university of 
 
 Connecticut 
 
 ibraries 
 
 BOOK 132.72.B677A c. 1 
 
 ?^!!^J".fJ A^^'^^^^ '"^S INFLUENCE ON 
 
 MIND AND BODY 
 
 3 T1S3 ODOblBlfl M 
 
ITS 
 
 ALCOHOL 
 
 AND BODY 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D. 
 
 7 
 
 7n3 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 EDWARD J. CLODE 
 
 PUBLISHER 
 
 
 ►-^-.v-'A 
 
^M'^i^ 
 
 \ ■ ' 
 
 -> ■■'> ' ■ '-<^ 
 
 COPYSIGHT, 1916 
 BY EDWARD J. C L O D E 
 
 All rights reservoA including that of 
 translation into foreign languages 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 WHO HAS CONSISTENTLY INSPIRED AND 
 ENCOURAGED MY BEST EFFORTS 
 
 
 -S* j". 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE average man drinks for one or more of 
 three reasons. 
 
 First, because he knows no better or has been 
 wrongly informed or maHciously misinformed: 
 
 Second, because the enemy, his friends, insist 
 on his being a "good fellow," and he hasn't the 
 gumption to realize that good fellowship begins 
 at home: and, 
 
 Third, because his alcoholized body cells crave 
 narcotics. 
 
 The average man has had little opportunity, 
 except by referring to highly technical foreign 
 works, of knowing that even the smallest amount 
 of alcohol reduces his efficiency in clear thinking, 
 in quickness of eye, ear, and brain; in all those 
 tasks, coordinating muscle and mind, that make 
 up the complex fabric of industrial activities. 
 
 He has always believed that alcohol is a stimu- 
 lant. I shall show, on the evidence of physiolo- 
 gists and psychologists, that it is a depressant; 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 that a normal, non-alcoholized man drinking for 
 purposes of mental stimulation merely receives his 
 "kick" in the imagination. 
 
 Also, that a moderate drinker's mental output, 
 as to quantity and quality, is decreased in measur- 
 able degree, as worked out in thousands of experi- 
 ments with instruments of absolute precision. 
 
 We have been told that alcohol is a food. I 
 propose to show that the food -value theory of 
 alcohol has been thoroughly discredited — that 
 even the most frequently quoted of the food 
 theory champions declares it to be a food only 
 as arsenic, belladonna, and other poisons are foods. 
 Also, that not only is the food value of beer almost 
 negligible, but that beer is, if anything, even more 
 besottmg and'ctangerous than liquor. 
 
 Many do not know that modern medicine 
 absolutely repudiates the so-called therapeutic 
 value of alcohol. Or that even moderate — let 
 alone excessive — drinking never made a poet 
 more poetic, an engineer or a captain of industry 
 more practical, or a philosopher more philosophi- 
 cal; that none of the genius of inspiration lurks 
 in the lees of the wine cup; and that a sweeter, 
 saner social life can and does follow the banish- 
 ment of Bacchus, and the installation in his place 
 
PREFACE Vll 
 
 of Minerva, Euterpe, and little, chubby-cheeked 
 
 Eros. 
 
 So if this modest effort shall have been the 
 means of inculcating these truths, and convincing 
 even a few good fellows to be better fellows I 
 shall be amply repaid, and highly gratified in the 
 conviction that the world is just a little better 
 and sweeter, and some few wives and little kiddies 
 are happier, because I lived awhile on this earth 
 and wrote a little book about "Alcohol — Its 
 Influence on Mind and Body." 
 
 EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D. 
 June 1, 1916. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CBAFTEB PAGE 
 
 I. The Emperor of Drugs 1 
 
 II. The Ignorance of 300 Centuries. ... 7 
 
 EH. When is a Man Drunk ? 13 
 
 IV. More Truth about the Demon Rum. . . 27 
 
 •* V— V. Alcohol and Children 39 
 
 J VI. "Booze'* as Food 49 
 
 VII. Beer the Brutalizer 65 
 
 ^/ Vni. What Alcohol Does to Cells. . . '"P . 75 
 
 '^' IX. The Doctor's Verdict 85 
 
 v^ X. Alcohol, the Death's Head . . . . . 101 
 
 XI. Alcohol and Accidents 109 
 
 Xn. Alcohol and War 121 
 
 "XIII. Efficiency and Deficiency 137 
 
 XIV. What Industry Thinks of Alcohol . . . 153 
 
 XV. Old John B. and the College Man . . . 177 
 
 XVI. What It Costs and What It's Worth . . 185 
 
 XVII. Bre.^king the Alcohol Shackles . . . . 193 
 
 ^^ 
 
ALCOHOL 
 
 ITS INFLUENCE ON MIND AND BODY 
 
 Chapter I 
 TEE EMPEROR OF DRUGS 
 
 THE average man drinks because he is an 
 average man and a moderate drinker. He 
 knows the difference between a sot and a moderate 
 drinker. He knows that he can stop if he wishes. 
 He has complete faith in his abihty to avoid 
 sottism, to walk arm and arm adown the primrose 
 path with Mr. Moderation. 
 
 He is probably right in this conviction. He 
 may never, or rarely ever, overstep the bounds of 
 moderate drinking, in which he assumes that there 
 is no harm, and there may be much good. 
 
 For is not an occasional drink stimulating .^^ 
 Is alcohol not a food.^^ Do not our German 
 brethren — some of whom own brewery stock — 
 contend that beer is "liquid bread"; that malt 
 
2 ALCOHOL 
 
 and hop liquors and brews are concentrated 
 nourishment in most concentrated form? 
 
 Have not doctors prescribed alcohol since that 
 old day — or perhaps long before — when we were 
 counseled to "take a little wine for our stomach's 
 sake"? Has alcohol not been issued as an emer- 
 gency ration to stimulate for murderous carnage 
 by field and flood? Have not the conquering 
 races of the world been tipplers and wine bibbers? 
 
 Witness the supineness and cow-like docility of 
 the East Indians, who permit a mere handful of 
 whiskey-drinking, beef-eating Englishmen to domi- 
 nate and domineer them. Also, observe the Chi- 
 nese — who are the original human door-mats, 
 guaranteed never to turn, even when trodden upon 
 in rankest injustice — in contrast with the "pep- 
 pery," saki-drinking Japs. 
 
 Have not the great poets, from Anacreon to 
 Omar Khayyam, and from the Tent Maker to 
 Kipling, extolled the virtues of the ferments of 
 grape and grains? 
 
 Did not the commanders of men, from Alexander 
 the Great down to Grant and Von Hindenberg, 
 hew out victories in that noble rage inspired of 
 wine, whiskey, and beer? 
 
 Do not the world's inventive geniuses solve 
 
THE EMPEROR OF DRUGS 3 
 
 their most intricate problems; do not the great 
 captains of industry "put over" their biggest 
 deals; and do not the diplomats plan their most 
 bare-faced coups to the accompaniment of popping 
 corks and gurghng liquids rich in that white 
 fire-water that takes the man out of manhood? 
 
 Did not the dissolute, wine-smeared Socrates — 
 the profoundest thinker that ever lived — inspire 
 Plato with the ideas — perhaps furnish even the 
 actual thought-stuff, out of which were woven 
 those immortal Dialogues? 
 
 If all the gregarious, social Hfe of the race is 
 manifested in highest degree around the drink- 
 splashed festal board; if the shrine of Bacchus is 
 the perennial meeting place of countless millions 
 of devotees, who might otherwise be misanthropic, 
 or mutually suspicious of each other, why, in the 
 name of all the gods at once, isn't it good to 
 encourage this spirit? If cheer and good fellow- 
 ship can replace gloom and loneliness; if the 
 magic of that wondrous Alchemist transmutes 
 Life's leaden metal into gold, why deny this 
 alcoholic solace to mankind? 
 
 Most men who drink believe some or all of these 
 things. The average man accepts them because 
 he doesn't know any better. Hitherto, he has not 
 
ALCOHOL 
 
 been definitely shown the error of his behef that 
 moderate drinking is harmless. Of course, every- 
 body admits the harm in excessive drinking. The 
 moderate drinker always has believed that alcohol 
 is a stimulant. 
 
 He has been told that alcohol is a food. He 
 believes the "liquid bread" fable, and, to the best 
 of his ability, obeys the admonitions of the malt 
 lords: "Drink up, the brewery needs the empty 
 kegs." ^^''^"'^' "^-5^-- -:>-- 
 
 The average man is prone to explain his indul- 
 gence in liquor on the ground of medical benefits. 
 He has been regaled for lo, these many years, by 
 the earnest admonitions of hoary-headed cen- 
 tenarians to take FluflSe's Malt Whiskey or Old 
 Hangover, get rid of all the ills that flesh is heir 
 to or likely to inherit, and live to be a hundred. 
 This, by getting comfortably and scientificially 
 permeated by these panaceas, and remaining 
 thusly. These beliefs of the average drinking man 
 are part of his allegiance to King Alcohol. 
 
 Now, if this ruler really possessed these manifold 
 virtues attributed to him, perhaps the annual tax 
 of five bilhon dollars — fifty dollars a year for 
 every man, woman, and child in the United States 
 — might not be excessive. 
 
THE EMPEROR OF DRUGS 
 
 But the moderate drinker didn't know what 
 alcohol did to him. In fact, nobody knew much 
 about alcohol until men began to study it scien- 
 tifically. As human beings these investigators 
 were prejudiced in favor of alcohol; as scientists 
 they did not care what was proven so long as the 
 facts were incontrovertibly established. 
 
 Their studies demonstrated conclusively that all 
 preconceived theories and beliefs were wrong. 
 Alcohol has none of the virtues and few of the 
 qualities claimed for it. The Arabs, who gave it 
 its name — al ghole — had the right idea. Alcohol 
 is exactly what its name indicates — an "evil 
 spirit." It is the emperor of all drugs. 
 
Chapter II 
 TEE IGNORANCE OF 300 CENTURIES 
 
 INASMUCH as human beings have been drink- 
 ing alcohol for some 300 centuries — its dis- 
 covery is believed to be coincident with the dawn 
 of the agricultural period — it would be natural 
 to suppose that they would interest themselves in 
 really knowing something about it. But they 
 didn't, in a scientific sense. 
 
 The excuse could not be made that the practice 
 of drinking alcohol is either limited or sporadic. 
 There has been plenty of opportunity for observa- 
 tion. The lowest order of savages and the highest 
 order of civilization have been equally devoted 
 subjects of the Great Emperor. And human 
 beings ferment and drink alcohol wherever grains 
 and fruits grow. None have been too low in in- 
 telhgence to start breweries and distilleries. 
 
 There has been no lack of observation or of 
 comment on the effects of alcohol, both pro and 
 con, and, as they say in some sections, the pro 
 
 7 
 
8 ALCOHOL 
 
 has been mostly "con." But there was a lack of 
 careful and intelligent investigation. Until a few 
 years ago the scientists were almost as ignorant of 
 the really important facts about alcohol as were 
 the savages. The plain truth is that human beings 
 have devoted thirty thousand years to drinking 
 alcohol and only 25 years to finding out what its 
 real nature is, and exactly what it does to the 
 organism. 
 
 The effects of excessive drinking always have 
 been plain enough — to the savage as well as to 
 the most highly cultivated. Through the ages 
 men have preached against drunkenness. There 
 have been moral and ethical teachings aplenty. 
 Medical men long have known that heavy drink- 
 ing engenders gout, a hob-nailed liver, "spleen," 
 laboring heart, brittle arteries, ulcerated stomach, 
 and many other serious conditions. 
 
 Yet there seems to be a natural impulse for 
 narcotics or intoxicants. It is not the taste that 
 appeals — at least not in the beginning. Every 
 drinker who is normal, and who is not cursed 
 with an alcohol heredity, is forced to learn to like 
 alcohol. 
 
 This impulse towards intoxicants is not confined 
 to human beings. Insects frequently get drunk 
 
THE IGNORANCE OF 300 CENTURIES 9 
 
 by indulgence in over-ripe fruit juices, returning 
 again and again to their Dionysian feast. Wasps 
 and bees often become wildly excited and quarrel- 
 some, finally ending their orgy by crawling away 
 in a semi-somnolent condition to sleep until the 
 effect passes. Hens and chicks eagerly devour 
 bread soaked in whiskey or brandy. 
 
 Elephants and dogs frequently acquire fondness 
 for liquors. Some degenerate dogs drink beer 
 and refuse meat when both are offered at the 
 same time. Darwin records the case of a baboon 
 made drunk with beer. The next morning his 
 keeper found him a picture of dejection and woe, 
 holding his head tightly after the fashion of a 
 repentant roysterer. The simian showed more 
 sense than the average drinker, however, for when 
 he was again offered beer he refused point blank 
 to touch it. 
 
 While the impulse for intoxicants may be 
 natural, there^js nqt^^^f^^dji^ of alcohol in nature. 
 Tf^'t^'^^tdf, and never was a "naturaPpfoc 
 Alcohol is formed in nature only as an excretion. 
 It is the garbage of vegetation, the discarded 
 elements of decayed plant life. It is food only 
 for the ferment of vinegar, and poison for every- 
 thing else. 
 
10 ALCOHOL 
 
 But there is no doubt that alcohol is the chief 
 factor in satisfying a universal human craving for 
 social excitement. Nothing so effectively breaks 
 down reserve, destroys barriers, takes the brakes 
 off restraint, and promotes what is commonly 
 called a good time. "Sociability" has much to 
 do with moderate drinking, for the habitual 
 drunkard cannot long continue the primrose path 
 in solitary state. His hunger for companionship 
 is quite as great — frequently greater — than his 
 thirst for alcohol. He might be a human island, 
 completely surrounded by bottles and kegs of 
 booze, and yet never take a drink by himself. 
 But let a friend drop in, and immediately he feels 
 an imperative need for spirituous stimulation. 
 
 Some years ago Bellevue and allied hospitals in 
 New York asked 246 patients: "Why did you 
 begin drinking.'^" The reasons assigned were: 
 Sociability, 52.5%; trouble, 13%; medical use, 
 9.3%; occupation, 7%; taught by elders, 7%; 
 out of work, 5%; unknown, 5%; "to be thought 
 sporty," 1.2%. 
 
 This was a practical and not a scientific inquiry, 
 but as an every-day guide the figures will hold 
 good for thousands of cases. 
 
 What does alcohol do to the moderate drinker.'* 
 
THE IGNORANCE OF 300 CENTURIES 11 
 
 Until yesterday nobody knew. And even then 
 the highly trained and specialized mind that first 
 took up the scientific study of alcohol had no 
 particular interest in it. He was pursuing a 
 definite course of investigation, in the careful, 
 methodical, patient, German scientific way, and 
 alcohol crossed his path. That meant he had to 
 know all about alcohol. And long before he was 
 ready to give his report to the world Dr. Emil 
 Kraepelin, Professor of Mental Diseases in the 
 University of Munich, probably the most eminent 
 living authority on mental and nervous diseases, 
 had proven startling facts. 
 
 For 25 years Dr. Kraepelin had been investigat- 
 ing the psychic effects produced by drugs — with 
 the end of securing knowledge of the incipient 
 symptoms and processes of mental diseases. He 
 was led to undertake studies in alcohol in order 
 to resolve insanity into its simple elements. Also, 
 to note the effects of liquor on heredity, and that 
 disease of the will which conduces to vice and 
 criminality. 
 
 In his wonderfully-equipped psychological labora- 
 tory, he attempted artificially to produce upon 
 normal individuals simple sets of psychic derange- 
 ments, that he might study the various phenomena 
 
12 ALCOHOL 
 
 in their beginning and development, and apply 
 the knowledge so gained toward curing certain 
 phases of mental aberration. He used for this 
 purpose various chemical substances — caffeine, 
 opium and its derivatives, bromin, cocaine, sul- 
 phonal, and finally our old friend alcohol — 
 known to its enemies as the Demon Rum. The 
 phenomena produced by alcoholic stimulants were 
 so extremely rich and startling that Kraepelin 
 decided to devote particular attention to this 
 poison. 
 
 By the use of instruments of absolute precision, 
 which could not be coerced, wheedled, or brow- 
 beaten into giving unfair decisions, the professor 
 and his pupils, many of whom are among the most 
 eminent scientists in the world, established the 
 fact that alcohol caused degeneration, that uni- 
 formly it affects all the faculties. And the higher 
 and more involved the faculty, the more definite 
 and measurable the effects. Also they proved 
 that the physiological and psychological action of 
 alcohol is cumulative; that if it be continually 
 used, even in small doses, harm is increasingly 
 manifested; the powers of coordination are 
 impaired, and the destruction of tissues and 
 protoplasm hastened. 
 
Chapter III 
 WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK? 
 
 THERE is wide difference of opinion among 
 authorities as to just when a man is drunk. 
 This also varies considerably with locality. For 
 instance, in Boston a man is intoxicated when he 
 cannot offhand name the ten decisive battles of 
 the world, and define pragmatism in fifteen words. 
 In New York a man is intoxicated when he him- 
 self acknowledges it. And in other parts of the 
 country they cheerfully maintain that a man is 
 never drunk until he falls down, can't get up, 
 and has to hang to the ground to keep from 
 rolling off the earth. 
 
