deterioration of personal capacity ; its relation to poverty and pauperism. 4. Expense in care and support of tfie product. 1. The muscular energy, nerve force, judg- ment and will power of a million moderate drinkers is seriously lowered each year by their personal use of alcoholic liquors. Prof. Hopkins has estimated the loss in time at 10 per cent., or the equivalent of full time for 100,000 men.i At $600 per year salary the time loss alone foots up to $60,000,000. There are also about 2,500,000 hard drinkers, as estimated by Wheeler, which lose practically full time.^ The actual loss in producing time and capacity here is very great but being more or less hypothetical, can not be closely esti- mated. That it is a concrete tangible waste of great economic import, is demonstrated by the fact that, according to the U. S. Depart- ment of Labor reports,^ 96 per cent, of rail- roads, 79 per cent, of manufacturers, 88 per cent, of trades and 72 per cent, of agricul- turalists discriminate to some extent against applicants for labor addicted to the use of liquors, and many of them refuse to employ hard drinkers at all. The reasons given are "to guard against accidents," "on account of responsibility," etc. 2. The number of lives sacrificed yearly to Bacchus cannot be given positively and can scarcely even be estimated. Those who die 85 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. from alcoholism are credited in the Census reports as being less than one per cent. ; but physicians seldom charge a death to that cause, on account of the wishes of friends, when any other can be assigned. Secret investigations by medical men show that at least 3 per cent, of deaths should be so charged. But the large number are those who die violent deaths through their own intemperance or that of someone else, in murders and fights and sui- cides ; the heavy loss due to accidents by drunken employees of railroads, street cars, factories, etc. ; minor accidents which would not have proved fatal without drink ; the in- temperance of others causing dependent chil- dren to die of insufficient care and nutrition ; wives of drunkards whose lives have been gradually worn out ; — altogether constitute a bill of death chargeable to intemperance ex- ceedingly great, and as inexcusable as it is without compensation to either the dead or the living, or to society who must bear the burden. Positive figures on such items can be only fragmentary at best. It is said that 100,000 drinkers die each year. Wheeler,^ late Editor of the Literary Digest, basing his estimates on investigations of the British Medical Association, and apply- ing them to America, says that of the 120,000 hard drinkers who die each year, 30,000 owe their death directly to their intemperance ; as many more children and dependents die on account of negligence, cruelty and transmitted defects. Prof. Jos. V. Collins shows by care- ful investigations that 3 per cent, of the total 86 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. deaths per year are due directly to it and 7 per cent, more indirectly. During the first 45 days of 1908 a careful collection of newspaper reports shows that in the one law-abiding representative state of Minnesota, with a large rural population, and therefore relatively free from crime, there were 52 persons killed while drunk, or by a drunken man, or who committed suicide on account of drink. The same proportion the year around would give Minnesota 420 violent deaths due to drink alone. Throughout the United States it would be 13,900 per year. This does not include the immensely larger number whose demise is traceable to liquor by way of alcoholism, sickness induced by drink or resulting poverty or by dependence upon drinking bread earners. As an estimate of the violent deaths it is probably too low since the newspapers are often financially interested in suppressing the facts tending to show liquor as a prominent cause. Life insurance figures indicate that "those who become intemperate after the age of twenty-flve years lose, on the average, ten years out of the thirty-five they would other- wise have to live and that the free drinkers lose five years out of the thirty-five."* But the death of a drunkard is a social bene- fit rather than a loss. How great, then, must have been the positive public loss when, through drink, he became, not merely a use- less burden but an actual negative quantity in economic welfare? The cost of a man to society at twenty-one years of age, if fairly educated, has been 87 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. placed at $2,000.^ The value of the invest- ment is fixed by his earning capacity. If that is $300 per year, or $1.00 per day, he is worth $5,000, the interest on this amounting at six per cent, to his yearly earnings. A man with an earning capacity of $600 on the same basis is worth $10,000; one who earns $1,200 is worth $20,000. With such figures at hand it would be an instructive experiment to esti- mate the loss to a definite community in earn- ing capacity and time, and the burden of sup- port thrown upon it tlirough the saloons of that community. The social fact is that the impairment of a man is the destruction of wealth and that no man or trade has the right to destroy the economic worth of a community or state. 3. Relation of Liquor to Poverty. — Intem- perance is generally regarded as an important, if not the chief, source of poverty and pauper- ism as well as of the conditions that lead to them. Intemperance and poverty are mutually cause and effect ; men take to drink to drown the sorrows and sufferings of the loss of prop- erty, or to gain a temporary escape from the thralldom of a poverty that has been life-long^yt- On the other hand excessive use of drink has always been one of the great sources of desti- tution ; even when drink can be said to be the result, rather than the first cause, it is the aggravating source of further deterioration and an effectual bar to recovery from the sub- mergency. At best it is a vicious circle of action and reaction ; drink is an active first cause of poverty ; poverty, finds relief in drink. Stop the drink and a chief source of poverty 88 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. will be removed ; remove all poverty and in- temperance will flourish as before, since there is more drinking during a period of prosperity than during hard times. The actual figures showing drink as cause are not so large as have been at times sup- posed. The Committee of Fifty has made one of the most careful and extensive investiga- tions ; it gives drink as producing 25 per cent, of poverty, 37 per cent, of the pauperism within almshouses and 45 per cent, of the destitution of children as due directly to the personal use of liquors or to their use by someone else. But the Committee is very con- servative, not attributing any case to drink "unless it was obviously the principle and de- termining cause."^ Prof. A. G. Warner at- tributes 28.1 per cent, as due to it directly and as a contributory cause. In London Mr. Charles Booth found 25 per cent out of 1,447 cases chargeable to drink.^ The Massachu- setts Bureau of Statistics investigations are very reliable and cover a large number of cases and conditions fairly average in Amer- ica ; this report shows 39.44 per cent, of pov- erty due to personal use of alcoholics and 5 per cent, more to its use by others, a total of 44.44 per cent.' But it is not among paupers that alcohol gets in its worst work. A vast host of people, just on the verge of becoming dependents, who support themselves but never lay aside a cent for the future, were brought there and are held there because of the margin of wages that goes to the saloon. They might have been financially successful and even been able to 89 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. buy a little home if it were not for the exces- sive drink burden they bear. "The ravages of intemperance are most plainly to be traced in classes distinctly above the pauper class. It is among artisans and those capable of earn- ing good wages that the most energy is spent for alcohol and the most vitality burned out."* Mr. Booth well summarizes the needless share that drink had in poverty as follows : "Of drink in all its combinations, adding to every trouble, undermining every effort for good, destroying the home, and cursing the young lives of children, the stories tell enough. It does not stand as apparent chief cause in as many cases as sickness and old age ; but if it were not for drink, sickness and old age could be better met."^ 4. The Burden in Care and Support. — The heaviest burden cast by drink upon society and the individual, the cost in money and capacity to those just above the line of dependence, cannot even be estimated. It is the earner of good wages that suffers most and who, thus saving nothing, is ready when overtaken by a slight misfortune or sickness, to drop below. This burden on the individual, on the family and on society must certainly be greater than the more direct one caused by actual poverty and pauperism. Being paid through the ordi- nary channels of business, in reduced earning and consuming capacity, it is not noticed as are the more direct burdens paid through taxation and philanthropy. The burden of care and support of the nor- mal, average product of the saloon, the share of crime, and poverty that legitimately may be 90 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. charged to it — the building, equipping, main- taining and support of the necessary storage granaries, such as jails, penitentiaries, insane asylums, hospitals for inebriates, epileptics and other defectives, compose a withering answer to the self-centered man's claim that "if you let drink alone it will let you alone." (1) Society has long regarded it as a primary duty to erect institutions to care for those who have no means or capacity for self-support or whose friends can not provide for them. It is government's first crude and most neces- sary form of philanthropy. Poorhouses and asylums, homes for defectives and incurables are supported by impartial taxation on citizens who are in sympathy with the liquor business, the source of so much of the burden, and those who are free from it. A large part of the cost is borne by private, church and other philanthropic organizations, but in any case the public always pays the bill. A very care- ful estimate of the share undoubtedly charge- able to drink, using the more conservative percentages of the total cost of such institu- tions in 1903 in each case has been made by Prof. Collins as follows : Hospitals, 40% due to liquor. . . .$ 4,000,000 Insane Asylums, 35% due to liquor 5,500,000 Feeble Minded, 45% due to liquor 5,400,000 Alms Houses, Z7% due to liquor. 3,200,000 Public Ohphan Homes, 46% due to liquor 4,100,000 Outdoor Relief 30.5% due to liquor 12,000,000 Private Charity, 30.5% due to liquor 30,500,000 91 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. The total actual cost of this portion of the drink product alone is $64,700,000. Besides this is the immense private burden borne by families and by the children of drinkers and drunkards, amounting to not less than $220,- 000,000. (2) The hunting down and prosecution of prisoners is a gigantic task and a proportion- ate cost. To provide for public safety is a first purpose of government. Yet in the twentieth century the scientific method would seem to be to get at the chief cause and save the criminal rather than to continue following the ancient semi-barbaric one of punishment as retaliation. On the average at least 50 per cent, of crime, large and petty, is due to liquor and its sale and use. The testimonies of judges, police officials, keepers of peniten- tiaries, reformatories and bridewells place it at from 60 to 90 per cent., the average being about 75 per cent. It varies with localities and with the character of criminals sent to the respective institutions. A broad investigation made by the Committee of Fifty puts liquor as "first cause" in 31 per cent. of the cases; as "sole cause" in 16 per cent., or a total of 49.95 per cent, as due to liquor in various forms and combinations. The Massachusetts Labor Bu- reau investigation gets almost an identical result, 50.88 per cent. But these are both very conservative estimates while the actual share so chargeable in our large cities is undoubt- edly much larger. Taking, then, one-half of the cost of police and constables, necessary to catch criminals, of courts to try them, of jails and peniten- 98 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. tiaries in which to confine them and of other precautions necessary to guard against crime we have as the share justly chargeable to the account of the liquor dealer and seller a bill of about $40,000,000 yearly. In Maine in 1906, with its prohibitory laws only fairly well en- forced, there was one commitment to prison for every 12,860 of the population. In Massa- chusetts, with saloons in most of the cities and many towns, there was one for every 788 of the population, the whole cost of justice and punishment being proportionately in- creased. References and Authorities. The American Drink BiU. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," 7-9. American Prohibition Year Book (1907), 40-42. Woolley and Johnson, "Temperance Progress," 499-500. 'Statistical Abstract of the U. S. (1906), 687. ^Statistical Abstract of the U. S. (1906), 530. 'American Prohibition Year Book (1907), 41. * American Grocer, May 8, 1907. The First Cost in the Drink BiU. Fehlandt, " A Century of Drink Reform," 207-218. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 81-97. Committee of Fifty, Summary of "The Liquor Problem," 104-107. Patton, "The Economic Basis of Prohibition," Annals American Academy, Vol. II, 59. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 4-10. American Prohibition Year Book (1907), 44-48. National Prohibitionist, January 30 and February 20, 1908. Fernald, "The Economics of Prohibition," 14-16. 98 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. ^ Compiled from Report of Commissioner of Inter- nal Revenue and Statistical Abstract for 1906 by Mr. Ferguson in "The National Prohibi- tionist," January 30, 1908. 2 "American Prohibition Year Book" for 1907, 46. 3 Statistical Abstract, 1906, 504-505. ^ Same. 5 National Prohibitionist, "Drink's Exhibit A," January 30, 1908. ^ National Prohibitionist, " In the Balances," Feb- ruary 20, 1908. The Consequential Cost. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 214-216. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 12-14. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 57-76. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 98-105. Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Prob- lem," 229-239. American Prohibition Year Book, 1907, 32-33. Fernald, "The Economics of Prohibition," 20-31, 358-377. Whittaker, "Alcoholic Beverages and Longevity," Contemporary for March, 1904. Patton, "The Economic Basis of Prohibition," Annals American Academy, Vol. II, 59. Stelzel, "The Workingman and Social Problems," chap. 3. 1 Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 98. 2 Wheeler, "Prohibition," 66. 3 Twelfth Annual Report, 71. 4 Wheeler, 63. 5 Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 102. The Relation of Liquor to Poverty. Kclynack, "The Drink Problem," 199-208. Koren, "Economic Aspects to the Liquor Prob- lem," 96-98, 120-125. Warner, "American Charities," 60-63. Summary Committee of Fifty, 89-104, 108-121. ^ Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Prob- lem," 96, 120, 130. 2 Booth, "Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age." 94 PUBLIC COST OF THE LIQUOR HABIT. 3 Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the Statistics of Labor, 507. * Warner, "American Charities," 61. The Burden in Care and Support. Keren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem." Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 14-16. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 214-216. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 106-114. Fernald, "The Economics of Prohibition," 21-31. 96 CHAPTER VI. INDUSTRIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. National Wealth and Social Welfare. — Financial prosperity is necessary both to in- dividual and national welfare. It is one of the chief conditions of success. Even ahead of health, intellectual culture and moral prog- ress it stands as a chief aim of every man and of every organized society of men. Each individual must have a certain amount of wealth to be able to be and do his best. The liquor habit in the individual and the liquor traffic in the nation strike at the very basis of the economic welfare of society by causing waste of wealth-producing capacity as well as of wealth itself. I. The wealth-producing capacity of the community. Every industry should produce, add to the sum total of the possessions of so- ciety or contribute to the distribution of those possessions. It should take the raw product and make it into something that will be worth more to the consumer than that raw product itself. The liquor factory takes grains and fruits, valuable for food, which, by their con- sumption yield work-power and make men capable of producing more, and gives, in turn, an article which has the very opposite effects. 96 INDUSTRIAL WELFARE & THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Not only is the health-g-iving value of the food lost when alcohol is formed but the wealth creating power of the consumer is reduced in proportion to the frequency and amount he takes. The distillery and brewery waste pub- lic wealth instead of adding to it. This trade causes improper distribution ; takes legitimate wealth out of the hands of its producer, the working man, and puts it into the hands of the brewer, the producer of false wealth. The liquor traffic wastes natural resources ; as Pro- fessor Patton of the University of Pennsyl- vania shows, "Two temperance people Cjan be supported on the land needed to satisfy the coarse tastes of one regular frequenter of the saloon."* 2. Intelligent and sober labor is an essential to an increase in public wealth. It is labor that produces ; the value of its intelligence, reliabil- ity and soberness as factors in this producton cannot be overestimated. The use of liquor injures every one of those qualities of man- hood which belong to every wealth-producing citizen. "An economic millennium would be an epoch in which there was no waste . . . above all, no waste of health, substance and self-respect in drunkenness and its attending vices." The temperate laborer, as well as the intemperate workman, himself, and the gen- eral public, must sufifer because of drunken labor. 3. A healthful interrelation of all industries. No one business should thrive at the expense of others, or feed on the evil tendencies or vices of the public as does the liquor traffic. 97 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. The oversupply of the market and consequent inabiHty to effect sales is a very frequent com- plaint of manufacturers. There is no such thing as oversupply so long as there is such crying poverty, distress and need on every hand. There cannot be an oversupply of boots and shoes while tens of thousands of drinking men and their families go with ragged shoes or none at all. The current period of prosper- ity is a farce to thousands of suffering people. It is a case of under-consumption coupled with improper distribution, largely chargeable to such destructive habits as drink and such wasteful trades as the liquor traffic. "From the standpoint of the community," says the economist, Hobson, "nothing else than a rise in the average standard of current consump- tion can stimulate industry.'" That business which injures and destroys those who use its product is an absolute obstruction to the pros- perity and success of every other business. It is not a legitimate business. Industrial Prohibition. — The recent move- ment among many of the largest and most prosperous industrial enterprises for temper- ance on the part of their employes is of tre- mendous significance. Among railroads and many large retail and department stores, man- ufacturing plants and other establishments the rules requiring total abstinence from the use of intoxicating liquors are becoming more and more severe at the same time that they are extending from one industry to another. Such business houses as Marshall Field & Co. of Chicago, who claim to have the largest 88 INDUSTRIAL WELFARE & THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. store in the world, will not permit any of their thousands of employes to drink either in pubHc or private, frequent places where liquor is sold, or even associate with those who drink. Many of the great railroads of the country have such stringent rules against drinking, or entering saloons as to amount to discharge for a single oflFense. A vast number of other enterprises have more or less stringent rules. This movement means nothing less than in- dustrial prohibition. The command is decisive and absolute. There must be no drinking or business relations cease. It is more severe and far-reaching than legal prohibition ; the latter applies only to the manufacturer and the seller, the social acts ; industrial prohibition applies directly to the use, the individual and personal acts. The purpose is, of course, purely economic. It is because higher moral qualities pay that morality is encouraged or required. This rea- son may be analyzed into three points: (i) The total abstainer is worth more to the com- pany than the man who drinks; (2) he will take better care of the property placed in his hands ; (3) in the case of transportation he will take better care of the lives of passengers. It is the suits for damages that railroads fear as a result of accidents that makes them value so much the lives of the public. The American Railway Association, which covers 160,000 of the 202,000 miles of main track in the United States and employs over 1,189,000 men, has fixed, as its minimum re- quirement, the absolute prohibition of the usie 99 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. of liquors of any kind while on duty, and for- bids habitual use or the frequenting of places where liquors are sold. Most of the largest companies, under this Association, have gone far beyond this requirement and absolutely forbid the use of intoxicating drinks of any kind at any time. "The United States Depart- ment of Labor found that 90% of railways, 79% of manufacturers. 88% of trades and ^2% of agriculturists discriminate against em- ployes addicted to the beverage use of intoxi- cants. The great barrier to wage-earners in general and to the elevation of young men in business in particular is the drink habit."* Nations whose laboring classes are relative- ly sober are progressing; those where they drink are falling behind. Great Britain is be- coming aroused to the fact that the United States is getting ahead of her commerciallv. One London paper, searching for causes, finds a chief one in drunken labor. One shipyard suffered in one year an injury of 25 per cent in its output due to drunkenness. The writer concludes: "If we are not able to produce better, faster and cheaper than other countries, our rivals will come and capture our trade." It is claimed by a careful student of the sub- ject'^ that one important factor in the relative advancement of American industries is the widespread system of temperance instruction in our public schools. Liquor and the Length of Life. — The late Dr. Willard Parker, the eminent surgeon of New York, gave it as his opinion that ZVA% of all the deaths in New York City were oc- 100 INDUSTRIAL WELFARE & THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. casioned directly or indirectly by the use of alcoholic drinks. There is remarkable unan- imity among those who have made a careful investigation of the problem that "a minimum proportion of deaths caused by alcohol is io%. As there were i,039-094 deaths in the census year 1900, that would make about 100,000 as alcohol's share.'" This estimate, while conser- vatively made, is so very high that v/e lose little in effect Ijy dividing it in half and giving 50,000 as the annual life sacrifice in America to the god Bacchus. Thousands of these are men cut off in their prime by the most unnecessary of causes. The average age of life is a little over thirty-five years ; drinking men, whether they die on ac- count of excess or accident due to drink, or to natural causes, die much younger, on the aver- age. These are the years when a man is at his best. Each year of labor at this period will add more to the wealth of the community than at any other time. In this connection it is well to note the relation of drink to those who enter the business and to those who use it. William Farr in Vital Statistics, an author- ity on the subject, shows that the saloonkeeper has the most unhealthful of all trades. There may be minor branches of work of extraordi- nary character, such as deep-sea diving or making trips to the north pole, which are more destructive of life, but as a regular trade em- ploying vast numbers of men, that of liquor selling stands lowest. Of 1,000 each of the following classes, there died within a fixed length of time, farmers 363, grocers 383, la- id SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. borers 442, and saloonkeepers and their assist- ants 605. This places saloonkeepers as having the highest and day laborers as second highest rate of mortality. The relative length of life enjoyed by drink- ers and total abstainers is best shown by the statistics gathered by the United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institu- tion of London/ Its records extend back for sixty years and embrace all classes of people that are usually accepted as insurance risks. The reports of American companies of recent years begin to show the same advantages to the abstainer but they are too recent to have anything like the value of the English figures. In 1 841 the United Kingdom Company estab- lished its separate section for total abstainers. In the 40 years, from 1865 to 1905, the per- centage of actual deaths to expected deaths in the temperance section was 71.52; in the gen- eral section, including both moderate drinkers and non-drinkers 94% of the expected deaths actually occurred. This tremendous difference in favor of the abstainers would have bc^n much greater had all in the general section been users of intoxicants. The difference is especially marked in the active working years between the ages of 25 and 60 years. This total abstinence section was founded at a time when people who refrained were thought to be dangerous risks since they were so very exceptional. The Scepter Life Association, another English Company, in 22 years exper- ience shows actual deaths in the general sec- tion to be 79.53% of the expected, while in 103 INDUSTRIAL WELFARE & THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the temperance section they were 54.25%. It is evident that as time goes on there will be a more and more marked difference in the longevity of drinkers and total abstainers. The sons of abstainers insuring in the temper- ance section will fare better than their fathers, many of whom, while abstainers themselves, were the children of drinkers, thus inheriting lessened vitality. In other words, the increased vitality resulting from temperance will begin to show itself in yet longer life. The Economic Demands for Prohibition. — Ordinarily the "first purpose" of government in America which is most sacredly fulfilled is the guarding of wealth. People are interested in the regulation of property, and require that such laws shall be enforced even while those relating to morals, or even to public health, are permitted to become dead letters. Most liquor regulations have been passed in the in- terests of morality and safety, aiming to com- promise between the apparent need of protect- ing liquor property and the obvious duty of restricting the evils of intemperance. In pass- ing regulation laws government has failed to recognize the source of the difficulty ; it needs to know that public wealth, no less than public morality and health, call for severe action in regard to this social evil ; that prohibition is necessary economically no less than morally. The first cost in the whole economic burden cast upon society by intemperance and the "grafting" trade that supplies the necessary means to intemperance, the retail bill of ap- proximately $2,000,000,000, is just about equal 103 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. to the total gross income of all the railroads in the country, which, in 1905, amounted to $2,080,000,000.1 In addition is the burden of caring for the product in criminal prosecution of the same, and in poverty and defective humanity. The great total cannot be given accurately but certainly it is not less than twice the first cost to society. In return the trade furnishes social and per- sonal enjoyment to its users, but often of a personally corrupting and dangerous-to-the- public sort, pays the farmer for a small share of his crop and furnishes employment to a few men in manufacture and to a large force in its distribution and sale and pays over one- fourth of the entire running expenses of the national government as well as a large amount to local and state governments. The Federal government receives in customs from liquor imported $13,529,000, in internal revenue $191,718,000, in special taxes $7,318,000, a total of $212,565,000.- the cities, and states collect about $100,000,000 more in taxes, licenses and fines, making a total of about $312,565,000 annually returned to society . Considering the fact that intemperance is so destructive of life and happiness, as well as of money and capacity that should be used to increase wealth in the community it is but a conservative statement that brands the trade that caters to it as a wholesale public robber — a grafter on dissipation. In taking from the nation the earning capacity of its sober every- day citizens it is striking deep at future prog- ress. Other trades produce more wealth than they consume ; the liquor business is a para- 104 INDUSTRIAL WELFARE & THE LIQUOR PROBLEM site consuming what they store up and return- ing practically nothing. Its overthrow by gov- ernmental action is necessary : 1. To remove the worse than useless burden in care and support of one-half or more of all crime, 37 per cent, of pauperism, 40 per cent, of the inmates of hospitals for the insane and feeble minded and an equally large share of others thrown upon the public for support. To get at the source of delinquency and de- pendency in society and save the victims as men and women rather than to permit them to be cared for or punished at public expense. 2. To supplement other agencies for social relief and education ; the social settlement, the school and church cannot do their work suc- cessfully while competition by the legalized saloon is so unrestricted. The license system now followed throws the burden entirely on the relief organizations while it gives an undue prestige and protection to the liquor trade and the saloon. 3. It is a primary function of government to protect public wealth. 4. Because it interferes wnth normal con- sumption, thus injuring markets for other trades and labor. "Under-consumption is the economic cause of unemployment. The only remedy, therefore, which goes to the root of the evil is a raising of the standard of con- sumption to the point which shall fully utilize the producing power. "^ 5. The fundamental safety and progress of the nation depend upon the quality of its cit- izens. The amount of money now being spent, especially among the poorer classes, is depriv- 105 SOCIAL WELFARE AN'D THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. ing- the children of necessary home comforts, food, clothing, a proper share of play and recreation, and is preparing them to be heavy burdens both to themselves and to society. It is Dr. E. R. L. Gould who says, "The danger resident in these huge national drink bills reaches beyond misery and moral degradation. Civilization itself is menaced by this growing economic waste. If it be true, and there seems to be a general opinion to that effect, that ex- cesses are less frequent now than formerly among the upper classes, the burden must be falling chiefly upon those who are relatively least able to support it. Certainly the family budget of the wage earner is not so flexible that liberal expenditures for drink may be made with impunity. So delicately adjusted is the balance that the status of a new generation is largely determined by the quantity of alco- hol the fathers consume." Since the liquor traffic and the resulting drink habit strike so vitally at the very source and necessary conditions of public wealth, nothing less than the total destruction of that traffic, and with it the removal of the chief source of intemperance, can adequately solve the problem from an economic point of view. References and Authorities. National Wealth and Social Welfare. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 46-53, 63-65, 83-89. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 9-11. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Prob- lem and Social Reform," 21-58. 106 INDUSTRIAL WELFARE & THE LIQUOR PROBLEM ' Patten, "The Economic Basis of Prohibition," Annals American Academy of PoHtical and Social Science, Vol. II, 66. ' Hobson, "The Evolution of Modern Capitalism," 283. Industrial Prohibition. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 11-12. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 90-92. Johnson, "Railroad Temperance Regulations," Chautauquan, June, 1904 "Commercialism to Settle the Saloon Question," New Voice, Oct. i, 1902. ' Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," II. ' Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Liquor and the Length of Life. Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 152-160. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," 51-53. Whittaker, "Alcoholic Beverages and Longevity," Contemporary, March, 1904. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 100-105. ^ Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," 53. ' Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 153, 154. The Economic Demands for Prohibition. Patton, "The Economic Basis of Prohibition," Annals American Academy, vol. II, 59-68. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 52, 131-142, 207-216. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 7-20, 49-56, 67-76. ' Statistical Abstract, 587. = Same, 107. ' Hobson, "Problems of the Unemployed," 98. 107 CHAPTER VII. THE RELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. The Saloon and the Public School.— The saloon is not merely a place of retail business, it is a great public educational institution. It influences the thought, morals, politics, social customs, ideals and conversation of its patrons as the grocery and shoe store never do. It has an atmosphere of its own, unlike that of any other trade, in addition to its direct busi- ness polic}^ of supplying the necessary means to intemperance. It has been called "z school of crime." Some saloons are ; some are not. Since at least 50 per cent, of crime is due directly or indirectly to drink there is much foundation for this charge. Yet many saloons, apparently obedient to law themselves and which do not encourage excess, are greater sources of evil on account of the sort of public ideals which they foster and the character which they give to their "scholars" than are the violent and low-down groggeries that have turned out the Czolgosz's and Guiteau's that strike at the representatives of government. The saloon is a day school, a night school, a vacation school, a Sunday-school, a kinder- garten, a college and a university all in one. It runs without term-ends, vacations or holi- 108 THE RELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. days. Its attendants are of all ages and from almost every grade of society. But the saloon is only the representative of the larger field of liquor interests, organized and unorganized, licensed and illicit, back of it. A description of our public educational sys- tem would be very incomplete if confined to "the little red school house"' and the city high- school alone. The superintendents and boards of education who hire the teachers, select the courses of study and control their methods and policies of instruction in this gigantic pro- liquor educational system are the promoters of the trade, the brewers who start the saloon- keeper in business and often own his whole stock and outfit of fixtures, the trade that plans the advertising that will get new forces of drinkers, youths and foreigners, and beyond all these the public policy of license and taxa- tion making the saloon an apparent necessity, not only as a means of support to the govern- ment, but also to pay the expenses of its rival educational institution, the public school. In our great cities, and many smaller ones, the saloon is an objective competing institution with the public school ; the organized sale of dissipation is a competing force with educa- tion. (1) In the home it establishes poverty and ideals of drinking and quarrelling where peace, morality and sufficient care to insure a normal childhood should prevail. It not only limits the time spent at school but also counteracts directly the kind of instruction there given by the powerful objective fact of a dozen saloons passed morning, noon and night. 