 But scientists say that a man is under the 
 influence of liquor when the limits of his muscular 
 or mental speed or endurance have suffered diminu- 
 tion as a result of his having imbibed. For one of 
 the first things the scientists found out when they 
 commenced to measure drunkenness and its effects, 
 was that every man who drank any appreciable 
 
 13 
 
14 ALCOHOL 
 
 measure of alcohol was drunk — in degree, for 
 two or three days afterward. Dr. Kraepelin and 
 his confreres proved conclusively that alcohol is a 
 narcotic, first, last, and always; that the stimula- 
 tion supposed to be derived from its use is purely 
 an imaginary stimulation; and that one does less 
 and poorer work under its influence, although, 
 curiously enough, he thinks he is turning out more 
 and better work than usual. 
 
 With the calm unbias of the true scientist, the 
 alienist, working with precise instruments, set out to 
 measure drunkenness as definitely as one would 
 weigh salt or determine the distance between two 
 points. 
 
 And he did just that. Not with individual 
 persons so much as with the individual as an 
 average unit of a mass. In other words, after the 
 method of a life-insurance statistician, who can 
 accurately prognosticate just how many men out 
 of a group may be alive at the expiration of ten 
 years, while he would fail in pointing out the 
 individuals. On this basis Kraepelin secured re- 
 sults which have since been duplicated thousands 
 of times in the great physiological and psychological 
 laboratories of the world. 
 
 The professor and his coworkers have also 
 
WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK? 15 
 
 demonstrated that it is not the fourth or fifth 
 drink that intoxicates: it is the sum of the first, 
 second, and third, and they were also able further 
 to fix the effect of the first with startling accu- 
 racy. 
 
 And remember, all the subjects of these investi- 
 gations were men habituated to drinking. In 
 fact, there are hardly any other kind in Europe; 
 in Germany or Bavaria, at any rate. For, the 
 Bavarian, German, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch 
 subjects selected by the dispassionate professors 
 were anything but total abstainers. They are, 
 always have been, and in all probability always 
 will be drinkers, as their fathers and grandfathers 
 before them have been. And in all likelihood their 
 children will follow, unthinking and sheeplike, in 
 their father's alcoholic footsteps. 
 
 Now, it would be altogether too much to expect 
 a man who has taken only one or two ordinary 
 familiar drinks to realize that he is drunk — to a 
 definite, measurable, and analyzable degree. He 
 may not know he is drunk, but those little clocks, 
 intricate wheels, and serene mechanical devices of 
 the laboratory will know it. There is no guess- 
 work or hallucination about it. There is no hyp- 
 notizing a writing balance, psychologizing an 
 
16 ALCOHOL 
 
 ergograph, or bamboozling a memory test. There 
 is, on the contrary, a ruthless uniformity in 
 the results. The decision they render is final. 
 Attempts to disprove them but increase their 
 emphasis and insistency. 
 
 A group of men, kept in ignorance of the nature 
 of the tests, who understood only that they were 
 expected to persist to the limit of their endurance, 
 were shown to be capable of a definite average 
 quantity of work. This average was determined 
 with almost mathematical certainty by experiments 
 made dozens of times, under absolutely similar 
 conditions as regarded time of day, food, exercise, 
 and surroundings. 
 
 Now, an excellent index of the degree of a man's 
 capability for work is the weight he can continue 
 to lift with the index finger. So the ergograph, a 
 celebrated laboratory device invented by Professor 
 Angelo Mosso, was brought into requisition. In 
 manipulating this testing machine the fingers were 
 clenched around a wooden peg, all but the index 
 finger, and the arm held immovable by being 
 clamped to the arm of a chair. A weight of 
 several kilograms (a kilogram equals 35.2736 
 ounces), suspended by a small rope that passed 
 over a pulley, was raised and lowered by this index 
 
WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK ? 17 
 
 finger, until the subjects were forced to desist from 
 exhaustion. This process was repeated twelve 
 times, with intervening rests of a minute. Each 
 pull was automatically recorded by a pencil on a 
 strip of paper, registered by a line. The sum of 
 the lengths of all the lines was translated into 
 "meter kilograms," which meant the work accom- 
 plished by the index finger in raising one kilogram 
 one meter (39.37 inches) against the pull of gravity. 
 
 These experiments were made ten times a day, 
 and the total average for each man calculated for 
 a number of days, under conditions of absolute 
 abstention from drink. Then the men were given 
 a "good glass" of Bordeaux wine, or, to insure 
 uniformity in dosage, its alcoholic equivalent — 
 about one-third of an ounce of alcohol freely diluted 
 in water — after each meal, and the experiments 
 repeated. 
 
 The consequences were a diminution in the sub- 
 jects' ability to withstand the fatigue of weight 
 lifting, amounting to an average of from 7.6% 
 to 8%. These experiments were repeated hun- 
 dreds of times by scientists in various parts of 
 Europe, and always with similar results. In every 
 instance a definite, measurable loss in muscular 
 efficiency was demonstrated. 
 
18 ALCOHOL 
 
 Professor L. Schnyder, of Berne, testing this on 
 himself with Kraepelin's ergograph, found that 
 when he took no alcohol he could lift the weight 
 with the nn'ddle finger of his right hand an average 
 of 240 times in 12 groups of tests. 
 
 However, after taking 28.4 grams of alcohol, 
 the amount contained in about one and one-half 
 pints of beer, or a man's size glass of whiskey, 
 he was able to lift the weight only an average of 
 191 times. 
 
 Similar tests, made in various forms of muscle 
 work, show that there was a loss of 8% to 10% 
 in work values on the days when the workers 
 drank a half pint of wine, the alcoholic content of 
 which would equal that of a pint or a pint and a 
 half of beer. So it would seem that it needs no 
 ghost returned from the tomb to prophesy that a 
 belief in the strengthening and supporting qualities 
 of alcohol will eventually become as obsolete as 
 belief in witchcraft. 
 
 Professor Durig, an expert mountain climber, 
 was sure that alcohol stimulates. He determined 
 to prove it in his own case. The experiment he 
 set for himself was to climb to the summit of Mt. 
 Bilkencrat, in the Alps, 8000 feet above sea level. 
 He "packed" the same amount of weight on each 
 
WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK? 19 
 
 trip, and carried instruments which enabled him 
 to measure exactly how much bodily energy he 
 was expending, the amount of muscle work 
 achieved, and the period of time required. 
 
 He obtained an average of all these in several 
 tests made under abstinent conditions. Then, for 
 a similar number of tests, each day, before begin- 
 ning his climb, he took the alcoholic equivalent of 
 two and one-third gla sses, of beer . The result, to 
 his complete surprise, was that, although the 
 instruments indicated that he had expended 15 % 
 more energy than on abstinent days, his watch 
 indicated that it had required 21.7% longer for 
 him to reach the mountain top than on the days 
 he had abstained. The actual work done, com- 
 puted in foot pounds, averaged 16.4% less than 
 on alcohol days. 
 
 Having shown these effects on resistance to 
 fatigue, learned professors advanced to the con- 
 sideration of principles involving combined muscu- 
 lar and mental processes. They used the "writing 
 balance," invented by Professor KraepeHn, and 
 constructed by the skillful instrument maker, 
 Runne, at Heidelberg. This ingenious contrivance 
 had attached to it a fifth-second chronometer, 
 which automatically registered time on a rotating 
 
20 ALCOHOL 
 
 drum covered with carbon paper. On the record 
 obtained in this manner the time required in writ- 
 ing a set of characters can be computed with an 
 error of less than one two-hundredth of a second. 
 The unit of time on which the trials were based 
 was called a "zeta," and corresponded to one 
 one-hundredth of a second. 
 
 The daily exercises began at 8 a.m. The sub- 
 ject's scientifically sober hand was connected with 
 the apparatus, and the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 
 9, 10 were written twice with pencil at top speed. 
 Then the sequence reversed — 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, etc. — 
 was twice written; then the German letters "inm," 
 also twice. These were repeated ten times, and 
 the total average time consumed by each man was 
 measured. Then he received his allotment of wine, 
 as with the ergograph experiments. 
 
 After 5 minutes the subjects resumed their 
 writing, with instructions to carry out their ap- 
 pointed task in scribbling as before. They proved 
 that, while the spirit was willing, the flesh, and its 
 controlling nerve pulses, were weakened. Every 
 man of them measurably had slowed up. The 
 degree of retardation, after writing 1 to 10 under 
 the influence of the small amount of alcohol ad- 
 ministered (about what the ordinary drinker would 
 
WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK? 21 
 
 take with his dinner), amounted to 5.6%. In 
 writing 10 to 1 the retardation was greater, 
 amounting to 7%. This was accounted for by 
 the increasing complexity of the stunt; it being a 
 more unusual combination than the straight pro- 
 gression of numbers. With the "inm" the de- 
 viation from normal was even more apparent, 
 averaging 7.3%. Again and again these same 
 general results were secured; though new crews 
 were used for each demonstration. 
 
 Similar results followed in the coordination tests, 
 where the subject was required to "snap down" 
 a telegraphic switch at the unexpected flash of a 
 light or sound of a gong; the time elapsing between 
 flashing the light or striking the gong and closing 
 the switch being measured by the "zeta" chro- 
 nometer. In every case the rapidity of the co- 
 ordinating responses was decreased from 6% to 
 8.3%. If this happened to a locomotive engineer 
 who, at a flash of a red hght around a curve, was 
 required instantly to close a throttle and reverse a 
 lever, it might retard mental and physical response 
 just long enough to cause him to pile his train in 
 the ditch. 
 
 For the next experiment a number of accountants 
 of all grades were selected, and their average 
 
22 ALCOHOL 
 
 ability to add one-figure columns was estimated for 
 one week. They were then given daily, in divided 
 doses, the alcoholic equivalent of a pint of light 
 beer. A marked and progressive diminution in 
 their output was noticed, beginning with 3.1 % 
 the first day. After 2 weeks of this steady 
 moderate alcoholic allowance the percentage in- 
 creased to 15.3. With these facts and figures in 
 mind it should not be difficult to determine the 
 whys and wherefores of the relatively slow and 
 errorful Monday morning's accounting and bal- 
 ancing. 
 
 Similar experiments were then tried on type- 
 setters. These were required to set type from 
 printed pages (to insure absolute uniformity of 
 copy), the total number of "ems" a day being 
 computed for a week. Then, with daily gentle- 
 manly drinks — the kind that millions of moderate 
 drinkers take every day because they like it, or 
 because they beheve it benefits them — the type- 
 setters lost an average of 9.6 % in efficiency by the 
 end of the week. And these particular typesetters 
 differ not the slightest from thousands of other 
 typesetters, printers, typewriters, and linotype oper- 
 ators all over the world. 
 
 A similar experiment was made upon four type- 
 
WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK? 23 
 
 setters in a printing office in Heidelberg, Germany. 
 The trials were carried on for four successive days, 
 an hour a day being devoted to each. On the 
 first and third day no alcohol was given; on the 
 second and fourth days the work was done after 
 the typesetters each had received three-fourths of 
 a tumbler of Greek wine (18% alcohol). 
 
 It was found that alcohol used in this quantity 
 decreased the amount of work done by an average 
 of 9%. It is further interesting to note that if 
 this same loss held for a whole day's work, a man 
 earning $15.00 a week, when abstinent, would be 
 capable of earning only $13.65 per week if he 
 drank so much alcohol as would be contained in 
 the average drinker's daily quart of beer. 
 
 In addition to the loss in the total amount of 
 work done on days when alcohol was given, it was 
 also demonstrated that the number of errors was 
 increased. 
 
 In the beginning the investigators obviously 
 wrote the simplest and most practical tests. As 
 the experimenters gradually worked up to the more 
 complex mental processes the decrease in efficiency 
 became much more noticeable. This was particu- 
 larly marked in the memory tests conducted by 
 Professor Kraepelin and one of his pupils. Dr. 
 
 15 un^. 
 
24 ALCOHOL 
 
 Kiirtz, which demanded committing to memory 
 for a half-hour every morning as many twelve- 
 place figures as was possible for each subject to 
 remember. The students would curl their legs 
 round the chairs, chew the ends of their pencils, 
 look up at the ceiling, and mumble "one six 
 nine, eight seven three, two one eight, one six 
 two," or some other group of 12 numbers, until 
 they could say them without effort. They would 
 then tackle the next group, committing as many 
 twelve-number sets to memory as was possible in 
 the course of a half-hour, repeating each set in a 
 whisper to a mentor seated beside them. This 
 was carried out for a fortnight, after which their 
 average was computed. 
 
 Then the subjects were given, each morning, just 
 about what would be considered a good "eye 
 opener." Immediately they dropped behind in 
 their studies. The next 2 weeks showed an average 
 reduction of 6.2% in the number of twelve-place 
 figures committed to memory. 
 
 Kraepelin also supplemented his arithmetical 
 experiments with a series of practical tests upon 
 accountants. A dozen clerks were given a number 
 of sums in compound addition. Each was provided 
 with a stop-watch, which he started the instant he 
 
WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK? 25 
 
 began working his sums, and stopped when he 
 had finished. The average time required was thus 
 estimated for each man. 
 
 A glass of wine was then given, and the work 
 was resumed on an equal number of sums of a 
 like number of figures. Out of the first 12 men 
 tested, 11 were an average of 14% slower. And 
 the twelfth, though slightly faster, had such a 
 large percentage of errors that his record had to 
 be ehminated. 
 
 These experiments were repeated again and 
 again, employing different sets of clerks, but in- 
 variably the results were the same: the lengthen- 
 ing of the time required to perform the work, and 
 an increase, frequently of disastrous proportions, 
 in the number of errors in the sums. 
 
 Not the least interesting feature in all this work 
 was the absolute uniformity in results. The reports 
 in one series were never forwarded until the con- 
 clusion of the experiments in another psychological 
 clinic. Then these were compared. Their con- 
 sistency was startling. 
 
 All these demonstrations deal only with moderate 
 indulgence in alcohol, such indulgence as we are 
 accustomed to say is "good for a man," "helps 
 him to do his work," or "stimulates his mental 
 
26 ALCOHOL 
 
 activity." If the deviation is increased in propor- 
 tion to the amount administered, it is probable that 
 the cautious professors would have to use a yard- 
 stick or a table of logarithms in order to compute 
 the delinquency. 
 
Chapter IV 
 MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEMON RUM 
 
 AND so we have reinterpreted drunkenness. 
 We have found a new definition for the word 
 "intoxicated." We have a new standard for 
 recognizing inebriety. Not by the flushed face, the 
 lack-luster eye, the staggering gait, the incoherent 
 rambling talk; not by the general aspect of help- 
 lessness and stupidity which envelops, like a murky 
 aura, one who has partaken unwisely and unwell 
 of "that perilous stuff that doth weigh upon the 
 heart" — and all the other internal organs — as 
 well as the blood vessels. But by means infinitely 
 more accurate. j^ 
 
 For we can now determine to the fraction of a 
 per cent just how drunk a man is, just how far 
 his mental and physical capacities deviate from 
 his normal. We know, by a system of mensuration 
 as accurate as a pair of scales, as unemotional as a 
 peck measure, exactly how intoxicated is one who 
 has had only what he always thought was an 
 
 27 
 
28 ALCOHOL 
 
 *' ordinary" drink, but which, since we are be- 
 ginning to understand what it does, now proves 
 to be an extraordinary drink — a drink fraught 
 with such potentiahties, so subtly and effectually 
 concealed, that its actual effects upon the organism 
 are a source of perennial amazement to the scien- 
 tists who are devoting the best part of their lives 
 to its study. 
 
 The experiments of Dr. Fuerer and Professor 
 Smith indicated that an intoxication too slight 
 to be recognizable decreased the capacity to 
 memorize, to correlate ideas and association to as 
 late as the third day after taking alcohol. This, 
 mind you, in ordinary doses. The subjects were 
 not suffering from blood-shot eyes, horrible kat- 
 zen jammers, nauseated and rebellious stomachs, 
 irritated alimentary canals, and laboring hearts. 
 
 Had they been, we could more readily compre- 
 hend why it might take even a week thoroughly 
 "to get over" them. To all outward physical 
 appearances they were absolutely normal. But, 
 just as stars exist, visible to us only with the 
 highest powered telescopes, just as bacterial life 
 exists which is brought into the ken of conscious- 
 ness only by the microscopic lens; just as there are 
 sounds we cannot hear except with the microphone; 
 
THE DEMON RUM 29 
 
 just SO definite phenomena of alcohol exist, the 
 degrees of which are not only measurable by trained 
 observation, but whose gross effects, as applied to 
 work output, are plain as a pike staff. 
 
 At first, however, the results astonish even the 
 most blase. Dr. Fuerer frankly declared: 
 
 "When I began my experiments I had no sus- 
 picion of the results I should come to, and even 
 during their course I was certain that no consider- 
 able effects could be attained. When I learned 
 the true state of things I was surprised — and 
 frightened." This has been the experience of 
 most men first becoming familiar with Barleycorn's 
 cell-bludgeonings . 
 