109 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. (2) It mis-educates, passively but power- fully, the new arrivals to our population from foreign shores, teaching them wrong ideals of liberty and government and encouraging them to cling to the worst of habits and anti-social ideas developed under a despotic European ruler. (3) It is a vast university for large num- bers of adults who, after having left the public school at an early age, have no other public or social institution that plays so large a part in their lives. In its conflict with the school the saloon is constantly present, except in communities where it has been expelled by law. Morning, noon and night, thousands of children, going to and from school pass its doors, open from 18 to 20 hours each day, often seven days a week and 365 days each year. The school opens at 9 A. M. and closes at 3 P. M. run- ning five days a week and nine months a year. Time alone being considered the resultant of the competing educational forces must be de- cidedly bad. Imitation is a primary social fact and especially strong in children. Whatever they see going on about thern comes, sooner or later, to be a part of their own habits, cus- toms and views in general. It is true that the right sort of home influences will largely counteract the repeated suggestions from the saloon, and its evils will even make children hate it, but such vast numbers do not have the right home training, due also, in part, to alco- hol and its use. Besides what a useless burden of care, solicitude and painstaking instruction is thus thrown upon temperate parents to 110 THE RELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. counteract the vicious suggestions constantly thrown out upon their growing children. Any effort here to protect the children is met by a counter effort to defend the income of the saloon and to throw a halo of "liberty" about its denizens. A tremendous revolution in school attend- ance, especially in the older grades, follows the expulsion of the saloon on a large scale as shown by Assistant Attorney General Trick- ett of Kansas when the saloons were closed in Kansas City, Kans., July 3, 1906. By Sep- tember an additional force of eighteen new teachers was needed. Says Mr. Trickett : "I went to the teachers and said, 'From whence comes this large demand for admission to our public schools ?' The result was a list of 600 boys and girls from twelve to eighteen years of age who attended the public schools last year for the first time. And they gave as a reason why they had not attended in former years that they had to assist a drinking father to earn a living for the family." Delinquencies and Disability in School Chil- dren. — Harmful as is the educational effect of the saloon upon normal children, the part that drink plays, upon the life-history of those not quite up to par and those who need special moral restraint, is yet more varied and pow- erful. Its influences during the school period are hereditary, environmental and personal. The schools are full of dull children made so through inhuman treatment or neglect by drinking parents, or who inherited their men- tal deficiency because of alcohol used by ances- tors, near or as remote as the third and fourth 111 SOCIAL WELFARE AXn THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. generation. The records of the juvenile courts are crowded with impulsive crimes by chil- dren. "Within a brief period in New York City six boys aged seven, nine, ten, eleven, twelve and fourteen respectively were con- victed for burglary, three of them having de- veloped a shrewd plan to rob sixty houses. Two boys, fifteen and seventeen years old, were found guilty of assault and highway rob- bery. Three boys, ten, fourteen and sixteen years of age, were convicted of murder. In each of these instances alcohol bore a con- spicuous part in the family history. Hardly a day passes without its record of juvenile crime. "^ Dr. T. Alexander MacNichol of New York, after a very extensive and scientific investiga- tion, shows how the children of drinkers in- herit a susceptible nervous temperament which, at the first taste, is aroused into a passionate fondness for drink. ^ "Alcohol by destroying the integrity of nerve structures launches hereditary influences and implants tendencies which a good environment may not hold in check." As an average example among the better class of families he gives the following: "Two little girls, four and six years of age, had the desire for drink aroused by a medici- nal dose of whiskey, and for months greedily drank iced whiskey which an indulgent mother provided in response to their strenuous appeals." He shows its relation to deficiency in mental capacity in the following sum- maries: "From 15 to 25 per cent, of drinkers, free from alcoholic taint, are dullards. From 53 per cent, to 71 per cent, of the descendants 112 thp: relatiox of liquor to education. of a drinking ancestry are dullards. From 4 per cent, to 10 per cent, of the descendants of a total abstaining ancestry are dullards." Of 12,919 children classed as dullards, com- ing to school from prosperous families 75 per cent, had drinking parents, while but 32 per cent, of all children from well-to-do homes had parents who drank. From poor families there came 3,193 dullards 85 per cent, of which had parents who used liquors.^ Among the poor the mental slowness is partly due to the sort of home caused by alcoholic indulgences as well as to inherited deficiencies but in the more prosperous homes the connection must be largely hereditary. Alcoholic environment in the home and on the streets is very unfavorable to good, or even average, school work. It accentuates evil proclivities and offers a field for the un- folding of physical weakness and moral de- pravity. Ignorance, especially among the hosts of recent immigrants, causes many chil- dren to be taught to use beer or brandy with their meals. While many adults may drink in this way occasionally or even regularly and appear none the worse for it, children can not do so under any conditions. The free lunch, the specially prepared drinks, the occasional free drinks of beer or "doctored" soft drinks, the games and amusements and the desire to imitate older men all attract boys and "create the appetite" or develop that already started. Largely in proportion to the number and at- tractiveness of the saloons in a neighborhood does the moral and physical strength among children, and especially among boys, decline. 113 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. The Committee of Fifty show that 45.83 per cent, of the neglect and destitution of chil- dren is caused directly by drinking parents or guardians. So far as the child and its educa- tion is concerned the evil is partly remedied by the public in taking charge of such children and placing them in institutions. But this is only a substitution for home, at best. The greatest cause of child labor in factories and shops is support of mother and brothers and sisters neglected, or worse, by a drinking father ; or by one confined in a workhouse or prison on account of crimes committed under the influence of drink. "The main reason why hungry boys and girls are found upon the road is drunken fathers," savs Josiah Flint in "The Children of the Road." The extent to which children are taught to use liquor in our great foreign centers of population in the large cities would be astound- ing to the average rural American. It is lay- ing a large foundation for future diseased and criminal citizens. Notwithstanding the fact that scientific instruction in health and the effects of narcotics in the public schools has largely increased the number of total ab- stainers, some teachers reporting as much as 20 per cent, less now than five years ago, the "vast immigration of inferior peoples, attracted by our great material prosperity and the hope of political liberty, bringing with them their vices as v/ell as their virtues, augmenting our drinking classes, furnishing additional soil from which to propogate criminals . . renders more imperative the necessity for these move- ments which will alleviate and enlighten."^ 114 THE RELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. But it is not the foreign children of school age alone that drink ; nor is it confined to the poorer classes. Dr. MacNichol found that in 34,000 cases of children attending school from prosperous homes there were 27 per cent, who drank, 4 per cent, using spirits and 23 per cent, beer, leaving only 73 per cent, that were total abstainers. In 6,879 cases of poor chil- dren the abstainers were 50 per cent., beer drinkers 43 per cent, and drinkers of spirits, including wines, 7 per cent. But 40 per cent, of the drinking half used both spirits and beer. These latter, classed by nationalities, bring out the fact that 36 per cent, of the Americans and 50 per cent, of the foreigners, including children of foreign born parents, drink. Ninety per cent, of the drinking Americans have foreign-born grandparents. Certainly not much in the way of respect for order and decency in the neighborhood can be expected from children and youths who drink. In the Illinois State Reformatory, at Pontiac, 59 per cent, of the boys there con- fined in 1903 were found to have used liquor before being committed." Of those under 14 years of age 56 out of 86 drank. The larger part of the whole number had fathers who drank to excess. Drink can not be charged with this whole ugly burden of mis-directed boyhood; lack of home training, death of par- ents, and many other factors enter in. But certainly no one will deny that liquor, whether used by parents or the boys themselves, was a most unnecessary cause in producing this youthful criminality. The Mis-Education of the Foreigner. — Seek- 115 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. ing to break the bonds of political subjection and religious intolerance the early Puritan and Huguenot "immigrants" established a type of liberty, not without its rigors and severities, which has become the admiration of the civ- ilized world. With memory keen to their own recent persecutions, but with high respect for law they founded deep the principles of equal- ity and liberty, based upon equal regard for the welfare of others. Ever since, American liberty, known the world around, has been subject to law — to regulation for the best wel- fare of the community as a whole — not to that sort of liberty which means license and runs into anarchy. During the first sixty years of our national life the hosts of Irish, English, Dutch and Germans brought a more liberalizing tone, per- haps needed, but did not bring disrespect for law or extreme views of liberty. They were among the most ingenious, enterprising and courageous of the communities from which they came. They built upon the political and religious principles laid by the colonists. But during the last fifty years, and more particularly in the last twenty, it has been the least thrifty and prosperous, the "beaten" and inefficient at home, that have sought this coun- try.^ With the hordes now coming at the rate of more than 1,000,000 per year appetite and passion are stronger, relatively, in respect to the mental capacity to control them. Under fearful pressure and taxation at home many have learned to hate authority and to think of all law merely as a guise to oppression. With this distorted view it is scarcely surprising 116 THE KELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. that liquor regulations and other public wel- fare laws should be defied as well as that actual anarchistic outbreaks should occur. The saloon itself, imported in \he early days, has remained an unnaturalized foreigner. In most countries, particularly in England and America, during the past few years it has un- dergone a change becoming more lawless as temperance sentiment has developed and as modern methods of business concentration have given it occasion for going into politics. Directly and indirectly it does much to keep alive and to create anew disregard for the rights of the whole community and to encour- age customs of personal indulgence and dis- torted ideas of personal liberty. It is vital to national welfare, for the native and foreigner alike, that the principles which made this country an asylum for the oppressed in the early days and supplied the foundation for the material prosperity of today, shall continue active and untarnished ; that foreign conflicting ideals either shall die at Ellis Is- land, or, learning that there is no soil in which to flourish here, shall not start for this coun- try at all. It is not the foreign man, but the sort of foreign ideas of liberty and social morality cultivated by the saloon and its asso- ciates that are dangerous. The foreigner's worst enemy on arrival in this country is the foreigner already here. Nearly all sweat-shop manipulators, who take advantage of the poverty and ignorance of the new arrivals, to contract them at one-fourth to one-half what independent workers could get, are Russian Jews ; their victims are Rus- 117 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. sian Jews and Italians. The padrone system, which exploits ignorance in hordes, contracts laborers, at a very small price, puts them un- der obligations by supplying transportation and food, and then turns them over to con- struction gangs and railroad contractors mak- ing a profit on every man's wages, usually is managed by foreigners. American greed supplies the incentive ; but low-grade foreign men do the work. The city and ward politi- cians who prey upon the public treasury find these new arrivals the best recruits to their army of voters. Their sub-agents herd these would-be citizens by nationalities, secure their naturalization papers in groups by wholesale and vote them in the interests of any vicious legislative or administrative proposition that may be up. The saloon-keeper, usually him- self foreign-born, is the intermediate agent and his place is not only headquarters but it also furnishes the necessary "medium of ex- change." The new arrival gets much of his first ideas of American liberty in the saloon or from saloon patrons. After a while he learns that there are laws regulating its hours of sale and ordering it to close on Sunday ; these are sys- tematically violated, in many places. Coming from a country where he was subject to an excess of law and where obedience was strictly enforced he goes to the opposite ex- treme. With this type of liberty as precedent, run by his own countrymen who interpret American liberty to him, he can not be ex- pected to gain a very high respect for our laws. Instead of loving freedom here the 118 THE RELATIOX OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. more on account of birth under oppression, as did the earHer immigrants, he gains the im- pression that Hberty means do as you choose and refuses to be governed by the regulations under which only liberty is possible. "More than any other one factor, the saloon has broken down the American Sabbath and ush- ered in the Continental Sunday, disdaining in most cases even to change the law, but accom- plishing its work in spite of the law. It is in the saloon that Anarchism finds a rendezvous and an inspiration, and the red flag has never floated to the American breeze except from an American saloon."^ Under cover of loyalty to the social customs of the fatherland, and in accordance with this distorted idea of liberty, organized defiance to law and its enforcement is made in our great cities and candidates elected to office on this issue. The so-called "United Societies for Personal Liberty" in Chicago, composed of beer-loving Germans, Polish and Bohemians, has for its one purpose the open ignoring of the Sunday closing and other similar laws. They claim to represent the German element ; they do not ; they stand only for that part that is determined to have their booze at any cost of public decency. The best elements of these nationalities in the city are strictly opposed to their "liberal" princi- ples. The general criminality of foreigners is two and one-half times that of natives, due, chiefly, to the lower grade of the present in- coming stream from Southern and Eastern Europe. But the children of foreigners, born in this country, show a much higher rate of 119 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. crime than do the foreign-born children of these same famihes.^ Under the environment furnished by the saloon, its vices, its political power and defiance of law, and other asso- ciated evils, the first generation of our present foreign population is the most crime-hardened of all classes in this country — much worse than the new arrivals themselves. "But above and beyond all, the saloon has organized, and in a large part created, a pur- chaseable vote whose proportions have alarmed even American optimism." . . . "It is this above all that makes the drink question one that lies, as Cobden said, 'at the foundation of all social and political reform.' ''* Sought after at once, on acount of his prospective vote, assisted to get fraudulent naturalization papers, shown how he may send these back home as a means of admitting other undesir- ables, selling his vote from year to year for a few drinks or a dollar or two, "in every way the alien is put on the wrong track and his American experiences are such as would nat- urally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corruption and venal agencies which find their origin in politics and the saloon."^ " 'Where God builds a church the devil builds next door a saloon" is an old saying that has lost its point in New York. Either the devil was on the ground first, or he has been doing a good deal more in the way of building. I tried once to find out how the account stood, and counted to 111 Protestant churches, chapels, and places of worship of every kind below Fourteenth Street, 4,065 120 THE RELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. saloons. The worst half of the tenement population lives down there, and it has to this day the worst half of the saloons. Up town the account stands a little better, but there are easily ten saloons to every church today."*' Its Mis-Education of the Public. — The American spirit of fair play grants to every industry the privilege of creating and main- taining for itself a place in the public mind. Publicity means not only attention, but also favorable attention. It is the life of trade under 20th century methods. The opportunity to educate sentiment in a business way is an outgrowth of the fundamental right of free speech. But publicity getting, that is education of public attention for private financial ends, is a right that must be strictly regulated. The most monstrous hoaxes and frauds have been per- petrated upon the public with every semblance of scientific truth and logic to support them. "Patent medicine" "cure-alls," first viciously suggesting disease where none exists, break- ing down self-respect and then supplying use- less and dangerous nostrums, are a common but mild form of abuse of this right. Govern- ment finds it wise to regulate strictly such sales under pure food and drug acts. Vicious, mendacious and obscene literature are forbid- den the use of the mails and are subject to police confiscation to prevent wholesale blight- ing of the public ideals of morality. No one would think of denying to the liquor trade the right of holding and enlarging its place in public opinion by reasonable and fairly honest methods. As it now stands it 121 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. has years of public approval back of it. If questioned, it has a right to show cause, at the bar of public opinion, why it should continue unrestricted. It may cite the millions of dol- lars it pays each year as license, tax and revenue to the support of the government, local and national, as proof of its loyalty and reason for its continuance ; it may point to the saloon as a place of democratic sociability where men may have recreation after a hard day's labor ; to the pleasure it furnishes those who drink and to its importance as a business industry in the community. But the liquor trade sadly abuses the Ameri- can spirit of fair play. Being engaged in supplying an article of merchandise which tends to produce the vice of intemperance, the reaction of such a trade upon the men engaged in it seems to cause them to lose all regard for truth. Apparently they are afraid to trust their wares to be judged on merit alone and must make their appeal for favorable attention on deception. There has long been a regular and system- atic attempt to defraud the public as to certain qualities of alcohol. Long extended series of newspaper and magazine advertising with false claims and spurious testimonials are constantly appearing. The use of certain brands of whisky are said to produce long life and health ; but the arguments used to substantiate the claim are misrepresentations and gross fraud. A favorite testimonial is the picture of a very old man, or woman, with a letter appa- rently from him, stating or suggesting that his health and long life are due to the constant 122 TKE RELATIOX OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. use of that brand of whisky. When traced down these cases are found, almost invariably, to have been people who were temperate all their lives, who were induced to take a sample of the "medicine" as a gift in return for sign- ing" a testimonial already written. The liquor agent follows the shrewd plan of getting the signature first. Sometimes these testimonials are pure fabrications made up in the advertis- ing section of the liquor firm by the advertis- ing manager. There is a widespread mis-instruction of the public as to the sociability features of the saloon. Retail dealers and their organizations constantly proclaim the saloon as the poor man's club ; they endeavor to make it serve in this capacity by supplying free lunch and music in order to gain custom and retain a hold upon the sympathies of the community. The saloon cultivates by direct instruction and suggestion the same false ideas of liberty in American born children and older people as it teaches to the newly arrived foreigner. Under the constitution there is no such thing as "personal liberty." It is "civil liberty" or "liberty of conscience" etc. not "personal." This idea, which carries with it so much im- plication of unrestricted opportunity to do as one pleases without regard to the rights of others, is a more recent importation. Liberty without law is not the original American con- ception that has gained the praise of the whole world. The public is constantly being deceived as to the extent and power of the liquor trade. The number of votes it controls, the amount of 123 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. money invested, its influence over other lines of business more or less related and the unity and strength of its organizations, local and national, are constantly exaggerated for the purpose of fixing deep the belief that it is use- less to attack so powerful an enemy. It indi- cates shrewd understanding of social psychol- ogy on the part of the trade's press agents. It further deflects attention from the real center of power in the business, the brewer and distiller, and tends to limit temperance effort to the near-at-hand saloon. The liquor trade purchases and controls newspapers and their editorial policy. Large payments for advertising space are made so as to prevent news reflecting upon the saloon and reports of temperance and prohibition progress being published. The opportunity thus furnished of dictating editorial policy on the liquor problem has meant more, doubtless, to the liquor business than the direct publicity gained for the particular brands of beer or liquors advertised. It has been one of the powerful means of keeping in check so long the present rising tide of local and general prohibition. But there is now a distinct revolt among the best and most independent papers against this policy of dictation by a com- munity-corrupting trade. Many magazines and dailies refuse to carry liquor advertise- ments at all on the same grounds that they throw out thinly veiled frauds in the form of patent medicines, "get-rich-quick" schemes and holes in the ground, called gold mines. Others are becoming more free and while re- ceiving advertisements are yet editorially at- 124 THE RELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. tacking the liquor business and giving freedom to prohibition news. The business control of liquor over the "people's university," the newspaper, is being loosened gradually but surely and more rapid progress toward the settlement of the whole problem may now be expected. Looking beneath the current methods of gaining publicity employed by the liquor busi- ness and the devices it uses for retaining a good trade and favor with the public we find the following: (1) Intense fear of a straight-out contest on the merits of the liquor question itself. (2) That the real strength of the pro- liquor propaganda and of the whole liquor traffic is the brewer and the distiller, not the individual saloon keeper or even the united saloons of a town or county. Ordinarily a few saloons alone are too small to withstand public sentiment. Besides from one-third to one-half are owned or controlled by the brewers. The real liquor problem, so far as organized opposi- tion to temperance is concerned, is the larger "trade" back of the retailer. Education and the Liquor Problem. — One of the earliest functions of government assumed by the states was the public education of chil- dren. The American public school system, the present outgrowth, is the greatest in the world. The saloon, and the liquor trade back of it, come into direct conflict with the school and what it stands for in a thousand ways. They make it necessary for vast numbers to remain out of school, after the first few years, on ac- 125 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. count of drunken parents ; it counteracts by suggestion and example the teachings of the school for thousands. Education by personal contact, suggestion and observation, are stronger than direct instruction — and they are always acting, in youth and older age alike. In its mis-education of the 1,000,000 arrivals from foreign shores each year as to what free- dom means in this country it is positively criminal. The saloon exists as a public social fact. That gives it standing. Anything that law permits, legalizes and secures revenue from is, in the eyes of most people, legitimate and right. No higher code of morals, public or private, exists than that which law recognizes. The saloon is educating public sentiments to- wards this standard. By a shrewd piece of business liquor dealers have for a long time endeavored to connect the public revenues from liquor license, taxes and fines with the cause of public education. It is one of their standard claims that the com- munity cannot get along without these fees ; that popular education will suffer. On the one hand, it seems like a sort of rude justice ; make the saloons pay the expense of education, the trend of which is always away from the culti- vation of such habits as intemperance. Also from this point of view the tax-payer seems to have his assessments lowered by the applica- tion of the license income to such close-at-hand public expenses as the support of the schools. On the other hand, the broader social views are tw^o incontrovertible facts ; first, the pay- ment of these fees into the school, or any other 126 THE RELATION OF LIQUOR TO EDUCATION. local fund, intrenches the saloon behind short- sighted cupidity and insures its perpetuation. Second, the saloon, running continuously day after day, is able to counteract to a large ex- tent much of the work of the school in the cultivation of morals and secure a full quota of new recruits for itself. Notwithstanding the immense amount of money that this trade pays into the public treasuries each year to be used for school pur- poses, the whole saloon business is in competi- tion with our public schools. The government has no right to accept money from the one to apply to the other. Its only right attitude is to crush out completely this enemy of child- hood and youth and of their best friend, the public school. References and Authorities. The Saloon and the Public School. American Prohibition Year Book (1908), 120. Delinquences and Disability in School Children. Keren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem," 126-132. Benedict, "Waifs of the Shmis." MacNichol, "Alcohol and the Disabilities of School Children ;" address at the 57th Annual Session, American Medical Association in Boston; National Advocate, February, 1908. 'Dr. MacNichol. ^ Report of Illinois State Reformatory, Pontiac, for 1903-4. Mis-Education of the Foreigner. Hall, "Immigration," 183-189. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 81-88. Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClure's Apr. '07. Riis, "How the Other Half Lives." ' Hall, "Immigration," 22. 127 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. = Wheeler, "Prohibition," 84. 'Hall, "Immigration," 150-151. ' Wheeler, 84. ° Grose, "Aliens and Americans," 216. •Riis, "How the Other Half Lives," ch. 18. Mis-Education of the Public. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 187-191. American Prohibition Year Book (1908), 124-126. 188 CHAPTER VIII. THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. The Sociability Source of Intemperance. — As a means of expressing a feeling of sociability the use of alcoholic drinks, it is well to state frankly, is quite thoroughly fixed in a large part of our current social custom. Among certain classes liquors have been used for ages at social functions, in clubs and informal meetings and in the home. Of recent years the saloon has largely taken the place of home use, with the result that exces- sive drinking has been increased and frequent- ly, the family broken up, while at the same time a relatively smaller nuniber of individuals do the drinking. Without regard to whether it is good or bad, or whether a better means of sociability might not readily be procured, alcoholic liquors do serve with a great many people as a popular method of gaining the friendship of companions and of expressing a feeling of fellowship. In this sense the saloon appeals to a funda- mental social instinct, sociability. It supplies something really necessary in human life, it is true, but in quality a very shoddy article at a very high cost of morals and money. The appetite for alcohol, the first and most persis- 129 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. tent source of the liquor evil, is a perverted taste, a diseased appetite. The desire to gain wealth, which prompts the dealer to push his sales so vigorously, while all right so far as the honest earning of money is concerned, has gone so far as a social fact that it is noth- ing less than money making out of the vices and excesses of other people — the worst of economics. The government sanction of the business by taxation and license afTords a fine revenue, but a fearful moral blight to the pub- lic conscience. So, perhaps, the only point that may be made in favor of the saloon is that it does furnish a certain amount and kind of social pleasure. It is no respecter of persons, but purely as a business matter it is open to everybody, rich and poor, at all times and without regard to social or moral standing. The saloonkeeper never asks embarrassing questions or places restrictions upon the con- duct of his patrons so long as they do not become too boisterous. The saloon has thus seized upon social want and proceeds to supply it in its own way. "The public house prokem is largely, by no means wholly, a question of forgotten needs," that is, of socia- bility needs. This ground the saloon has filled, or usurped, and these needs are there satisfied, not hy, hut in spite of alcohol and intoxication. The business aim of selling all the liquor possible is the only one that may be credited justly to the liquor dealer. Methods for the solution of the saloon prob- lem as a part of the larger liquor problem, social and political, as we have it, must take 130 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the sociability feature into consideration. If there is a certan amount of usefulness in the saloon it should be known. There is no use going at the work blindly. If, on the other hand, the saloon is a powerful competitor with better means of sociability and a source of social vice to the community, the good which it may do can be no excuse for the greater evils. Palliative measures will be found to be both insufficient and wrong. The welfare of society as a whole and the effects of the saloon upon it must be the only final test of its social worth. The Saloon as a Social Center. — The seeking of pleasure of the right kind is one of the legitimate aims of every individual in society, as well as a chief end of social organ- ization. It is as important to health and all- round manhood to be able to relax after hard labor as it is to work. "The destruction of a legitimate pleasure is a positive moral loss to the world, and no nature can be anything but dwarfed in which the faculty of enjoy- mlent has not been developed.'" The strongest plea that can be made for liquor is that it furnishes social pleasure. This it does, first, by means of the "social glass" to the two or three or more taking it together, and, second, by means of the saloon serving as a social center for certain classes of people who either prefer the kind of society to be found there or who have or can find no other place open to them. It is only among certain classes of people that the saloon acts in this capacity. There 131 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. are many who drink who get all their recrea- tion and amusement elsewhere. They are largely the more able classes financially, who can pay for a better quality of social enter- tainment. There are large numbers in all grades of society who patronize the saloon exclusively or chiefly* for the liquors. After all that may be said in its favor as a social center, the saloon is first, last and all the time the place for the sale of intoxicants ; and the primary purpose of the saloon patron is to get alcohol and alcoholic drinks. The saloon- keeper makes his place free and hospitable to all for the one end of selling more liquors. The people who respond in any important degree to the sociability features of the sa- loon are : 1. The more well-to-do or wealthy classes who distinctly prefer the sort of sociability that accompanies or follows alcoholic intoxi- cation ; those with blunted moral tastes and distorted social ambitions, the degenerate rich. They make the saloon a sort of club or trans- form their club into a saloon. They might get excellent society elsewhere, but they are not satisfied with it. They can offer no valid ob- jection against any interference that may be made with this sort of personal liberty in the interests of public welfare. 2. The outcast and degenerate of other classes who seek their associates among the ex-criminals, embryonic criminals, loafers, professional beggars, etc., of the low-down groggery. Saloons of this type are found in all our large cities; they are the rendezvous 132 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. for all kinds of evil-inclined men who are a burden upon society. Among both of these classes, the rich and the very poor, the sort of sociability offered caters directly to social vice and gambling of the worst sorts. 