 In his report Dr. Fuerer emphasizes particularly 
 the enormous waste in work values and economic 
 efficiency as a result of the ordinary or moderate 
 use of alcoholic drink. We shall consider this 
 interesting and important phase of the subject 
 later. 
 
 This disconnecting of the memory plugs by that 
 nimble-fingered operator, John Barleycorn, is one 
 of the most serious results of intemperance. Cases 
 are frequently reported in which certain alcohol- 
 soaked individuals would actually forget all they 
 had seen or heard even a few seconds before. 
 
30 ALCOHOL 
 
 Five minutes after extremely painful surgical 
 operations many of these patients have no recollec- 
 tion of what has taken place, and have not the 
 remotest idea why they are in bed. In fact, it 
 might be observed that they would make ideal 
 witnesses, inasmuch as what they don't know or 
 don't remember would be the extreme limits of 
 sufficiency. 
 
 The beginnings of this memory crumbling have 
 been demonstrated experimentally by Dr. R. Vogt, 
 of the University of Christiana. During 7 months 
 alternating experiments in memorizing 25 lines of 
 Homer were made with and without alcohol. 
 The time required for repetition without mistake 
 averaged 18% longer during the alcohol periods 
 than during the abstinent days. 
 
 The amount of alcohol given was 25 c.c, 
 corresponding to about a half pint of 4% beer. 
 When the system had accustomed itself to alcohol 
 — in other words, when the abnormal condition 
 became the condition normal to the subject because 
 alcohol toleration was established — the difference 
 in memorizing ability was reduced to between 5 % 
 and 7 % longer — the alcohol being taken after 
 breakfast. 
 
 On the other hand, when the drink was taken 
 
THE DEMON RUM 31 
 
 before breakfast — "on an empty stomach" — 
 the lengthening of the required memory period 
 went up to 69%! Which seems to be a pretty 
 strong argument for not beginning the day with a 
 drink. 
 
 However, one of the most remarkable features 
 connected with these studies was developed by 
 38 of these daily memorizations being repeated 
 after 107 and 108 days. This elicited the startling 
 fact that the time required to recall the memorized 
 lines was uniformly and invariably greater in the 
 case of those stanzas learned on alcohol days! In 
 other words, not only does it take a longer time 
 to fix impressions when alcohol is used, but the 
 impression itself, made while the system is enter- 
 taining a gentlemanly drink, is not so permanent 
 and durable. 
 
 Perhaps the most convincing observations, in 
 connection with the Munich experiments, was 
 concerned in the free "association of ideas." To 
 illustrate: If the name of an object is spoken, 
 immediately one thinks of something in connection 
 with that object. Professor Kraepelin's subjects 
 were requested to write these down, enumerating 
 as many associated objects as occurred to them in 
 the space of 5 minutes. Two words were given 
 
32 ALCOHOL 
 
 out at each session, 5 minutes being allotted to 
 each subject. This was repeated at intervals 
 during the day for 10 days, and the average num- 
 ber of suggested things reckoned up. Then each 
 evening preceding the next 10 days a generous 
 "nightcap" was given, and the results of the 
 following 10 days' "association" computed. A 
 loss in coordinating power in this series amounted 
 to as high as 27%. 
 
 This was a remarkably convincing demonstration, 
 and proves conclusively that one who drinks much 
 is living only a small part of his normal life; for 
 his brain is narcotized — partly paralyzed by the 
 action of liquor. 
 
 In testing out the association of ideas, it was 
 established that the most valuable and pertinent 
 association of ideas diminish on the days following 
 the small dose of alcohol — diminish from 11.03% 
 to as high as 46.08%. 
 
 The experiments embraced 1350 idea associations. 
 The quantity of alcohol corresponded to the alco- 
 holic content of from one-half to one bottle of 
 light wine daily, or 2 to 4 pints of ordinary beer. 
 But if one be an accountant, or engaged in any 
 work requiring accuracy, quick perception, correla- 
 tion of ideas, or memory of numbers, names, and 
 
THE DEMON RUM 33 
 
 facts — it is enough to result in his being able to 
 give his employer only from 89% to as low as 
 44% of his normal, undrugged efficiency. 
 
 Shortly before his death, Dr. J. J. Ridge, an 
 English physiologist, made a series of experiments 
 which points conclusions of tremendous impor- 
 tance to railroad men. He selected a group of 10 
 medical students, nurses, and porters. Placing a 
 row of letters at the end of a corridor, he had each 
 member of the group walk slowly from the other 
 end until the letters could be read, changing, of 
 course, the sequence of the letters in each case. 
 A chalk-mark was drawn upon the floor, to indi- 
 cate the spot from which the furthest degree of 
 vision in each person's case was possible, and each 
 individual's initial was marked beside it. 
 
 He then supplied his subjects with beer in 
 quantities which ranged from half a pint to as 
 small an amount as one-sixteenth of a pint — which 
 not even the most captious critic would claim an 
 excessive quantity. 
 
 On repeating the test, it was found that in no 
 single instance could any of the victims read the 
 letters from the spot where they had originally 
 stood. All had to move closer. In none of the 
 group was there any improvement. 
 
34 ALCOHOL 
 
 Professor Kraepelin, checking up these experi- 
 ments of Dr. Ridge, found that, on an average, 
 a man who had taken a fluid ounce of alcohol a 
 half -hour afterward had to approach to 20 feet in 
 order to read letters he had previously read at a 
 distance of 30 feet. The effect in diminished 
 vision, he found, lasted for from 4 to 5 hours after 
 drinking. 
 
 Another experiment of especial interest to rail- 
 road men, concerned the rapidity with which visual 
 images could be perceived, and also the "time 
 reaction" — quickness and accuracy — of the re- 
 sponse thereto. 
 
 Dr. Kraepelin stationed each member of a group 
 of men in turn a little distance from a screen, 
 from behind which a colored flag was suddenly 
 erected. The raising of the flag started a split- 
 second stop-watch. 
 
 They were directed to press a button, which, 
 by means of electricity, stopped the watch, and so 
 recorded the length of time it required to perceive 
 the flag, decide its color, and press the proper 
 button to designate that color. 
 
 Each man's average under abstinent conditions 
 was thus estimated. He was then given a glass 
 of light wine. After a short interval, to permit 
 
THE DEMON RUM 35 
 
 absorption of the alcohol, the experiments were 
 repeated. The results, after taking alcohol, showed 
 that in every case the men tested were from 6% 
 to 13% slower in responding. Also, errors in 
 determining the proper color of the flags were 
 materially increased. 
 
 In another test figures, letters, and words were 
 made to pass quickly before the eyes of a group of 
 subjects, who were asked to write down what they 
 saw. After alcohol had been taken, they failed 
 frequently to perceive all the characters that shot 
 by, and invariably they made more mistakes in 
 enumerating them. 
 
 The effect of alcohol on mental quickness in 
 answering signals has been carefully studied. 
 For example, tests were made in which subjects 
 were required to decide which of two motions to 
 make at a given signal, as an engineer, when a 
 red light flashes out on the track before him, must 
 decide in the fraction of a second the action which 
 will guide his train and passengers to safety. 
 
 The tests were made thus: If a green flag 
 showed, the individual tested was required to press 
 an electric button at his right; if a red flag, he 
 must press the button at the left. For a short 
 time after taking the small amount of alcohol 
 
36 ALCOHOL 
 
 contained in a bottle of claret, he pressed the 
 button more quickly, but he was much more 
 likely to press the wrong one. He made more 
 mistakes. Increasing the amount of alcohol slowed 
 up the time of response, and markedly increased 
 the number of errors. 
 
 This shows the danger a drinking man may be 
 in any business requiring rapid giving, receiving, 
 and answering of signals, for alcohol slows the 
 correct reading of signals, and invariably increases 
 the liability to make mistakes. It is partly for 
 this reason that so many American railroads 
 require abstinence on the part of all train opera- 
 tives. 
 
 These studies prove that alcohol is depressant, 
 anaesthetic, and narcotic. Its effects on the 
 sensory and motor nerves are to diminish acuteness 
 and pervert activity. Sending the blood to the 
 head and surging through the brain with increased 
 velocity is not increased vigor, but increased 
 irritation, which comes just before anaesthesia and 
 diminution of power. In other words, the drinker 
 deludes himself. He only thinks he is thinking; 
 for his very first drink has produced a definite, 
 measurable degree of intoxication. 
 
 Dr. Johnson may have been right when he said 
 
THE DEMON RUM 37 
 
 that "wine makes a man pleased with himself, 
 which is no small matter." But the man doesn't 
 "please*' the stoical ergograph, the smug "writing 
 balance," the sturdy tables of figures, and the 
 memory and association processes. 
 
 Indeed, it seems quite clear that if a man has 
 any brains worth preserving, alcohol is the poorest 
 preservative he could possibly pick out to use. 
 
y^ 
 
Chapter V 
 ALCOHOL AND CHILDREN 
 
 THERE is no question of the earnestness, 
 honesty, and sincerity of Professor Karl 
 Pearson, of the Galton Laboratory of Eugenics, 
 University of London. Professor Pearson collated 
 reports on the height and weight, health, intelli- 
 gence, eyesight, and death rate among school 
 children in various cities of Great Britain, and, to 
 his own satisfaction at least, proved that the 
 children of drinking parents were taller and heavier, 
 had better general health, more intelligence, keener 
 eyesight, and a lower death rate than the children 
 of non-drinking parents. 
 
 And yet, against this we have the evidence of 
 hundreds of equally qualified observers, who insist 
 that it is a crime to give children wine or beer, and 
 that the dreadful neurasthenia of modern times is 
 due chiefly to this early use of alcohol. 
 
 Science now contends that many an alcohol- 
 cursed career had its foundation in the nursing 
 
 39 
 
40 ALCOHOL 
 
 stage, for the tender babe, at the most impres- 
 sionable period of its hfe, imbibes alcohol from 
 its mother's breast. It has been proved, again 
 and again, that alcohol is present in the milk 
 when the mother has taken spirituous beverages 
 in excess. 
 
 The appetite for liquor implanted by the mother 
 
 — who perhaps, even under a doctor's direction, 
 is taking ale or porter to "strengthen" her and 
 increase her supply of milk — tends ultimately to 
 make her child an inebriate — if he grows to 
 man's estate. 
 
 Breast-fed infants, nursed by mothers who use 
 alcohol oftener have convulsions, are more restless 
 and irritable than infants of non-drinking mothers 
 
 — all of which symptoms clear up when the mother 
 is induced to substitute pure milk for her alcoholic 
 potion. Indeed, Count Deust, the Austrian diplo- 
 matist, when an infant, lay senseless for 24 hours 
 as a result of alcoholized milk from a wet-nurse. 
 She had been celebrating his birth in wine pre- 
 sented her by his father. 
 
 And not only is the milk of the mother who 
 drinks drugged with alcohol, but it has been found 
 that it does not contain the proper amounts of 
 protein, fat, sugar, etc., and therefore it is not 
 
ALCOHOL AND CHILDREN 41 
 
 SO well adapted for building a healthy infant 
 body. 
 
 Professor Hahnel says: "Among Bavarians, the 
 greatest beer-drinking people in the world, 300 out 
 of every 1000 babies born are born dead. Each 
 year 69,000 infants die before they are 12 months 
 old. Norwegian mothers had as many dead born 
 babies as Bavarian mothers until they were taught 
 not to drink alcoholic liquors. Now they lose but 
 80 or 90 out of 1000 babies." 
 
 Professor Taav Laitinen, of the University of Hel- 
 singfors, reports a comparison of children in 50 ab- 
 staining and 59 drinking families in one village in 
 Finland. In the abstaining families, the weakly chil- 
 dren constituted 1.3%, while in the drinking families 
 they constituted 8.2%. Of the children in abstain- 
 ing families, 18.5% died while still children, while 
 in the drinking families 24.8% died. 
 
 Professor Alfred Gordon, of Philadelphia, in a 
 study of 117 alcoholic families, reported that in 
 90 of these there were at least 200 children, all of 
 whom evidenced degeneracy. One hundred and 
 fifty, or 75 % of the whole number, were epileptic. 
 Of 78 children found in 20 families, whose grand- 
 parents, as well as whose parents were alcoholists, 
 35 were imbeciles and 25 insane. 
 
\cr\<\ ^anc^?/ 
 
 42 ALCOHOL 
 
 Professor Bunge, the foremost living authority 
 on the chemistry of nutrition, has shown, by most 
 carefully sifted statistics, that the inabihty of 
 many mothers to nurse their children is one of the 
 hereditary results of alcoholism, and that the germ 
 cell of alcoholic parents is defective, and cannot 
 evolve a normal body. This, he insists, is the 
 reason we find so large a percentage of functional 
 and organic diseases among children of drinking 
 parents. Indeed, the best informed diagnosticians 
 of Europe and America are firmly convinced that 
 rickets, decay of the teeth, scrofulous glands, and 
 other evidences of physical degeneracy are due in 
 large measure to the use of alcohol, either by the 
 child himself, or by his parents before his birth. 
 ^The great Auguste Voisin, head of the Sal- 
 petriere, Paris, and famous the world over as an 
 alienist, proved conclusively that these children 
 furnish a high percentage of our half-witted, 
 criminal, immoral, and insane population, and also 
 that many progeny of drinking fathers — and more 
 particularly of drinking mothers — are struck, 
 about the period of adolescence, with a sudden 
 abatement of their mental faculties. They seem 
 normal enough until, at about 12 or 14 years of 
 age, they are suddenly taken, without apparent 
 
ALCOHOL AND CHILDREN 43 
 
 reason, with a mental inertia or apathy, and an 
 insensibihty or indifference to morahty. Many of 
 them become mentally defective, which condition 
 remains permanent. 
 
 And Dr. Samuel G. Howe found, from a study 
 of the family history of 300 Massachusetts idiots, 
 that 145 were definitely known to be the children 
 of habitual drunkards. 
 
 Indeed, I myself am convinced that our morons 
 — grown women, whom the Binet psychological 
 tests prove to have only the mental capacity of 
 12 or 13 year old girls, and from whose ranks 
 prostitutes are largely recruited — are thus cursed 
 because of an alcoholized parentage. This also 
 applies to our gunmen and gangsters, who show 
 similar traits of mental decadence and moron 
 incapacit y. \ 
 
 One of the ablest of all investigators in alcoholic 
 phenomena is Professor Demme of the University 
 of Berne. While physician to the Jener Hospital 
 for children at Berne, Dr. Demme studied carefully 
 the effects of alcoholism upon his charges. He 
 submitted to the Christiana Congress a series of 
 tests made upon boys between the ages of 10 and 
 15, in alternate periods of wine drinking and ab- 
 stinence. 
 
44 ALCOHOL 
 
 * 
 
 In May, June, July, November, and December 
 a half glass of red wine was given daily (but a 
 third of a glass, to the younger boys). During 
 February, March, April, August, September, and 
 October nothing but water was permitted to be 
 drunk. 
 
 The subjects were all from wine-drinking families, 
 and were accustomed, almost from infancy, to the 
 use of alcohol. However, it was found that in the 
 wine-drinking periods the nervous systems of these 
 boys were less stable, and they were more excitable. 
 They slept badly, were given to distressing dreams, 
 and were more difficult to arouse in the mornings. 
 They were sluggish and indolent, and had much 
 more difficulty in fixing attention. Finally the 
 boys themselves recognized their superior comfort 
 and well-being during the abstinent periods, and 
 begged that they be excused from further tests. 
 
 In his very interesting report Dr. Demme also 
 refers to a 10 year old boy who suffered from 
 what is known as Korsakow psychosis, an alcohol 
 sickness, the most striking symptom of which is the 
 almost complete obliteration of memory. We have 
 rather facetiously set the high water mark on 
 mental obfuscation when we allege of an individual 
 that "he can't even remember his own name." 
 
ALCOHOL AND CHILDREN 45 
 
 But this pitiable condition was literal with Dr. 
 Demme's subject. The little patient was absolutely 
 unable to recall his own name, let alone any one 
 else's name, which he would from time to time 
 voluntarily attempt to remember. His father, it 
 developed on examination, had been in the habit 
 of giving him a "strengthening" dose of a quarter 
 of a bottle of Malaga wine daily. 
 
 "When this stupid abuse of innocent childhood 
 was stopped complete memory returned. Luckily 
 the boy had not been "strengthened" for a suffi- 
 cient period permanently to become weakened. 
 
 The effect of alcohol upon the mind and memory 
 of the child is equally startling. The abstinent 
 teachers of Holland published recently a series of 
 comparative studies, showing convincingly that the 
 mental activity of beer-drinking children varied in 
 inverse ratio to their alcohol habits. The chart of 
 these findings is a typical picture of a stairway to 
 stupidity. And bearing out these findings, an 
 American teacher, speaking a few years ago at the 
 Bremen Anti-Alcoholic Congress, contended that 
 the dullest children in St. Louis came from just 
 those localities most thickly studded with breweries. 
 
 In that classical series of studies by E. Bayer, a 
 school director in Vienna, it developed that the 
 
46 ALCOHOL 
 
 backward and unruly children were, almost without 
 exception, given alcoholic drinks of various kinds. 
 Many were accustomed to the daily use of rum in 
 their tea. 
 
 Professor Bayer studied 588 of these children, 
 distributed through 14 classes. He found that the 
 134 abstaining children had a total of 42% of the 
 highest marks, both for efficiency and for good 
 conduct, and with the other scholars both deficiency 
 and unruliness increased proportionately with the 
 amount of drink consumed. In other words, 
 the more frequently the children used wine or beer, 
 the more the good marks in scholarship and be- 
 havior fell off, and the greater the increase in poor 
 marks. 
 
 Bayer's report was corroborated by Dr. Shiavi, 
 who investigated the influence of alcohol upon 
 4000 school children in Brescia, Italy. 
 
 Dr. T. A. MacNichol conducted a similar in- 
 vestigation on 55,000 school children for the New 
 York Academy of Medicine. He found that more 
 than 50% of these youngsters were unable to do 
 work in school that could be marked "good." 
 Studying the habits of 20,147 parents, Dr. Mac- 
 Nichol found that 53 out of every 100 children of 
 drinking parents were mentally dull, while fewer 
 
ALCOHOL AND CHILDREN 47 
 
 than 10% of children of abstinent parents were 
 deficient in their studies. So it seems to be proved 
 that alcohol and scholarship mix very poorly, if at 
 all. 
 
 Indeed, it would seem that one of the surest and 
 quickest ways of increasing health and efficiency 
 among children would be to teach them simply 
 but scientifically just what alcohol is and does. 
 
 Terse and epigrammatic posters should be con- 
 spicuously displayed in all school rooms, and in 
 places frequented by children. These should give 
 exact facts concerning just what we are discussing 
 in these pages — the loss in school-room efficiency; 
 the deteriorating effects of alcohol upon health and 
 strength; the debasing and degenerating results of 
 alcoholic excesses. « 
 
 In Germany a beginning has been made in the 
 "New Education." There the school children 
 learn, as a lesson in composition, that "Alcohol is 
 a poison, with whatsoever name it is baptized — 
 with whatever adjectives it is decorated. How- 
 ever taken, in winter in little glasses to warm one, 
 or in large glasses in summer to refresh one, it is 
 always a poison, as morphine, nicotine, cocaine, 
 and opium. It neither warms nor nourishes. It 
 does not strengthen. It kills. It assassinates." 
 
Chapter VI 
 ''BOOZE'' AS FOOD 
 
 ALCOHOL is a poison which can be considered 
 a food, provided one carefully avoids using 
 it. Its apologists, however, have long contended 
 that it is a true food, and they have quoted, 
 as their authoritative advocate in this view, the 
 late Professor At water. They have . lifted cer- 
 tain of his statements out of their context, 
 and have wilfully destroyed their meaning and 
 intent. 
 
 But they have studiously avoided all reference 
 to Dr. Atwater's speech at the Musee Social in 
 Paris, where he said: 
 
 "Alcohol is a food, within very restricted limits. 
 Likewise arsenic, belladonna, and other poisons 
 contain nutritive elements, and can, equally with 
 alcohol, be called foods." Which is not quite so 
 favorable to the "food- value" theory as we have 
 been accustomed to hearing from Professor At- 
 water's misquoters. 
 
 49 
 
50 ALCOHOL 
 
 It used to be contended that food served as 
 fuel, after the manner of fire under a boiler, 
 supplying energy by its burning or oxidation. 
 On this basis food values were reckoned in calories, 
 or heat units. It was held that since alcohol in 
 burning yielded a definite number of these, that 
 it must therefore — notwithstanding its notori- 
 ously poisonous qualities — be a food. 
 
 No longer is this theory tenable, for it has been 
 proven that many substances which burn to water 
 arid carbon dioxide in the body, as does alcohol, 
 have absolutely no food value whateverj^ajid^are^ 
 not capable of acting as substitutes for such foods, 
 for instance, as fat or sugar. These substances 
 are glycerin, butyric, acetic, uric, lactic, and other 
 organic acids. All attempts to prove the posses- 
 sion of food value by these have completely failed. 
 This little-known fact has been overlooked, or 
 ignored, by those interested in promoting the 
 theory of the food value of alcohol. 
 
 To develop nutritive characteristics substances 
 to be classed as foods must possess other qualities 
 in addition to that of oxidizing in the tissues. 
 These characteristics require that food elements 
 must participate in the buildingup of the 
 cells — the foundation of life function. 
 
<<^^^„^ »> 
 
 BOOZE AS FOOD 51 
 
 For instance, such elements as whole series of 
 inorganic compounds or mineral salts — potash, 
 lime, sodium, etc. — have not the slightest calorie 
 or burning value, yet, as true food elements, they 
 are absolutely indispensable to life and health. 
 
 Alcohol, by reversing the building principle, and 
 alwa^sbreaking down the cells, acts destructively 
 upon protoplasm. In short, it is a poison which is 
 the direct opposite of a food. 
 
 Further, alcohol oxidized in the body withdraws 
 oxygen from the tissues, and hinders the combus- 
 tion of food supplies in the organism, particularly 
 of fats. Because of this, unutilized pathological 
 fat is deposited in various parts of the body, and 
 permeates the vulnerable internal organs. 
 
 Furthermore alcohol passes out of the walls of 
 cells as easily, or more easily, than it passes into 
 them. This is not the case with any element that 
 could be classed as a true food. Alcohol therefore 
 physiologically violates all pure food laws. ^^i.^^^^ 
 
 Also, alcohol has exactly the same effect a^ ethep/ 
 chloroform, and chloral-hydrate — in contradistinc- 
 tion to sugar, for instance — for it dissolves and 
 is soluble in fats. It is a true narcotic poison in 
 the fat series, and has the same properties as 
 its bloodthirsty cousins of this category. For 
 
52 ALCOHOL 
 
 with it one can first narcotize, then paralyze, 
 and eventually kill, when given in suflScient 
 quantity, any man, animal, or plant subjected to 
 its action. 
 
 Not even the most enthusiastic alcohol exponent 
 would think of calling ether, chloroform, or chloral- 
 hydrate a "food," even though these substances 
 oxidize in the body as freely, or more freely, than 
 does alcohol. Of alcohol alone they make a shining 
 exception, for it is only with respect to this White 
 Water of Death that they make the paradoxical 
 claim that, notwithstanding the fact that it is a 
 poison, it is also a good food. 
 
 Many men, in other respects intelligent, firmly 
 believe that wine, for example, gives strong bones 
 to growing children, and even staid, bespectacled 
 professors still regard beer as "liquid bread." 
 Yet Destree and Schmiedeberg have demonstrated, 
 in an elaborate and carefully worked out series of 
 experiments, that workmen can do more work 
 fasting than while existing upon alcoholic "nutri- 
 tion" exclusively. 
 
 Also, it has been shown that dogs nourished with 
 a definite quantity of albumen and sugar, can not 
 only accomplish a definite, mathematically regis- 
 tered quantity of work each day — using the 
 
i i ^ ^ ^ ^ ?5 
 
 BOOZE AS FOOD 53 
 
 running machine as a testing medium — but they 
 gain in weight. Whereas, if the sugar be replaced 
 with alcohol to the same number of calorie units, 
 there is a distinct diminution, both in the dog's 
 weight and in the amount of work accomplished. 
 
 Indeed, if the "oxidizing" view were true, fusel 
 oil — regarded universally as an adulterant to 
 "good" liquor — would, as producing more heat 
 units during combustion in the body, have to be 
 considered a much more desirable food than the 
 fine, high-priced ethyl-alcohols of the much-vaunted 
 "pure" hquors and wines. 
 
 But even granted, for the sake of argument, 
 that alcohol has a fuel value, it is a deceitful one, 
 for the body temperature falls when alcohol is 
 used in winter. The surface blood vessels, dilating 
 as they do under its action, are like open windows, 
 letting the heat escape. Polar explorers have long 
 since proven this by sad experience, and it is now 
 but rarely that brandy is included in the explorer's 
 medicine chest. And this same interdiction applies 
 to most of the European armies and their rations. 
 
 Also, intelligent drivers and chauffeurs, whose 
 duties require them to be much in the frigid air, 
 realize that there is no quicker way for them to 
 "freeze stiff" than by taking alcoholic stimulants 
 
54 ALCOHOL 
 
 to "heat them up." Needless to say, dilatation 
 of the capillaries produces a heatening effect in 
 summer, as the blood-congested and sweat-streaked 
 faces of those who indulge in this "food" can testify. 
 
 Dr. Lyman Fisher, Director of the New York 
 Hygiene and Life Extension Institute, comments 
 upon alcohol to this effect: "What about alcohol.^ 
 This lecture is about foods, not about narcotics; 
 so we will place alcohol where it belongs — on the 
 drug shelf. You can get the equivalent of its 
 vaunted energy and so-called food value without any 
 of its poison value out of a little sugar and water." 
 
 Gradually but surely driven from their "food" 
 defenses, alcohol's apologists have now constructed 
 a bulwark of beer. Many of these gallant heroes 
 contend that there is more nourishment in a glass 
 of beer than there is in a whale on toast. This 
 may be true. For no one knows exactly how 
 much nourishment there is in a whale. But we 
 know exactly how much nutriment a glass of beer 
 contains. It contains about 5% of malt extract 
 — or 1 part in 20 — the food value of which is 
 variable. 
 
 This extract consists of protein matters, con- 
 verted and unconverted sugar, hop resin, and other 
 substances of no dietary value, left as a residue 
 
(( 99 
 
 BOOZE AS FOOD 55 
 
 after complete evaporation. In addition, beer 
 sometimes contains preservatives, such as sodium 
 fluoride and salicylic acid, together with soda 
 bicarbonate to neutralize the acidity, and to help 
 put the foaming "head" on it. Also salt, to over- 
 come the disagreeable taste — and perhaps inspire 
 a languishing thirst for more of this "liquid food." 
 
 Dr. Wiley, some time ago, very effectually dis- 
 posed of the status of salicylic acid and preserva- 
 tives, and even the most enthusiastic exponents of 
 "food in beer" will hardly urge the use of hop resin 
 as an article of diet. ^ 
 
 As regards the recent claims that lecithin, or 
 "nerve fat," has been discovered in beer, this is 
 interesting — if true. If it has — despite all the 
 painstaking negative analyses of many generations 
 of chemists — it is quite safe to estimate that the 
 total amount contained in 4 car loads of beer 
 might approximate the quantity concealed about 
 the person of one vigorous, fresh egg. WTiich 
 would give it a nutritional value almost as high 
 as that of the hole in a doughnut. 
 
 This leaves us a few grains of proteid and a 
 small amount of sugar as the "food" in beer. If 
 the tissues are supplied with a liberal amount of 
 water — although no one claims water as a food 
 
56 ALCOHOL 
 
 per se — life can be sustained for a very con- 
 siderable time. Dr. Tanner fasted for 40 days. 
 Perhaps some beer-encouraged expert might do 
 even better. He might — if he could rid the beer 
 of its 4 or 5 % alcohol content — ^ a content that, 
 in the absence of other food to attack, would prey 
 upon the tissues like a myriad of infinitesimal 
 teeth. But if he did, the genial draught would no 
 longer be beer. 
 
 Many years ago. Baron Justus von Liebig, in 
 his "Chemische Brief e," said: "It is now possible 
 to demonstrate with mathematical certainty that, 
 so far as enriching the blood is concerned, the flour 
 that will lie on the point of a knife affords more 
 nourishment than 4 measures of the best Bavarian 
 beer. Anybody who drinks a measure of beer , 
 daily would thus imbibe in one year about as much 
 nourishment as is contained in a pound of bread." 
 So notwithstanding that Professor Adolph Cluss, 
 of the Royal College of Vienna, states that 
 
 "Beer makes good the waste in human tissue, 
 due to excessive mental or physical activity," it 
 does not make it good — chiefly because it contains 
 nothing to make it good with. 
 
 In the absence of more convincing proof, it would 
 seem that those who class beer among the foods 
 
** booze" as food 57 
 
 are giving their imaginations gentle exercise — or 
 else they are magnifying the food value of a few 
 grains of proteid and a little sugar through the 
 lens in the bottom of a beer bottle. 
 
 We are also laboring under a grave misappre- 
 hension when we believe that alcohol "^^ssists 
 digestion." So far as the seductive and cheery 
 looking "appetizer" is concerned, it has almost the 
 same profound influence upon digestion that a 
 tom-tom has upon chilblains. They "tried this 
 out" at Yale University lately. 
 
 To one group of students an excellent dinner was 
 given — without alcoholic accompaniment. A few 
 hours later, what remained of this dinner was 
 withdrawn and tested. In every case digestion 
 was found to be well advanced. 
 
 Another group of students partook of a similar 
 collation, but each of these, in addition, was 
 presented with an appetizer in the shape of a 
 cocktail, gin-fizz, or whatever they most yearned 
 for. 
 
 The stomach contents of this group were with- 
 drawn after the same length of time. On examina- 
 tion it was found that digestion was abnormal and 
 imperfect. Peptic digestion was only incompletely 
 "carried forward," for, owing to the presence of 
 
58 ALCOHOL 
 
 alcohol, the digestive juices had failed properly to 
 act upon the albumens. 
 
 These experiments were repeated many times, 
 and invariably with similar results. Which proves 
 that the "aperitive" is not an appetizer or di- 
 gestive. It is a devitalizer, pure and simple, and 
 destroys or retards the normal processes of digestion. 
 
 The feeling of warmth and exhilaration, fre- 
 quently felt as the "kick" from a cocktail, arises 
 merely as a result of irritating the more or less 
 delicate mucous membrane lining of the stomach. 
 
 According to Drs. Chittenden and Mendel, "One 
 tablespoonful of whiskeys-reduces the digestive 
 activity more than 75%,j And, asserts Dr. 
 Bunge, "When alcohol is taken into the system, 
 in any appreciable amount, the digestive process 
 is arrested and fermentation ensues." 
 
 If there exists a decided misconception as to 
 why whiskey is, there exists an even more pro- 
 nounced ignorance concerning what whiskey is. 
 Most whiskey drinkers "let the label tell." But 
 what it tells only adds to their plentiful lack of 
 knowledge on the subject. 
 
 For instance: Whiskey, brandy, gin. Cognac, 
 rum, and most other high-content alcoholic drinks 
 are all — according to the testimony elicited during 
 
( ( „„ >5 
 
 BOOZE AS FOOD 59 
 
 the hearing of the "Whiskey Trust" before the 
 House of Representatives — made from the same 
 base. 
 
 This base consists of "high wines," the first 
 product of the distillation of grain. When these 
 are taken reverently from the distilling apparatus 
 they are raw, crude — totally undrinkable. But 
 on being kept for a time in charred oak bar- 
 rels, the more poisonous elements — the so-called 
 "higher alcohols," fusel oil, aldehyde, etc., amount- 
 ing to approximately 2 % — are chemically changed. 
 Although the modified liquor is not less poison- 
 ous than it was before, it becomes drinkable. And 
 then it is "whiskey" — old style. 
 
 During the aging process the high wines dissolve 
 some of the sugary elements and color from the 
 char of the barrel, and thereby acquire the amber 
 color ^ and the oily "bead" so beloved of the 
 connoisseur. 
 
 But this method is generally obsolete. The 
 modern method of producing liquors consists in 
 redistilling these high wines, driving off the fusel 
 oil and aldehydes, and reducing the resultant 
 "cologne spirits" to "proof" by adding a judicious 
 admixture of water and flavoring. 
 
 This process is confidingly and affectionately 
 
60 ALCOHOL 
 
 known as "rectification," and those who unselfishly 
 and unstintingly give of their time and labors in 
 this good work are known as "rectifiers." 
 
 Rectification is accomplished by means of es- 
 sences, aromatics, coloring material, sweetening, 
 spirits, and brains. 
 
 Thus a diligent, skillful rectifier, by the aid of 
 sugar syrup, "Bourbon extract," "rye extract," 
 "rye oil," "malt essence," "Irish" or "Scotch" 
 essence, "Pittsburgh rye," or " Monongahela " 
 essence, can produce whiskey of any age or origin 
 — w^ithout an effort. 
 
 James R. Mann, a member of Congress from 
 Illinois, demonstrated this before the House of 
 Representatives during the classic Whiskey Trust 
 hearing aforementioned. He showed that, by the 
 aid of these various essences, aided and abetted by 
 a bottle of "bead oil," some "aging oil," and 
 caramel to color, any desired variety of whiskey 
 could be produced. And the sworn testimony of 
 a number of distillers, w^ho testified before that 
 Committee — substantiated by the reports of the 
 Bureau of Chemistry — shows that whiskeys were 
 so produced. 
 
 Indeed, Mr. William T. Hobart, answering the 
 question : 
 
(6 .„ >> 
 
 BOOZE AS FOOD 61 
 
 "How do you flavor gin?" answered: 
 "We simply take spirits, and put in about 40 
 drops of essence of gin, which is made from the 
 juniper berry. That makes it gin." 
 