3. There is a relatively small but impor- tant class of business men who use the saloon as a place for business appointments. Cus- tomers are more readily won and better bar- gains made, as they believe, over a glass of beer or champagne. It is interesting to note that this sort of business sociability is de- creasing among many of the better and most successful houses. 4. There yet remain the working classes who regard the saloon as a place for social intercourse. Here the real problem is found. First, this class is the largest in the total and per capita consumption of liquors. Sec- ond, their opportunities for social enjoyment, separate from the saloon, are m:ore limited, and so they are compelled to depend upon it more. In a word, it is the laboring man, and he alone, who may claim the saloon as in any sense a real "social center." Here he finds relaxation after a long day in the dust and roar of the factory such as the crowded and slouchy rooms he calls home will not furnish; here he can escape the cry- ing children and get the companionship of men interested in the same things he is ; there are games, cards, pool, reports from the races and prize fights, sometimes music and a warm place in which to enjoy them. There is no feeling of constraint; on the con- 133 S;)CIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. trary, the manager is glad to have him re- main so long as he is spending money. All these enjoyments may be purchased for an evening at the exceedingly small price of a few beers, or even for a single glass with a free lunch thrown in. The saloon is a democratic institution, open freely to everyone and criticising no one. "The Poor Man's Club." — The tendency toward club life is growing in this twentieth century. Never before were people so anx- ious to unite into associations with more or less organization and frequent meetings and with social, or social and economic aims com- bined, as at present. Everything from a "street Arab's" gang and a college fraternity to a labor union and a mutual benefit asso- ciation emphasizes this fact. The average unskilled workman takes out his club life almost exclusively in the saloon. It is the social center for hundreds of thou- sands of the dwellers in our cities, chiefly the poorer classes of people. Those who are not patrons of the saloon find their social enjoy- ment elsewhere. They usually have fair or good homes and have a part in self-supporting club or church or other organized social life. The workingman does not enter these. The saloon is where he meets his associates, plays his game and relaxes after the day's labor. Here he gets his free lunch as well as his drink. It has therefore come to be called "the poor mar 's club." Efforts to do away with it are resented as an attack upon the poor man b; the more well-to-do. There is 134 T!1E SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. a Strong and unreasonable opposition, often amounting to hatred, among laboring men, especially the more unskilled, against temper- ance and prohibition workers for this very reason. It is needless to say that this is fos- tered by the liquor dealers themselves and class antagonism is appealed to to support the business. The unreasonableness of the claim that the saloon is the poor man's club is shown when the large number of saloons, sometimes of the worst kind, supported ex- clusively by the wealthy, is pointed out. The so-called "upper classes" are found to main- tain clubs in which drinking is one of the very chief purposes. The saloon is not so much the poor man's club as it is the drink- ing man's club. On one hand it may be conceded that the saloon is the place in which vast numbers of laboring men find their only enjoyment. On the other it is no less evident that it is the presence of the saloon that makes better social life impossible, (i) It is here, ready established, easy to adopt by every young man or boy. (2) It is able to compete, in the sense of drawing men to it, both by means of its liquors and its less harmful attractions, with any and every "substitute" that has yet been placed in the field. With the brewers' millions of wealth behind the saloonkeeper, if occasion demands, it can hold its own in furnishing entertainment to an almost unlim- ited extent. (3) Many saloons offer evil in- ducements, the satisfaction of evil appetites, questionable amusements and gambling. This 135 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. is not the kind of social club workingmen need. The low cost, at which the saloon furnishes its numerous attractions is one of the strong features in making it popular. One reason why laboring men do not form clubs of their own is because they cannot afford the mem- bership dues that would be required to pay for well-furnished quarters and equipment. Yet no one doubts for a minute that the saloonkeeper does all this purely as a business venture, often furnishing to lodges, labor unions and other organizations, rooms, heated and lighted, near to the saloon, absolutely free of cost. It is inconceivable that the money which pays for the drinks, plus the "attrac- tions" provided by the saloon, would not pay for the attractions alone if the drinks were absent. How can we help concluding that while the saloon now acts as a sort of poor man's club, it is the club which, taking advantage of his poverty and of his desire for intoxi- cants, makes him pay more for his social life than any other class of people with moderate or low earnings? Counter Attractions. — "The negative and destructive methods employed in social reform movements should be accompanied or followed by positive and constructive ones." The ap- plication of this sociological principle to the saloon question calls for "some broad, rational and practical method of counterbalancing the various motives that lead men to patronize the saloon."' The idea of a "substitute," how- 136 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. ever, in the opinion of Professor Barker, should not be limited to a rival business in competition with the saloon — a social institu- tion run next door or across the street to draw men away from it, but to satisfying the motives, so far as they are worthy ones, or indicate any real need, in other and more nat- ural ways. There are many organizations and clubs, both philanthropic and self-supporting, which provide healthful amusement and recreation. These, intentionally or unintentionally, serve as counter attractions for the saloon to some extent. But the great need of our large cities is for more, many more and better ones, those in which there will be more inducements as well as more of a feeling of freedom' on the part of those for whom they are established. The most successful of these institutions at present are coffee houses, lunch rooms, read- ing rooms, bowling alleys and other athletic games not in connection with saloons, recrea- tion centers, social settlements, the better grades of theaters and parks, especially the small parks in dense residence neighborhoods. These all supply means to sociability of a pure kind away from the temptations of the saloon. But their number is all too meager and the hours of closing often too early. The Young Men's Christian Associations to some extent serve in this capacity, but their field is largely limited to clerical and railroad men and strange young men of the better class coming from the country and small towns. They do not, to any marked extent, 137 SOCIAL \VK1,FARK AND THE LIQUOR PKOHLICNF. counteract the attractions of the saloon to those who need them most. The essential principle of this movement must be the suppl^^ing of healthful relaxa- tion free from the sale of intoxicating liquors. There can be no temporary surrender of this principle in favor of the lighter alcoholics or increased temptation to the young is sure to follow. If the lightest beer should be served in connection with the best of amuse- ments it might be a good means of weaning off the old toper, but it would be the fatal attracting influence that would start thousands of young men and boys to acquiring the alco- hol habit under respectable surroundings. Anything that does this is sure to increase later the number of regular saloon patrons who go there for the liquors alone. The ab- sence of liquor must be complete or the attrac- tion will be toward, instead of away from, the saloon. The man who takes his recreation and social pleasure at the saloon feels that he is paying for what he gets. And he certainly is paying full price. The saloon is not run for charity, but for business. The independent wage earner, even if he is quite poor, knows this and apprecites it. If he is at all self-respect- ing he resents the doing of things for him by outsiders with an air of charity about them. The rightly organized counter attraction will take note of this principle by requiring that the accommodations which it gives shall be good and that payment, at least in part, shall be insisted upon. But he himself must re- 138 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. member that a self-respecting man cannot se- sure the social enjoyments he so much needs while so large a share of his meagre earnings go for beer. The question of providing counter attrac- tions rightly belongs to the school, the church, the popular lecture, the night and trade schools, the trade unions, the private clubs and organizations and the thousand and one forms of social enjoyment open to healthful society. It is the saloon that, for economic ends, has usurped this ground and that tends to rtm sociability into vice. The duty of voluntary organizations of this kind is to follow up and supplement more radical restrictive and prohibitory measures ; to supplement organized social force, govern- ment. In this new profession, or mission, a force of our best college trained men and women is needed in our large cities as social workers. With substitution measures alone the power of the saloon to corrupt society will remain practically unbroken. Its power to offer at- tractions is unlimited. "The saloons that at- tract most men are those that harbor gambling and shelter prostitutes. The saloons with concert halls, where so many men and women are lured to drink and dance, have their walls decorated with suggestive and indecent pic- tures, and one hears songs of the most re- volting character. The whole atmosphere re- veals a total lack of modesty and common decency.'" No philanthropic or semi-philan- thropic, or even legitimate business enterprise, 139 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. can counteract the fascination of the average saloon, with such "attractions," combined with the appetite for liquors, as it offers to vast numbers of people in all grades of society. The saloon is not the "poor man's club." It is primarily the drink-loving man's club, whether poor or rich. So long as alcohol is one of the forces in the saloon there is and can be no substitute for it' furthermore, social welfare demands that there shall be no such substitute. "Reform the Saloon"— The Subway Ex- periment. — Frequently eft'orts to reform the saloon, make it more respectable and free it from some of its most open objections, or eliminate private profits in the retail sale, are proposed as temperance measures. These sug- gestions originate sometimes from liquor men, especially the dealers in the stronger liquors, who wish to keep the trade in better opinion before the public by eliminating the most ap- parent evils and shutting down the low grog- geries. Such efforts are only in a restricted sense of the nature of substitutes, and have none of the advantages of true counter at- tractions. They do have all their objections, however, and many others besides. 1. Saloon reform fails to take into account the appetite for intoxicants and the opportun- ity to cultivate it, that all kinds of drink, and especially the most "pure," afford. 2. That the quality of sociability afforded with drink accompaniment tends to become, if it is not already so, vicious and criminal and a menace to social welfare. 3. That, as the high license saloon, with 140 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. all its brilliant and costly attractions, needs its accompanying law-breaking finishing-off places and the dispensary its nearby "blind tiger," so even the high-grade saloon with its private profits eliminated, needs some sort of place where the appetite there formed may continue to be satisfied after the respectability of the drinker has been lost, 4. The attractions about a saloon will in- crease the amount of liquor sold, but the liquor will not increase, but will rather di- minish, the trade in "soft drinks" and other features designed to take the place of alco- holics. The noted Subway Tavern of New York, opened in August, 1904, was intended as a model reform saloon. It was incorporated by a company of men especially interested in social movements. Their honest purpose was to free it from all the evils of the ordinary saloon, except alcohol. The drinks were to be pure and of the best quality, but sold at usual rates. The element of private profits was eliminated almost entirely, the manager being paid a salary, and the profits, after a certain fixed per cent to stockholders, were to go toward establishing similar places. A restaurant and lunch counter, a room right in the front, where only temperance drinks were sold, opportunities for reading and recre- ation and amusement were to make it a "poor man's club," where men could drink alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks without getting drunk and could enjoy themselves under good moral surroundings. 141 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. The place was opened with much publicity and an immense amount of public advertis- ing. The opening service, in which Bishop Potter, one of the incorporators, said, "This is the greatest social movement New York has ever known," closed with the doxology and the bishop's prayer of consecration upon the new social enterprise. Although it received more free advertising than any other institution ever started in that city, it did not succeed. The beer-drinker went back to the ordinary barroom, where he could have more freedom and get as much beer at the same price ; the sightseers and curiosity crowds that made it run smoothly the first few months ceased to be attracted by the novelty. In thirteen months the place was sold out and is being run now as a regular saloon. A new bar has taken the place of the soda fountain and men may now walk boldly in at the front door to get their beer instead of going furtively through the side entrance. In the words of the new owner, "You can't follow the Lord and chase the devil at the same time." "The biggest patron of the sa- loon is the man with the biggest thirst." A typical near-by tenement dweller, who has lived in the neighborhood twenty years, seemed to catch the social principles under- lying counter attractions for the saloon better than did the sociological gentlemen who pro- moted the Tavern when he said : "When I see how them rich people spend money to do something for our wives and children, I take my hat off to them, but when they get 'bit' 142 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. for a thing like that, when they let every Tom, Dick and Harry come along and get them to put up money for that kind of a thing and think we want it, then I knozv they don't or don't want to, understand ns — and I get dis- couraged." Substitution as a Temperance Measure. — The modern effort to find a satisfactory "sub- stitute" for the saloon is a recognition of the part that the sociability source has to play in the whole vast liquor problem. It is well for the temperance cause that this is being better known, so that constructive efforts by social service workers may accompany and follow the repressive and restrictive measures made necessary by the other three sources. Substitution aims directly at one of the foundations of the evil and at but one of them. But it is intimately connected with the problem of better homes for the poor of our great cities, with home and public sanitation, in- struction in the values of food and in cooking, the question of wages and hours of labor and other industrial and metropolitan problems. Much can be done in these respects to keep men from ever going to the saloon ; far more can be accomplished when the saloon, as the unjust competitor with these righteous efforts, is driven out by organized force. To the extent that substitution is or can be successful it is a decided temperance measure and worthy of the greatest support. But it takes into consideration only one of the four sources of the actual liquor problem. I . The most persistent source of the liquor 143 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. evil, the taste for alcoholics, is left practi- cally untouched. The improvement of the workingman's home life, better cooking, bet- ter sanitation, reduced hours of work, will to some extent reduce the desire for stimulants which sometimes leads to the acquiring of the appetite. But only to a degree. It is a well- known fact that many in the well-to-do and many in the middle classes, people with the best of home life, every opportunity for good cooking, etc., yet fall back upon the frequent use of intoxicants. 2. The economic source, the profits of the dealer, cannot be touched by this method. In fact, it but accentuates this source. It makes the saloonkeeper, backed by the brewer, more intense to secure new trade, encourages him to ofiFer more temptations to the young and out-attract the most successful counter attractions. Sidney Webb has applied Gresham's law of currency, that bad money will drive out good money when both are in circulation, to all forms of competition. Count- erfeit money must be "prohibited" before good money will circulate. The sale of liquors must be removed before social clubs, settle- ments, reading rooms, healthful athletic as- sociations and Y. M, C. A.'s can do their best work. It is the saloon which is the counterfeit social center; the others are the proper fields for the expression of the social self. 3. The legal sanction of the government is upon the saloon rather than upon the "sub- stitute" as matters now stand. It takes from 144 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the saloon a $500 or $1,000 license fee to pay city expenses, provide a strong- police force to take care of the crime product of the saloon, and relieve private taxation ; in doing so it gives the dealer a just cause to demand protection from irritating enforcement of re- strictive laws. The license policy gives the saloon an undue social prominence, while the "substitute" must struggle for a precarious public support. Further, what law pronounces as right most people accept at once as right and permissable for them in conduct. Every effort to win people away from the saloon has to meet this attitude. Notwithstanding its limitations, work which amounts to substitution is a most valuable tem- perance measure, first, as a means of co-oper- ating with and supplementing legal destruction of the saloon and its evils and, second, as a part in the broad general cause of social ad- vancement just where it is most needed. But for the ordinary American stand-up saloon where men go to drink as their chief pur- pose there is and should be no substitute. The following bit of recent testimony is exceedingly valuable as showing the attitude of that class of men most dependent of all upon the saloon for their social enjoyment if they are to have any at all. Mr. C. M. Stocking, of Minneapolis, superintendent of the Union City Mission, on December 4, 1905, conducted a meeting of 150 laboring men, most of whom lived in lodging houses, and all of whom were regular drinkers. The object was a free-for-all discussion of the saloon and 145 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. substitutes for it. Specific questions, after abundant discussion, were voted upon as fol- lows : "Do men first go to the saloon to enjoy a social hour or do they go there to take a drink?" The vote was, drink 50, social hour "If all saloons in this city ceased to sell liquor, but kept every other attraction they now have, could they retain one-tenth of their customersf" Only eight voted affirmatively. "How many of the men here to-night go to the saloon for the sake of the liquor sold there?" One hundred and five hands were raised. "Can you suggest any substitute for the sa- loon?" The vote stood, Yes 30, No 50. On further discussion a clean-kept lodging house with opportunity for amusements at a reason- able rate seem to be most desired. A few wanted places where pure liquors could be sold. But all agreed upon one thing — that nothing furnishing the accommodations and attractions and comforts of the saloon with intoxicating drinks left out would be of any special interest to them. The other things were good, but they would not take the place of the drink. References and Authorities. The Sociability Source of Intemperance. Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 1-7. Peabody, "Substitutes for the Saloon," Forum, 21, 595- Wheeler, "Prohibition," 90. 146 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," 184-188. Stelzel, "The Working Man and Social Prob- lems," 40-46. Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Prob- lem," 210-240. The Saloon as a Social Center. Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 1-24. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 90-92. Peabody, "Substitutes for the Saloon," Forum, 21, 595- Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," 184-188. Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClure's Maga- zine (Apr., 1907), 28, 575. Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Prob- lem," 210-240. ' Wheeler, "Prohibition," 90. " The Poor Man's Club." Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 45-53. Stelzel, "The Working Man and Social Prob- lems," 37-50. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Prob- lem," 364-367. Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClure's, 28, 575. Barker, "The Saloon Problem," 184-185. Counter Attractions. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," 179-195. Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 25-44, ^96- 207, 216-242. Peabody, "Substitutes for the Saloon," Forum, 21, 595- Smith, "Liquor and Labor," Catholic World, 47, 539- Stelzel, "The Workingman and Social Problems," 48-50. ' Barker, "The Saloon Problem," 180. " Barker, "The Saloon Problem," 186. " Reform the Saloon." "The Temperance Problem and the Subway Tav- ern," International Magazine, Jan., 1905. 147 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. "Collapse of the Subway Tavern," National Tem- perance Advocate, Oct., 1905. Independent, June 22, 1905. Substitution as a Temperance Measure. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," ^79-195- „ , „ Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 25-30, 216- 242. Stelzel, "The Workingman and Social Problems," 48-SO. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 90-92. Smith, "Liquor and Labor," Catholic World, 47, 539. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Prob- lem," 393-407- 148 CHAPTER IX. THE ETHICAL PHASE. The Social Ethics of the Saloon.— Just what is right or wrong in regard to the various chases of the Hquor problem can not always b-^- stated. Neither the personal act of drinking nor the social one of making and selling should be measured ethically by an arbitrary standard. It is not in itself wrong to drink a glass of beer; even when it does contain 4 per cent, alcohol which science regards as a poi- son ; it may be permissible, or it may be a vile wrong. It depends upon whether or not the glass of beer, or the later ones it may call for, injures that particular drinker or those de- pendent upon him. The sale and the manu- facturing for sale, the social acts, should like- wise be judged by a standard similar in char- acter and no less arbitrary than the welfare of the social unit or of the community as a whole. The saloon stands for both the "habit" and the "trade." It is w^here the former is created and gratified by the ordinary business sagacity of the latter. Its results are readily seen in the mass, free from exceptions. It there- fore affords a concrete example of the whole problem, ethically, although by no means is it a complete representative of the power of the liquor trade economically or politically. We 149 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM, should judge the saloon, in brief, by a social ethical standard that will permit the greatest possible degree of individual freedom, to would-be user and dealer, conformable to pub- lic welfare as a whole. This standard is zvhether its acts and its product bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number. The saloon is good or bad, relatively, as it leads toward or from this standard. The self- benefit or injury to the immediate maker or user is not a sufficiently broad unit with which to measure an institution so fixed in current social life. It would not be right to deny to a majority a healthful or merely a rel- atively non-injurious pleasure on account of the intemperance and excesses of a few. It is the great average run of normal, inevitable consequences upon the family, the dependent friends and the community that condemns the saloon and the drinking habit as socially bad. One of the greatest authorities on social ethics says that conduct in relation to our fel- lows is "good or bad according to its assumed effects upon the largest range of associations that we can take into account.'" John Stuart Mills says "The standard of morality is the rules and precepts of conduct which procure the greatest happiness in quantity and quality for all mankind."' Certainly the saloon takes into account only a very small range of human needs and associations. For the sake of fur- nishing a choice of livelihood to a few thou- sand men and gratifying a created and abnor- mal physical craving, for satisfying a very normal and fundamental desire, sociability 150 THE ETHICAL PHASE. and good-fellowship, in a questionable way it injures millions of non-indulging women, children and even men, as well as those who actually become victims to the habit, physic- ally, financially, morally, blighting them for this world and for eternity. It throws upon society a burden in the care of paupers, crim- inals, and defective humanity greater than that caused by any other one source and degrades the public conscience by permitting the gov- ernment to take a share of its profits as a small compensation for the immeasurable burdens it entails upon the present and future genera- tions. Balancing by the number and quality of associations to be taken into account we get a result which condemns ethically both the sa- loon and the drinking custom. Freedom to the dealer in the choice of a trade is offset by the dangers and losses which that trade brings the community. It is not a difficult matter to enter another business; it is not a great surrender of personal liberty to the public good. It is not a question of reducing the number of opportunities open for the earning of a livelihood; if so, the overthrow of the saloon might be a more serious disturbance to business than it is. The sum total of public wealth would be greater without this parasite upon economic welfare; therefore each man's share, including the ex-saloon-keepers, v.'ould be greater. In- creased consumption of legitimate articles would call for labor in production and sale that will far more than take up that spent in the production of liquors. 151 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. The financial profit to the individual is also offset by the moral and financial losses to the community and by the fact that no trade has a right to exist, irrespective of its financial pros- perity, that makes its profits out of individual or community vices. The happiness of the drinker in his freedom to drink is balanced by that of his wife and children, an average of four to one in quan- tity, and equal in quality, to say nothing of that of the public which must share in the re- sults of his conduct. It is only in its sociability features that the saloon gets anv real ethical support. Here it has seized upon a neglected factor ; it has had handed over to it by the community the mo- nopoly of the social life of the majority of American wage-earners.^ They find in it al- most their only recreation, relaxation and freedom from care. The saloon gives them more comforts, companionship, papers, music, amusement, games, and even better food than they have at home or in the lodging house. Thus it furnishes them a material and so- ciability uplift; with no other and worse feat- ures the saloon would be an ethical uplift, also. It supplies this satisfaction not always by, but sometimes in spite of alcohol and intoxication, although the "booze" is the one indispensable factor in procuring thein. But in taking his recreation in the saloon the workingman is depriving his family of their same, equal right and share in relaxa- tion and escape from the burdens of the day. Women and children must remain at home or 152 THE ETHICAL PHASE. go upon the streets. It thus encourages self- ishness and leads to the blighting of the home, as well as taking the money that might pro- cure happiness for all. Spencer, the great apostle of personal liberty, who regarded it as a virtue to be preserved above all others, yet insists upon its being limited by the necessity of granting to others the same equal rights and privileges. Saloon sociability is essentially contrary to this principle; it is always selfish. With the famil}^ as a basis it is a clear case of suffering by the majority to gratify the ques- tionable pleasures of a minority. In quality the sociability found in the sa- loon is usually worse than none at all. The average saloon is gross and vulgar. The air is bad, the conversation profane and obscene. The moral effects aside from the drinks are usually unwholesome. "The saloons that at- tract most men are those that harbor gambling and shelter prostitutes.'" In the words of a prominent liquor paper bent on "elevating the trade," "The average saloon is out of line with public sentiment. . . . It is a resort for all tough characters, and in the South for all idle negroes. It is generally on a promi- nent street and is usually run by a sport who cares only for the almighty dollar. From this resort the drunken man starts reeling to his home ; at this resort the local fights are in- dulged in. It is a stench in the nostrils of so- cietv and a disgrace to the wine and spirit trade."^ Further than this "the public saloon and sa- loon system is a vast organized inciter of hu- 153 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. man appetite. It is an omnipresent, publicly sactioned temptation to evil. It exists not be- cause man, by nature, must drink, but be- cause, by proper incentives, man can be made to drink, and there is money in selling it to him. The craving of large numbers of people for alcoholic liquors is no more to be charged to the Creator than is the craving of certain people for opium, or of many for tobacco, or the irresistible tendency of others to utter themselves in copius profanity. These, and other like them, are strictly acquired habits, perverted and evil habits, acquired in associa- tion with companions of evil." ' The fact remains that the saloon furnishes pleasure, both the happiness of association and the stim.ulating effects of the drink itself, to a large number of people who do not use it to excess and who do not apparently leave any burden on society — the moderate drinking business man, of the middle classes and the men of means. It is shown' that 50 per cent, of the entire population of Boston patronize the saloons of that city every day ; in Chicago the daily patronage is greater than 50 per cent, of its 2,000.000 population. Not all of these are dependent upon the saloon for their social en- joyment. For them, therefore, the restric- tion that would come from the expulsion of the saloon would not be a serious one; they may well be compelled to yield this one privi- lege in the interests of the public who must bear the burdens of those who do go to excess. The toxic dangers of alcohol are so great, the social vices coming from the saloon are so 154 THE ETHICAL PHASE. insidious, its political influence so corrupting to the state and the type of citizenship it creates so bad that the pleasures of even the most moderate drinkers become relatively unim- portant and should not be considered in face of the larger needs of the community. "A serious thing it may be to curtail the pleasures of mankind ; but is it not far more serious to continue pleasures that can be had only by the continuance of conditions that are certain ever and everywhere, to entail upon countless thou- sands woes that are immeasurable? The issue is not the wine-cup of which poets sang, but the saloon whose horrors only a Dante could fittingly describe?'" The Attitude of the Church.— The three great organized moral forces of society are the home, the school and the church. Upon their welfare the ethical standards of the State depend. Government recognizes the ethical need when it protects these institutions from the encroachments of the saloon whose teach- ings are found, in practice and principle, to run directly counter to their type of instruc- tion. The church is, or ought to be, pre-eminently the leader in the righting of social, as well as individual, wrongs. In it is found "the high- est form of moral organization known to man. In it the best impulses and teachings of the home, and the noblest and purest unfoldings of the school, find their sweetest and ripest fruitage, their development nearest the di- vine." ' The chief aim of the church is to make men 155 SOCIAL WELFARE AXD THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. better, both individually and collectively. Its methods are, and must continue to be, "moral suasion," not force, or law. It would defeat itself if it undertook to compel men to be good. But it must hold up the standard of right for the individual and for organized so- ciety and government incessantly or it misses the object for which it exists. It is one of the most hopeful signs of early success in the anti- liquor movement that the church has recently com.e to recognize its social responsibility in grappling with the saloon and the political and business forces back of it. In its work the church is in direct conflict with the saloon. Between it, aiming to build up the morality of the community, and the liquor trade as it actually exists in most places, there is nothing in common but inherent an- tagonism. Only the briefest possible outline of the attitude of the church can be given here. 1. The teachings of the Bible as the founda- tion of the Christian religion are essentially against personal intemperance, the offering of temptation to use strong drink and the reap- ing of private or public profit from the sale of intoxicants. 2. In accordance with its fundamental prin- ciples and its own experience the church in America has come, practically, to the conclu- sion that total abstinence for the individual is the only right and safe method of conduct It recognizes the higher freedom of the indi- vidual to be governed according to an edu- cated conscience yet, because of the dangers which lie in the alcohol habit when once ac- 156 THE {LTHICAL PHASE. quired, and the personal responsibility for ex- ample toward others, it believs that this is the right course of personal conduct for Christians. As exceptions much of the teach- inq-s of the Episcopal and Catholic and a few minor churches is for moderalion, but there are very many in all these churches who be- lieve absolutely in total abstinence. 3. Almost every Protestant church believes in positive exclusion of liquor dealers from membership and most of them will not receive contributions from the trade. Even in the Catholic church there is a growing demand that "Catholics everywhere get out and keep out of the saloon business." 4. In regard to the traffic Protestant churches, with the exception of the Episcopal and a few of the smaller denominations, de- clare for complete prohibition. The Episcopal favors a very high license policy, with the hope of reducing the evils of the traffic in ac- cordance with its emphasis of personal mod- eration rather than total abstinence. The Catholic church makes no official declaration as to the means of control but the number of ministers favoring severe restriction and pro- hibition is constantly increasing. This is sig- nificant as the experience of the church is largely among the classes which are more per- sonally interested in the trade and who have inherited drinking customs than the work of the Protestant churches has been. Experience is here teaching the same lesson — that the liquor trade mu.st be removed if the church is to do its best work. 157 SOCIAL WELFARE AXD THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. 5. That "it can never be legalized without sin" is a settled principle among the leading evangelical churches. Official declarations emphasize this more and more strongly and urge upon members the necessity of living up to it in practice. They specify the renting of property for saloon purposes, signing of peti- tions for license, voting for license, for license or taxation policies, for men favoring them or for political organizations and parties that sup- port the traffic or the license policy. 6. Recognizing the political source of the liquor power several prominent church or- ganizations have declared clearly as to what constitutes good moral conduct on the part of Christians politically as regards the liquor problem. They recognize that it is not the function of the church to dictate how a man shall vote but they indicate clearly for what political principals and organizations or par- ties he ought not vote. The action of the Methodist Episcopal church may be taken as reflecting the ethical standard of the largest Protestant church in America in this respect. It states that "We record our deliberate judg- ment that no candidate for any office which in any wa}- may have to do with the liquor traffic has a right to expect, nor ought to receive, the support of Christian men so long as he stands committed to the liquor interests or re- fuses to put himself in an attitude of open hos- tility to the saloon." * The Saloon Its Chief Competitor. — The more the church learns to appreciate its social mission in the community and to improve the conditions which are a menace to its work, 158 THE ETHICAL PHASE. the more it learns that the saloon is its heaviest competitor for men, especially young men. It has seized upon a function heretofore largely neglected by the church, the providing of the means and place of sociability for wage-earn- ers, young men and new arrivals in the cities. The brewers equip immense amusement parks at heavy expense, provide the games and ex- citements as well as the beer, and get an at- tendance of thousands every evening during the summer. When the church takes up this work, as it is now beginning to do slowly, but in earnest, in its settlement work, its clubs, men's Bible classes, gymnasiums, Y. M. C. A.'s, etc., the saloon becomes resentful and attempts to discredit the church, defame its ministers and counteract its labors to win men. The saloon is as well, if not better equipped for handling large numbers of men, than is the church. Throughout the country there are 236,000 places where liquor is sold openly^ as compared with the 207,707 churches of all denominations. In 1906 the total number of liquor dealers was 283,703^ and the ministers of all churches, protestant, catholic, Jewish, etc., was 159,503.2 Frequently the church buildings are grouped together in the better parts of the cities and towns and are hard to reach by those Vv'ho need their help most. The tendency of the brewers, the backers of the saloon, on the other hand, is to establish a grog shop, when it is not positively excluded by law, in every separate section or commun- ity where it can possibly support itself or create a new trade for itself. The saloon goes where the people are ; the church seems to ex- 169 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. pect the masses to accommodate themselves to it. Church membership increased at the rate of 2.7 per cent. ; while the increase in the con- sumption of liquors was 10.35 per cent. The saloon runs from 16 to 20 hours per day for six, or even seven days a week. The church is open one whole day and an average of two or three nights more each week. In Boston a few years ago careful investi- gation ^ showed that the daily patronage of the saloons, counting "repeaters," visitors and people living in the suburbs, as 50 per cent, of the total population of the city. They spent on an average ten cents each visit. At the same time the patronage of all such institu- tions as may properly be regarded as furnish- ing competition with the saloon, such as read- ing rooms, coffee-clubs, and lunch rooms not intended exclusively as eating places, etc., was 76,268, also including "repeaters" and people from out-of-town. The average daily attend- ance at the Y. M. C. A. was 1061.* The pro- portionate attendance was 1 at the places free from alcohol to 3.3 at the saloons. In Chicago there are 1.000 churches, chap- els and missions of all kinds. There are, as counter attractions, 7,200 saloons ; the former are open from one to three nights per week and all day Sunday; the latter run from 15 to 24 hours a day and seven days in the week, some never closing the year around. If the average attendance at the saloons is the same as in Boston, that is 50 per cent of the total population, and there is no reason to think it lower, there are 1,000.000 visits made daily to 160 THE ETHICAL PHASE. these saloons. The Y. M. C. A. in all its de- partments shows an average daily attendance of 3,351, including repeaters and men who live in the suburbs. It has been carefully estimated' that of the 14,250,000 young men in the United States between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five 9,059,000, or 63.5 per cent, never attend church at any time. The remaining 36.5 per cent includes all those wdio go occasionally, merely for amusement, as well as the mem- bers and active w^orkers. "It is safe to say that 95 per cent of the young men do little or nothing in an aggressive way to promote the organized Christian work of the churches."** At the present time there are not fewer than 16,000,000 young men in the country, of which 10,160,000 never enter a church door and of which 900,000 constitute the actual Christian working force. In marked contrast is the vast number that visit saloons, some regularly, some only occasionally. It is not confined within a sin- gle million. Figures are not available, but in saloon towns, and particularly in the larger centers, hundreds may be found in drinking places to one in the churches, the same even- ing. A prominent Secretary in the Young Men's Christian Association" says : "On Sun- day evening, February 26, 1899, a careful count was made of the men in a Madison Street saloon (in Chicago) at 7 o'clock. The number was 524, and during the next two hours 480 more men entered. At one of the billiard tables young men six deep on all sides were engaged in open gambling. Private 161 SOCIAL WELFxVRE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. stairways connect this saloon with the vilest theatre in the city. There are 3000 billiard and pool rooms in the city, generally adjacent to or a part of a saloon." Another Secretary reports an investigation of fifteen saloons in Peoria, 111., in which, on a Sunday night, 875 young men were found in one hour and fifteen minutes. How fifteen ministers of that city would have rejoiced to have seen those 875 able fellows scattered through their aud- iences ! The fact is too evident to be avoided that the saloon has a stronger hold upon the young men of America than has the combined force of all the churches. Further, it has developed and is developing an environment from which it is more and m.ore difficult to lift men, and which makes them less useful after they are reached. "Environment afTects conversion before and after." The efifect of the presence of the legalized saloon produces a dangerous reaction upon the church itself. It can not escape complete- ly the demoralizing ethical effects of the liquor business upon the spiritual condition of its own members even when its voice is clear and decisive against it. Since the liquor trade is a part of current social order church members get mixed up with it in every-day business relations, social connections and especially in political affairs. The saloon maintains its po- sition largely because of its licensed respect- ability. The effect is seen in the halting atti- tude of many congregations toward practical anti-liquor work, in their fear of radicalism, in a sort of chronic horror of the political 162 THE ETHICAL PHASE. phases of the question, in decrease in spiritual power and influence and in the distaste of many strong men outside of the church, for church relations of any kind. The church can not realize its own proper place of usefulness in the community while the saloon continues to be a competing legal institution. The Traffic in "The Foreign Field."— Scarce- ly less important than the competition that the saloon offers to the church at home is the way in which the liquor traffic handicaps its missions in the foreign field. Whether our civilization is to be a benefit or a curse to the Phillipinos, to Hawaii and in the mission fields of Africa, where the "child-races" and semi-civilized are found, no less than in the older countries of China, Japan, India and elsewhere, depends upon whether American vices, and chiefly American liquor, are to con- tinue to accompany the flag and the mis- sionary. Before our type of civilization was carried to these countries half of the world was under total abstinence religions, Hindu, Buddhist and Mohammedan, a clear indication that the desire for intoxicants is not a universal human instinct that must be gratified, but a vice that even these religions condemn as morally wrong. Those nations that were not held to absti- nence by religious influence or laws, more or less strictly enforced, and growing out of the native religions, w^ere mostly temperate in the use of such intoxicants as they had. The Chi- nese have frequently passed prohibitory laws and so there has been little drunkenness in 163 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. that country except where the people come into contact with Western commerce. It is to the lasting- disgrace of Great Britain that the opium trade was forced upon China at the mouth of the cannon and to the great credit of the present rulers of China that they have passed a graduated prohibitory law now rapidly becoming effective. In India the Eng- lish trade has almost a monopoly of the liquor business but American consuls are laboring hard to give the American brewers a fair opening. Rev. E. C. B. Hallam, a missionary, says, "In eight years the increase of the liquor traffic in Bengal was 135 per cent. In the central provinces it was 100 per cent in ten years. In Ceylon the revenue from drink is almost 14 per cent of the total revenue. Mr. Cain, ex-member of the British Parliament, says, 'All moral considerations are swamped in the effort to obtain revenue. The worst and rottenest excise system in the civilized world is that of India.' "^ While most native races have native drinks more or less intoxicating, according to Dr. Crafts,- the Ainos of Japan are the only race of heathen drunkards who were not made such by civilization. Drunken- ness is with them, as with ancient worshippers of Bacchus, a religious ecstacy. "Throughout the length and breadth of beautiful Japan, in all large and smaller cities and villages for- eign drinks are easily obtainable, to the great injury of the people."-'' In Central Africa drink from civilized na- tions created such havoc that its importation was prohibited by concerted action of the powers within a limited area. Yet it is not 164 THE ETHICAL PII.\SE. Strict!}- enforced and the area is too small. Prince Alomolu Massaquoi of Ghendinah, who was educated in America, after taking up his rule over his tribe as king wrote* in 1^05^ "From actual calculation I find that nearly one-half of the goods imported into my territory is in the form of liquor, and that of the worst and most injurious kind. The na- tive has an idea that everything that white men use and export must necessarily be good and an essential element in civilization. It is therefore common to find a man who is poor and not able to get sufficient liquor on which to get drunk, rubbing a drop on his head or on his mustache in order that people may smell it and call him civilized." Drunkenness is distinctly a vice of the Christian nations. It is their aggresive trade spirit that has carried liquor in immense quan- tities among these undeveloped races. Among the most savage and especialh' in warm cli- mates its ravages are fearful. The natives knovv no self-restraint; they copy the vices of the great white man more quickly than they do his virtues. The exportation of liquors to these tribes is a crime against humanity. Prof. Starr, of the University of Chicago, the noted anthropologist, said in a lecture "An African living in an African hut after an African fashion is likely to be a better man than he would be after the Anglo-Saxon introduced his religion, his surface civilization and his rum." The liqvior traffic is one of the greatest ob- stacles to effective missionary effort in all }*Iohammedan countries. All white men are 165 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. supposed to be Christians. Moslems say when they see one of their number drunk, "He has left Mohamet and gone to Jesus." In Morocco "drunkenness is considered a Christian sin." "There is no license system, because the sul- tan cannot derive a profit from sin." The rum tragedy in Manila and throughout the Philippine Islands is the great disgrace in connection with our recent era of expansion. An advance agent of a certain American brew- ery was in the first ranks of Dewey's force, and shiploads of beer were following close after the fleet. This agent hastily threw oflf his uniform, and in a few days had many saloons established dealing out beer and the stronger American liquors in true American style. A.mericans were soon known as drunk- ards by both Spanish and Philippinos. At first disgust, then slow acceptance of them, has been the attitude of the better classes, while the less civilized yield more quickly to this type of refining influence. Pres. Schurman, of Cornell University, who was at the head of the Philippine Commission, said, "I regret that the Americans let the saloon get a foothold in the islands. It has hurt the Americans more than anything else, and the spectacle of Americans drunk awakens disgust in the Filipinos. We suppressed the cock-fights there, but left the saloon to flour- ish. r3ne emphasized the Filipino frailty and the other the American vice. I have never seen a Filipino drunkard."^ . .The Filipinos, while pagan and semi-civilized, are moral and sober. They first learn of Christianity from the profane sailor, and when they see immense 166 THE ETHICAL PHASE. numbers of drunken, profane and immoral soldiers representing this country they have little respect for the religion they profess. 'If that is your religion,' they sav, Sve prefer our own."'« With such a blighting disgrace ruining in advance so much of the noble sacrificing work of our missionaries and teachers it would seem v^'ise economy to apply the whole force of Christian America, if necessary, to stop the exportation of intoxicating liquors and give the church and our type of civilization a fair chance. Ethical Phase of the License Policy.- -Li- cense means in theory both restriction and privilege — restriction from certain acts for the legal privilege of doing certain others. It rests upon the assumption that the business is partly good, partly bad; that the evils are contingent, not inherent, and so may be elim- inated by careful regulation. It has neces- sarily a twofold character — sanction and con- denmation. In actual operation, applied to the sale of liquors as it is in most states, with the excep- tion of those having prohibition, it means lit- tle in the way of restriction but much in the way of endorsement, encouragement and pro- tection. It gives the business privileges which otherwise it would not have. It fails to note that intemperance and the evils attending it are inherent in the alcohol sold and in the vicious sort of sociability permitted or en- couraged in most saloons. Its application here is therefore wrong in principle and a mis- take in practice. 167 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Further, it is its permissive feature, the public consent to sell intoxicating liquors, usually if not al\va3's injurious to the public, granted for a price paid the government, that brings it into conflict with ethical ideals of social welfare. It is as wrong to set up a false ideal in society as it is to teach a child vicious habits, to steal, to be impure, to have no regard for the sanctity of life, and it is many times more dangerous to public welfare. "Law and gov- ernment are the sovereign influences in human society. What they sanction will ever be generally considered innocent, what they con- demn is thereby made a crime." ' The edu- cational effect of law is to train either upward or downward. The license law teaches that the traffic is all right if the fee is paid; it puts the social right or wrong on a money Ijasis. If the sale of liquor is right and needful for public welfare the business should not be required to bear such an unusually heavy burden in public support; the license should be merely for regulation so as to eliminate any attendant evils. As it is the extraordinar- ily high fees demanded by the government and willingly paid by the dealers, are in the na- ture of what is called "graft" in current "high finance" and "high politics." If the beverage sale is a danger to society, as the character of alcohol makes it, government has no right to license it; it may not justly attempt to legalize a wrong. It should be attacked and cleared out if possible. If this can not be done all 168 THE ETHICAL PHASE. at once consent should not be given any more than it would be given to a gang of thieves or gamblers, all of whom can not be captured at one time. Without this legalizing phase of license it would be possible to prosecute sa- loons one at a time as nuisances. If the traffic is right the retail sale should not be burdened with the social opprobrium of a $i,ooo license fee; if wrong the fee can not make it right. The desire of the dealer to pay it only proves that he regards the money as a compensation to the public conscience. To the individual citizen license implies consent to the acts so authorized. The govern- ment becomes responsible for the product of the saloon — a partner in the business because it accepts a share of the returns of that busi- ness. In our form of government the individ- ual citizen, favoring that policy, no matter how remotely, and voting for it is a party to that policy and its consequences. There can be no ethical distinction between his act and that of the mayor or licensing board who signs the document that hangs over the bar. "Society has no right to do what an in- dividual has no right to do. Society is only a collective individual. In a republican form of government 'we the people' have a moral responsibility for their collective acts, and that responsibility rests upon those who make up 'we the people' — in other words, on the voter. A Christian voter has no right to endorse by his vote an attitude or an action by society which he would not endorse as a private Christian." * 169 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Assuming that two-thirds of those who ])atronize the saloon never become drunkards and that all who drink do it voluntarily and with a knowledge of its possible consequences, the saloon is nevertheless a vice and a drunk- ard factory ; the families of the one-third of society must suffer. Neither the gratification of the pleasures secured by the two-thirds in the saloon ; nor the free will of. the drinker in choosing his own course, nor the price paid by the dealer will justify the social conse- quences. Harmony of Government with Ethical Welfare. — As has been shown before, the drinking of alcoholic liquors is not in itself wrong; it depends upon the consequences. If a man drinks in such a way that little injury is done his health, if he can stand the cost financially and if his acts do not injure others or his indulgence entail lowered vitality upon his children, it must be acknowledged that there is nothing personally wrong in his use of liquor as a beverage, and that government has no occasion to interfere. To restrict him from without is to limit his pleasure, a loss to himself and to the community. But science shows that in anything more than the most moderate doses, so small as to make its beverage use insignificant, alcohol is for most people a poison. This makes it to the great mass of people an inherent danger and so it becomes an inherent wrong to per- mit its wi de-'^pr end and general sale for such purposes. \ The social ethics cannot be deter- mined by the individual effects but by the great average of consequences. These are of 170 THE ETHICAL PHASE. such far-reaching danger to the common safety that the rights of the moderate self- controlled drinker should not be permitted to stand in the way of the infinitely more import- ant jcnsideration — the lasting good of the whole. , The^liquor trade, supplying an article in- herently dangerous to most people, and the saloon so nearly always accompanied by low morals, that it is an encouragement to positive vice, are, in their inevitable personality wrong. The liquor saloon is per se a moral blight upon the city, state and nation. It cannot be reformed and made pure so long as alcohol is there sold for general beverage consumption. The protection of public morals is another primary duty of government. It, too, is among those unwritten powers of all govern- ment called "police powers," for preserving the very integrity of the government itself. It is not the function of society, organized as a whole, to "make men good by law" ; but it is as much its duty to protect ethical and religious aspirations and ideals as it is to see that men do not steal each other's dollars, or maintain a public nuisance that endangers health or deprives each other of life or limb. The ethical and spiritual need is one of the fundamental requirements of society. In its acquisition social regulation is as necessary to prevent undue private aggradizement upon those following that aim as it is to protect a man in the proper accumulation of material wealth. The state cannot directly make anyone happy, or good or wise ; but the character of 171 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the public institutions it permits, or gives spe- cial endorsement to by licensing, makes a great deal of difference to him in his en- deavors to escape misery and be good. The saloon is a source of vice, misery and crime. It is the duty of government to remove this sort of environment. The state may not make tnen good by law hut it certainly should not permit men to he made bad in accordance zvith law. Institutions tending toward moral uplift are protected fully by law. Churches and church property do not pay taxes because of the pub- lic moral service they render. Legitimate business willingly bears the additional burden placed upon it. On the other hand, immoral institutions and sources, such as lotteries and gambling apparatus, are not taxed for the very opposite reason — they are evils from which the moral business man is paying to be de- fended. Why should the liquor traffic be per- mitted to have privileges contrary to its in- herent nature just because it is willing to pay for them ? Ethically there is but one course open to government in regard to the liquor business and the saloon — to expel it unconditionally. Any temporary compromise with a view to re- moving certain evils is an evasion of the fun- damental facts. License attempts to make it legal ; prohibition acts on the principle that it is wrong; local choice ignores the ethical prin- ciple almost entirely in behalf of a policy of immediate local gain. The state gives pro- tection to property and life ; the state, too, not a county, township, ward of precinct, or city, 172 THE ETHICAL PHASE. should say whether the morals of that com- munity shall be protected from the saloon, or not. Local option, as well as high license or restriction, is contrary to high moral prin- ciple, although it differs in being capable of being used as a step toward prohibition when sentiment is not strong enough to demand the whole principle or as a compromise when the pro-liquor influence is able to make the public believe that what is morally right may not be politically expedient. It has been said that prohibition interferes with the moral freedom of the individual ; that it removes temptation and that the non- tempted is non-moral because virtue comes from the resistance to temptation, not from blind freedom from it. In answer is the fact that prohibition as applied to liquor has not been directed against the act of drinking ; that men may make their own liquor and drink it, if they choose. Besides, as shown above, the state does not make men good, or aim to ; its duty is to protect the community as a whole from the burdens cast upon it by excessive drinkers, which in practice means nearly all drinkers. When intemperance is threatening the life of a nation this objection is a very small one, indeed. No law can possibly de- prive a man of the opportunities necessary to put up a good fight for manhood. The more persistent claim, ethically, for the saloon is that it furnishes amusement and recreation for a large class of workingmen who cannot aft"ord anything better. Prohibi- tion is necessary to deal with this phase of the problem satisfactorily ; it does not aim to take 173 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the sociability features away from the saloon, as do certain other regulative measures, but to remove alcohol and vice from sociability so that through the money now spent for drink healthy, normal recreation may be possible. References and Authorities. The Social Ethics of the Saloon. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 279-292, 300-303. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Re- form," zi, 41-42, 185-188. Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 2-8, 14-16. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 27-30, 88-92. Committee of Fifty, Summary of "The Liquor Problem," 146-150. Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClures, April 1907. *Dr. Albion W. Small, University of Chicago, Lec- tures on Ethics of Sociology. ^Mill, "Utilitarianism." 'Committee of Fifty, Summary, 147. ^Barker, 186. "Bonfort's Wine and Spirit Circular; Barker, 187. "Fehlandt, 302. 'Wheeler, 91. The Attitude of the Church. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 48, 73-85. Fernald, "1 he Economics of Prohibition," 418-430. Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 125-134. Woolley and Johnson, "Temperance Progress," 447-465- American Prohibition Year Book, 1908, 159-164. i^opkins, "Wenlth and Waste," I7i-i''4. M lopkins, 166. ^From Report of General Temperance Committee, Conference of 1908. 174 THE ETHICAL PHASE. The Saloon Its Chief Competitor. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 48. Cressey, 'The Church and Young Men," 1-7. Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 10-15, 133- 146. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 300-303. Peabody, "Substitutes for the Saloon," Forum, 21. 595. Oates, "The Religious Condition of Young Men." ^American Prohibition Year Book (1908) from Internal Revenue Reports. ^Daily News Almanac (1908) from Compilation of Religious Statistics by Dr. H. K. Carroll for Christian Advocate. 'Peabody, "Substitutes for the Saloon," Forum, 21, 595. 'Y. M. C. A. Handbooks. ^Cressey, "The Church and Young Men." "Dates, "The Religious Condition of Young Men." 'Paper on "Social Forces in Action," by J. Wilbur Messer, General Secretary, Chicago Y. M. C. A. The Trafac in "The Foreign Field." Crafts, "Intoxicants and Opium." Dennis, "Christian Missions and Social Progress," Vol. 1, 76-84. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 48-49. Woolley and Johnson, "Temperance Progress," 433-445. Fernald, "Economics of Prohibition," 441-453. Prohibition Year Books, (1907) 13-16; (1908) 134. Momolu Massaquoi, "Africa's Appeal to Christen- dom," Century, April, 1905. ^^merican Prohibition Year Book (1907) 14. =Crafts, 19. 'Same, 137. *See reference above. 'Barker, 49. •Crafts, 201. Ethical Phase of the License Policy. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Soc: .1 Reform," 67-70. 175 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Cyclopedia of Temperance and Prohibition, 360- 362. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 193-207. Spencer, "The License Question," in Stephens "Prohibition in Kans." Fraser, "Ethics of Prohibition," Inter. Jr. Ethics, 9, 350-359- Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 207-216. ^Wheeler 144. 'Spencer in "Pro. in Kans.," 127. Fraser, "Ethics of Prohibition," Internatl. Jr. Ethics, 9, 350. Harmony of Government with Ethical Welfare. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 302-305. Fraser, "Ethics of Prohibition," International Journal of Ethics, 9, 353. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 164-179. 176 CHAPTER X. THE CITY PROBLEM. The City Problem. — The disproportionate growth of large cities is one of the most strik- ing social phenomena of the age. Within twenty 3'ears, at the present rate of progress, one-half of the people of the United States will live in cities. In the new agricultural communities of the West the rural population is increasing ; in the Central States it is prac- tically at a stand-still ; in certain sections of New England it is actually decreasing. But the cities are growing ; the larger the city the greater is the rate of growth at the present time. In 1800 there were but six cities in the United States with a population of 8,000 or more; they contained 3.9 per cent, of the total population. In 1880 there were 286. In 1890 there were 443 containing 29.12 per cent, of the total ; in 1900 33 per cent, of all the people lived in such cities which numbered 545, among them some of the largest in the world. From 3 to 33 per cent, in a hundred years — a won- derful shift of population from steady-going country life to the business excitement, the social swirl and political corruption now in- volved where people live huddled together in 177 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. o^reat masses. "If the rate of the movement from the country to city between 1890 and 1900 continues until 1940 there will then be in the United States 21,000,000 more people in our cities than outside of them. . . . The cities will then no longer accept limitations from the state but, when they have become fully conscious of their power, will take into their hands, not only their own affairs, but also those of the state and of the nation."^ The most far-sighted and friendly of critics of our American institutions, James Bryce, says that the one conspicuous failure in this country is the government of great cities. Wendell Phillips said that the time would come when rum intrenched in our great cities would strain American institutions and liberty as slavery never did. Prof. F. H. Giddings, of Columbia University, said a few years ago in an address, "We are witnessing to-day beyond question, the decay — perhaps not permanent, but at any rate the decay — of republican insti- tutions. No man in his right mind can deny it." And the blight of municipal mis-government and "graft," of the exploitation and sale of dissipation and vice on a large scale is due, more than to any other one cause, to the saloon and the saloon-boss and to the liquor trafific back of them. The liquor business is a gigan- tic political trust buying out city councils, mayors, police ofificers and people alike. It is ready organized to secure its own ends or to furnish the necessary force of venal voters and political bosses required when private cor- porations enter upon some scheme to fleece the 178 THE CITY PROBLEM. public or get a big "graft" from the city and state treasuries. The causes of this shifting of the mass of population, and with it of political power, from country to city, are permanent and cannot be stopped or materially reduced. People live longer in the cities than they used to and the death rate among children has been greatly lowered through public sanitation. There is a tremendous rush of young people from the country to the city. Scientific farming and the use of improved machinery on the farm reduce the number needed to produce the food supply of the world and drive many to the city for employment. The demand for a thousand articles, now regarded as necessities but for- merly looked upon as luxuries, increases stead- ily the proportionate number of employees needed in factories and in commerce. The larger opportunities ofiFered for a career in business, politics, commerce or art draw thou- sands. The abnormal excitement of city life, the noise, the vice and tendency towards fast life draw the more depraved of all classes and center them more and more in the cities at the same time that the greater opportunities for advancement are appealing to the more ener- getic. The occasions and temptations to drink or to indulge to excess are multiplied in the city ; they are more open and easy of access. The nervous haste and excitement lead to a crav- ing for stimulants to prod the flagging nerves. The dangers resulting are greater, too, since there is less opportunity to throw ofif the alco- 179 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. holic poison by work or exercise in the open air and away from temptation. It is the cities that resist longest the advances of prohibition and constitute the strong-holds of intemperance and the liquor power. The traffic is now largely centered and protected in the 100 largest cities of twenty-eight license states. From this point of vantage it not only controls the cities themselves but also bom- bards the small town and rural territory, com- prising two-thirds of the entire country, in which liquor selling has been outlawed and in which live 40,000,000 people. The govern- ment of these 100 cities is almost equally di- vided between the two dominant parties which, in their city machinery, are totally under the leadership of liquor politicians. To the men nominated and elected at the bid of these parti- san bosses falls the execution of the liquor laws of the state. The result is, too often, that they are totally ignored or city ordinances are passed conflicting with them. On this question the pro-liquor party leaders of the great cities dictate the policies for the party of the state and nation. One hundred years ago almost everybody drank, the per capita consumption chiefly dis- tilled liquors, being something like 4 gallons. There were no temperance societies and no legal restrictions whatever on the sale. At the present time not more than one out of four persons drinks, the per capita use has grown to 22.27- gallons, including both malt and dis- tilled liquors, there are 40,000,000 people liv- ing under the operation of local and state pro- hibitory laws, chiefly in rural communities or 180 THE CITY PROBLEM. States without great cities, and intemperance and the poHtical and commercial power of the Hqiior trade are centralized and complicated in our largest cities. Here, backed up by dis- torted ideas of personal liberty, it furnishes the necessary force of venal voters and money re- quired to keep itself in power, defends itself against the higher moral sentiment of the coun- try and awaits the certain predominance of the city in the politics of the nation to gain a more relentless grip on public affairs than it has ever yet held. With this certain growth of the political power accompanied by the relative waning of the rural vote, upon which we have depended to save the city from itself and the state from the city, the overthrozv of the liquor pozver within the cities becomes the strategic and most essential issue in American reform politics. The City Population. — America has been proud to be known as the place of refuge for the oppressed of all nations. Of recent years the pleasure of this philanthropic spirit has been dimmed by the dangers arising from the massing of foreign peoples that refuse to be Americanized in our great cities and by their abuse of the liberties here sought when they fled oppression in their home lands. Says Jacob Riis in regard to the motley character of the tenement population in New York, "One may find for the asking an Italian, Germah, French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish and Chinese colony. The one thing you will ask for in vain in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community."