 "You take these spirits, and put in some other 
 essence, and it becomes Jamaica rum.^" 
 "Yes, the spirits will take any flavor." 
 "Then you take some other of these essences 
 and some spirits, and it sells for rye whiskey .f^" 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Any kind of whiskey you want.^" 
 "Yes, it can be made with these flavors." 
 And in replying as to the extent of these prac- 
 tices, he admitted that 
 
 "There is not a house in the trade that does not 
 understand this." 
 
 So, upon the Pelion of the natural injuriousness 
 of alcohol is piled the Ossa of highly poisonous 
 adulteration. Is it to be wondered at the drinker 
 sometimes has grave doubts as to where he was 
 struck — and also what struck him? 
 
 However, if one must drink, it would be highly 
 advisable — from the standpoint of health — to 
 drink always poor liquor instead of pure liquor. 
 For the best is infinitely worse than the worst. 
 Good old liquor is vastly more harmful than bad 
 
62 ALCOHOL 
 
 new liquor. The more stars there are on the 
 label of a bottle of high-priced brandy, the more 
 stars the drinker of the brandy will see, and the 
 sooner he will see them. Also, the more perma- 
 nent the effects of such distorted vision upon him. 
 
 This has been proved beyond any question of 
 doubt by most elaborate and painstaking analyses 
 made recently in Europe. Professor Lieberman, of 
 the University of Budapest, was the first to direct 
 attention to this seemingly paradoxical discrepancy. 
 
 He examined several hundred specimens of fine 
 wines and brandies, compared his findings with 
 the analyses of an equal number of the ordinary 
 vintages and cheap alcohols of trade, and found 
 the former much more dangerous in that they 
 contain higher percentages of aldehydes and fur- 
 furol, and also a higher alcohol content than the 
 cheaper beverages. 
 
 The best Cognac that could be purchased was 
 found to contain 4.7 % of fusel, as against 7.01 % 
 in some of the cheaper varieties. The Swiss Mo- 
 nopoly, examining 316 specimens of ordinary trade 
 spirits, found a fusel content of only 3.86%. 
 
 Then Professor Morin carried the analysis a step 
 further. A kilogram of the most expensive Cognac 
 fusel was compared with the same amount of fusel 
 
*'booze" as food 63 
 
 from potato and grain spirits. The result was 
 fetish-destroying. For, while in the grain spirits 
 he found .21 grams of furfurol and oils, and in the 
 potato spirits only .05, in the high grade, multiple- 
 starred varieties of Cognac there were 8.88 grams 
 of these epilepsy-producing poisons. 
 
 Professor Bruylant of the University of Brussels, 
 and Professor Depaire of the University of Louvain, 
 analyzed 500 samples of spirits purchased at ran- 
 dom from the public drink shops of Belgium. 
 
 They demonstrated that these contained only 
 one-tenth the impurities found in high grade 
 liquors and wines from the cellars of the epicures. 
 
 Similar results were obtained in quantitative 
 chemical analyses made in France and in Germany. 
 And as most of our "high grade" liquors are 
 imported, it would be ridiculous to suppose that 
 the same thing is not true in America. 
 
 Therefore, if one must drink, it would be highly 
 advisable to economize in both health and money 
 by drinking only the poorest "pure liquors," or 
 better still, the "split" of the Maine and Canadian 
 woodsmen. For those who may wish to refine 
 their taste in beverages, we might say that this is 
 a combination of grain alcohol, sugar, and water; 
 mixed to suit the individual requirement and 
 
64 ALCOHOL 
 
 capacity. The advantage of this alcohoHc drink 
 over all others, is that when one is poisoned by it, 
 he at least has the satisfaction of knowing what 
 caused it. One thing, however, we do know. We 
 are quite certain that alcohol, because it destroys 
 all organic life, is a splendid medium in which to 
 preserve a man, after he is dead. But to use it 
 during life — either as a food or drink — is in- 
 compatible with scientific thought, or even good 
 common sense. 
 
Chapter VII 
 BEER THE BRUTALIZER 
 
 CONTRARY to generally accepted belief beer 
 is proportionately much more noxious than 
 are wines or liquors. While liquor makes a man 
 brutal and dulls his judgment, beer makes him 
 slow-witted and abolishes judgment. And, while 
 wine or brandy, in sufficient quantity, makes a 
 man crazy, beer, in corresponding quantity, makes 
 him stupid. And between insanity and stupidity 
 there is merely a question of choice. Some of us 
 prefer an interesting maniac to a brutalized idiot. 
 
 The actual reason for this brutalization and 
 sottishness has been known for only a few years — 
 is even yet not generally understood. Yet it is 
 very simple. For, in addition to the small whiskey 
 glass of alcohol in each pint of beer, beer also 
 contains a large and varying percentage of lupulin 
 — the active principle of hops. 
 
 The so-called lupulin glands of the hops secrete 
 an ethereal oil consisting of various terpenes — 
 
 65 
 
66 ALCOHOL 
 
 substances similar to turpentine oil — which hold 
 the other elements in solution. Among these ele- 
 ments are the hop acids and resins. 
 
 We used to think that we got all the "rosin" 
 with which we varnished our kidney cells from the 
 pitch lining of the beer barrels. But we know now 
 that we get our kidney shellac from the hops which 
 enter into the composition of the beer. These 
 terpenes act powerfully and disastrously upon the 
 nervous system as wxll as upon the kidneys. 
 
 The alkaloids, too, have a stupifying action on 
 the nerves. For the hop belongs to the hemp 
 group, and is closely related to Indian hemp. 
 On the female blossoms of Indian hemp, as on the 
 female blossoms of hops, we find glands holding 
 a narcotic, sticky, bitter-tasting substance, which 
 is the active element of hashish. 
 
 Hashish is used largely by the various Moham- 
 medan peoples of West and South Africa,, and in 
 the Malay Archipelago, for narcotic purposes. 
 In the intermediary stage — before complete stupi- 
 fication sets in — these hemp habitues become 
 dangerously violent — even to running amuck with 
 a huge creese, or crooked-bladed dagger — stab- 
 bing and slashing, until they are mercifully killed 
 in their tracks. 
 
BEER THE BRUTALIZER 67 
 
 Now, hashish contains exactly the same elements 
 as are found in the lupulin glands of hops — bitter- 
 tasting resins, an ethereal oil, and one or more 
 alkaloids. Therefore, hops exert the same effect 
 on the human body as does hashish — differing 
 only in degree. 
 
 Naturally, in making this comparison, we must 
 remember that hashish is used in concentrated 
 form, while there is relatively but a small amount 
 of the hemp elements in beer. But this is some- 
 what offset by the fact that a beer drinker imbibes 
 — in his favorite beverage — sufficient lupulin to 
 make up considerable of the deficiency. 
 
 Professor Reinitzer, of the Polytechnic at Graz, 
 has demonstrated that it is due to the preservative 
 action of the hop resins that it is possible to 
 "keep" beer. The bacterial life-forms in beer 
 (the sarcina organisms) are hindered from multiply- 
 ing by the resins contained in the hops. This 
 assists the alcohol in preventing undue fermenta- 
 tion. So the internal organs of a beer drinker 
 undergo a double process of pickling, which makes 
 him just about 50% worse off than he would be 
 if he confined himself exclusively to alcohol. 
 
 Here we have rational and scientific explanations 
 as to why excessive beer drinking is accompanied 
 
68 ALCOHOL 
 
 by that stupidity and clumsy heaviness of mind 
 pecuhar to those who indulge unwisely and unwell 
 in the beverage that anathematized Gambrinus. 
 That vivacity and brilliance of wit which enable 
 the Munich beer drinker, for instance, to stare 
 stupidly into his beer mug for an hour at a time, 
 are typical symptoms of hemp poisoning — plus 
 alcoholism. And either alone is bad enough — in 
 all conscience. 
 
 It would be most interesting if Kraepelin, 
 Benedict, Ascheffenburg, or some other physiologist 
 were to make a series of experiments w^ith the 
 lupulin extracted from a given quantity of beer, 
 to determine exactly how much extra loss in 
 memory, correlation, response, accuracy, and work- 
 value follows the use of beer — as compared with 
 undoped alcohol. 
 
 We have just seen that alcohol plus lupulin 
 equals brutishness. It might be instructive to 
 amplify this knowledge somewhat — to convince 
 ourselves that the whiskey devil cannot be driven 
 out by the beer Beelzebub. Here are a few of the 
 reasons why. 
 
 Professor Forel, of the University of Zurich, 
 reported that at the Ellikon Sanatorium — the 
 first great institution in Europe to forswear alcohol 
 
BEER THE BRUTALIZER 69 
 
 in therapeutics — the number of beer alcohohsts 
 outnumbered the spirit alcohohsts nine to one. 
 
 Dr. Hueppe and Professor Przibram, of Prague, 
 have demonstrated, by the incontrovertible evidence 
 of the autopsy table, that beer injures more hearts, 
 livers, and kidneys than does brandy. 
 
 The great physiologist, Welminsky, has shown 
 that the belief that beer drinkers do not suffer 
 from delirium tremens is a fleeting fitful fancy. 
 He has given us accurate statistics proving that in 
 Bohemia and other European countries — with a 
 beery past, present, and perhaps future — a far 
 greater number of the delirious have become so 
 through beer than through spirits drinking. 
 
 And Dr. Delbrueck adds, for our edification, 
 that beer and wine lands are the most alcohol 
 drenched (France, Germany, Belgium, and Bavaria), 
 and that the whiskey and brandy lands (Sweden 
 and Norway) the least so. He concludes that the 
 beer danger is for the future far greater than the 
 spirits danger. 
 
 Also, Dr. August Smith, of Schloss Marbach, 
 has reported experiments which prove positively 
 that beer drinking — even more than spirit drink- 
 ing — produces invariably a dilation of the heart, 
 and coincidentally causes all the pathological effects 
 
70 ALCOHOL 
 
 upon the circulatory system that accompany heart 
 dilation. 
 
 And here is something that may give the beer 
 drinker pause. In the Reinitzer prisms, displayed 
 conspicuously in the anti-alcohol exhibitions of 
 Europe, one cube represents a pint of pure alcohol 
 
 — sufficient to kill a man on the spot. Alongside 
 of this is a prism standing for 14.6 pints of alcohol 
 
 — the amount a man who drinks a pint of beer 
 daily takes into his system each year. It is a 
 relatively simple problem to estimate from these 
 comparisons just to what extent and how fatuously 
 a beer drinker — in pursuing his favorite avocation 
 
 — is flirting with the undertaker. 
 
 A device much used in Europe for demonstrating 
 the alcohoHc content of beer, might with profit 
 be employed in this country. This consists of an 
 ordinary and most familiar looking bottle of brown 
 beer, through the cork of which a small hole has 
 been punched. This bottle is set over a heating 
 apparatus, and after two minutes the alcohol 
 evaporates and passes up through the hole. The 
 gas is then ignited, and, needless to say, it makes 
 a very pretty and most illuminating illumination. 
 
 And to prove, out of their own mouths, that the 
 Germans are not nearly so enthusiastic about beer 
 
BEER THE BRUTALIZER 71 
 
 as some pro-beerists would have us believe, we 
 have but to glance at these excerpts from an 
 Army pamphlet entitled "Alcohol and the Power 
 of Resistance," circulated widely among German 
 soldiers. 
 
 "There is no justification for calling beer 'liquid 
 bread'; a glass of heavy beer costing 25 pfennigs 
 has no more nourishment than a piece of cheese 
 costing one pfennig. . . . Almost all excesses and 
 disturbances in the army are traced to drink. . . . 
 It is mostly beer that causes the mischief. Beer 
 is not the harmless drink it is supposed to be." 
 
 The most sinister thing about beer is this ap- 
 parent harmlessness. Yet almost invariably the 
 drink habit is inaugurated through the use of beer. 
 Scientific men and sociologists in general fail to 
 agree with brewers in their contention that beer 
 drives out stronger liquors. Professor Strumpel of 
 Breslau, Germany, says: "Nothing is more errone- 
 ous than to think of diminishing the destructive 
 effects of alcoholism by substituting beer for other 
 alcoholic drinks." And Dr. Howard A. Kelley, 
 of Johns Hopkins University, says: "I consider, 
 with eminent German authorities of enormous ex- 
 periences, that beer is exceedingly injurious and 
 dangerous as a beverage." And so it is. For of 
 
72 ALCOHOL 
 
 18 cases of drunkenness appearing before a police 
 court judge "hand running" recently, fifteen said 
 that they had been drinking beer. Three old to- 
 pers had been using whiskey. Half of these beer 
 cases involved assault and battery or destruction of 
 property. 
 
 Even as a "hot weather drink" beer is a broken 
 reed upon which to lean. For Dr. Alfred Plehn — 
 world famous as a tropical hygienist — warns 
 explicitly against its use, arguing that, in his 
 experience, it is especially suited, under the patho- 
 logical conditions which a hot climate creates, to 
 create disturbances in the stomach and diges- 
 tion, and in this way to prepare the ground for 
 dysentery. 
 
 What we have said concerning beer applies with 
 equal, if not greater, force to ale — even to those 
 heavily advertised and much-lauded ales for which 
 the claim is made that 
 
 "To feel well and be well, drink a glass of 
 
 Ale w^ith your dinner each night. . . . Physicians 
 generally recommend it for its wonderful tonic 
 value." 
 
 This statement is pure buncombe. Educated, 
 well-read physicians do not "generally recommend 
 ale for its wonderful tonic value," for the simple 
 
BEER THE BRUTALIZER 73 
 
 reason that it has none. The man who drinks ale 
 or beer or stout drinks it because he Hkes its 
 narcotic and stupifying effects. If he thinks he 
 gets any other effects from it, he is deluding 
 himself. 
 
 And when these purveyors of poison insist that 
 "No other beverage can compare with good ale 
 for satisfying and nourishing properties," they are 
 paying out good money to prove that they know 
 nothing about nutrition or nutritive values. To 
 prove this statement we have but to refer them to 
 comparative tables showing the food values of 
 milk or chocolate, for instance — both fairly well- 
 known beverages — as contrasted with beer, ale, 
 or stout. 
 
Chapter VIII 
 WHAT ALCOHOL DOES TO CELLS 
 
 ACADEMIC men, particularly the German 
 savants, are above everything else methodical. 
 And so they demonstrated — methodically and con- 
 clusively — that alcohol is a chemical — definite 
 and stable — the effects of which, allowing for 
 slight modifications or variations due to idio- 
 syncrasy, are uniform and well defined. Also that 
 it produces physical, mental, and psychical phe- 
 nomena which are readily investigated, and which 
 yield surprisingly interesting — not to say actually 
 startling — results. The conclusions — allowing for 
 the personal equation — are quite as accurate 
 as a mathematical problem, and equally as con- 
 vincing as a demonstration in physics or in 
 chemistrv. 
 
 Now, the chief physical (or physiological) action 
 of alcohol is strikingly shown when the leucocytes 
 — the "White Soldiers of the Blood" — are sub- 
 jected to its influence. Under the microscope it 
 
 75 
 
76 ALCOHOL 
 
 is demonstrated that even a moderate quantity 
 absorbed into the blood paralyzes the white cor- 
 puscles (phagocytes). They behave like drunken 
 sots, they can't move fast enough to catch the 
 disease germs, and when placed in the midst of a 
 clump of malignant microbes are unable to kill and 
 devour them. In the chronic alcoholic the micro- 
 scope shows that the fighting powers of the white 
 corpuscles are permanently reduced. ^ This accounts 
 for the lowered vitality of heavy drinkers — and to 
 a lesser extent of any drinkers — and explains why 
 pneumonia, typhoid, or grave infectious diseases 
 are so fatal among them. 
 
 In fact, after continued heavy drinking, the 
 microscope reveals that the phagocytes have lost 
 their real nature, have returned to a condition of 
 savagery, and, instead of defending their host and 
 his body cells, have become degenerate cannibals, 
 feeding upon the tissues and organs like disease 
 germs. 
 
 The favorite food of these alcohoHzed corpuscles 
 is the tender cells of latest development, the 
 highest and most delicate in the biological scale. 
 These are the brain cells. In proof of this, the 
 presence of the gray matter of the brain can 
 be demonstrated in the bodies of the leucocytes 
 
WHAT ALCOHOL DOES TO CELLS 77 
 
 of drunkards. This explains mental degeneracy 
 among these unfortunates. 
 
 But, in addition to paralyzing the phagocytes, 
 alcohol has three other methods of helping along 
 the fair cause of degeneracy. The first centers 
 in its fat-dissolving qualities. For alcohol has 
 a much higher affinity for fat than an Esquimo 
 has for blubber. Be it remembered that all 
 fat dissolving substances are narcotics; and 
 furthermore, the facility and rapidity with which 
 they dissolve fats determine their power as 
 narcotics. 
 
 Thus, ether or chloroform, dissolving fat more 
 rapidly than alcohol, are stronger narcotics than 
 alcohol, although their effects are more transient, 
 and therefore less disastrous. 
 
 But alcohol also has an affinity for oxygen. It 
 combines with oxygen to form an aldehyde (one of 
 the steps towards the dissolution of alcohol into 
 its elements). This oxygen hunger causes alcohol 
 to rob the blood of its loose oxygen. This retards 
 normal oxidation of food products, and causes the 
 accumulation of effete and under-oxidized material. 
 These products act as actual organic poisons upon 
 the nerve cells and tissues — preventing their 
 active functioning. 
 