^ 181 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. These people have brought with them cus- toms both good and bad. But it is from the vice and crime, from the social and political corruption of the saloon and the saloon asso- ciations that face them on three corners of every street crossing, and a half-dozen times in each block, that they learn the ideas that are dangerous both to them and to the com- munity. It is not the foreigner that is a men- ace ; it is those of his own race who have been here a few years, or a generation, who teach the ideas that make him dangerous. "He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and the venal agencies which find their origin and politics in the saloon."^ By far the largest share of saloon keepers are for- eigners and each colony has its ov/n ward poli- ticians to exploit its newly acquired rights of suffrage for the benefit of some corrupt politi- cal deal. It is not for Americans to decry foreigners simply because they were born on a distant shore. This country has grown strong be- ^cause it has received, from time to time, the customs, energies and ideas of many old coun- tries. It is not the foreign man but the ideals and practices foreign to the spirit of American institutions and morality that are dangerous. Among these kept alive and propagated by the saloon, are the following: -l. An aggravated form of intemperance. It is a noticeable fact that those who have come to this country from Central or Northern Eu- rope either begin to drink more or quit alto- gether. There is little of the same degree of moderate drinking among the Germans here 182 THE CITY PROBLEM. that there is in the Fatherland. The cHmate, tlie rushing, nervous life, the excitements of business, labor disputes and politics increase the evils resulting from the use of alcohol and strengthen the demand for the stimulant itself. In the second generation the change is more marked — either excessive drinking or an ap- proximate total abstinence. Many industrious peasant laborers are constantly disgraced by vicious, idle sons and daughters, who despise them and learn their own ideas of "liberty" from the American type of saloon and its habitues. 2. The mis-education of foreigners as to their political relations and duties. The first lesson in self-government is taken in the saloon ; he sees there the first political organ- ization of which he has heard ; he meets there the "boss" assigned to his precinct or nation- ality and is paid in the coin current of the saloon for the first exercise of his newly ac- quired privilege of voting. No wonder, if ignorant, he becomes the tool of the ward boss \\ho is able to manipulate as he chooses the solid Irish, Polish, Bohemian and even Ger- man vote. 3. His ideas of liberty are distorted in the same way. It is to be expected that, escaping from Russian oppression, the Russian Jew or Pole should have a tendency to dislike all gov- ernment. The saloon stimulates this spirit. It afl:'ords a standing example of law defiance since it refuses to obey even the most lenient regulations. Also by its associations and the physical consequences of the "goods" it sup- plies its patrons it cultivates the same anti- 183 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. social Spirit and affords a rendezvous for anarchy and crime. 4. Native born children of foreign parents show a crime tenrlency twice as great as for- eigners themselves and three times as great as the children of natives. "This amazing crim- inality of the children of foreigners is almost wholly a product of city life."^ Writing of the distinctive policy of the brewers of Chi- cago to thoroughly saturate the tenement and working districts of that city with beer, Tur- ner says in his "Study of the Great Immorali- ties/"* "A population of hundreds of thousands of unrestrained male laborers, plied with all possible energy and ingenuity with alcoholic liquor, can be counted on, with the certaintv of a chemical experiment, for one reaction — violent and fatal crime. There would be crime of this kind from such a source under any circumstances. But the facilities of Chicago double and treble it. . . . Their children are as surely rotted as themselves by the influence of the saloon upon the neighborhood of their homes." 5. It is in the saloon that the purchasable vote is in large part created, organized and sold. 6. The substitution of the European Sunday for the American Sabbath directly accompanies the growth and influence of the liquor element. 7. The governmental custom of licensing, and so legalizing, the sale of liquors is begin- ning to be applied to such intolerable evils as gambling and the social vice. This is a direct importation from Europe where in certain citico the la^;' legalizes and collects fees from 184 THE CITY PROBLEM. them as it treats the saloon in this country. The saloon, by perpetuating and aggravat- ing the worst in the customs of the 1,000,000 people annually coming to America, rather than their best, is an enemy both to the for- eigner himself and to the welfare of this coun- try as a whole. The Saloon and the Housing Problem. — One of the most characteristic of social problems in our large cities is how to provide healthful and pleasant yet cheap housing for the poorest classes. It is one of the vital problems of city life. Sociologists have spent a great deal of time investigating and philanthropists have given money to erect model and paying tene- ments yet it is only partially solved. The first need, of course, is better wages. Another, no less important, is often overlooked — the proper use of the wages earned. It is too often the money spent for intoxi- cating drinks that makes it necessary in the first place to rent the poorest of quarters and crowd them with roomers to help pay the rent. Wide studies have shown that it is the home, the house and house furnishings, that suffers most for the lack of the money spent at the saloon ! As stated by Dr. E. R. L. Gould, "The economies which are necessary to in- dulge the appetite for spirits are almost in- variably practiced upon the home accommoda- tions."^ This is particularly unfortunate for it is the innocent members of the family, the wife and small children, who are compelled to remain in these squalid roosts — they cannot be called homes — all day, that suffer most. It has been found by those who have under- 186 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. taken large plans of tenement house reform that it is almost impossible to improve the families in which one or more members drink. They cannot make use of better houses even after they have been provided ; they cannot save even the slight amount asked to pay the rent for very much improved dwellings. All that margin, and much more, goes for beer. Then they cannot live with neighbors under improved conditions ; they are disorderly and interfere with the peace of others poorer than themselves. Merely securing them good homes or paying higher wages so they may procure better ones for themselves is not suffi- cient while the drink habit remains. The sup- ply must be broken off. Some few years ago there was efifected in Edinburgh a remarkable series of housing im^ provements among the very poor. One of the chief promoters gives the following testi- mony as to how the saloon practically ruined the results of their costly labors : "Edinburgh presents an illustration of the extent to which sanitary agencies are connected with the drink evil. . . . Upwards of half a million pounds was expended in rooting out the haunts of wretchedness and vice, while another half-mil- lion was expended on improved dwellings and other sanitary reforms. That the result of this great experiment has been largely counter- acted by drink is only too apparent. In twelve years the number of drunken cases increased 27 per cent., while the whole population in- creased 16 per cent."- In this region there were 200 men living in low grade lodging houses ; they received fair to good wages but, 186 THE CITY PROBLEM. spending one-half of it, on an average, on drink they were unable to have any sort of homes of their own. They simply preferred the drink. To spend public money in con- tributing to the household comforts of this class would be to do them a positive injury; They possess ample power to improve their own position."^ This great housing reform was rendered nugatory to the poorer classes by the constant presence and pressure of the saloon. The City Vote. — There is scarcely a city of 100,000 population in this country at the pres- ent time that does not have the beginnings of or a well developed ring of political manipu- lators and bosses who graft on the public funds, rail-road through public franchises at the expense of the people and "stand in" with the sellers of social dissipation, of which liquor is the largest and most powerful. In many smaller cities the system is equally well organ- ised. It is a great scheme of public robbery made possible by the indifference of so-called good people to city politics and by the con- flicting of state and national party lines with local affairs. The one ever-necessary go-be- tween is the saloon vote. This inherently vicious vote of the saloon in the cities is a worse factor in politics than even the state and national organizations of the liquor dealers themselves. The saloon first makes men capable of selling that sacred power which makes every man a king, often com- pels them to do so in order to get something to eat or to pay for more drinks, and then buys and sells that vote. "The influence of 187 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the saloon, rather than the influence of the saloon-keeper, is the cause of grave concern. The influence of the saloons of the land is no more to be measured by that of the men who conduct them than the influence of the common schools of the land is to be measured by that of the teachers employed in them. The bar rather than the barkeeper is the source of deg- radation, and if every saloon-keeper emigrated or died to-morrow, and the saloons continued, there would be but a slight and temporary change for the better. It is true the liquor dealers, through the organizations — local, state and national — which they have formed, and the immense capital which they have accumu- lated, have developed political power danger- ous to contemplate. But the chief source of that power is not, after all, in their organiza- tions, nor in their capital, nor in their personal ability ; but it lies in the saloons which they control, and through which they operate to such tremendous advantage. Whatever pur- chaseable vote there may be is almost sure to he within the reach of the saloon-keeper."'^ Here the party machines are best organized and depend most upon the saloons for their medium of exchange. "It is in the large cities that we find the corrupt and dangerous politi- cal machine in the full stage of development and there we may study, at close range, the phenomena of one-man power in a republic."^ The machine is legitimate party organization narrowed down to one man ; the "machine politician" is the one who is in ; the "reformer" is the one who is trying to get in. In the two dominant parties, where the getting of ofiice 188 THE CITY PROBLEM. is subservient to principle, the machine takes advantage of the great mass of unfamiliar names on the ballot, to secure the nomination and placing thereon of the names of their ow^n confidential henchmen and of "good" men who will turn over to them the privilege of disposing of all the appointive jobs connected with the position. Geo. B. Cox, the infamous Republican boss of Cincinnati, impressed upon all heads of departments .and office-holders that all subordinate help should be appointed by him. A judge could not select his own bailiff or stenographer. The mayor could not choose his assistants or clerks. Cox appointed his men to all these positions. There were more than 5,000 of such jobs in the city. These men had an average of at least five friends whose votes they could control. They were given to understand that if these friends failed to vote as Cox dictated they lost their jobs. "The skeleton of Cox's machine is simple. He at the center is supreme ; associated with him are his two cabinet men, Herrmann (chair- man of the campaign committee. President of the Board of Commissioners for the New Water Works, manager of the Cincinnati ball team, etc.) and Hynicka (who is county treas- urer). Herrmann runs all city departments ex- cept the Council, which is entrusted to Mike Mullen. This provides for the administration. The army which retains this inner circle of administration in power, is minutely organized. At the head of each ward is a captain who is directly responsible to Cox, but in most mat- ters reports to Herrmann or Hynicka. Under each ward captain are executives, one in charge 189 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. of each precinct. The responsibility of carry- ing a ward is placed on the captain ; if he fails to accomplish this and no satisfactory expla- nation can be given, he loses his place. . . . The precinct executives are in like manner held responsible by the captains. They must know about every man in their small district, what his tendencies are, what organizations he belongs to, how he may be influenced, who his friends are. He must take a poll of his district on demand, and he is usually able to tell within a few votes how his precinct will go."^ The precinct executives all hold city jobs, the only exception being a former saloon partner of Cox's who runs free from molesta- tion the largest gambling den in the city. Higher offices, such as councilman or federal positions in the city, are reserved for the ward captains. All pay good salaries and some af- ford wide opportunity for graft. "All these men, however, are on intimate terms with the saloonists of their wards and can deal with them for the patronage they control."* The machine runs the convention in perfect order. "On the following morning, after the primaries, the chairman of the ward dele- gates meet Cox at Wielert's saloon. These chairmen, in nearly all instances, are the ward captains. . . . Cox gives each a slip of paper indicating how they are to vote as their wards are called. He also has all resolutions in type- written form and arranges with certain indi- viduals to present them at the proper time. Preparations having been made all repair to the convention except Cox who remains at Wielert's. In former years Cox used to be 190 THE CITY PROBLEM. one of the sergeants-at-arms, and was always on the floor to direct operations. Now, how- ever, the machine is so well adjusted that it runs itself." After adjournment all return to Wielert's saloon for a blow-out.^ However legitimate party machinery may be in a great city nothing can keep it clean except a powerful public issue backed by pub- lic spirited men. The boss is a product of his environment ; when one disappears, either into a prison cell, where so many belong, or retires with all the plunder he wants, he is succeeded by another. Worthy men will not go into what is ordinarily termed "politics" for the spoils of office and the additions to be gained by graft, alone. When political parties are used merely to fill the offices the object of getting in can be no other than personal profit. The lasting antidote to boss rule is the de- struction of the saloon environment in which it flourishes and the entering of practical poli- tics by educated young men whose motive is the good they can do the public, while receiv- ing the well-earned salary belonging with the office. But neither in the political organiza- tion nor in the offices can most good men, if we judge by the present and past in city poli- tics, remain good — resist permanently the in- sidious demands of the sellers of dissipation, unless they are in turn backed by an organized constituency whose issue is a vital public ques- tion. The overthrow of the liquor traffic and its associated evils, being intensely local, state and national, affords the best possible opportunity to worthy men whose tenure in office and pub- 191 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. lie success, of the highest type, depend upon their being true to the great issue upon which they were elected. The problem of the saloon is not alone or chiefly a city question. It is a state and na- tional question. The county and the state pay the taxes that support the institutions, prisons, reformatories, asylums, that care for the ulti- mate saloon product. Local prohibitory or regulative laws are made ineffective by liquors carried across the local boundary lines. The city should not rule the country ; — the country cannot long, and should not, rule the city. The proper unit to vote upon and decide such problems as the saloon, whose consequences fall upon both country and city, is one which involves both rural and city population. The only vote which can truthfully show the senti- ment of the people is that of the state, includ- ing both rural and city communities with all their varying races, inherited ideas, drinking customs, and living conditions. The township and village are purely rural ; the city, of course, is urban, while the question itself is necessarily both. The county is usually rural in character although in such counties as Cook, in Illinois, where Chicago is situated, Hamil- ton and Cuyahoga in Ohio, with Cincinnati and Cleveland, and the counties covered by New York, the terms are synonymous. But the county is a much truer expression of pub- lic sentiment than any smaller unit v.'hich can scarcely avoid being dominated by some one class alone. In the majority of the counties of most states, with a city with real city social and political problems as countyseat, the 102 THE CITY PROBLEM. county vote on saloons or no saloons conforms to the demands of broad and fair reform. Otherwise it is as sectional and unfair as the wards of a city which, often, merely crowd the saloons from the more respectable sections, where their ravages can better be borne, to the poorer sections already saturated with beer. Temperance people may use the different gov- ernmental units for all the good that can be procured from them but the inherent unfair- ness of submitting the option on a state-wide problem to the will of the sort of people who may happen to inhabit any small region, and compel the rest of the community and the state to help bear the consequences, should at the same time be fairly held in mind. References and Authorities. The City Problem. Strong, "The Challenge of the City," 16-68. Wilcox, "The American City," 1-27. Dole, "The Spirit of Democracy," 216-232. Commons, "City Life, Crime and Poverty," Chau- tauquan, April, 1904, 115. Strong, "Our Country," 71-78, 128-144. Strong, "The Twentieth Century City," 33-102. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 78-81. Loomis, "Modern Cities," 27-53. ^Strong, "The Challenge of the City," 61. 'Statistical Abstract, for 1906, 687. The City Population. Strong, "The Challenge of the City," 131-164. Strong, "Our Country," 68-78, 84-85, 128-144. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 81-88. Commons, "City Life, Crime and Poverty," Chau- tauquan, April, 1904, 115. 193 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClure's, April, 1907. 'Riis, "How the Other Half Lives," ch. 18. ^Grose, "Aliens or Americans ?" 216. 'Commons, "City Life, Crime and Poverty." 'Turner, McClure's, April, 1907, 580. The Saloon and the Housing Problem. Rowntree and Shervvell, "The Temperance Prob- lem," 40-44. Strong, "The Challenge of the City," 93-106. ^Gould, "The Social Conditions of Labor." ^"Environment and Drink," No. Am. Review, Vol. 161, 460. 'Same. The City Vote. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 76-81. Bryce, "American Commonwealth," Vol. IL, Chap- ters 43-44. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Prob- lem and Social Reform,"' 114-115. Strong, "The Challenge of the City," 62-64. Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClure's, April, 1907. Wright, "Bossism in Cincinnati," 41-112. 'Wheeler, Prohibition," 76. ^Coler, "Municipal Government," 186. 'Wright, "Bossism in Cincinnati," 68. 'Same, 71. 'Same, 81. 194 CHAPTER XI. DRINK AND THE FAMILY. The Family Drink Bill. — "Among our work- ing people," says Prof. Schmoller, of Berlin, one of the most important of recent econom- ists, "the conditions of domestic life, of edu- cation, of property, of progress or degradation, are all dependent upon the proportion of in- come that flows down the father's throat. The whole condition of our lower and middle classes — one might without exaggeration say the future of our nation — depends upon this question."^ This is Germany, where beer-drinking is at its best ; where moderation is supposed to pre- vail, where excess is seldom found and where beer is as pure and perfect as science and the supervision of government inspectors that in- spect can make it. These are the people so frequently pointed out as suffering little or not at all from liquors. But the facts show that the economic consequences alone of the univer- sal drink custom, especially on the family, are frightful and constitute a menace to the wel- fare of the race and nation. With low wages and heavy taxes the purchase of four, ten or even twenty glasses of beer per day is a fixed and regular drain ; it may not produce the de- gree of drunkenness found in England and 195 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. some Other countries, but it limits the food sup- ply and makes the drinker dull and slow-going, thus reducing his earning capacity while lead- ing to early sickness and degeneracy. The liquor craving is at best an abnormal economic demand. When fully acquired it is a most persistent and growing item of expense in the family budget. Its gratification takes precedence to that of any legitimate desire or need on the part of wife, children or aged pa- rents. How it conditions domestic happiness is best shown by a study of its relation to each of the three fundamental necessities of life — food, clothing and shelter. Among the great mass of people dependent upon their daily earnings, laboring men in fac- tory or office or on the farm, as well as among the poorer classes, the standard of family liv- ing will rise as the drink bill is cut off, or fall as an increasing ratio is spent for this purpose. The first heavy burden always falls upon the home — a poorer house or more crowded rooms must be procured. Next in order follows food reduction ; cheaper in quality and less in quan- tity. Last of all, and only when the strictest economy is exacted in order to furnish more money for beer, will most people save to any great extent in clothing. As a symbol of re- spectability this will be clung to most frantic- ally by the family of the drunkard being drawn down in the social scale by the liquor burden. It is on the rent that the most heartless sav- ing takes place. The narrowed quarters, crowded rooms, filthy surroundings and broken spirits of the home where a large share of the income is spent for drink must be borne chiefly 196 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. by the innocent members. The man himself may seek selfishly the companionship of the street corner or saloon ; the wife and children must endure without relief day or night the unhealthful rooms which his indulgence makes necessary. According to the conservative estimate of the American Grocer^ the per capita cost of drink is $17.74 each year. Counting the aver- age family at five members, the yearly family drink bill is $88.70 for temperate and intemper- ate families alike. The American Prohibition Year Book's estimate^ is $27.64 per capita or $138.20 per family. Shut the saloon and the average American family will have from $7.00 to $11.00 each month with which to provide for itself adequate, comfortable and decent liv- ing. It would settle the housing problem and wipe out the slums of our great cities at one stroke. The second great slice made in the family necessities on account of the money spent for liquor is in food. The compulsory education department of the Chicago school board re- ports* that 5,000 school children are sent to school breakfastless, and that of 10,070 cases examined, 55 per cent are sufferers from mal- nutrition. Neglect, drunkenness of one or both parents, and sickness were found to be the great causes in most cases. Hundreds of mothers were found who went to bed hungry in order that the children might have some- thing to eat next morning. Often fathers were beneficiaries of the free lunch counters in sa- loons while the rest of the family went half starved. 197 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM, It is said that "two temperance people can be supported on the land needed to support the coarse tastes of one regular frequenter of the saloon."^ The following figures are not in- tended as proof of this statement, yet they serve to illustrate it and to show how a vast amount of good food value is lost in the manu- facture of alcoholic liquors. Official figures show that in 1906 there were so used 101,284,- 000 bushels of grain, rye, com, barley and wheat.** It has been estimated that notwith- standing the variety, this amount, if made into flour, would produce an average of 40 pounds per bushel' or 4,040,000,000 pounds of flour. Since each 40 pounds yields 60 pounds of bread, the grain worse than wasted in making alcoholic poison would give instead 6,060,000,- 000 one-pound loaves of bread. This would give every man, woman and child of our 95,- 000,000 population 63 loaves or apportion 315 to every family. There is thus destroyed, without adequate economic return, sufficient raw food stuff to give every one in the nation a loaf of bread daily for two months, or more than enough to feed the entire "submerged tenth" a year. On the third chief item of family necessity, dress, the consequences of the drink bill are not quite so marked although equally severe. Clothes are the social and cultural indication of the wearer. They give "standing" as noth- ing else does. Physical suffering, lack of food, cold, and disease will be borne in silence ; any- thing will be sacrificed before this tag of re- spectability is left go. The ragged and shabby appearance of the 198 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. drunkard's family are only too well told by the heart-rending stories of the old-time temper- ance agitator. They can not be overdrawn. They reveal the extreme of the truth ; they mark the limit of suffering and sacrifice de- manded to gratify the drink appetite. The smart, but stylish and cheap Sunday dress, so often worn by the daughters of the very poor, is but the meanest contrast with the garment which it must replace instantly on reaching home. Wife and children are again the great- est as well as the innocent sufferers because of the money lost on drink. The Suffering Unit. — In the earlier days the use of alcoholic liquors in the home by the older members of the family and sometimes by children was almost universal, as it is in European countries at the present time. Dur- ing recent years home drinking has been very much reduced ; it is found today only among certain classes, newly arrived immigrants and foreign "colonies," the more wealthy, certain classes of wage earners and among mixed classes in local prohibition territory in large cities. Among others the custom has become almost extinct. Where formerly almost every- body drank, now scarcely more than one out of four drinks, while it has been estimated, for example in Boston,^ that one family out of four is more or less severely afflicted with one or more drinking members. During the last fifty years the development of the modern stand-up saloon has had much to do with taking intoxicants out of the home. But the social consequences have varied in the opposite direction. Fewer members of the 199 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. family drink, but the saloon has made drinking excessive ; it has removed restraints ; the bar has developed the unlimited evils of the treat- ing habit ; the saloon has become a lounging place for men in competition with the home, while drinking by women in public very re- cently has grown rapidly. The social and po- litical vices connected with the liquor problem mostly find their center in the saloon. In brief, the habit has become individualistic ; the con- sequences social. The evils resulting are more than ever shifted to the family as a whole. All grades of society despise the hard drinker ; it is the innocent members, not the sense- blighted inebriate, that feel this social ostra- cism. The heavy drinker can not injure him- self more severely now than he could a cen- tury ago when almost everybody took some- thing; but the wife and children suffer moral- ly, in social standing and in lack of support, from a drink bill three times as great. He may lose his place in a paying employment more quickly ; they degenerate into poverty even more rapidly. The intensified burden that this historical differentiation has thrown upon the average family, dependent upon its daily earnings, has been relieved slightly in certain economic fea- tures by concurrent developments. The ten- dency of fewer women to drink insures better home care ; the centralization into saloons has, until very recently, aided in keeping them from its use ; modern industrial movements have opened many new lines of employment for women and children so that, in case the saloon takes too large a share of the man's earnings, 200 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. they become less dependent upon him for sup- port. But, on the whole, for the drinking classes, the saloon is out-substituting the home. It has taken the place of something better for thou- sands of its patrons. Many who now have no place in which to have a good time once had home life, the real kind ; many have belonged to wholesome and unquestionable clubs — so- cial, literary and semi-religious, or wholly so. These supplied fully the "club" demands of modern society. The saloon has preempted this ground for economic purposes. It has added to legitimate attractions those which society is never bound to respect — the encouragement of unlimited personal liberty, evil habits and the gratifica- tion of a craving for morbid sociability. It has made impossible organizations for better athletic, social or political ends. There is no substitute for the saloon. The sale of alcoholic intoxicants, its fundamental aim, forever rules it out from all normal place in society. The Supreme Court bases its deci- sion upon this social fact when it says, "There is no inherent right in a citizen to sell intoxi- cating liquors at retail. It is not the privilege of a citizen of a state or of a citizen of the United States."^ To consider therefore only or chiefly the in- dividual drinker, man or woman, is not only inadequate but also very misleading. The question is not a personal one. The family is the affected, suffering unit. It is the proper basis from which to measure the consequences of drink. The individual gets all the good, if 201 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. there is any — the pleasures of taste, stimula- tion and sociability ; the other members bear the load of suffering. The family is nature's primary social unit and upon it falls the heav- iest burdens that come from drink. Drink Among Women. — During the period that liquor drinking was being centralized into saloons, business places set apart for that one purpose, there was a marked decrease in the number of women drinkers and in the amount consumed by them. Following this were the temperance and total abstinence advances, each of which was more sweeping among female than among male drinkers. Now it has long been considered disreputable for women to frequent or drink in saloons. Very recently there has been a decided re- versal in the current of progress. Indulgence in intoxicants among women is again on the in- crease. Growing independence industrially is removing conventional and social restraint. Enlarged opportunity for self-support, work in factories, stores and offices, has brought a much-needed economic independence to an army of women wage earners but it has been accompanied by two vicious contingent conse- quences, (1) the new industrial equality af- forded working girls has suggested powerful- ly a demand on their part for equal freedom in drinking in public places, smoking cigarettes, and for a bold life in general hitherto confined by custom to men, and (2) the low wages paid in many department stores and factories has brought pressure on the employees to eke out an additional income by immoral means, the break-down almost always being by the route 202 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. of the saloon with its ladies' entrance. Among women not dependent upon their own earnings there is a similar demand for equality, a fatally lowered equality though it is. The saloon and the club take men away at nights ; women are demanding and taking similar freedom, es- pecially among some of the so-called upper classes. There is a decided growth in the drink habit among young and middle-aged women in society functions, at restaurants, soda fountains and other polite subterfuges and substitutes, to say nothing of the increased patronage of the saloon itself. Some high grade soda fountains and refreshment parlors, making this their whole business, are nothing but women's saloons, where would-be refined women and girls may take their wine concoc- tions and cock-tails, combined with other drinks or "straight," without suffering social odium. Some of these places carry regular re- tail liquor dealers' licenses. Most saloons in the larger cities have the "family entrance," the side door to wine rooms, private sitting rooms, etc. Beer wagons do an immense trade to resi- dences and flats, particularly in districts where the saloon has been excluded by local action. Having it right at hand by the bottle or case, the woman inclined to use beer and afforded an excuse by the short-sighted advice of a physician often drinks to excess when alone and lonesome during the quiet hours of the day. In twenty years in Great Britain there has been an increase of 43 per cent in the num- ber of deaths of males due to liquor ; of fe- males, in the same time, 104 per cent,^ indicat- ing that excessive drinking among women has 303 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. grown almost three times as rapidly as it has among men, a fearful menace to the future of the British peoples where drinking is much more unrestrained and general than it is in America. "Luxury drinking" is very common among the society and leisure classes ; lacking a healthful occupation and aim in life they turn to alcohol for a spur to exertion in the pursuit of further pleasure or to escape depression. The women of the "upper 400" are almost in- variably inebriated to a more or less degree. Opposite motives drive the poorer and labor- ing classes to the false relief afforded by in- toxicants ; over fatigue, sickness, the awful grind of daily dullness and drudgery and the craving for excitement produce "misery drinking," a means of temporary relief from the burdens of poverty and sickness that would be excusable if its consequences were not so frightful. Men drink and flee their cares; why should not women do the same. Such drinking, whether among rich or poor, is an unmitigated peril to the home and ulti- mately to the nation and the race. The wom- an of wealth, sipping her champagne in a high- class restaurant-saloon, or in the privacy of her mansion, is as much a monstrosity and blight to social welfare as is the poor wreck, soaked with cheap beer, who starves her chil- dren while she rolls on the floor of her filthy tenement. From the homes of drinking parents, espec- ially of drinking mothers, come most of the criminals and defectives that become public charges. 204 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. 1. The children are predisposed to a ner- vous instability which leads directly to drink and repeated alcoholism ; or it takes different directions, resulting in idiocy, insanity, mor- bid depression, warped moral judgment and lack of control, crime, homicide or suicide. 