78 ALCOHOL 
 
 Alcohol has an especial fondness for water, 
 which it seems to like much better than the man 
 who drinks it. In its sense-deadening progress 
 through the system it robs the tissues of this fluid. 
 This accounts for the horrible thirst which follows 
 hard upon the "morning after." The headache 
 which usually accompanies this same condition — 
 it may be interesting to know — is due to increased 
 blood tension, to absorption of toxins, and to the 
 congestion "reflexed" from the highly irritated 
 stomach and alimentary tract. 
 
 These, however, are but surface manifestations. 
 It is not in transient effects that the dull alcohol 
 flood leaves its imprint, but in the degenerative 
 changes which take place in the brain and nerve 
 cells. 
 
 All poisons have an "elective aiOBnity" for special 
 organs or tissues. Inasmuch as the brain and 
 nerve cells are composed largely of fat, oxygen, and 
 water, and as alcohol, by its principle of dissolving 
 fats, combining with oxygen, and abstracting water, 
 works its insidious will with all three, we can 
 readily understand, on a purely physiological basis, 
 why a drinker should be wit-stricken. 
 
 When the fat is dissolved out of the brain and 
 nerve tissue, it paralyzes their cell function. This 
 
WHAT ALCOHOL DOES TO CELLS 79 
 
 paralysis is, at first, only temporary, clearing up 
 with the sobering process. But if the cause is 
 repeated sufficiently often, the paralysis becomes 
 chronic, and dementia, acute insanity, tremors, 
 palsy, and various other brain and nerve diseases 
 develop. 
 
 As a result of the abstraction of fat and water, 
 the tissues tend to shrink (atrophy), the cells 
 degenerate, or their delicate structures are com- 
 pletely consumed in the white poison, and they are 
 replaced by connective tissue — dense, gristle-like 
 substance, which serves none of the normal purposes 
 for which the particular cells it replaces were 
 intended. 
 
 Again, alcohol is one of the few substances that 
 can force an entry into all cells. The protoplasmic 
 cells ordinarily possess great powers of resistance. 
 They can throw off or overcome the action of most 
 poisons, and stop the entrance into their delicate 
 interiors of substances injurious to them. But 
 this is not the case in dealing with this Emperor 
 among lethal drugs. For alcohol, in common with 
 the other narcotic poisons, ether and chloroform, 
 has the power to penetrate all cell walls with the 
 greatest ease. And the more complexly organized 
 the cell, the more easily and quickly it penetrates. 
 
80 ALCOHOL 
 
 The more highly developed the cell, the higher the 
 percentage of fat; and alcohol is a wizard when 
 it comes to dissolving fat and sacking the inner 
 shrine of the cell temple. 
 
 This effect is even more marked with those most 
 delicate yet unresponsive of all cells — 'the germ 
 cells. Dr. C. R. Stockhard, of Cornell, makes 
 this clear in a recently published record of his 
 investigations relating to the inherited effects of 
 alcohol on guinea pigs. Now, the cells of the 
 body are divided into two great groups — those 
 that do the everyday work of the body, and those 
 reserved for the perpetuation of the species — the 
 germinal cells. The germ cells are much more 
 diflficult to poison or to affect unfavorably than 
 are any other cells in the body. 
 
 Yet Professor Stockard demonstrated that when 
 guinea pigs were kept under the influence of alcohol 
 for some time, their procreative cells were harm- 
 fully affected. Males so poisoned begat defective 
 offspring, even when mated with perfectly normal 
 females. The chief effect noticed was in impaired 
 vision, and so profound an impression had alcohol 
 stamped on the diminutive piggies that this defect 
 was transmitted through three generations. There 
 were also many instances of matings followed by 
 
WHAT ALCOHOL DOES TO CELLS 81 
 
 negative results or early abortions, still-born 
 young, or defectives. 
 
 Other experiments proved that by giving one- 
 half dram of alcohol to guinea pigs during their 
 period of pregnancy, the young, even though 
 viable at birth, which occurred but rarely, invari- 
 ably died within six hours of birth. 
 
 Professor Laitinen treated rabbits and guinea 
 pigs to as much alcohol in proportion to their 
 weight as an ordinary sized man would get in a 
 half -pint of beer per day. The young of the 
 animals receiving this fractional dose of alcohol 
 showed far less vitality than the young of normal 
 rabbits. Their average weight at birth was less, 
 and they gained in weight more slowly during 
 the time of observation after birth. 
 
 And Professor C. F. Hodge reported remarkable 
 hereditary effects of alcohol given to a pair of dogs. 
 The amount given daily was not sujfficient to cause 
 any physical evidences of intoxication. Accepting 
 the common idea that "moderation" is that 
 amount of drink a man can stand without show- 
 ing it, these dogs were only moderately poisoned. 
 Yet but 17% of their young survived, while 90.2% 
 of the puppies of abstinent dogs were sound and 
 healthy. 
 
82 ALCOHOL 
 
 The well-known practice of dwarfing puppies by 
 giving alcohol in the food, is another example of 
 the toxic influence of the drug upon protoplasm. 
 The most significant feature in connection with 
 this is the rapid response to relatively small doses. 
 
 Under the microscope, cells immersed in even a 
 mild dilution of alcohol shrink and become dis- 
 torted from the loss of water (dehydration) before 
 spoken of, and by the retraction of the protoplasm 
 from irritation. This process, going on in all the 
 cells of their tender little bodies, explains the 
 dwarfing of the puppies. 
 
 And what applies to animals applies to the 
 cells which compose all animal and vegetable life. 
 For instance, in experiments with the yeast plant, 
 growing on natural media, after 11 hours 2061 
 cells were developed. Adding a . 001 % solution 
 of alcohol, a number of cells were, during the 
 same period of incubation, reduced to 1091; 
 increasing this to a .01 % solution, the cells were 
 further reduced to 992; with a .1 % solution, the 
 number of cells developed dropped to 852; and 
 when a 5% solution was employed, only 69 nor- 
 ) mal cells were found. This is one of a great 
 number of experiments showing the disintegrating 
 action of alcohol upon plant cells. 
 
WHAT ALCOHOL DOES TO CELLS 83 
 
 Similar experiments have been made upon 
 animal cells. Dr. Kesteven, of London, showed 
 that alcohol was distinctly poisonous to the ameba 
 and other simple forms of protoplasm (living 
 matter). The cells, placed under the microscope 
 and treated to a 1 % solution of alcohol, developed 
 a narcosis that lasted for several hours. In a 2% 
 solution, the deadening influence was increased so 
 that every cell stiffened. Some died, while the 
 others recovered after a time. With a 4% solu- 
 tion, the majority died, and a 5% solution was 
 immediately fatal to every cell. This demonstra- 
 tion can be repeated by any one capable of using 
 a microscope. 
 
 And here is an experiment that may be checked 
 up, even by school children. Pots containing 
 similar soil and the same kind of seeds were 
 treated with clear water and with water contain- 
 ing alcohol in proportion of .1 %, .2 %, and .1 %. 
 Though treated exactly alike in all other re- 
 spects, the difference in their growth is very pro- 
 nounced. 
 
 Those seeds treated with pure water developed 
 strong and vigorous sprouts, while those treated 
 with alcoholized water showed retarded growth 
 in proportion to the amount of alcohol employed. 
 
84 ALCOHOL 
 
 Many of those treated with the .1% solution 
 "died a-borning." 
 
 Coming higher in the scale of creation, and using 
 the crayfish, perch, and goldfish as subjects of ex- 
 periments, it was found that by adding alcohol, 
 to make the water in which the fish were swim- 
 ming equal to a .1 % solution, they dropped im- 
 mediately to the bottom of the aquarium, and 
 unless quickly removed to unpolluted water, they 
 promptly died. 
 
 Again, if a chicken's egg be immersed in a 5% 
 solution of alcohol for two hours, or subjected to 
 the fumes of alcohol for the same period of time, 
 the life of the egg germ will be inevitably killed. 
 No case is known where a chick developed from 
 an egg so maltreated. 
 
 Keeping clearly in mind alcohol's power of par- 
 alyzing and killing leucocytes, its insidious fat-dis- 
 solving properties, its high affinity for oxygen, and 
 its voracious appetite for water, and remember- 
 ing how these processes are related to the physical 
 economy, we can readily understand the various 
 degenerative changes and conditions produced by 
 its action, and also we can much better understand 
 the phenomena of drunkenness. 
 
Chapter IX 
 TEE DOCTOR'S VERDICT 
 
 IS alcohol a stimulant or not? Has it any right 
 to be classed as a medicine, as many conscien- 
 tious physicians claim, and if so, what right? 
 
 These questions have puzzled scientists, split 
 asunder the camps of the learned. It must be 
 admitted that the almost universal belief of human- 
 kind — including many doctors — that a "good 
 drink" is a "bracer" sows the seed for a powerful 
 mental suggestion of benefit. In other words, the 
 psychological stimulant influence of alcohol upon 
 one dangerously ill, might on occasion weigh the 
 Scales of Life in his favor. 
 
 But if he had the same faith — and many do — 
 in an amulet, a few bread pills, or any inert and 
 innocuous substance or treatment, he would derive 
 from them the same, or even greater benefits. 
 At least he would suffer no reaction, such as 
 follows the use of the narcotic drug, alcohol, from 
 them. 
 
 85 
 
86 ALCOHOL 
 
 However, there is no longer any excuse for 
 giving alcohol as a medicine or as a stimulant. 
 For, apart from its temporary reflex action, due 
 to its irritating effect upon the delicate mucous 
 membrane lining of the stomach, alcohol, if it has 
 any action at all, is a depressant. 
 
 Alcohol, given in diluted form, so as to avoid 
 excitation by direct irritation, has been repeatedly 
 given to dogs and men, without the slightest 
 appreciable beneficial effects on the heart action 
 or upon the circulation. Given in concentrated 
 form, alcohol quickens the heart action in per- 
 haps a slightly more marked degree than do mus- 
 tard, essential oils, and other irritants, but it falls 
 farther afterwards. The pulse pressure, which is 
 temporarily increased immediately after the irritat- 
 ing reflex action of the fiery liquid, is permanently 
 decreased. In other words, the pulse, after a 
 momentary increase in size, becomes smaller. So 
 if you want a temporary "kick," without paying 
 too high a price in loss of energy for it, it would 
 be far better to take a capsule of mustard or red 
 pepper to accomplish this purpose. 
 
 The experiments which settled this highly com- 
 plex problem are highly technical in their nature, 
 and were made under the strictest test conditions, 
 
THE doctor's verdict 87 
 
 using the plethysmograph, sphygmomanometer, 
 and other instruments of precision for estimat- 
 ing and recording circulatory and blood-pressure 
 changes. 
 
 When moderately strong alcohol — mildly diluted 
 whiskey, brandy, etc. — were administered, the 
 local irritation of the drug produced a reflex rise 
 in blood pressure, and an acceleration of the 
 heart's action, which reached its highest in about 
 one half -hour, and then was invariably followed by 
 a corresponding depression. 
 
 When, on the other hand, whiskey or alcohol — 
 well diluted, and hence not irritating — was em- 
 ployed, neither the maximum nor the minimum 
 blood pressure showed the slightest variation that 
 reasonably could be attributed to the action of 
 alcohol. Dr. Cabot concludes that "So far as 
 could be determined, the action of alcohol upon 
 the circulation is nil," for in none of his many 
 experiments was there any marked change in the 
 heart rate or blood pressure within one half hour 
 of the administration of the alcohol, unless very 
 large doses were employed. Then it was found 
 that alcohol acted invariably as a circulatory and 
 respiratory depressant. 
 
 This depression was most marked upon those 
 
88 ALCOHOL 
 
 most in need of stimulus, as with typhoid or 
 other septic cases. So the more a patient needs a 
 stimulant the less he gets — from alcohol. 
 
 Therefore, while alcohol in concentrated form 
 may act as an apparent circulatory stimulant, it 
 cannot be regarded as a true tonic or stimulant, 
 inasmuch as it decreases the heart's eflSciency and 
 lowers the pulse pressure. Alcohol has no more 
 claim to be considered a tonic or a medicine than 
 has oil of mustard, or a red-hot potato. 
 
 So the diversity of opinion among physicians 
 concerning the value of alcohol lies in its psychic 
 effect upon patients who are habitual users of the 
 drug. In these it buoys the spirits, and engenders 
 hopefulness and courage. But this same effect 
 can be secured equally well by the administration 
 of other remedies which give all the stimulating 
 effects of alcohol on the physical organism, without 
 any of its depressing after-results. And the time 
 may come, in the not-distant future, when to pre- 
 scribe alcohol in sickness may be considered mal- 
 practice. For alcohol is proved entirely too lath-like 
 a weapon to oppose to Death, when the stake is life. 
 
 Many conscientious physicians nowadays refuse 
 to prescribe alcohol, or even medicines in an 
 alcoholic menstrum — not alone because of the 
 
THE doctor's verdict 89 
 
 evil effects of the drug upon the system, but also 
 for fear of arousing a dormant alcoholic craving 
 in some susceptible patient. For not infrequently 
 an intense desire for alcohol is flashed through 
 deficiently resistant cells by a doctor's incautious 
 alcohol prescription. None can say when or where 
 atavistic traits may flare up. A youth may have 
 had a grandfather who was an alcoholic — so 
 powerfully addicted that he transmitted the craving 
 to his grandchild — jumping, as is the biological 
 custom, a sober generation, to work sinister havoc 
 upon the second. The results are obvious. 
 
 This brings us to consider "medicated" wines, 
 
 — most pestiferous and pernicious insults to in- 
 telligence. These invariably contain a large per- 
 centage of alcohol, and various other substances 
 
 — such as malt, beef extracts, pepsin, iron, or 
 even cocoa leaves. Wines that contain cocoa 
 extract have frequently been responsible for the 
 formation of the cocaine habit, one of the most 
 dangerous and insidious of drug habits, and per- 
 haps, of all, the most difficult to cure. 
 
 Most people who take medicated wines honestly 
 are deceived by them, since they look upon them 
 as medicine rather than as "booze." Some even 
 imagine that the presence of the beef extract, 
 
90 ALCOHOL 
 
 malt, or iron, renders the "dope" harmless; but 
 this is far from true. Indeed, the very opposite 
 is the case. Pickling malt or beef juices in alcohol 
 lengthens the period required for their digestion, 
 and thereby renders them less wholesome as food 
 — for, of course, they can have no medicinal 
 action, as such. 
 
 A few cents worth of freshly made Blaud pills 
 will give far better results than a dollar bottle of 
 "iron tonic" — and without risking the creation 
 of an alcohol habit, or poisoning the protoplasm 
 with cheap whiskey. j 
 
 Within the memory of many of us who are only 
 slightly gray, it used to be thought that a jug of 
 whiskey, a barrel of codliver oil, and a glad, free 
 life in the open air, constituted a sure cure for 
 consumption. But we know better now. We 
 know now that whiskey is "bad medicine," and 
 especially bad for lung diseases, because of its 
 effects upon the blood vessels, the phagocytes, and 
 its general lowering of resistance. 
 
 Dr. Jacques Bertillon, Chief of the Bureau of 
 Municipal Statistics in Paris, and world-renowned 
 as the originator of the famous Bertillon system of 
 measurement — has given as his opinion that 
 alcohol may well be called the principal con- 
 
THE doctor's verdict 91 
 
 tributing cause of tuberculosis. Supporting this 
 contention he cites the mortahty statistics of 
 100,000 men of all ages, which show the death 
 rate among abstainers to be less than half that 
 of alcohol users — 21.8% among alcoholic patients, 
 as against 9.9% among abstainers. 
 
 In another study of 500 cases of tuberculosis, 
 the use of alcohol was followed by a 40% higher 
 mortality than occurred among those receiving no 
 alcohol. 
 
 In France similar results were noted — im- 
 moderate drinkers dying in proportion of 52.8%; 
 moderate drinkers in 25 out of 100 cases; while 
 abstainers had a mortality of only 18.5 %. 
 
 The International Tuberculosis Congress, meeting 
 recently in Paris, ajQfirmed the relationship of 
 alcohol and tuberculosis when it officially pro- 
 claimed the necessity of proceeding against both, 
 if tuberculosis were to be vanquished. 
 
 Also, the poisonous effect of alcohol on the 
 circulation causes congestion, the formation of 
 toxins, and the retention of waste material. The 
 extra labors placed upon the heart in an endeavor 
 to overcome this condition quickly result in fa- 
 tigue, which falls most heavily upon the lungs and 
 nerve centres. 
 
92 ALCOHOL 
 
 This helps explain also the diminished resistance 
 of alcoholics to pneumonia as well as to tuberculosis 
 and other lung diseases. This was emphasized 
 during a recent Anti-Alcoholic Congress in London. 
 A study of more than 2000 cases of pneumonia, 
 half of which were treated with alcohol and half 
 without, showed a mortality of 31 % when spirits 
 "stimulation" was resorted to, and only 19% when 
 alcohol was tabooed. 
 