2. Children are underfed during infancy and older childhood, those having the misfor- tune to escape an early grave growing up un- developed in both mind and body. If such become criminals they are scarcely responsi- ble ; it was the alcohol used by their parents, and the government that permitted its sale, that mutilated their moral character for life. 3. The home training where mothers drink is less than nothing — there is no escape from the overwhelming example of an inebriate mother. Liquor and National Welfare. — Its relation to the welfare of society as a whole is the final test of the worth or danger of a social institu- tion or custom. The family is nature's first and lasting unit of social organization. On its permanence and purity depend the welfare of the individual himself no less than the con- tinued existence of the state as a whole. From the standpoint of the home and the family, the drink habit, the drink bill and the saloon have no redeeming features. The at- tractions of the saloon, drawing so inevitably from the home, make them direct competitors. With the family regarded as a righteous insti- tution, the final outcome of ages of experi- ment, it must follow that to reclaim success- fully those suffering from intemperance, the saloon must be replaced by its true substitute, 205 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the home. Thousands of cirink ruined homes proclaim the additional need of organized force, law and government, in the suppression of the interpolated institution, while all sorts of philanthropic organizations are at work to improve the conditions surrounding needy homes. If, as the drink bill rises that of rent falls, so in the reverse order, rent rises as the cost of drink is reduced. The quality of home life varies inversely as the amount of liquor used. It may not be possible to prove scien- tifically just which is cause, intemperance or poverty. But, in any event the drink bill is the least excusable and most unnecessary of all waste, and in this sense it is cause. It makes no difference practically whether the excessive use of liquor followed or preceded the fall into poverty. On its sociability side the saloon does fur- nish something of value to certain classes of people. But it accomplishes this by depriving the other members of the family of the money, ambitions and ideals necessary to get for them- selves a better grade of social life and more of it. It is a very expensive club for the poor man and a very selfish one as regards his family. Much of its sociability is accom- panied by the stimulation of habits and asso- ciations which reflect back with all their viciousness upon the home. Thousands of women, burdened with the care of large families, are compelled to neg- lect the most important duties that can fall to them, and seek employment in factories and shops on account of the head of the family having become worse than useless through 206 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. his slavery to alcohol. Two specially serious consequences follow, both of which serve as complicating causes in two other great public questions. First, neglect in early home train- ing is one of the chief sources of the law- defying spirit among growing boys and girls, and later of fully developed crime. Second, driven by the absolute need of a bare subsist- ence, and unable to demand for themselves what their labor is actually worth, these women are complicating the industrial prob- lem. They lower wages in the labor market not only for themselves and for other women who enter industrial lines, because they prefer independence, but what is infinitely worse, for men who are earning for a whole family. The evil consequences thus fall not only upon the drunkard's wife, driven by abject necessity to desert the home where she is so much needed, but also upon the women of other laboring men's households, where all are temperate, but where the husband's earnings are reduced by this unnatural competitive factor. Two kinds of inheritance that constitute a serious menace to the race, follow the use of intoxicants by any considerable class of people : (1) Social, — the example of drinking parents, the lack of or wrong sort of moral training, the psychic effects of drink surroundings, the poverty, disgrace, shame-facedness on small and growing children, are a cause of general inefficiency and crime compared with which even the evil accompaniments of the saloon are very small. (2) The transmission of warped and dwarfed intelligence, accompany- ing defects in nerve structure, and resulting 207 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. in epilepsy, impulsiveness and criminal con- duct ; these all tend toward the formation of racial characteristics. On the scale that liquor, especially beer, is now used among large classes, it means a far-reaching menace to the future of the race. As Horace Mann has said, "The intemper- ate man, who has no resource but his labor, experiments upon his children to find the mini- mum of possible subsistence." The cost is too great. Society cannot pay it without mort- gaging the future of the race. The family of the wealthy inebriate tends to exterminate it- self ; that of the poor drunkard becomes a pub- lic burden. Even among those earning fair incomes, as Dr. E. R. L. Gould has said, "The family budget of the average wage-earner is not so flexible that liberal expenditures may be made for drink with impunity. So delicate- ly adjusted is the balance that the status of a new generation is largely determined by the quantity of liquor the fathers consume} "The worst feature of the domestic phase is that the passion for drink ruins affection, breaks family ties and makes men callous to the anguish of wife, children and friends. The frequency of divorce is one of the danger sig- nals. There were in 1903 more than 23,000 divorces granted in the United States alone. According to the deliberate testimony of the judges who legally severed the matrimonial bonds in the courts, more than two-thirds of the divorces are occasioned by the use of in- toxicants. The alarming laxity of family ob- ligations unless checked is certain to be fol- lowed by ruin and disaster to society."^ 208 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. The regulation of the sale of alcoholic liquors is not a personal problem. The in- dividual alone does not seem to be able to with- stand the undue attractions of the saloon with alcohol as its essential factor. But it is not the release of the slave to appetite that makes the matter one for public management. It is not to restrict the moderate drinker in the interests of abstract or ethical good but to pro- tect the innocent and helpless and to prevent the physical and mental break down of future generations. It is often he, the steady, moder- ate drinker, who perhaps is seldom noticeably drunk, that entails upon his children the most lasting burden in inherited defective nerve structure. There can be no such personal liberty to injure future generations. Certainly if the protection of the public health, wealth and morals is the primary function of govern- ment, this which combines them all can be second to nothing else. No attitude on the part of law will give the family, tempted by the blandishments of alcohol and the saloon, a fair show except prohibition with a well organized constituency back of it to see to its permanent enforcement. The government should be on the side of the home, revenue or no revenue. References and Authorities. The Family Drink Bill. Gould, "Social Condition of Labor." Peabody, "The Drink Question in Germany," Na- tion, 54, 167. 209 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Smith, "Liquor and Labor," Catholic World, 47, 539. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Problem and Social Reform," 7-44. ^Peabody, "Drink Question in Germany," Nation, 54, 167. ^American Grocer, May 8, 1907. ^American Prohibition Year Book, (1907) 41. 'Chicago Record Herald, Oct. 2, 1908. *Patton, "Economic Basis for Prohibition," Annals American Academy, Vol. II, 66. 'See "Social Welfare," 79. 'Hargreaves, "Our Wasted Resources," 116. The Suffering Unit. Barker, "Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 42- 43. Stelzel, "The Workingman and Social Problems," 45-50. Smith, "Liquor and Labor," Catholic World, 47, 539. Peabody, "Substitutes for the Saloon," Forum, 21, 595. Fernald, "The Economics of Prohibition," 378-387. ^Peabody, "Substitutes for the Saloon," Forum, 21, 595. 'Crowley v. Christensen, 137 U. S. 86. Drink Among Women. Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 161-188, 232-234. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 42-46. Horsley and Sturge, "Alcohol and the Human Body," 311-337. Fernald, "The Economics of Prohibition," 383-387. Miller, "Alcohol and Degeneration," Independent, 58, 261. American Prohibition Year Book, (1908) 78-81. "The Temperance Problem," 89-90. ^Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Prob- lem and Social Reform," 90. liquor and National Welfare. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 42-47. Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 232-235. 210 DRINK AND THE FAMILY. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 90-91. Horsley and Sturge, "Alcohol and the Human Body," 311-337. 'Gould, "Social Conditions of Labor." ^Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 43. 211 CHAPTER XII, LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. The Burden of Intemperance on Labor. — Upon no other section of society does the burden of intemperance rest so heavily as it does upon the laboring classes. It is among those who, aside from the farmer, must earn their subsistence by daily and regular physical work, that drink causes the most harm and in the greatest number and variety of ways. This does not necessarily mean that this class contains more excessive drinkers than any other, but that, next to the men en- gaged directly in the liquor business, no other class contains so low a per cent, of total ab- stainers. In the prominent industrial and mining states, where the masses of population are cen- tered, almost all of the men engaged in un- skilled, and many of those in the more skilled, trades are frequent or constant users of malt liquors. It is this steady average use of beer, extending from very moderate to constant soaking on a wide scale that makes laboring people the greatest of all sufferers from drink. Some of these men in factory, shop and mine would vote to banish the saloon, if given op- portunity. But while it remains they are its constant patrons. Without property to fall 212 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. back upon in case of sickness, accident, or loss of work, dependent for daily living upon steady employment, this constant narcotizing of the mental faculties, even when no more than two or three glasses per day are taken, prevents advancement, leads to accidents, causes unsteadiness in work and opens the way to attack by tuberculosis, pneumonia and other acute diseases to which the drinker is peculiar- ly liable. The steady expense makes it impos- sible to save so that when work is stopped suf- fering quickly follows. Liquor is the wage earner's heaviest handicap in his noble strug- gle for advancement and an important compli- cating source of his industrial dependence. The great English labor leader and its repre- sentative in Parliament, John Bums, in a lec- ture at Manchester, Oct. 31, 1904, said, "There is no class in ancient, nor any section of mod- ern, society, in which the evil of drink or the scourge of drunkenness has so mischievously impressed its destructive effects and steriliz- ing influences as on the class who can least resist it — the industrious poor, the working classes, on whom the lot of manual labor falls." The burdens of sickness and reduced men- tal and physical vitality are distributed almost evenly among all clases that use liquor in pro- portion to the number of excessive drinkers among them. The social burdens of crime, poverty and degeneracy, must be borne by the whole community, rich and poor, those who indulge and those who do not, alike. But the weight of the individual, or rather family, drink bill, with the money that it takes and the income that it prevents, falls first and always 213 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. upon the laboring man and those dependent upon him. He must share with other citizens the pubHc expense while carrying as his own burden the heaviest of them all. If alcohol were simply a harmless luxury, it would not be so bad. It would mean merely the cutting down of the already too small amount spent for food, housing and furniture, the bare necessities of life. It would be merely a loss without adequate return. But the laborer's liquor bill is not mere use- less luxury. The waste of the money spent directly is the smaller loss. The greater, is the direct injury to efficiency. His ability to work is his only resource ; it is the only com- modity he has for sale. Alcohol slowly or more swiftly lowers his value in the labor mar- ket ; it unsteadies his nerves, makes his brain unreliable and his muscles weak, and slowly reduces him in the scale of producing capac- ity. Thus the loss of the money spent on liquor, reacts to cause a second and more se- rious loss — his own personal economic value to himself, to his employer and to the community. It is the better classes of labor that must suf- fer most in this respect simply because they have the better qualifications and therefore the most to lose. "The ravages of intemper- ance are most plainly to be traced in classes distinctly above the pauper class. It is among artisans and those capable of earning good wages that the most energy is spent for alco- hol and the most vitality burned out by it."^ A third way in which liquor serves to in- crease the financial burden of the wage-earner is through the part it plays in the introduction 214 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. of cheap labor into the labor market. The scaling down of the family necessities to meet the father's drink bill compels members of the family that ought not to be so employed, the mother and children, to help earn a bare living. These women, driven by the cry for bread, are willing to work for any price. The market feels the result ; wages are reduced in response to this abnormal sort of competition and men are thrown out of employment. Wages in general are affected and the temper- ate laborer, and his family, the innocent, must bear a part of the consequences. A false idea of sociability has developed the treating custom. On the night after payday many a man spends far more for drink, to be a "good fellow" with the boys, than he would for himself alone, and so adds to his own ex- cessive drinking as v/ell as to his expense. This custom is common to nearly all drinking classes but has an important bearing on the laboring man since his liquor bill takes already so large and steady a part of his meager in- come. The Relation of Drink to Wages. — Intemper- ance is a secondary but very vital factor in that most discussed of all economic problems of the day, the wage question. While the amount of wages pure and sim- ple, — that part of the general reward of indus- try that goes to labor, — is decided primarily by fundamental laws of political economy, drink, to the extent that it prevails among working men, seriously interferes with the operation of these laws. Its bearing is exceed- ingly vital and especially critical in the present 216 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Struggle of wage earners for a larger share in the general returns of production. It touches and demoralizes the labor market at the fol- lowing points : 1. The efficiency of labor as a producer in adding to the general wealth of the community and in winning for itself its legitimate share of the profits of production. 2. The number and insistency of the com- peting unemployed. This is an acute factor in fixing the wage scale at any particular time. 3. Consumption and the consequent demand for new production and labor. That drink reduces earning capacity among the more highly skilled and responsible classes of labor, where keen perception, quick judg- ment and technical skill are required, is too evident to need discussion. Certain trades are more and more requiring total abstinence. A generation ago railroad employees were among the heavy drinking classes. At the present time industrial prohibition has made 1,190,000 such men, better paid than form rly, total ab- stainers while on duty and very moderate drinkers, if not abstainers, while off duty.^ It has been proven by very careful experiment^ that in typesetting, the use of one ounce of alcohol, the amount contained in about three glasses of beer, even when taken only on alter- nate days, leaving one day for the effect to pass off, reduces working ability ten per cent. Drinking men always experience greater dif- ficulty in getting the usual amount of work done on Monday following the heavier drink- ing on Saturday night and Sunday. Thus drink acts as a rough means of classi- 216 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. fying labor according to efficiency. And this is a fundamental fact in the fixing of wages where competition exists. This sifting process among the various grades, from the highly skilled to the most desultory of day workmen, leaves the upper classes with fewer competitors and adds to the second and lower grades. So on to the most degrading work where brain action, judg- ment, and care are superceded by mere brute strength. Here the already overcrowded labor market becomes glutted by the constant addi- tion to it of those sent down from above — men driven by the necessity of a bare existence and the craving of an abnormal appetite who are willing to work for the lowest of wages. Temporarily, the temperate skilled may profit by this reduction in their ranks through intemperance or any similar vice that takes off the edge of skill. They gain the advantage of a sort of monopoly. This is true so long as competition is the only operating force. But other powerful factors enter. The lowest classes are degraded by this influx of liquor- benumbed labor. They are compelled to adopt the lowest possible standard of living, and con- sumption, the prime source of production, and so of the demand for labor, reacts finally upon labor itself and a larger unemployed class re- sults. It is a primary economic fact that minister- ing to present wants creates new ones. The man who buys a home immediately needs a great variety of articles with which to furnish it. In a poor family free from such self- destroying vices as drink, a new want created 217 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. by a cheap musical instrument gives successive calls for more music, for the services of a teacher and finally for a piano, in the manu- facture and transportation of which a very large share of labor, skilled and unskilled, is required. Gratified desire creates in multi- plied form new wants ; leave desire unsatis- fied and it dies down to the most servile stand- ard of subsistence. Here overbearing capital steps in, takes advantage of the oversupply of this cheap, unprotesting class and all labor is robbed of its rightful share in the fruits of production. The desire for alcohol serves only to create a further demand for itself. In its manufac- ture fewer laborers are required^ than in the production of any of the ordinary necessities, conveniences or even luxuries, of everyday average living. Money spent for liquor does less, therefore, in creating a demand for new labor than when spent for any one of a thou- sand legitimate needs. The use of intoxicants instead of creating new wants, merely monop- olizes more healthful ones ; slowly but surely it drives out of existence many of the normal demands of home life. The greater the grati- fication of a normal demand the greater other industries are benefitted ; the more the liquor demand is satisfied the more other industries suffer, the higher the per cent that goes to the capitalist — the brewer and distiller — and to the government, and the less other wants of the drinker's family are satisfied. The stand- ard of living sinks lower until even drink itself can scarcely be purchased. "So far then, from the value of sober labor's 218 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. being increased by drunkenness, the reverse is true, and not only for the reason just given, but fo' another reason equally apparent. The drunkard cheapens the labor market in the same way that the dealer who sells books below cost cheapens and demoralizes the book market. The drunkard is ready to sell, not only his own labor, but that of his wife and children, at less than the real market value. The result is an eruption of woman labor and child labor at whatever price employers will pay. While we are trying to bar out cheap labor from abroad the saloon is steadily cheap- ening labor at home."* The place where drink hurts labor most is where it cuts down the standard of living in his family and prevents their enjoying an all- round normal life. The great army of con- sumers in this country are the producers them- selves, not the extravagant rich. Therefore anything that lowers, or keeps down their abil- ity to buy, or blights hope and courage, injures production and wages more than any other force can possibly do. The radical defect is not over production but under consumption and uneven distribution. Liquor blights con- sumption, as above shown, and is one power- ful factor in enabling the wealthy to retain so unjust a share of the wealth produced by the joint operation of labor and capital. 'Tt is the man with many wants, not luxu- rious fancies, but real legitimate wants — who works hard to satisfy his aspirations."^ The economic value of moral qualities, sobriety, thrift, strength of purpose, etc., is to create a whole new series of wants and to 219 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. give the mental strength and power of co- operation necessary to see that these wants are gratified. To deny this would be to say that the lowest laboring classes are hopeless. It is said that abstinence from liquors would make the workingman willing to labor for as much less per day as was the price of his beer, — that the capitalist alone would get the profits from his abstinence. But this view assumes that moral qualities have no economic value to their possessor — that a temperate man is no more able to assert himself, to unite with other workmen in protracted efforts against aggres- sive capital, — that he is no more a man than the deep drinker. All science and experience deny such an assumption and prove the oppo- site. A man who has "sworn off" does not work for less than before. As a result of his increased personal standard and self-respect (1) his standard of living is raised and he can not afford to work for as little as before ; (2) his soberness makes him able to enforce, to a larger degree, his demands; (3) his wife and children, needed in the home and at school, have a better chance of being withdrawn from the overcrowded ranks of the "unemployed," and there is a smaller number among which to divide the money and work that go to this ir- regular class of workers. The Struggle Between Capital and Labor. — One of the most serious of social conditions of the present time is the struggle between capital and labor. Labor is demanding more and more strenuously every day a larger share in the value it has done so much to create, higher wages, shorter hours and better treat- 220 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. ment, — demands in themselves most just and reasonable. Entering into this struggle, inten- sifying its differences and hindering solution is this intruding factor, the drink habit. Liquor may not be classed among the chief causes of the labor question, but it is an active factor in keeping the dispute open and one of the fundamental reasons why labor is so hampered in its efforts to defend itself or gain its full rights. Drink lowers the laboring man's standard oi- life, upon which his standard of wages largely depends. The man who lives better, purchases more and a greater variety of food and cloth- ing, and has higher moral ideas, is always worth more economically and is able to de- mand more wages, and because of his higher standard is able to enforce his demands to a greater extent. The laborer who is sodden with drink is willing to put up with anything ; his wages will be low to correspond with his low standard of life and he will become more and more unable to hold his own in the strug- gle with capital. The wealthy man may be able to carry the weight of excessive alcoholic indulgence and suffer little financially on account of it. He has money to pay for it ; his family need not suffer and his position in the community may be maintained by the use of money. Not so with the poor man. The drink burden strikes his welfare at more vital places. Indeed, liquor seems to be an ally to the oppressor of labor. The "scabs" who break up strikes come from the reckless, heavy-drinking classes. Drink is an enemy to union labor in that it 221 THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. interferes with the self restraint necessary to carry out steady co-operative effort for more distant ends. The influence of the labor union is now against the saloon. President Gompers of the American Federation said, "Fifteen or twenty years ago the common meeting place of union labor would be a saloon or the room adjoining a saloon, but we have changed all that. It was not good for the men. It was not good for the unions. There was more likelihood of violent talk and unwise measures. It hurt the standing of the unions in the com- munity. Hence that is practically done away." Many of the most active labor leaders in Amer- ica do not drink, while every one of the rep- resentatives of the labor party in the English Parliament are total abstainers. An investigator of the early sources of the liquor problem, Dr. Lees, of London, cites manuscripts of the Elizabethan reign to show that the saloon, as such, was early devised by the ruling classes as a means of restraining the growing independence and wealth of the common people. It was recommended to Sec- retary of State Cecil, that "It must be cured by the providing, as it were, of some sewers or channels to draw or suck from them their money by subtle and indirect means, to be handled insensibly." Accordingly, licenses to sell ale and wine were lavishly dispensed and the business encouraged by the government. Whether the saloon was so devised or not, it is certain that the wide-spread saturation of a large share of working men by beer at the present time is an important factor in the bat- tle for organization. The brain, not brute 222 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. force, must be the weapon of warfare against overbearing capital. It is affected by very small quantites of alcohol. Against the alco- holization of his keenest mental powers the out-to-win worker must be relentlessly alert. Dr. Frohlich, of Vienna, states a foundation sociological fact in the following words : "Alcohol deceives the man with the promise of a happy present, and hinders his apprecia- tion of the weight of misery that is upon him. There is no easier way possible to make the unfortunate man content with his misfortunes than a couple of glasses of beer. Every dis- agreeable thought vanishes then, because the cortex of the brain is deadened and the man is lulled into a soporific state. We need men who are awake. The alcohol which puts men to sleep is an enemy to labor and a bitter enemy to the laborer, though it come under the deceit- ful mask of a friend." The use of liquor leads to outbreaks, riots, destruction of property and lives in the event of strikes. This fact is so well known that it is no uncommon thing for the city officials in places where strikes are in danger of ending in riot rigorously to close all saloons and keep them closed. It is the liquor-excited sub- leaders who incite to riot, the liquor-excited mob that destroys property and endangers lives, not the honest strikers themselves. It is this which more than anything else has dis- graced organized labor and its undoubted right to strike. This phase of the liquor-labor ques- tion has become so serious that if the right- eousness of the power to strike is to remain, drunken labor must go. 223 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. At present the strike is one of the most ef- fectual means by which labor's just demands against capital may in the end be enforced. When saloon viciousness and drink corrupt it the strike becomes a public menace which so- ciety has no right to permit. The burdens of the laboring man often seem heavier than they are because of the drink bill which he has put upon himself. It is not a defense of low wages to say that there are thousands of men who, if they had more money coming in weekly would only spend the more for liquor and so hasten their own de- struction and be a greater burden upon society. Cesare Lamorosi, the noted Italian criminolo- gist, after the most careful study of the ques- tion, concludes that an increase of wages alone means an increase of drunkenness and its ac- companying crimes. Labor, we may say, de- cisively, ought to receive vastly more from its large share in production, but it can never win its just rights in its struggle against aggres- sive capital, nor, if it should, would it be per- manently better ofif afterward, while bearing its awful burden of drink. Burns, the English labor leader, shows the weight of this burden by comparing it with the cost of strikes. "In 1901," he says, "the much abused trade unions, with all their 648 strikes and lockouts, 68 per cent of which were wholly or partially successful, inflicted a loss of half a day per annum on all the working classes at work. This involved a loss of less than £1,- 000,000, for which they secured £24,000,000 in higher wages and a net gain of over 11,- 000,000 reduced hours of work, beyond other 224 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. important conditions, yet on drink, betting and gambling-, and the loss entailed in time and money, from thirty to fifty days per annum were lost with no adequate advantage at all." There is no security against tyranny, cap- italistic or political, except in the power and disposition to resist tyranny. The hard work- ing laboring classes are the only proper and safe guardians of their own interests. If they do not seek these interests they will to a degree lose them, and the whole industrial body — but themselves most of all — will receive injuries which tend to become permanent. Drink must be banished as a step toward what ap- pears to them as the greater end, a fair distri- bution of the product of labor. As an Employer of Labor. — "That capital is best employed," says Professor Hopkins,^ "and best serves the creation and distribution of wealth, in the reproduction of which the larg- est possible amount of labor is engaged, and in the returns for which labor has the largest share." In view of this economic principle, let us see what share labor is getting from the business of manufacturing alcoholic liquors. The city of Milwaukee, advertised throughout the world as a center of the brewing industry, affords the most fair and practical example that can be found. In a statement issued by the Manufacturers' and Merchants' Associa- tion of that city for 1903" we find the leading industries of the city compared as to their rela- tive employment of labor. It is noticeable that the brewing business is far below that of many others in its general importance, and especially as a market for labor. The metal industries 225 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. employed 27,977 persons ; leather, 7,839 ; wear- ing apparel, 9,733, and the breweries "which made Milwaukee famous" and all others taken together only employed 3,545. Another com- parison is that afforded by the relative amount which labor received of the value of the entire output for the year, which was as follows : Metal industries labor received in payment of wages 22.9 per cent of the product manufac- tured ; leather, 14.5 per cent ; wearing apparel, 20.9 per cent, while of the product of the brew- eries labor received but 11 per cent of the out- put. What does this indicate in view of the economic principle mentioned above? Mil- waukee business men as a whole repudiate the idea that beermaking is the chief industry of their city. In proportion to the amount of capital in- vested in the liquor business, the number of men furnished employment is among the low- est, if not the very lowest, of any of the great industries of the country. It is certain then that if this capital were released and placed in another business it would greatly stimulate the demand for labor. From the point of con- sumption, if the money spent by laboring men and others were spent for clothing, furniture, food and a thousand household conveniences and necessities, it would mean not only a tre- mendous social advance, but also such an in- creased demand for these products that abun- dant labor would be provided for all the men now employed in the manufacture and sale of liquors. The liquor trade furnishes employment to labor at two points: (1) In its production 226 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. and sale, and in those trades closely allied with it ; (2) to the farmer to the degree that it furnishes a market for his produce. As compared with the share which goes to labor in other producing industries, the liquor traffic makes a very poor showing, indeed. It has been shown^ that of $5.00 spent for each of the following articles labor finally receives the amounts indicated : Boots and shoes $1.12; bread, .89; clothing, $1.10; furniture, $1.18; the average of all such products, .88; distilled liquors, .05 ; malt liquors, .25. Twenty-five dollars spent for necessary arti- cles stimulates business, pays $4.40 to labor in wages, creates a new demand for more labor and brings needed supplies into the fam- ily. Twenty-five dollars spent for liquor gives labor 75 cents worth of employment, reduces the demand for other articles and interferes with the earning capacity of the laborer. Cer- tainly liquor as an employer does not show itself "the best friend of the laboring man." In 1905 there were employed in the liquor producing industries 55,407 men as wage earn- ers,* and several thousand more in such closely related trades as bottling and cooperage. If the value of the product at retail which they turned out had been an average of other manu- factured articles, so much needed by the suf- fering poor, the men required to produce it would have been 406,214, or 340,807 more workers would have been employed at $158,- 074,402 additional in wages. The money spent for liquors, if put into an average of all other manufactured articles would have given em- ployment for all those now engaged in that 227 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. business and a market for 340,000 additional to be taken from the lists of the present unem- ployed. The advantage to the farmer would have been equally great. Notwithstanding the large claims of the Hquor trade only 1.48 per cent of the total farm produce of the country is con- sumed by the brewer and distiller. The money used to purchase this grain at retail in the form of liquor, as shown by Ely^, if spent to satisfy the rational wants of the same families, made destitute by intemperance, would pur- chase at least seven times as much grain in the form of flour as in the form of liquor. "Those farmers," he says^, "who think the liquor traffic creates a demand for their com- modities, and those brewers and distillers who endeavor to instill this belief, are both de- ceived and deceivers." References and Authorities. The Burden of Intemperance on Labor. Stelzel, "The Workingman and Social Problems," 37-40. Roberts, "The Anthracite Coal Communities," 222-243. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Prob- lem and Social Reform,'" 21-34 Warner, "American Charities," 60-62. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 10-12. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 67-68. 228 LIQUOR AND THE LABOR PROBLEM. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 62-70. Horsley and Sturge, Alcohol and the Human Body," 91-96. 'Warner, "American Charities," 61. Relation of Drink to Wages. Rowntree and Sherwell, "The Temperance Problem and Social Reform," 26-29, 55-58. Hobson, "Problems of Poverty," 178-181. Horsley and Sturge, "Alcohol and the Human Body," 92-96. American Prohibition Year Book (1908), 64-67. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 68-69. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 62-70. Ely, "Political Economy, 156. 'See page 99. ^Smith, "Alcohol and the Individual," McClure's, Oct., 1908. 'See page 81. *Wheeler, "Prohibition," 69. 'Gould, "The Social Condition of Labor," 31. The Struggle Between Capital and Labor. Rowntree and Sherwell, "the Temperance Problem and Social Reform," 44-58. Woolley and Johnson, "Temperance Progress," 396-405. Calkins, "Substitutes for the Saloon," 303-313. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 68-70. Frohlich, "Alcohol the Workingman's Antagon- ist," School Physiology Journal, Nov., 1908. As an Employer of Labor. Ely, "Political Economy," 156. Waldron, "Economics of the Drink Traffic," Chau- tauquan, June, 1908. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 9-10. Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 57-61, 87-89. 'Hopkins, "Wealth and Waste," 57. ^Published by the Anti-Saloon League of Wis. 'See page 82. 'Statistical Al^,stract, (1906), 504-505. ^Ely, "Political Economy," 156. 229 CHAPTER XIII. THE CONFLICT OF RACES. The Negro and Drink. — Deep indulgence in alcoholic liquors is pre-eminently a white man's vice. Wherever and whenever the colored man, Negro or Indian, has learned its exten- sive use, it has been at the teaching of the superior race. Especially on the part of the Negro the prompting impulse has been imita- tion — to be like that great sueprior white race. Released from slavery, under which there was little or no drinking, liquor men began to take advantage of his ignorance and of his long- ing to have every privilege enjoyed by white men and proceeded to create a new market, limited, however, by the poverty of the would- be purchaser, and to peddle out cheap liquors to the ex-slaves. On account of the limited degree to which the colored people have taken to drink, neither in the South nor in the Northern cities, to which they have been coming in increasing numbers in recent years, have they suffered so directly from drunkenness as have the drinking classes among the whites. The Negro is not an inebriate in the sense that the drunken American, Irishman, Englishman or German is, with hundreds of years of heavy 280 THE CONFLICT OF RACES. drinking back of him. The country Negro of the South finds it difficult to get Hquor on ac- count of the rapidly extending prohibitory laws. In the towns, where saloons yet remain, most of them have so little money that they can pay for drink only at long periods. Com- paratively few are habitual drunkards ; as a people they do not yet possess a craving for intoxicants and have not inherited convivial social customs. Investigation by the Commitee of Fifty,^ chiefly among those in the North, shows that with the Negro 9.15 per cent, of his direct and 5.09 per cent, of his indirect poverty is due to drink, while of the white man 19.43 per cent, of direct and 9.18 per cent, of indirect comes from the same source. It takes time to stamp drunkenness on a race and the colored man in America has had only one generation in which to learn the vices of civilization, since he has been free to have a choice in the mat- ter. In this one respect his native shiftless- ness and his poverty have combined with leg- islation and restraint by the better part of the white race to keep the Negro sober and pre- vent the utter debauch and destruction that would have followed such wide use of intox- icants as is practiced by the more drunken nationalities mixed with the Northern peoples. But the use of liquor by Negroes, relatively smaller in amount though it may be, is and has been an ugly factor in the friction and quarrels between the races in the South and has con- stituted one of the most powerful arguments for the anti-liquor side in the prohibition movements. It has caused the race friction, which might otherwise have been overcome 281 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. by peaceable methods, to break out into quar- rels, revolting crime, riot and lynchings. In- toxicants act more quickly and more acutely on the primitive brain, emotions and passions of the colored man, making him insolent, ex- aggerating his self-conceit and leading to dis- turbances where real or imaginary grievances already exist. Further, alcohol stirs up his worst passions and removes the little feeling of restraint so far learned by the lower grades of Negroes. Naturally easy-going and amiable, he becomes impudent and abusive. He is not long tolerated in the saloon, almost always kept by white men, and when on the street continues his hilarity and improper con- duct.^ The keenest of recent students of the psychological, crime-producing effects of alco- hol reach the conclusion that "quite small doses are often responsible for the commis- sion of reckless, self-pleasing actions and for the inordinate sway of the passions, which are no longer kept in full control by the higher powers of the mind, because these are more or less in abeyance as the result of the paralyz- ing effects of the drug."^ If this is true of the Anglo-Saxon with more than a thousand years of civilization be- hind him what may be expected of the Negro only a hundred years away from the African jungle, where passions, emotions and natural impulses were exceptionally strong from ages of unregulated control. The inhibiting powers have been but slowly developed since freedom and it is just these faculties that alcohol first attacks, as the scientists show. 282 THE CONFLICT OF RACES. Just what place liquor occupies as a stimu- lant of the special crimes that stir race hatred to the lynching point has not been determined by actual investigation. But there is no un- certainty as to the attitude of the best edu- cated Southern people — those who know the colored man best — on the matter. They are determined to keep liquor from the Negro at all costs. Hon. Seaborn Wright, of Atlanta, the leader of the prohibition movement in Georgia, expresses the conviction of the South- ern white man when he says that "the develop- ment, the safety, aye, the very life of the Negro race in the South hangs upon his abso- lute separation from intoxicating liquors. Four-fifths of his crimes against our women come from this infernal source ; it is behind nine-tenths of the race conflicts in the South."* On the other hand, the testimony of the best educated Negroes is that "the Negro brute is a product of the white man's gambling hells, low dives and saloons.''* "The laws of the slave-holding states made it a crime to furnish liquor to a slave ; and this one thing, in spite of the grinding hardships of slavery, made of the Negro the finest physi- cally developed race on the continent ; as mechanics, as masons, as field laborers, they were without superiors, sober, industrious, honest. When the war ended the saloon was a closed door to the Negro. In five years, tens of thousands of 'doggeries' and saloons, in every city and village and cross-roads, were stretching their paralyzing arms to this semi- savage child-race, destroying all that was best in the Negro mind and heart and body. . . . 233 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. I tell you, before God, that my people, as mas- ters, were never enemies of this helpless race, as the brewers and distillers, in partnership with the national government, have been since the Negro in the sixties stepped out of the old slave quarters into the open doors of the Amer- ican saloon." Liquor a Factor in Race Conflicts. — The use of alcoholic intoxicants has a specially ominous place in the quarrels and disturbances that arise where two races, so different as the white and black, are compelled to live together in the same community, in anything like equal numbers. It is not that alcohol hurts the col- ored man more, the personal injury is actually less, but that it serves as the match to touch off the deeper lying prejudices into brawls, crime and riot. Several factors in which the saloon and liquor are largely responsible are found in con- nection with nearly all lynchings and riots based on race differences. North or South. First is a preceding period of lax law enforce- ment, and a feeling on the part of the people that appeals to justice will be ineffectual or too slow. There is no other institution in America that is so uniformly a law-breaker as the liquor traffic. There is none that so universally succeeds in preventing justice or encourages by precept and practice the law- defying spirit that disgraces American govern- ment in the eyes of Europeans. Another factor is the use of liquor by the criminal that has incited the vengence of the mob, and by the leaders of the mob. Liquor is a predisposing cause for crime among men 234 THE CONFLICT OF RACES. of any class with little self-restraint ; the tongue is loosened, fingers are ready for a quarrel, and impulse and passion are left free to control action. It is the horrible details of such impulsive crimes that stir to vengence, rather than punishment. Lynchings in the South frequently occur in communities where there are no saloons, but in most cases it is found that the Negro guilty of murder or outrage has been using whisky illegally sold or was of the floating type that came into a peaceful, country, no-saloon com- munity from the low-down grog shop of the cities. In the North where race lynchings are beginning to assume the same characteristics as in the South, the liquor conditions are in- tesified. The mob is almost always the out- put of the saloons, the loafers and young men and boys from sixteen to twenty-two years of age. It is this type of men that makes the bulk of all mobs, North or South. The order- ly, peaceable mob, composed of "the best cit- izens," that "goes quietly about its business" is a newspaper hyperbole. The mob is mass passion revenging itself on individual passion ; both are irresponsible and uncontrolled and both are cowardly when met by manly strength. The psychological action of the mob is such that laws against lynchings can not reach it. The cure must be the same as the cure for the crime that stirred the mob to vengence — the cleaning up of the condi- tions that make both possible, the strict en- forcement of law, speedy justice, the removal of liquor from the lower grades and irrespon- sible of both races, and proper education. In 285 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. the Northern states perfect confidence in law can never exist so long as the saloon and the saloon politician have so strong a hand in gov- ernment as they have at the present time. In a discussion of "The Tragedy at At- lanta"^ John Temple Graves presents the views of the best Southern men in his state- ment that the crimes that stir most often to lynching are, in many if not most cases, due to the consumption of whisky, morphine, etc., by the reckless classes of Negroes — that whisky plus hot weather is the immediate ex- citing cause, though not finally the ultimate one, of the fearful race riots and lynchings that so frequently disgrace that section of our country. Stirred by reports of attacks by Negroes on a half-dozen white women in one day, a mob lead by saloon hangers-on accumulated and for several days held the city in its grasp. One hundred persons, mostly negroes, were injured or killed, stores were looted, property destroyed, homes of respectable colored people entered, innocent Negroes shot along with the guilty, and the laws, with city officials indif- ferent or tolerant, were defied. The Negro brutes and the mob-leaders were both the product of Atlanta's saloons. Had it not been for these "low whites" and floating "niggers" the period of high tension on the deeper prob- lem would have passed without disgrace. Race enmity is felt most by the least efficient white man, who resents any success by the colored man. It is the worthless white and the criminal Negro, North as well as South, that 236 THE CONFLICT OF RACES. are the easy victims to violent impulses, and low politics. Then came the reaction in Atlanta — the serious determination to remove the occasion for such outbreaks. The race question could not be settled at once ; the weather could not be changed ; but the saloon and its indulgences, its vile talk and fellow-encouragement among the victims of both races, the saloon and alco- hol with excuse neither in nature nor in indus- trial blunders of the past that massed the races together — the saloon must go. This movement was not an attempt to re- move from the blacks what the white people wished to retain for themselves. They recog- nized its dangers to both races. It was an as- sertion of the truth that what injures one class in a community must be a blight and menace to all. The saloons were closed two weeks. "During that period perfect order was maintained, the recorder's court docket was reduced one-half, and the merchants, espe- cially in the humbler portions of the city, ex- perienced phenomenal trade."- Then the peo- ple began to ask, "Why not a year?" "For- ever ?" The liquor traffic fostered and encour- aged the depraved and criminal Negro and the vengeful and irresponsible white. Of both the South was tired. Educated Negroes themselves recognize only too well the dangers of liquor in such conflicts — dangers out of all proportion to the amount the colored people use of it, if com- pared with the foreign-born nationalities of the North. Booker T. Washington says:' 237 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. "The prohibition movement is based upon a deep seated desire to get rid of whisky in the interests of both races because of its hurtful economic results. The prohibition sentiment is as strong in counties where there are prac- tically no colored people as in the Black Belt counties." "In Birmingham the Negroes formed an organization and cast nearly all the registered colored vote for prohibition."* Race hatred and with it the lawless law of lynch is spreading North along with the im- migration of the "floating Negro" into North- ern cities, where the conditions for outbreak are already too fertile. Typical Northern race riots were those of the two Springfields, Ohio in 1904, and Illinois in 1908. In the former^ there had been a long period of lax enforce- ment of law, a murder every sixteen days in the county and few executions ; there was little or no enforcement against vice and the saloon in the city ; the authorities catered to these elements; the Negroes had 1,500 votes that were regularly bought and sold by the parties alternately as needed. There were 145 saloons in Springfield, one to every 283 of the popula- tion, nine of them kept by Negroes. A spe- cially vile colored levee was run by a political boss and repeated efforts to have it cleared up were thwarted by the party leaders who needed the 60 or 70 votes that this petty plut- ocrat handed them in return for protection. The soil for riot was rich and deep. A drunken Negro shot a policeman. A mob of men and boys, mostly between the ages of 16 and 20, recruited from the back rooms of the saloons, battered down the strongest jail in 238 THE CONFLICT OF RACES Ohio. Moral rot had seized the officers of the law, the sheriff, deputies, mayor, police and the militia company stationed there. They had not been accustomed to enforce law ; their habit had been to excuse, to make exceptions, to let off easily in dealing with the law-break- ing liquor element and others who paid for or demanded exemptions from the operation of law. The Springfield, 111., riot was a repe- tition of the same fundamental elements. The South is getting rid of the saloon large- ly to reduce the opportunities for race fric- tion. Lynchings there have been decreasing in number the past few years. Race disturb- ances in the North, on the other hand, are just beginning, and with a fury, when they do oc- cur, no less than that shown by the most lynch-hardened sections of Mississippi or Geor- gia. It would be wise for the Northern states to get ready for the coming influx of the lower classes of Negroes into their cities by remov- ing the saloon from which the colored race Vvill suffer more than it has ever done in the rural communities of the South. Ten million blacks and eighty million whites can live to- gether and work out the solution of their dif- ferences, if sober. But the inferior race can- not remain peaceable and hope to advance at the same time, when they come to have numeri- cal strength, if the crime-suggesting and pas- sion-stimulating saloon is left open to them as freely as to other nationalities and races. The Saloon in Political and Social Assimila- tion. — In its relation to the million immigrants who each year come to America and settle in the large cities and mining camps, the raw, 239 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. undigested, un-Americanized mass that col- onize in city communities, the saloon problem of the North has certain important features not unlike those of the South. Here it is that the organized American brewing industry, following its fixed policy of saturating to the limit the beer-drinking com- munities, establishes a new saloon, with a com- patriot as keeper, for each new tribe, nation- ality or race that arrives, and, centering their first acquaintance with this land of liberty on the saloon, with its free lunch, games, free- for-all-for-a-nickel fellowship, its law defiance and encouragement of crime, makes them even more foreign in spirit than before they left their homes in Europe. From the saloon the would-be democratic citizen learns his first ideas of self-government and discovers that the new privilege of fran- chise is a commodity for financial gain. Beer serves both as the means and the motive by which the ignorant are exploited for political purposes, the purchaseable vote created and applied to the misgovernment of our great cities. The South has its race problem ; the North its problem of many races. To-day immigration as a whole is ten times as illiterate as it was a generation or two ago. We now have "vortex rings of nationality," as Hall calls them,i — "little Italys, little Rus- sias, little Syrias and so on," "closed to the outside medium in which they live, though possibly shifting enmasse from one place to another as the currents of economic demand bear them." It has been found that the Amer- ican born children of foreign parents "furnish 240 THE CONFLICT OF RACES. three times as many criminals as those of native birth and parentage, and more than twice as many as the foreign-born. The chil- dren of immigrants are, therefore, twice as dangerous and troublesome as the immigrants themselves."^ Just how much of the increased crime is due to the heavier use of drink, which accompanies the larger wages here received, how much is due to the mis-education of the foreigner by the saloon and the conditions into which he is thrown, and what share is chargeable to the lower quality of the average ship-load of im- migrants of the present day and to other con- ditions, cannot be determined. But there can be no doubt that the saloon plays an unfor- tunate part toward these new peoples in the following ways : 1. There is a thoroughly organized and sys- tematic exploitation of the ignorant, non-Eng- lish speaking foreign vote in Northern cities. The saloon is invariably a part of the political machine. The boss is one of their own race, accountable to the more powerful ward boss for the votes of his fellow-countrymen. The saloon is the means by which the "supe- rior" race purchases the political power of the "inferior." What can "citizenship" and "the sacred right of the ballot" mean to such voters ? This is disfranchisement by means of money and beer. Such a voter is no more expressing his opinions than is the excluded Negro of the South. Whether it is more dishonorable to disfranchise by means of the saloon than by law may depend upon whether one is looking 241 SOCIAL WELFARE AND TPIE LIQUOR PROBLEM. from a Northern or a Southern view point. 2. The liquor traffic, through national or race spirit stirred up in support of old drink- ing customs, presents organized opposition to certain long-existing American institutions. The saloon persists in defying or evading whenever possible, every law passed toward its restriction. It is the foreign-born citizen that is loudest in his misinterpretation of civic liberty as personal liberty, — and usually the one most recently from the countries where little or no liberty is found. It is the European that insists on the Sunday saloon and in the break- ing down of the American ideals regarding that day — one of the earliest and most sacred of American ideals. The personal liberty leagues in various states and cities are little better than organized movements for the de- fiance of restrictive laws placed on the liquor trade. In Chicago the United Societies, claim- ing 120,000 members, endeavoring to demon- strate their power in opposition to the law- obeying elements, conducted a gigantic Sun- day parade and assembled in the Armory for speeches in German, Italian, Polish and Bohe- mian, demanding the sale of liquors on Sun- day. They further explicitly condemned the action of the States Attorney for endeavoring to enforce law and commended the Mayor for his persistent refusal to do so.^ This systematic defiance of law, when it suits convenience, led so largely by foreign- born American citizens, when compared with the acts of the low-born colored men of the South and the quick vengence of the mob that 242 THE CONFLICT OF RACES lynches him — both the acts of impulse — is little less than treason. 3. The saloon assists in keeping alive old- world customs and drinking habits unsuitable to the more nervous, rushing life and climate of this country. The moderate drinking of continental Europe seems not to be possible here for these reasons and because of the freer spirit which develops the treating habit and on account of the greater attractiveness of the saloon. It is when beer flows freely, in the mining towns of Pennsylvania, that brawls and fights, based on racial antagonisms, are most fre- quent. Inherited religious and racial feuds, imported from Eastern Europe, break out afresh. The Ruthenians are having a feast. It strikes a group of Polish lads that this will be a good time to look in on them and have some fun. When sober these people are com- monly very peaceable ; but when maddened by drink anything serves as a weapon, chairs, lamps and knives. There are few inebriates, as compared with the heavy drinkers among the Irish, English or even Americans. But the quarrels and rows of the average Slav saloon are little different from those of the Negro saloon, and the spirit back of them is practically the same. "The Slavs and Lithuanians are fond of drink and spend their money freely on it. Some spend more money on beer than they do on food. The evidences of drink in the homes are apparent on all sides, and not only do national customs and national tastes and 248 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. usages make for drunkenness, but the unde- niable fact that the liquor interests are the only American interests which effectively reach the great mass of the non-English speaking immi- grants."* "A population of hundreds of thousands of rough and unrestrained male laborers, plied with all possible energy and ingenuity with alcoholic liquor, can be counted on, with the certainty of a chemical experiment, for one reaction — violent and fatal crime. There would be crime of this kind from such a popu- lation under any circumstances. But the facilities of Chicago double and treble it. The European peasant, suddenly freed from the restraints of authority and of rigid police au- thority, and the vicious Negro from the coun- tryside of the South — especially the latter — furnish an alarming volume of savage crime, first confined to their own races, and later, as they appreciate the lack of adequate protection, extended to society at large. None of these folk, perhaps, have progressed far along the way of civilization ; but under the exploita- tion in Chicago they slip back into a form of city savagery compared to which their prev- ious history shows a peaceful and well-ordered existence. Their children are as quickly and surely rotted as themselves by the influence of the saloon upon the neighborhood of their homes."" America's Problem of Races — In nineteen Northern states, the most populous in the union, the states that control national legis- lation and elect the presidents, the states that contain the greatest number of saloons and 244 THE CONFLICT OF RACES that are the home of the Hquor power in poli- tics, there are now living more foreigners than A.mericans. That is, there are more people in these states who themselves were born on for- eign shores or whose parents were immi- grants than there are natives whose parents were also Americans. In the large cities the ratio is from two-thirds to three-fourths. At the present time the immigrants of a single year would make an Italian city the size of Minneapolis ; the Austro-Hungarian peoples, Bohemians, Jews, Magyars and Slavs, would fill another Detroit ; the Poles, Jews and others from Russia would re-people Provi- dence.^ From the time of the Revolution to 1905, 23,000,000 immigrants arrived.^ Those who have come to this country since 1835 con- stitute more than one-half of the entire popu- lation.'^ Until the heavy change in the class of immi- gration took place twenty-five or thirty years ago, the lower grades taking the place of the more industrious and skilled, and the South and Eastern Europeans substituting for the energetic, liberty-seeking classes of the North, and until the excessive massing of the ignor- ant in colonies in cities began, assimilation went on in a healthful manner. Now it is retarded by the hordes annually arriving, by the race antipathies that arise on account of the inferiority of the later arrivals, and by the low moral conditions into which these rural peasants are thrust in our cities and mining camps. To retain permanently foreign cus- toms, to refuse to assimilate, to herd "in vor- tex rings," or to be driven by race prejudice 245 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. to seclude themselves from contact with Amer- ican ideals, is a crime against the future wel- fare of the nation for which industrial and moral conditions here are chiefly responsible. No race has a right to remain permanently foreign, and it is inviting self-destruction for Americans to permit the institutions that offer to these new would-be citizens the very worst of our civilization as a foundation for their new type of personal liberty. On the other hand, however ethical standards may vary, no foreign-born citizen has a right to demand that the community shall continue to support a saloon to satisfy his appetite when it is en- dangering the welfare of societv common to both. The saloon is as much American as it is foreign. It came over with the colonists. But the descendants of the colonists, as well as these of the additions during the first fifty years of our national history, are everywhere becoming m.ore and more temperate and where the American blood flows purest the saloof has been banished from 30,000,000 or more people. In the North the mass of immigrants have adapted their ready drinking customs, heretofore usually moderate, to our vicious, legalized, political saloon system that knows no moderation, respect for minors, or obe- dience to law. Two conditions result: 1. It has made their heretofore moderate drinking excessive, lowering the "foreigner" in the estimation of the older "American," and laid the foundation for a doubling of crime in the next generation. 2. The saloon power and demand for liquor 246 THE CONFLICT OF RACES. has been re-enforced. Without this inflow temperance instruction in the schools, temper- ance societies, the influence of the church and restrictive legislation were rapidly getting the upper hand. In the cities have been massed the rural- bred, light wine drinking Italian, or moderate beer using Hungarian, German, or Slav into crovv'ded three-saloons-to-the-crossing and five- in-the-block districts. Here they have been mercilessly saturated with beer, taught saloon politics and citizenship and for the best of their European morality, their moderation and religious faithfulness, has been substituted a degenerate type of "personal liberty." Various races and nationalities are living together in America — 10,000,000 Negroes, a few remaining Indians, some Chinese and Jap- anese on the Pacific Coast, 40,000.000 descend- ants of European nationalities that have come in during the past 100 years, and 1,000,- 000 of a mucb lower, less intelligent average that a'T arriving each year. In all probability they will have to continue to live together. Therefore, remove the conditions that cause friction or enable one class to use another as a political tool. The liquor trade is one of these ; its destruction is a part of the Ameri- canizing program. If it remains Americans will be foreignized instead of foreigners Amer- icanized. In the South the truest of Americans have been willing to deny themselves even the mod- erate use of intoxicants for the benefit of the colored race and the lower whites. "The abo- lition of the bar-room is a blessing to the 247 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Negro second only to the abolition of slavery. Two-thirds of the mobs, lynchings, and burn- ings at the stake are the result of bad whisky drunk by bad black men and bad white men."* In two months' time, as Booker T. Washing- ton says, "Putting it in round numbers, ac- cording to the reports of the public magis- trates, prohibition has reduced the amount of crime in Birmingham, Ala., one-third, and in Atlanta, Ga., one-half since January 1, when the law went into effect."^ Among the foreign-born of the wiiite races are many who would banish the saloon as quickly as the most radical temperance people of earlier native descent. Nationale Prosperi- tat, a German-American magazine, resent- fully denies that "the beer barrel is the Ger- man Kaiser in America" and that personal lib- erty to drink beer is the ideal of Germans in America. In the Birmingham, Ala., prohibi- tion election the city was carried largely by the vote of the mills and factories. And it was not a typical Southern city ; its population was largely born and recruited from the foreign elements of our own American population. Where the saloon interests have not enlisted the active allegiance of the foreign-born peo- ples on their behalf, and do not hold them in political affiliation, whether drinkers or non- drinkers, they gradually become as willing to banish the saloon as any other class of our citizenship. They are not unwilling to deprive themselves of the privilege of drink for the welfare of the new America of which they are becoming loyal citizens. 248 THE CONFLICT OF RACES References and Authorities, The Negro and Drink. Du Bois, "The Philadelphia Negro," 277-286. Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem," 160-185. Committee of Fiftv, Summarj^ of "The Liquor Problem," 115-116. Waring, "Some Causes of Criminality Among Col- ored People," Charities, 15, 45. Graves, "Georgia Pioneers the Prohibition Cru- sade," Cosmopolitan, 45, 83. Washington, "Prohibition and the Negro," Out- look, 88, 587; "A Town Owned by Negroes," World's Work, 14, 9125. Iglehart, "The Nations Anti-Drink Crusade," Re- view of Reviews, Zl , 468. ^Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Prob- lem," 180. =Same, 169. ^Horsley and Sturge, "Alcohol and the Human Body," 114. *From an address at Baltimore on "The Race Problem and the Liquor Traffic," American Is- sue. May 9, 1908. As a Factor in Race Conflicts. Graves, "The Tragedy at Atlanta," World To-day, 11, 1170. Corrigan, "The Prohibition Wave in the South," Review of Reviews, September, 1907. Baker, "What is Lynching?" McClures. In the South, Vol. 24, 299. In the North, Vol. 24, 422. Washington, "Drink and the Negro," Outlook, March 14, 1908. Waring, "Some Causes of Criminality Among Col- ored People," Charities, 15, 45. Graves, "Georgia Pioneers the Prohibition Cru- sade," Cosmopolitan, 45, 83. nVorld To-day, 11, 1170. ^Corrigan, "Prohibition Wave in the South," Re- view of Reviews, September, 1907. 249 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. 'Prohibition and the Negro, Outlook, 88, 587. ^Same, 589. ''Baker, "What is Lynching?" 24. 422. The Saloon in Political and Social Assimilation. Hall, "Immigration," 172-188. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 81-87. Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClures, April, 1907. Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem," 135-147. Committee of Fifty, Summary of the Liquor Prob- lem, 114-125. See Chapter 11. 'Hall, "Immigration," 177. 'Same, 149. 'See Chicago daily papers, February 10, 1908. ^Roberts, "The New Pittsburg," in The Pittsburg Survey, Charities, January 2, 1909. ''Turner, "The City of Chicago," McClures, April, 1907. America's Problem of Races. Barker, "The Saloon Problem and Social Reform," 49-50. Hall, "Immigration," 183-188. Grose, "Aliens or Americans?" 233-250. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 81-87. 'Grose, "Aliens or Americans?" 21-22. ^Hall, "Immigration," 8. 'Same, 103. ^Review of Reviews, 37, 474. ^Washington, "Prohibition and the Negro," Out- look, 88, 587. 250 CHAPTER XIV. THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION. The Relation of Sources to Solution. — The most vital test that can be applied to a method suggested for settling a public prob- lem is the way in which it affects the funda- mental sources of that problem. To deal with the beginnings of the drink habit is to guar- antee against intemperance ; to apply the rem- edy to the sources of the trade is to stop, be- fore it begins, the social and political corrup- tion chargeable to the saloon. The many methods proposed may be classi- fied into four groups, corresponding in a rough way to the periods of advance through which reform movements usually go : the first, "moral suasion," belongs to the period of ex- clusive personal effort ; the second, the provid- ing of counter attractions and substitutes, is possible only when reform has reached the stage of social co-operation in organized soci- eties, churches, and other forms of united labor ; the third and fourth, restriction or con- trol, and legal overthrow, belong to the period of governmental action and organized social force, supplementing other forms of effort. The four chief sources of the ugly, compli- cated liquor problem as it is found in America 261 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. are first, the desire for stimulants and the ap- petite for intoxicating liquors ; second, the op- portunity to make money by increasing and supplying this demand ; third, social custom, and fourth, government sanction. It is inter- esting to note how far the various reform movements and methods so far tried have really touched the vital sources of this social welfare disease. 1. The desire for stimulants, when gratified repeatedly by the use of alcoholic drinks, tends to become more and more exacting in its de- mands until it is the most relentless of all the causes of intemperance and the resulting social consequences. The degree to which a method of solvation gets at this source is a crucial test of its practical value. Under moral suasion the aim is to win the drinking man away from his cups and to pre- vent the uninitiated from learning the narcot- izing effects of intoxication, and from form- ing the drink habit. The force applied is ap- peal to the will, to honor, home and commun- ity responsibilities, dangers resulting from drink, etc. The method creates a strong moral pre-disposition against drink. But beyond this psychological force it leaves the appetite prac- tically unbroken, if previously formed, and does not affect the outward inducements to drink. It is immensely practical and will al- ways continue to be the leading method to se- cure personal temperance. Substitution fails to take into account the fact that most men go to the saloon for the drinks and, while its influence is directly aimed at the social source, it leaves this one practic- 262 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION ally untouched. It offers, however, the latent influence of example and gives opportunity to men who want to break away from the alcohol habit to do so. Both the Gothenburg and the dispensary sys- tems, in their claim to offer pure liquors, ac- centuate the inherent evils of intoxication, overlooking the fact that alcohol is the worst poison that liquors contain and that it is essen- tial to them all. License, high or low, as well as regulative measures of all kinds, assumes that drinking is to continue ; that the desire for stimulants must be gratified, while aiming to have it done under more respectable conditions and in a lawful way. They encourage, rather than di- minish the formation of the liquor habit and provide all the means necessary for its gratifi- cation. Prohibition methods are aimed directly at this source. By cutting off the supply they prevent the creating of the habit in the young and, to a large extent, its gratification by those already under its influence. 