 In two large cities in the East studies of death 
 from pneumonia educed the significant fact that, in 
 patients under 50 years of age, from 65 % to 70 % 
 of those mortally stricken had an alcoholic 
 history. 
 
 And this suggests that if singers only realized 
 the pernicious effect of alcohol — especially upon 
 the delicate mucous membrane lining of their 
 respiratory passages and "voice box" — they would 
 embrace it with the same ardency and joyous 
 abandon that they would a pestilence. 
 
 For alcohol, by its hardening and toughening 
 effect upon the square foot of delicate mucous 
 membrane which the singer uses in his business, 
 causes the outer layers of this membrane to 
 degenerate so as to be utterly incapable of per- 
 forming normal functioning, until such time as 
 
THE doctor's verdict 93 
 
 new tissue shall have been created to replace that 
 destroyed by alcohol erosion. This accounts, in 
 part, for the hoarseness and the exaggerated 
 resonance of the "morning after" voice. 
 
 Catarrhal conditions of the pharynx and vocal 
 passages are excited by an allopathic indulgence 
 in beer or light wines. The relaxation of the uvula, 
 soft palate, tonsils, and fauces is most marked. 
 
 Also, it is alcohol, and patent medicines contain- 
 ing alcohol, which are largely responsible for the 
 prevalence of catarrh of the stomach and intestines 
 — so frequently forerunners of grave and even 
 fatal maladies. 
 
 In cerebral hemorrhage more than 50% of pa- 
 tients dying are regular users of spirits. And 
 many so-called cases of "heart failure" and sud- 
 den collapse have the same grim history. 
 
 In Munich they have worked out, with pains- 
 taking German thoroughness, the exact relation 
 between alcohol and degeneracy. In a city where 
 every man, woman, child, and suckling infant 
 consumes a per capita allotment of an average of 
 287 pints of beer a year, this, as might be ex- 
 pected, is not difficult. 
 
 The alcoholic content of this amount of beer is 
 equal to 6 glasses of brandy a day for all hands. 
 
94 ALCOHOL 
 
 Professor Bollinger, who made autopsies on about 
 6000 of them, assures us that every sixteenth 
 male in Munich dies of "Munich beer heart," and 
 he adds, for our further edification, that "One 
 rarely finds in Munich a faultless heart and a 
 normal kidney in an adult man." 
 
 Also, long experience has demonstrated that no 
 case of rheumatism or neuritis promises a successful 
 outcome unless alcohol be absolutely interdicted. 
 
 While not distinctly a subject of medical interest, 
 it might yet be pertinent to note that alcohol 
 seriously mars beauty in women. It roughens 
 the skin, and produces discolorations and pimples. 
 By inhibiting the action of the vasomotor nerves 
 — which regulate the expansion and contraction 
 of blood vessels — it causes a chronic congestion 
 in the tiny capillaries underlying the skin. Which 
 dilation, if long enough continued, becomes perma- 
 nent, because the "elastic" will have gone out of 
 the blood vessels. This causes the skin to become 
 red and flushed, or, in cold weather, leaden or dull 
 purple, and produces the characteristic bulbous 
 nose associated with alcohol drinking. 
 
 Alcohol also makes the breasts flabby, by robbing 
 the supporting muscles of their normal vigor and 
 tone. 
 
THE doctor's verdict 95 
 
 And, as alcohol is responsible for much of our 
 present-day neurasthenia, it follows that to it can 
 properly be charged a considerable proportion of 
 the wrinkles, crowsfeet, and haggardness of the 
 neurasthenic. This, entirely apart from its subtle 
 but certain effect in stamping its unmistakable 
 stigmata upon the countenance of every woman 
 who regularly uses the insidious drug. 
 
 Yet alcohol is of undoubted value — used ex- 
 ternally. In fevers, particularly, applied to the 
 surface of the body, its chemical, water-absorbing, 
 and rapid evaporation properties give it a grateful 
 refrigerant action. An alcoholic sponge bath means 
 chemical absorption of the surface moisture of the 
 body, with diminishing temperature, and relief of 
 capillary congestion. This is the nearest alcohol 
 comes to being a medicine. 
 
 For, taken internally, alcohol is a narcotic; 
 paralyzing, corroding, or irritating every variety 
 of tissue in the body, and the more delicate the 
 tissue, the more pronounced the action. 
 
 Only recently it has been demonstrated that 
 alcohol hinders the formation and the accumulation 
 of glycogen in the liver, thus materially lessening 
 the body's natural resistance to infection, and 
 decidedly encouraging auto-intoxication from in- 
 
96 ALCOHOL 
 
 testinal poisons. The observations of Combe, 
 Bouchard, von Norden, Bunge, and numerous 
 other authorities have demonstrated beyond cavil 
 the enormous role played by intestinal auto- 
 intoxication in both chronic and acute disorders. 
 
 In certain kinds of work, alcohol, by breaking 
 down resistance, renders the worker especially 
 susceptible to disease, thereby intensifying the 
 danger involved in the work itself. 
 
 For instance, those who work with lead, as paint- 
 makers, painters, etc., are much more liable to 
 lead-poisoning as drinkers than as abstainers, 
 because the natural resistance of the body is 
 lowered in trying to overcome the effects produced 
 by the lead. 
 
 And when the debilitating effects of the alcohol 
 are added to the dangers of the lead, phosphorus, 
 arsenic, or what-not, the resisting forces of the 
 body are overcome much more quickly than if 
 only one enemy at a time is fought. 
 
 The same principle applies also to those who are 
 required to work in intense heat, because the 
 physical and nervous resistance have been depre- 
 ciated by the action of alcohol. Alcoholics are, 
 therefore, peculiarly liable to sun-stroke and heat 
 prostration. 
 
THE doctor's verdict 97 
 
 Alcohol has also a pronounced and degenerating 
 effect upon the teeth. Dr. Floras, a pupil of the 
 eminent von Bunge, and surgeon to the Anatolian 
 Railway in Asia Minor, examined the teeth of 
 729 employees, divided into the strictly abstinent 
 Moslems, and those who had fallen into European 
 drinking habits. 
 
 Counting the number of decayed teeth in each 
 class (their habits of life, except for drinking, 
 being identical), he found that the average number 
 of decayed teeth to each drinking workman was 
 almost double that found in the abstinent class. 
 In workmen between 46 and 50, this average rose 
 to nearly 4 times as many. Professor Bunge, and 
 other physiologists, have since repeatedly corrobo- 
 rated Dr. Floras' findings. 
 
 It is also significant to note that Dr. Bunge 
 finds a distinct decline in nursing power accom- 
 panying decay of the teeth, and predicates both 
 as being due to one cause, viz.: alcoholism. 
 
 So it would almost seem, as Professor Bunge 
 says, that, to dry up the springs of race degenera- 
 tion, of which alcohol is the chief one, is a problem 
 the solution of which admits of less delay than any 
 other. 
 
 Dr. William H. Welch, Ex-President of the 
 
98 ALCOHOL 
 
 American Medical Association, says: "Alcohol in 
 sufficient quantities is a poison to all living organ- 
 isms, both animal and vegetable." Dr. Howard A. 
 Kelley adds: "It is clear, in the light of experience 
 and of recent research work, that alcohol should be 
 classed in the list of dangerous drugs, along with 
 morphine, cocaine and chloral. On the basis of 
 experience I appeal to my colleagues everywhere 
 to abjure its use." 
 
 Dr. T. Alexander MacNichol, in one of his 
 addresses, says: "Fifty years ago men commonly 
 believed that alcohol was food, tonic, and stimulant. 
 But the invention of instruments of precision, and 
 the application of more exact methods of examination 
 have revolutionized our attitude. In the light of 
 modern science alcohol is not a food, a tonic, or a 
 stimulant." 
 
 In a word, science has classified alcohol as a 
 universal protoplasmic poison to all forms of or- 
 ganic life. 
 
 And Sir Victor Horsley remarks: "We cannot 
 estimate what minimal amount we can safely 
 take into our bodies and say that it will not be 
 detrimental to our tissues." 
 
 The Society for the Study of Inebriety, concur- 
 ring in the opinion of the English society, finds 
 
THE doctor's verdict 99 
 
 that alcohol has no tonic or stimulant power; 
 that its real effects are invariably narcotic and 
 paralyzant. 
 
 Dr. Louis D. Mason, President of the American 
 Society for the Study of Alcohol and other Nar- 
 cotics, delivered an address recently, in which he 
 said: 
 
 "A large majority of the leading and influential 
 practitioners of medicine and surgery in this 
 country and Europe are excluding from their 
 practice alcohol in any quantity, and also denounc- 
 ing it in any form as a beverage. The great 
 hospitals of every scientific centre reflect their 
 action." 
 
 Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, after a life- 
 time's study of alcohol and its effects upon the 
 human organism, concludes that "The wide-spread 
 use of alcohol as a beverage, and the delusive 
 theories which have grown up about it in med- 
 icine, are due exclusively to its fascinating nar- 
 cotic action for the relief of pain, discomfort and 
 suffering. It is not stimulation that is sought, 
 but narcotism, anaesthesia and relief." 
 
 So twentieth century expert medical testimony 
 renders its final verdict in this: Alcohol has no 
 helpful function to perform for the human system. 
 
100 ALCOHOL 
 
 either in health or disease, as a beverage or as a 
 medicine, under any circumstances, in any form 
 or quantity, or under any condition. It is the 
 most deadly and far-reaching, in its deleterious 
 results, of all epidemics. It has no antitoxin, no 
 vaccine — except the powerful preventives of intel- 
 lectual sterilization and mental sanitation. 
 
Chapter X 
 ALCOHOL, THE DEATH'S HEAD 
 
 I BELIEVE it is generally conceded that only 
 live men are efficient. 
 
 Therefore, it might be well to consider how 
 much of his life a drinker loses by moderate 
 drinking. 
 
 The Association of Life Insurance Presidents 
 take a lively interest in this matter, also they 
 exhibit a justifiable pride in the accuracy of their 
 statistics. 
 
 Based upon a report of two million cases 
 tabulated from the records of American and 
 Canadian life insurance companies in the past 
 25 years, Dr. Arthur Hunter, Chairman of the 
 Central Bureau, Medico-Actuarial Mortality In- 
 vestigation, claims that the span of human life 
 is reduced four to six years as a result of the 
 use of alcohol. In other words, consistent users 
 of alcoholic drinks die six years younger than 
 
 101 
 
102 ALCOHOL 
 
 they should, and one-time consistent drinkers, 
 who "reformed" before they took out life in- 
 surance policies, die four years younger than they 
 should. 
 
 It is interesting to note also that poetic justice 
 makes saloon keepers and liquor dealers suffer 
 maximum loss of life. Those connected with the 
 sale and manufacture of liquor, especially hotel 
 proprietors and saloon keepers, have an extra 
 mortality of 70%; that is, on account of their 
 occupation, their lifetimes are reduced on an aver- 
 age of about 6 years. 
 
 Mortality among men who at one time used 
 intoxicants, but who had reformed prior to taking 
 out insurance policies, is 50%, or a reduction of 
 more than 4 years in the normal life expectancy. 
 So, even though a steady drinker became a veri- 
 table saint of sobriety, he would be a shorter-lived 
 saint than he would have been had he always 
 been a saint. 
 
 The men who use alcoholics daily, but not to 
 excess. Dr. Hunter divides into two groups: 
 
 A. Those who take 2 glasses of beer or 1 glass 
 of whiskey a day. 
 
 B. Those who take more than that, but are 
 not "excessive" drinkers. 
 
ALCOHOL, THE DEATH's HEAD 103 
 
 The expert's investigation disclosed that the mor- 
 tahty in the second group was 50% higher than 
 in the first. Also, the New York Mutual Life 
 Insurance Company, from 1875 to 1899, found 
 that among insured abstainers the death rate 
 was but 78% of the expected rate; among non- 
 abstainers it was 96%. 
 
 On the basis of their statistics, insurance men 
 calculate that if Russia, for instance, persists 
 in banishing all alcoholic beverages from within 
 its borders, a million lives will be saved to 
 that awakened country within the next ten 
 years. 
 
 Many also are prompted by the white maggots 
 of despair that crawl in the brains of alcoholics 
 to solve their difficulties by making their hasty 
 quietus. According to the United States mortality 
 reports, 23% of the suicides in the United States 
 are directly traceable to intemperance. Between 
 1900 and 1908 it is estimated that 11,986 persons 
 killed themselves because of alcohol. 
 
 E. Bonnell Phelps, who is recognized as one of 
 the most careful and conservative of statisticians, 
 in his "Mortality of Alcohol," claims that 65,897 
 deaths per year are due to the use of alcoholic 
 liquors. This estimate signifies one adult death 
 
104 ALCOHOL 
 
 every 8 minutes, or, in other words, 1 man in 
 every 7 J who die in the United States dies because 
 of drink. 
 
 The claim is also made that, of the 1000 deaths 
 among drinkers, 440, or nearly one-half, are due 
 to alcohol. 
 
 If we concede that alcohol is responsible, as the 
 chief causative factor, in many cases of Bright's 
 Disease, tuberculosis, heart disease and fatty 
 degeneration, pneumonia, hardening of the arteries, 
 degeneration of the liver and pancreas, apoplexy, 
 suicide, accidental injury, paralysis, chronic gout 
 and rheumatism, toxemia and auto-intoxication, 
 dementias, delirium tremens and alcoholic insan- 
 ities, increased susceptibility to occupational and 
 infectious diseases, inability to withstand surgical 
 operations which if performed might have saved 
 life, increased infant mortality from decreased 
 powers of lactation in nursing mothers, gastritis, 
 and epilepsy, it might almost seem as though the 
 enthusiasts have underestimated, rather than over- 
 estimated, alcoholic mortality. 
 
 On the weight of the highest scientific authority 
 in the world, alcohol is the most distinct and 
 prominent of all causes of death in persons under 
 50 years of age, and one of the most deadly, the 
 
ALCOHOL, THE DEATH's HEAD 105 
 
 most far-reaching, and the most degenerative of 
 all the causes of mortality. 
 
 Professor Kraepelin insists that not only is alco- 
 hol the immediate cause of approximately a third of 
 all his cases of mental disease in Munich, but that 
 in a large series of pathological conditions — 
 including paralysis, epilepsy, and arterio-sclerosis 
 — it is the chief factor, and one of the most 
 important causes of degeneracy. Confining his 
 observations to only one clinic, he reported that of 
 836 men treated, 253, or 33 %, were there because 
 of alcohol and its effects. Women do much bet- 
 ter — only 3.6% of them requiring attention because 
 of alcoholic degeneration. 
 
 Beer — the kind that made Munich famous — 
 played the heavy villain in the tragedy of these 
 wrecked lives, although 40% of the victims drank 
 schnaps as well. 
 
 In this country the ratio is slightly lower, but 
 high enough, in all conscience. For, it is definitely 
 established that fully 30% of the men, and 10% 
 of all women admitted to State Hospitals in the 
 United States are suffering from conditions brought 
 about, directly or indirectly, through alcohol. 
 
 The DaneSj who have a passion for tabulation 
 and statistics second only to the Germans, have 
 
106 ALCOHOL 
 
 proved the very interesting and significant fact 
 that every pint of brandy a man drinks shortens 
 his Hfe by 11 hours, and every pint of beer he 
 consumes curtails his earthly sojourn by an average 
 of 25 minutes. 
 
 The method of arriving at these astonishing 
 results is simplicity itself. The Governmental Com- 
 mission sent to all Danish physicians a request 
 for information concerning deaths among adults 
 occurring in their practice for one year, with 
 especial reference as to whether or not the cause 
 of these deaths could be traced to drink. Only 
 such cases were credited to alcohol as were ad- 
 mittedly drink-engendered. Answers came con- 
 cerning 4309 dead men and 4280 women — a 
 trifle over one-third of the mortality in Denmark 
 for that year. 
 
 The tabulation of these reports show that there 
 was, as Hamlet observed, something rotten in the 
 state of Denmark. For 23 % of male deaths and 
 3% of mortality among the females were shown 
 to have been caused by the misuse of alcohol. 
 So the Danish statisticians got a sheet of paper and 
 a stubby pencil and did some figuring. 
 
 This was the problem: If all these alcohol 
 deaths were eliminated from the total, the average 
 
ALCOHOL THE DEATH's HEAD 107 
 
 longevity of a man of 20 would rise from 45.4 to 
 49.3 years; and of a woman from 47.5 to 48.1 — 
 respectively 3.9 and .6 years — which, by the way, 
 is slightly less than our American insurance experts 
 have found in their recent investigations concern- 
 ing this matter. 
 
 Given these figures, and using the per capita 
 consumption of alcohol in Denmark as a divisor, 
 the results proved, as we have seen, that every 
 pint of brandy consumed steals 11 hours out of a 
 man's normal expectation of life, and every pint 
 of beer drunk cheats him out of approximately 
 25 minutes of earthly activity. 
 