2. The economic source. The modern liquor trade is not merely the business machinery for furnishing the economic supply in response to a normal demand for alcoholics. It is an or- ganized business pushed by the highest ingen- uity known to the new advertising profession. It opens new fields and creates new constitu- encies in residence neighborhoods in our cities, crowds the industrial sections with saloons and creates a new demand in foreign countries where the use of intoxicants has been little known. 253 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Moral suasion work has succeeded in get- ting a few retail dealers to quit the business for a short time. Otherwise it is practically useless in dealing with this source. The pro- viding of substitutes for the saloon is futile since the trade, with vast financial resources behind it, can out-attract any sort of counter- attraction that meager philanthropic efifort, however high its motive, may be able to offer. Only when supplemented by legislation and enforcement can substitution do its normal and necessary work as a temperance measure. The prime purpose of the Gothenburg sys- tem and of variations modeled after it, is the removal of the incentive of private profits. It is applied, however, only to the retail sale and so leaves the profit in manufacture un- touched. To some extent it succeeds, but it fails to take into account the other sources of the liquor evil and so limits its possibilities of success. The great difficulty is the disposal of the earnings of the business so that they will not serve as a bribe upon the public conscience and so make it to the interests of the managers to push the sales from the same motive as does the ordinary saloonkeeper. The dispensary is a method for the trans- fer of the element of profit from private in- dividuals to the city or county or state. It makes the public the liquor seller, gives it an absolute monopoly of the business, to- gether with the larger profits which this im- plies, and lets the public keep all the profits. This money, apparently relieving the taxpayer, intrenches the business behind the short- sighted cupidity of tax-paying citizens. From 264 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION the economic point of view it is not a temper- ance measure at all, merely a means for rais- ing public revenue. License, especially hig-h license, centralizes the trade into the hands of fewer retail dealers, discriminates against the poorer sa- loonkeeper, not on a temperance basis, but on a financial basis, and thus acts as a monopo- listic measure. On the whole, it increases rather than reduces the economic incentives in the business. All forms of prohibition, in principle, go straight to the bottom of this source. It is here that they deal their heaviest blows. State prohibition is more decisive than local because it gets at the manufacturer as well as the seller. The option feature in some forms of local prohibition is not so strong as it might be in that it leaves hope alive to the outlawed saloonist that within a year or two there will be a reversal of the vote. It thus encourages him to carry on an illegal trade in the meantime. 3. The sociability source of the liquor evil, complicating and aggravating the whole great problem, has sometimes been overlooked by practical temperance and prohibition workers. The habit of seeking amusement and recrea- tion in the saloon is fixed in the social cus- toms of large classes of people. This ground the trade has seized and proceeds to satisfy, not with, but in spite of, alcohol and intoxica- tion. The providing of healthful counter attrac- tions of a social nature, free from the sale of liquors, is a direct aim at this source of 266 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. intemperance. It is, in principle, an effort to accompany the negative and destructive meth- ods of reform by constructive ones. It is an exceedingly wise method, but inefficient when alone since it takes into account but one of the four sources. The Gothenburg system tries to take this source into account by using a part of the profits of the bar trade to provide reading rooms, lunches and resting rooms as well as other semi-philanthropic social centers. But it also provides for the sale of alcohol, either in the same room or somewhere near, and so counteracts much of its good work. The license and restrictive measures have nothing to do with this source except to add to its intensity by requiring the liquor dealer to resort to every means that he can devise in order to increase his trade so he may pay his higher fees. Prohibition regards it negatively ; that with the money spent in the saloon any man can supply himself, and his family as well, with all the recreation procurable at the saloon and with home improvements besides. In or- der to get at this source completely and satis- factorily neither substitution nor prohibition alone is adequate. The two must be combined and work co-ordinately. Only under a pro- hibition policy can counter attractions reach the people as they should ; only with proper counter attractions can prohibition be most suc- cessful in our large cities ; only after the re- moval of the open temptation to spend their money for the abnormal excitements of the sa- loon will most of those who are accustomed to find their recreation and fellowship there, be 256 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION able to provide good recreation and amuse- ments of their own. 4. The political source. This very impor- tant source of the liquor problem is, unfortu- nately, often neglected by students of public questions. They fail to note that intemper- ance is but a part of the whole problem and that its public social and political aspects are, if possible, the most corrupting of all. Gov- ernmental sanction is the greatest source of the liquor power in business and politics ; indi- rectly, also, it adds to the force of private greed and social custom in producing intem- perance. It is the most inexcusable of all the sources of the problem and its train of evil consequences. The substitution and moral suasion methods cannot touch the political power of the liquor traffic. The Gothenburg system, as it exists in Norway, does not have such conditions to meet, but if it should be adopted in this coun- try, it would merely shift the power into the hands of those who have the monopoly of the sale for which it provides. The South Caro- lina dispensary was one of the finest examples of corrupt political machinery to be found anywhere in the United States. It served as the one great means of keeping the liquor business from being completely banished from that state. The license policy, whether high or low, whether by city, state or as United States internal revenue, is the very backbone of the political power of the saloon and the liquor trade. The prohibition methods are the only ones which take direct aim at it. Local pro- 257 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. hibition hits chiefly at the saloons of a small localit}- without reference to the general gov- ernmental policy. It leaves the larger political power of the traffic unbroken. In its efforts it has to fight not only the saloons of a town or county, but the stronger organizations be- hind them as well. The state method, going a step further, weakens the power to the state boundaries, but has to fight the national unions of the trade, the dealers in nearby license states and the revenue and interstate commerce pol- icies of the Federal government in order to maintain satisfactory enforcement within its own territory. The Social Basis; Summary. — It is their effects upon the community as a whole, upon the health, happiness and morality of large masses of people, and upon the permanency of the nation, that condemn the drink habit and traffic. It is not so much that harm comes to the individual user as that others must bear so large a burden of undeserved consequences, that calls for action on the part of organized society. It may not be inherently wrong to drink a glass of liquor or to manufacture in response to a pre-existing call for intoxicants, for oc- casional use. But the consequences of the trade, the almost impossibility of preserving such moderation that no evil will result, and the active creation of a new demand produce a deep-seated wrong that strikes at the foun- dations of community and national life. All trade is social in character and directly subject to social welfare or it has no reason for exis- tence. The liquor traffic, judged by its con- 268 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION sequences as a whole, does not do this ; it has no adequate reason for seeking the approval of society and the protecting legislation of gov- ernment. It is an absurdity and a contradic- tion of the purposes of government that an institution which is a danger to public welfare should receive the sanction of law — the only method by which the whole of society speaks authoritatively. To provide for the public safety, health and morals, is the very first duty of the police powers of the government. This is the author- ity conferred on government by the people themselves for the defense of what the sociolo- gists call the ends of social welfare, the public health, wealth, knowledge, sociability, etc. With all of these the liquor traffic conflicts and is thus marked as an anti-social institution to be exterminated : 1. The general use of alcoholic liquors is a serious danger to public health, the necessary physical basis for all individual, as well as social, welfare. Mankind has used stimulants for thousands of years and has grown so ac- customed to their action that the most far- reaching evils were not discovered until mod- ern science took hold of the liquor problem. Alcohol is directly and indirectly a cause of disease, physical and mental, to an extent here- tofore claimed only by the most extreme of its enemies. Its worst consequence is its insidious deterioration and keeping down of the classes persistently using it, the inherited tendencies to obtuseness idiocy, and innumerable vari- eties of nervous weakness and general low- ered physical vitality, the weakened power to 269 SOCIAL WELFAKK AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. resist disease, the tendency toward vice, and crime — these, by vitiating the stock, lay up a fearful burden for future generations. The recent massing of large populations in great cities, away from outdoor exercise and fresh air, greatly increase these effects. The degree to which alcohol has nutritive value has not been determined. Practically it can never serve as a general article of food because of its inherent qualities as a poison. As a medi- cine it should be administered exclusively by physicians who conscientiously comprehend its dangers. 2. Economically the liquor traffic consumes wealth but produces nothing. It is not a mere luxury. It injures labor, the vital factor in all production, decreases the length of life, and throws upon society a consequential burden of poverty, imbecility, inefficiency, lunacy, crime and its punishment, and in general incapacity, for which it is in part or wholly responsible, that is so immense as to be almost beyond cal- culation. 3. The saloon is not merely a place of retail business ; it is a great public educational insti- tution. It influences the thought, morals, poli- tics, social customs and conversation of its patrons — gives a bent to their character — such as the grocery and shoe store never do. By suggestion, example and its emphasis of a dis- torted meaning of pergonal liberty, it teaches indulgence of the h tver passions, instead of their restraint, and creates the alcoholic crav- ing as a new one. By defying restrictive regu- lations it breaks down respect for law. It teaches the million foreign immigrants that an- 260 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION nually come to America that the ballot is a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder and trains up a host of voting citizens opposed to many of the fundamental principles of Ameri- can liberty and justice. 4. The saloon furnishes a place of sociability and relaxation of some considerable value to the poor man who can get nothing better. This is one count in its favor. But even this is more than counteracted by its competition with the home and the fact that the enjoyment there must be limited, selfishly, to one member of the family while the wife and children, equally needy, must sufi^er all the more on account of it. The alcohol should be eliminated and the club features left to develop in a normal way. 5. It is only on its sociability side that the saloon gets any ethical support. Aside from this slight return that it makes to the one class who can least afiford its burdens, "the public saloon and saloon system is a vast organized inciter of human appetite. It is an omnipres- ent, publicly sanctioned temptation to evil. It exists not because man, by nature, must drink, but because, by proper incentives, man can be made to drink, and there is money in selling it to him."^ For this reason it is unreservedly condemned by the church as unethical, and should be declared unconstitutional and an out- law by the government. The placing of liquor selling under the license policy grants it social standing, permission and authority and makes each citizen responsible for the character and consequences of the saloon. There can be no distinction, on moral grounds, between the acts of the men, officials and parties that en- 2dl SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. dorse this policy and those of the dealer who proposes to make a livelihood out of the vice of intemperance. The voter is free ethically only when he has protested by act against the principle in which he does not believe. From the standpoint of the user the mod- erate, self-contained drinker can not demand that the public sale of that which injures many of his fellows, so seriously, shall continue on the ground that the consequences of his own drinking fall upon himself alone. The right thing for him is to give it up willingly ; if he refuses the public welfare demands that he shall be compelled to do so. The Necessity for Complete Overthrow. — Prohibition, without doubt, is a severe meas- ure. If the evils arising from the saloon were such that they could be cured without resort to such a drastic remedy, the principle of lib- erty in American democracy would demand that it should be done. Legal prohibition, ap- plied to manufacture, sale and transportation, implies the removal of all opportunities for ob- taining liquor other than by private home mak- ing for personal use. As a matter of policy even the strongest advocates of prohibition seldom favor making the act of drinking, itself, illegal. They propose simply to remove the open and powerful temptations toward creating or increasing the habit, being convinced that, since the desire for alcohol is abnormal, it will consequently die out and alcoholics will then not be missed. Some of the unfortunate results doubtless can be removed by regulative and restrictive laws, by limiting the sale to certain districts 262 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION and removing it altogether from resident sec- tions of cities. Temperance societies may do their noble work of rescue and prevention, counter attractions may be established in min- ing, factory and shop neighborhoods, and bet- ter home life encouraged, thereby overcoming some of the influence of the saloon. But the latest medical and sociological science show that these measures are very incomplete in themselves ; that the great characteristic dan- gers are inherent in the liquor and the trade themselves and can be reached effectively only by complete prohibition. Ethyl Alcohol is the essential agent in all liquors used as popular drinks. It is the one necessary ingredient always present in some proportion, large or small. It is the intoxicat- ing element that gives the effect desired when drinks of any kind are taken for their own sake. In certain liquors other poisons are present and in high grade wines there are sev- eral by-products of distillation that injure even more quickly than alcohol, but generally speak- ing, the purest liquors are the worst. The character of the trade seems to partake of the inherently bad qualities of the article it sells to the public. All efforts to elevate the saloon, to disentangle it from social and politi- cal vice and to prevent its encouragement of excess have signally failed. Judging by a hun- dred years experience the evils of the saloon are not contingent and can not be separated from it. Where exceptions occur they are due to the unusually self-controlled character of the community or nationality where such retail sale is found. The saloon is the chief source 363 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. of morbid and degenerate sociability. Low morals and ideals prevail ; alcoholic drinks are a necessary accompaniment of the social vice ; anarchy and crime find here their home. "The bar rather than the bar-keeper, is the source of degeneracy, and if every saloon-keeper emi- grated or died to-morrow, and the saloons continued, there would be but a slight or tem- porary change for the better."^ Its public educational effects are absolutely unavoidable as long as the trade continues. No other institution so persistently violates law and, by its example, so persistently corrupts public respect for law. In this it is blighting, at its foundation, the necessary means to social welfare and national safety. The absolute im- morality of granting legal life, permission and authority to any business that yields such con- sequences is educating downward public ideals and the moral tone of the nation. This dan- ger can not be measured but is more menacing than the annual drink bill of nearly $2,000,000,- 000 or the heavy loss of life due to drink. As supplemental to other reform efforts the banishment of drink is imperative. Private and organized movements for the rescue of the drunkard, to provide better housing and sani- tation for the poor of the city slums, toward cleaning up municipal politics, against gam- bling and other similar evils need to have the destruction of the liquor trade accompany or precede their advance in order to insure real success. City missions, coffee-houses, rescue homes, clubs for the poor, settlements, and a thousand other agencies are now burdened by the fact that a peculiar co-operation exists 264 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION between their competing enemy, the saloon, and the city authorities and that it is given a privileged protection, on account of the fees and "graft" that representatives of the law and the city treasury get out of it. The liquor trade can not be a benefit to pub- lic welfare in one community and a danger in another ; the above facts show this clearly. It is the proper function for the state to deal with the problem. Q\ny local form of govern- ment is inadequate. A policy at least as wide as the state should prevail, because the sources of the trouble itself are, not only state, but nation wide^ Officialxmvestigation in Great Britain, fol- lowing the South African war, inspired by the fact that it took 300,000 veteran British troops, supposed to be the best soldiers in the world, to defeat 25,000 abstaining Dutch farmers, found that the most serious causes of the in- efficiency of the English were the wide use of chemically prepared foods and the increasing use of stimulating liquors by the classes from which the troops were recruited.^ In so doing it recognized the most serious danger to the trade and military supremacy of the nation. In America, where the per capita consump- tion is somewhat less than in Great Britain, but where it is yet increasing notwithstanding the rapid extension of local prohibition terri- tory, and where the tenser, nervous life and higher requirements make alcoholic deadening more disastrous to the individual and the com- munity, national prohibition is a measure of social hygiene more and more imperative from year to year. Complete enforcement need not 265 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. be expected all at once. The habits and cus- toms of centuries do not change suddenly. But the public social act, the sale, and above all, the approval of government must be stopped. That it can be done has been conclusively dem- onstrated. Politics is the present stronghold, the final resort, of the liquor trade. Science has routed its food and stimulating claims ; in- dustry is enforcing total abstinence in many lines ; and even its legal standing is found to rest more on the public psychological effect of the license granted than in constitutional law. The most necessary move, whether it comes first or accompanies local and state overthrow of saloons, community by community, is to deal a death-blow to the political source and strength of the traffic. From this pc-sonal temperance a stronger, cleaner type of national manhood will follow, logically, as the natural output of cleaner moral and industrial environment. But "it would not do to stigmatize such laws as attempts 'to reform the moral conduct of others ; or to make men honest and virtuous 'by a system of coercive legislation.' The reform may fol- low, or it may even have been the object of those enacting the law ; but it follows not as a coerced reformation, but as a natural result of the changed condition which the law has created."^ References and Authorities. The Social Basis. International Journal of Ethics, Vol. IX, 350-359. Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 229-239, 122-151. 266 THE SOCIAL DEMANDS FOR PROHIBITION Pitman, "Alcohol and the State," 110-129. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 299-305. Horsley and Stiirge, "Alcohol and the Human Body," 313-341, 345-357. Wheeler, "Prohibition," 26-29. 'Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 302. The Necessity for Complete Overthrow. Fehlandt, "A Century of Drink Reform," 139-171, 299-305. Horsley and Sturge, "Alcohol and the Human Body," 19-22. Artman, "The Legalized Outlaw," 165-169. Pitman, "Alcohol and the State," 149-192. 'Wheeler, "Prohibition," 76. 'Kelynack, "The Drink Problem," 230. 'Wheeler, "Prohibition," 27. 267 N DEX. Abstainers, number of, in- creased, 12, 16, 33, 75, 129, 199, 216. Abstinence, total, among labor leaders, 222; economic value of, 99, 216; required by busi- ness, 98; by church, 157; by some religions, 163. Adulterations less harmful than alcohol, 46. Alcohol , adulterations of, 46; consumption of, 12, 33, 74, 76, 180, 199; and crime, 10, 69, 92, 108, 112, 115. 119, 184, 207, 223, 231, 247; essential agent in all liquors, 43, 263 ; in drinks, amount of, 44; as a food, 47, the harmful fac- tor of all drinks, 46; as a medicine, 55, 44; a poison, 49, 170; physiological effects, 42, 60, 64, 223; reduces men- tal capacity. 111 ; reduces resistance powers, 62 ; re- duces race vitality, 13, 67, 112, 207, 209: a source of disease, 59. Alcoholic diseases, 61 ; liquors, 4; classes of, 43. American, drink bill, 74, 78. Attitude of church toward liq- uor traffic, 155; popular, toward liquor changing, 12, 16, 157. Attractions of saloon, 29, 35, 132, 136, 139, 146; counter attractions to saloon, 136, 251. Attractiveness of liquor, 41, 42, 223. Appetite, created, 32, 35, 113; for narcotics, not normal, 31, 50, 60, 154, 163; a source of liquor problem, 27, 144, 252. Assimilation of foreigners re- tarded, 181, 245. B Beer, composition of, 52; de- ceptive effects of, 54; heat pro- ducing value of, 52; a liquid food, 50. Bible and liquor, 156. Bill, drink, 74, 78. Brain, effects of alcohol on, 111. Brewery, an employer of labor, 225; the central power, 33, 125 ; ownershin of saloons, 34, 109, 239. Boss rule, antidote for, 191. Burden in care and support due to drink, 90, 105, 151; of intemperance on labor, 212. Capital and labor struggles, 218. 220. Child labor, 66, 114, 219. Children, drink among, 114. Church, attitude of, 155; liquor and missions, 163. Churches, in number compared 268 INDEX with saloons, 120, 159. Citizenship, false ideals of, 115, 183. City, government of, 178; growth of, 178; population, 181; the city nroblem, 177; stronghold of liquor, 34, 180 ; vote, 187. Clothing, standard of living, 198. Club, origin of, 13. Conflict between public wel- fare and private liquor inter- ests, 38. 151, 258. Consumption of alcohol, 12, 33, 74, 76, 180, 199. Consumption of legitimate products greatest among pro- ducers, 219; reduced by drink, 98, 105, 219. Corruption in cities, 178, 187. Cost, care of dependents etc., 90; of drink per capita, 197; as a consequence of drink, public, 83, 90, 104, 151 ; of a man to society, 87; of strikes and drink compared, 224. Consequential cost of drink, 83, 90, 104, 151. Crime and drink, 69, 92, 112, 115, 119, 184, 207,247; among foreigners, 184, 119, 240. Counter attractions for saloon, 136, 251. Customs, drinking of Euro- peans in America, 182, 242. D Death rate among drinkers, 86, 101. Deceptive effects of alcohol, 42, 223. Decrease in number of drink- ers, 16, 180, 199; in use of alcohol as medicine, 55. Demand, economic, for prohi- bition, 103 ; for liquor mono- polizes healthful wants. 218. Delinquencies and disabilities in children. 111. Disease, alcoholic, 61 ; alcohol as a source, 62, 59. Divorce, 208. Drink, bill, 74, 78; a burden to labor, 213, 224; in the family, 66, 195; cuts down food supply, 197; reduces earning capacity, 96, 214, 216; a cause of child labor, 66, 114, 219; cause of under- consumption, 219; cheapens labor market, 215, 219; per capita cost, 197; decreases demand for labor, 217, 226; and divorce, 208; in race friction, 231 ; its heritage classified, 68; and immortal- ity, 66 ; physiological effects of, 42; reduces race vitality, 13, 67, 111, 207, 209; and rent, 185, 196; and social evil, 67; and standard of living, 195, 219; and strikes, 223 ; and tenement reform, 186; relation to wages, 215. Drinks, alcoholic, inherently intoxicating, 47. Drinking, among children, 114; early in America, 11, 15; customs of Europe unsuited to America, 182, 242; in 18th century, 10; habits imported by colonists, 11; among wo- men, 202; wrong "per se"? 25, 170. Duty of government to provide for public welfare, 36, 71, 103, 171. 269 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Early drinking customs in U. S.;il, IS. Economic, demands for pro- hibition, 103, 220; results of drink on family, 195, 214; sources of liquor evil, 28, 31, 144. 253, 260; value of total abstinence, 99, 216. Education, of immigrants by saloon, 116, 242, 246; and the liquor problem, 108, 125 ; public school, 108. Effects of beer and whiskey compared, 64; of drink on standard of living, 195 ; on rent, 185, 196, 206; on food, 197; on clothing, 198; on labor problem, 216. Employment of labor furnished trade, 81, 225 ; two kinds, 226. Ethical phase of license policv. 167, 184, 260, 264. Ethical welfare, harmony of government with, 170. Ethics of drinking, 25, 170 ; of saloon as social center, 149. F Family, drink bill, 66, 195, 214; social ostracism due to liq- uor, 200. Farmer's share of liquor re- ceipts, 79, 228. First cost in drink bill, 74, 78, 102. Food, alcohol as, 47; beer as, 50; supply of, reduced bv drink, 197. Forcing system of saloons, 34. Foreigner?, assimilation of, 181, 245 ; corrupted by sa- loon, 119, 241; crime among, 119, 184, 241. Foreign drinking customs in America, 12, 182, 246; ele- ment in cities, 181, 239; countries, liquor in, 10, 163. Frauds, liquor, 122. G Government, and morals, Zl , 171 ; receipts from liquor trade, 104; harmony with ethical welfare, 170. Growth of cities, 177. H Habits, drink, imported early, 11, 15; of foreigners, 12, 182, 246; and trade mutually cause and effect, 32. Health the first essential, 69. Harmony of government with welfare, 170. Heredity and drink, 67, 13, 112, 204. Housing problem, 185, 196; drink hinders tenement re- form, 186. I. Immigrants, educated by sa- loon, 116, 243. 246; effects of drink on different classes, 12; number of, 244. Immortality and drink, 66. Industrial prohibition, 98, 216. Industries, injured bv drink, 97, 218. Inefficiency due to drink, 67, 97, 216; of British troops, 265. Insanity, 64. Increased consumption of al- cohol, 12, 2>2>, 74, 76, 180, 199. Increased number of total ab- stainers, 12, 33, 16, 75, 129, 199, 216. Increase of wages alone means increased drunkenness, 224. 270 INDEX Intemperance as contributory cause of disease, 65 ; among foreigners, 12, 114, 118, 182; greatest in cities, 180; versus poverty, 66, 105, 88, 231; a race characteristic, 9, 163 ; reduces race vitality, 13, 67, 111, 207, 209. Intoxicant, meaning of term, 45; alcohol inherently intoxi- cating, 47. Intoxicants monopolize health- ful wants, 218. Intoxication from pure liquors, 46. Is alcohol a food? 47. Is beer a liquid food? 50. L Labor, burden of drink, 212; capital, struggle with, 218, 220; drink bill, 213, 224; de- mand for reduced by drink, 217, 226; efficiency affected, 216; the farmer, 228; market cheapened by liquor, 207 ; oppressor of, allied with liq- uor, 221 ; sober, essential to welfare, 97; supply of, and insistency, 216; unions, 221. Labor's heaviest handicap, 212, 222; share of receipts from liquor trade, 81, 226. Law of supply and demand, distorted, 31, 32. Legal overthrow, 251, 253, 255, 257. Liberty versus saloon, 116, 123, 183. Liberty, personal, 25, 38, 117, 153, 183, 242, 247, 262. License, and local option, 172; the policy, ethics of, 167, 184, 260, 264. Life, loss of, 86. 100; length of, 53, 100, 87. Loss, due to traffic, 85; of time, and capacity, 85, 97; of life, 86, 100. Liquor, consumption for a year, 74; increased consump- tion, 12, 33, 74, 76, 180, 199; and education, 108; as an employer of labor, 81, 225; in race conflicts, 233 ; enemy to labor, 82, 221 ; and the length of life, 53, 87, 100; and national welfare, 205; against other industries, 98, 151; a hinderance to mis- sions, 163 ; and union labor, 221. Liquor evil, one of conse- quences, 25. Liquor problem, complexity of, 20; two meanings in current use, 19; what is it? 17; strongholds, the cities, 34, 180. Liquor traffic, advertising, 50, 44, 121; farmer's support? 228; in foreign countries, 10, 163; judged by social conse- quences, 27; a law breaker, 117, 234, 241; opposed by churches, 155; in politics, 178, 187; profitable, 28; a so- cial institution, 21 ; wastes raw products, 198. Lynching and drink, 234. M Medicine, alcohol as, 44, 55 ; decrease in use of, 55. Mental capacity reduced by drink. 111. Methods of solution, 251. Mis-education, of foreigner, 115, 183, 240, 246; of the public. 121, 264. 271 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Mob violence and drink, 234. Moderate drinking, danger of, 68. Missions, liquor hinders, 163. N Narcotics, appetite for, 31, 50, 60. National wealth and social welfare, 96. Natural demand for stimulants, 42. Necessity for complete over- throw,' 181, 262. Negro and crime, 233; de- bauched by white man's liq- uor, 233 ; and drink, 230 ; not an inebriate, 230. Newspapers controlled by traf- fic, 124. Number of drinkers, est., 44, 154. O Origin of saloon and club, 13, 222. P Padrone sj^stem, 119. Patent medicine, advertising, 46, 121. Personal liberty, 25, 38, 117, 152, 154, 183, 242, 247, 262. Physiological, action of alco- hol, 42, 223, 60, 64; source of liquor evil, 27, 41, 144, 252. Poison, alcohol a, 49, 170. Police powers of government, 171. Political boss, hold on ignorant vote, 118, 183; works through saloon, 118, 164, 187, 240 ; machine of Cox, in Cin- cinnati, 189. Politics, liquor traffic, in, 178, 187; power in, 30, 118, 184, 187, 240. Political source, 29, 126, 144, 257, 187. Poor man's club, 134. Povertv due to drink, 66, 88, 231, '105. Powers of resistance reduced, 62. Producers share of money from, drink, 79. Producing capacity destroyed, 96, 216. Profits of the trade, 28, 81, 152. Prohibition, demands for, eco- nomic, 103, 253; physical, 69, 252; political, 170, 257; so- cial, 143, 255 ; versus license, 172; necessity for, 262; a method of solution, 251 ; re- duces crime, 247; a right of government, 265 ; sentiment in the South, 237, 248. Public opinion, on liquor changing, 12, 16, 157. R Race, cause of friction, 231 ; a characteristic of the, 9, 163 ; problems of America, 244: riots, 233, 243 ; vitality re- duced by drink, 13, 67, HI, 207, 209, 259. Races, different, how affected, 10. 12. Ratio of saloons to churches, 120, 159. Reform the saloon, the Sub- way Experiment, 140, 263. Relation of drink h\\\ to neces- sities, 198; to poverty, 8S 236, 66; to wages, 215 sources to solution, 251 trade to the habit, 31, 154. 272 INDEX Rent affected by saloon, 185. Responsibility of voter, 169, 262. Restrictions as a solution, 251, 253, 255. 257. Revenue, government receipts, 104; an intrenchment of the traffic, 126; from liquor traf- fic, 79. S Safety of public, first duty of government, 36, 71. Saturation policy of brewers, 34. Saloon, in assimilation, social and political, 239; attraction of, 35, 29, 134, 136, 139, 146; two-fold capacity of, 13 ; in Chicago, 34; not merely a city problem, 192 ; as a club, 14, 134; competitor of church, 120, 158, 184; of home, 201, 207; counter at- tractions to, 136, 251 ; ene- my to best social life, 135, 139, 153; factor in race fric- tion, 233 ; in foreign field, 163 ; and housing problem, 185 ; keepers bound to brew- ers, 35 ; keeper not the source of the evil, 187; op- posed by churches, 157; op- posed to American institu- tions, 117, 241, 246; opposed to liberty, 116, 123, 183; owned by brewery, 34, 239, 109; origin of, 13; patrons, classes of, 132; power in- creased by immigration, 115, 183, 246; power in politics, 30, 118, 184, 187. 240; and public school, 108; as a so- cial center, 14, 131, 152; a wrong per se, 171 ; 263. School, public, and the saloon, 108. Sober labor essential, 97; nec- essary to struggle with capi- tal. 223. Sociability source of intemper- ance, 129, 206, 261. Social consequences, basis of action, 26; of judgment of the liquor traffic, 27. Social demands, 39, 150, 170, 173, 205, 258. Social evil and drink, 67. Social ethics of the saloon, 149. Social institution, the saloon, a, 21. Social source, 29, 13, 21, 129, 255. Social welfare, the basis of legislation, 27, 2,7, 131. 258. Solution, methods of, 251. Sources of liquor evil, 27, 251 ; economic, 28, 31, 144, 253, 260; physiological, 27, 144, 253; political, 29, 144, 257. 187; social, 21, 29, 13, 129, 255 ; of intoxication, 43 ; of race degeneracy, 13, 67, HI. Standard of living, 195, 219. Strikes, cost of, 224. Struggle, between capital and labor, 220. Substitution as a temperance ' measure, 143, 251, 252, 254, 256.^ 257. Substitutes for the saloon, 136, 143. 201. Subway tavern, 141. Suffering unit, the, 199. T Temperance, agitation begin- ning, 16; instruction, 100; first society, 16. 273 SOCIAL WELFARE AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. Tenement house reforms, 186. Test of a method of sokition, 251. Time, loss of due to drink, 85, 97. Total abstinence, economic value, 99, 216; increased 75, 12, 16. 33, 129, 199, 216; among laborers, 222; re- quired by business, 98; by churches, 157; by some relig- ions, 163. Trade, relation of habit to, 32. Traffic, in foreign field, 163. Tragedy at Atlanta, 235. Treating custom, 215. U United Societies in Chicago, 242. Vitality of race reduced by al- cohol, 13, 67, 111, 207, 209. W Wages, affected by drink, 96, 215 ; increase alone of, in- creases drunkenness, 224; lowered by introduction of women and children, 207. Waste of raw product, 198. Welfare of public and private interests, conflict, 38, 104, 258; of society as a whole, 36, 71, 27 \ of society the basis of legislation, 37. Women, drink among, 202; la- bor introduced on account of drink, 219, 66. 274 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last d^te stamped below. NO PHONE DEC 1 2 1987 RENEWALS ONIVERSITY"orCALIFO AT LOS ANGELES IJBSABT I^Hj c/ 3 1158 00438 6826 AA 000 837 266 6 J