 So, a Congress of 800 of the most eminent pro- 
 fessors and medical men in Germany conclude 
 that : 
 
 "Alcohol, even in moderate quantities, causes 
 disturbances in the brain's action, paralyzes crit- 
 ical capacity, power of will, and the ethical and 
 esthetic sense. It is apoison , and no longer may 
 be classed with foods. Its use Towers resistance to 
 sTcEnesses andsEbrtens life. Those who abstain 
 wholly have a greater capacity for work and endur- 
 ance, both intellectual and physical." 
 
 And the International Conference on Alcoholism 
 — composed of scientific men from all the great 
 
108 ALCOHOL 
 
 nations — agreed with this when, after comparing 
 and confirming the results of world-wide investi- 
 gation, they drew up a report defining alcohol as 
 "a poison, destructive and degenerating to the 
 human organism," and added that "its use should 
 be limited and restricted in the same way as the 
 use of other poisonous drugs." 
 
Chapter XI 
 ALCOHOL AND ACCIDENTS 
 
 ALCOHOL is a quicksand, swallowing the life, 
 health, efficiency, and substance of the human 
 race. And not the least of its black record is its 
 accident score. For the befogging of brains with 
 beer renders the possessors of the former extremely 
 susceptible to accident. Professor Dr. Guttstadt 
 has noted that, for every 1000 injured in the 
 trade unions of Germany, 43 were injured by 
 accident; while among the brewers the number 
 rose to 109 per 1000. In Berlin the proportion is 
 even greater, for in one year there were recorded 
 412 accidents among every 1000 insured brewery 
 workers (2208 accidents among 5364 brewers 
 insured) . 
 
 In the building trades — including the extra 
 hazardous occupation of roofing — the number of 
 accidents was but Q5 per 1000. It would almost 
 seem a merciful injunction to shout at a drinking 
 
 109 
 
110 ALCOHOL 
 
 workman: "Get away from that wheelbarrow. 
 You are not fit to handle machinery anyway." 
 
 Every year, 500,000 workmen are killed or in- 
 capacitated in the United States by accident. 
 Of these, from 30,000 to 50,000 are killed, or, 
 roughly, one life for every 15 minutes. These 
 500,000 figure a financial loss to the country of not 
 less than $250,000,000 annually. Industrial acci- 
 dents are due in part to mechanical causes, in 
 part to human causes, and in part to a combination 
 of the two. Among the human factors in accidents 
 is the excessive use of alcohol. 
 
 "The problem of safety," says James McCrea, 
 President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, "is not 
 altogether a question of rules and enforcement, of 
 appliances and their application, but of inherent 
 self-restraint and control." 
 
 It is this function of self-control that alcohol 
 first strikes down in its attack upon the drinker. 
 
 With this in mind, the Pittsburgh Steel 
 Company, employing 5250 men at a monthly 
 expense of $300,000, went so far as to address a 
 letter to the license judges of their county, pro- 
 testing earnestly against the licensing of saloons. 
 They said: 
 
 "We have experienced a growing inefficiency and 
 
ALCOHOL AND ACCIDENTS 111 
 
 an increased carelessness in the mills, resulting in 
 accidents and deaths, largely attributable to the 
 excessive use of beer, whiskey, and other alcoholic 
 drinks. Eighty-five per cent of such accidents are 
 attributable directly or indirectly to liquor. Effi- 
 ciency has been so reduced in recent years as to 
 show that at least one-tenth of our pay-roll is paid 
 out for services not rendered, and 20% of the 
 money we pay our men is spent upon liquor and 
 lost to the use of their families." 
 
 Mr. Charles L. Huston, Vice-President of the 
 Lukens Iron and Coal Company of Pennsylvania, 
 claims that there was a decrease of 54% in the 
 number of accidents the first six "dry" months in 
 Coatesville, compared with the corresponding months 
 of the previous year, when the town had license. 
 
 In 1912 an engineer on the Lackawanna Road, 
 who had been on an alcoholic debauch the night 
 before, ran his train past three signals warning 
 him to stop. He proved tragically that alcohol 
 is likely to render one less able to proceed correctly 
 and act upon signals, as his deficiency cost 40 
 lives, and more or less grievously injured 75 
 passengers. It was after this accident that Mr. 
 George A. Cullen, Traffic Manager, issued this rule: 
 "There is only one absolutely safe course to be 
 
112 ALCOHOL 
 
 followed by a trainman, and that is to abstain 
 altogether from the use of liquor. Our men must 
 not drink or enter saloons hereafter, even when 
 off duty." 
 
 Superintendent Johnson, of the American Car 
 Foundry Works, testifies that industrial accidents 
 due to alcohol decreased over one-third after an 
 evangelistic campaign which induced many work- 
 men to sign the pledge. And Mr. W. R. Fox, 
 Vice-President of the Fox Typewriter Company, 
 writes me: "We have had only 2 serious accidents 
 in the plant in 20 years. One was a very serious 
 injury to a man we afterwards learned was intoxi- 
 cated, who had his face torn open while trying out 
 a grind-stone." 
 
 Carefully compiled German statistics show that 
 in accidents requiring less than 4 weeks for re- 
 covery, at all ages between 15 and 74 years, 
 drinking workmen had from 95 % to 220 % more 
 accidents per 1000 men than non-drinking work- 
 men. In more serious accidents requiring more 
 than 4 weeks for recovery, drinking workmen had 
 an even more excessive rate. 
 
 In America medical directors of three great life 
 insurance companies estimate that from 7 % to 43 % 
 of accidents are due, either directly or indirectly. 
 
ALCOHOL AND ACCIDENTS 113 
 
 to alcohol. Seven per cent of railway accidents, 
 8% of street car ace* dents, 10% of automobile 
 accidents, 8% of those due to vehicles and horses, 
 43% of heat prostrations and sun-strokes, 7% 
 of machinery accidents, 8% of all accidents in 
 mines and quarries, 13% of drownings, and 10% 
 of gunshot wounds, are sustained, either in whole 
 or in part, because of alcohol. 
 
 Dr. Charles W. Hitchcock, Chief Surgeon of the 
 Standard Accident Insurance Company, informs 
 me that: "Our long experience with all kinds of 
 accident claims has served to confirm the general 
 belief that alcoholics do not present normal re- 
 sistance, and that long-continued and persistent 
 use of alcohol invariably so lowers vitality as very 
 much to increase the length of disability resulting 
 from accident." 
 
 A most interesting relation between alcohol and 
 accidents is found in the statistics of the days of 
 the week on which accidents occur. The Zurich 
 Building Trades Association, from records covering 
 7 years, found that an average of 22% of the 
 week's accidents occurred on Monday, an average 
 of 15.7% on the other days of the week. In other 
 words, there were approximately three accidents 
 on Monday as against two on the other days. 
 
114 ALCOHOL 
 
 This has been corroborated by the German 
 Imperial Insurance OflBce, which compiled statistics 
 for two decades, commencing in 1887. Its findings 
 showed that invariably Monday averaged the 
 highest record for industrial accidents. The high 
 accident rate is undoubtedly due to the use, or 
 abuse, of alcohol, and the fatigue following the 
 Saturday and Sunday debauch. For, as we have 
 seen, the effects of alcohol persist 24 hours or more 
 after drinking, even though the drinker may, so 
 far as the naked eye is concerned, be free from 
 evidences of intoxication. Still, this "hang-over" 
 from the Saturday night and Sunday drinking, 
 added perhaps to the factor of loss of technical 
 skill during the week-end rest, pushes up the 
 Monday accident rate. 
 
 Alcohol increases accidents because it impairs 
 faculties that ordinarily would take necessary 
 precautions against danger; it impairs nerve 
 control, causing unsteadiness of hand or dangerous 
 missteps; it lessens ability to recognize danger; 
 and it interferes with ability to avert danger when 
 recognized. Alcohol also begets a certain exuberant 
 self-confidence, which in the presence of danger 
 amounts to recklessness. The man who has im- 
 plicit confidence in his own powers — a confi- 
 
ALCOHOL AND ACCIDENTS 115 
 
 dence superinduced by drink — is the man who is 
 likely to attempt repairs on his machine while it 
 is yet in motion, or to do other equally foolish or 
 reckless things. 
 
 As illustrating the impairment in the power of 
 judgment, tests made in eye measurements demon- 
 strated that the amount of error after taking a 
 bottle of light wine was more than three times as 
 great as at periods when no alcohol was taken. 
 The judgment which errs to this extent as to the 
 distance between the hand and the moving belt, 
 saw, cog, die, or knife, may at any moment entail 
 upon the owner of that hand irreparable loss. 
 
 This impairment is emphasized in United States 
 Senate Document No. 645, Volume 11: "The 
 margin of safety in modern industry is small. 
 It is measured too frequently by fractions of an 
 inch. Reduce the alertness and the exactness with 
 which the body responds to the necessities of labor, 
 and by so much have you increased the liability 
 that the hand will be displaced that fraction that 
 means mutilation." 
 
 Hearing also is made much less acute by alcohol, 
 particularly in the matter of distinguishing sounds 
 and interpreting their meaning. This is a fact of 
 great significance to the workman who, amid the 
 
116 ALCOHOL 
 
 roar and jar of machinery, should be able quickly 
 to detect the slightest changes in sound which 
 may indicate that something has gone wrong. 
 
 It is not the obviously intoxicated man who is 
 the greatest source of accident. Any competent 
 foreman can pick such a man out as far as he can 
 see him, and promptly pack him home. The man, 
 however, who is laboring under the results of 
 heavy drinking may show few or no outward signs 
 of it, and yet be definitely deficient in the control 
 of his faculties. 
 
 It is fair to state, however, that with a shorter 
 work day, permitting workers to stop before the 
 physical limit of exhaustion has been reached, and 
 before their toxemia-loaded systems cry out for 
 some stimulant to tide them over their arduous 
 period — there is a distinct falling off in the desire 
 to indulge in liquor. 
 
 Mr. Boyd Fisher, Vice-President of the Club of 
 Detroit Executives, recognized this when he said: 
 "A good many Detroit employers are wise enough 
 to see that in a large number of cases excessive 
 drinking is a direct result of too long hours at 
 monotonous work. Wherever they have shortened 
 the working hours, they have minimized the drink- 
 ing and secured a compensative increase in output." 
 
ALCOHOL AND ACCIDENTS 117 
 
 The Burroughs Adding Machine Company fur- 
 nishes an example of this. This firm voluntarily 
 shortened the working day from 9.5 hours to 8 
 hours. A noticeable decrease in drinking followed, 
 and what is equally gratifying from the economist's 
 standpoint, a slight average increase in the output. 
 
 The loss to the employer through alcoholized 
 employees does not end with the causation and 
 result of accidents or other economic loss. For it 
 is well known that the body tissues of the steady 
 drinker are often so weakened by alcohol that 
 injuries affect him much more seriously than they 
 do the abstainer. Recovery is delayed, and even 
 death may occur as the result of an accident which 
 under ordinary circumstances should have termi- 
 nated in recovery. The Leipzig Sick Benefit 
 Societies found that alcoholists, from 25 to 34 
 years of age, lost 372 days in recovering from 
 wounds for every 100 days lost by the non-drinker, 
 while their death ratio was as 4 to 1. 
 
 This indicates an undoubted increase for com- 
 pensation expenses for the drinker or his family 
 for three salient reasons: the greater frequency of 
 accidents, a more protracted recovery, and a 
 heavier death toll. 
 
 The South Australian Benefit Societies' statistics 
 
118 ALCOHOL 
 
 point clearly to the industrial health loss through 
 drink by comparing abstainers and non-abstainers. 
 Societies requiring abstinence as a tenet of their 
 creed average not more than one-half as much 
 sickness per member as Societies which do not 
 exact abstinence. In point of duration of illness 
 the abstaining men lost from work on an average 
 of 6.4 weeks, while the non-abstaining Society 
 members lost 10.9 weeks. The death rate was also 2 
 to 1 in favor of those to whom alcohol was tabooed. 
 
 Interruption of work by more frequent and 
 longer protracted sickness among drinkers is only 
 one of many losses imposed upon industry. Sta- 
 tistics prove that the death rate of drinkers tends 
 to increase during the prime of life — from 25 to 
 45 or 50 years of age. These should, by rights, 
 be the years of highest activity in physical and 
 mental powers. The years, therefore, spent in 
 acquiring skill and efficiency, fail to bring their 
 maximum return if life be prematurely cut off, 
 or if the worker be disabled intermittently or 
 permanently by disease. 
 
 It is small wonder that Industrial Prohibition 
 spreads; that the Insurance Department of the 
 State Industrial Accident Commission in Los An- 
 geles has ruled that an employee injured after 
 
 / 
 
ALCOHOL AND ACCIDENTS 119 
 
 drinking is not entitled to compensation; and that 
 the United States Government found that 77% of 
 upwards of 7000 employers discriminated against 
 even moderate drinkers. Also that the business 
 man is more and more prone to toast the drink- 
 ing workman in this trenchant alliteration: "The 
 last man hired — the first man fired — the man 
 who drinks." 
 
 \ 
 
Chapter XII 
 ALCOHOL AND WAR 
 
 AS might be expected, that condition which, if 
 carried to excess, makes a man see blue 
 rhinoceroses — and two of them at that — sadly 
 interferes with a soldier's killing powers. If a 
 soldier is to be really eflScient he must be able to 
 shoot accurately; he must have a good eye for 
 distances, and be capable of stabbing, cutting, 
 slashing, and hacking intelligently and expedi- 
 tiously; he must remain steadfast under an amount 
 of hardship that would kill a goat; he must have 
 a heart and muscles that will stand long forced 
 marches. Altogether he must be a splendid human 
 animal, "fit" in the highest possible degree. 
 
 Now, because of the fact that they can be kept 
 under close observation — like hospital patients — 
 and are even more amenable to discipline than are 
 most hospital patients — the armies of the world 
 have furnished us with instructive and highly edi- 
 fying alcoholic data. 
 
 121 
 
122 ALCOHOL 
 
 Amid such a lush and luxuriant profusion of 
 startling and valuable statistical material, it is 
 difficult and embarrassing to select examples for 
 these pages. 
 
 Accurate shooting presupposes a clear brain, 
 bright eye, and steady nerves; the same equip- 
 ment a bridge builder needs when, on a terrifyingly 
 precarious footing 200 feet in the air, he tosses or 
 catches the white-hot rivets intended to bind the 
 heavy girders in a metallic embrace. 
 
 The same physical and mental eflficiency is 
 required of an automobile driver who must judge 
 speed and distance with unerring accuracy, in 
 order to avoid running down pedestrians, or escape 
 wrecking his car. 
 
 The same keenness of eye and sureness of judg- 
 ment is demanded of a woodsman felling giant 
 trees, or driving great logs through turbulent 
 waters. The same skill, strength, and endurance 
 are necessary in the railroad man, the telegraph 
 operator, the engineer, the sailor — in fact, in any 
 and all whose work is not desultory, or automatic. 
 
 With the facts in hand, it should not be difficult 
 for us to apply their meaning and bearing upon 
 almost any specific occupation. So let us examine 
 more evidence. 
 
ALCOHOL AND WAR 123 
 
 It will be remembered that Dr. Fuerer demon- 
 strated that relatively small amounts of alcohol 
 kept a man intoxicated more than 48 hours. The 
 subject, of course, did not know he was in that 
 condition described by Burns as "a wee bit drappie 
 in the eeye," but the memory and idea association 
 tests knew it — and there was no guess-work about 
 their verdict. 
 
 Shortly after the report of the Heidelberg 
 investigation, a Swedish oflScer, Lieutenant Bengt 
 Boy, of the Karlskrona Grenadier Regiment, con- 
 ceived the idea of translating Fuerer and Kraepelin 
 into terms of military efficiency. 
 
 Selecting three corporals and three privates, all 
 accustomed to drink, he placed a target at a dis- 
 tance of 300 meters, and tested the shooting 
 capacity of his squad in various ways — with and 
 without alcohol. 
 
 The dose of alcohol, taken a half hour before 
 beginning the experiment, was two-thirds of a 
 wine glass of Cognac (equal to a pint of "domestic" 
 beer), in addition to the same quantity of punch 
 on the evening before. This was preparatory to 
 determining accuracy — or the lack of it — in 
 shooting. For the endurance test two-thirds of 
 a pint of beer was given. Even the most captious 
 
124 ALCOHOL 
 
 must admit that this was moderate drinking — 
 the kind the average man considers harmless, or 
 perhaps even necessary. 
 
 The tests under alcohol influence however 
 showed, without a single exception, a decreased 
 number of hits, although, as has been frequently 
 noted in these psychic experiments, the subjects 
 were certain that they had done better by reason 
 of the "stimulating" effects of their liquor or 
 beer. 
 
 Lieutenant Boy also made trials with precision 
 shooting; rapid firing — to test the number of 
 shots which could be discharged in a half minute — 
 salvo firing, and again, to prove endurance, with 
 50 shots fired in rapid succession. 
 
 The average number of points for the men and 
 series in the accuracy experiments was: 
 
 In 6 series without alcohol — corporals, 19.22 
 points; privates, 15.24. 
 
 In 7 series with alcohol — corporals, 17.95 points; 
 privates, 11.34. 
 
 In the non-alcoholic tests for rapid firing the 
 number of false shots — shots which completely 
 missed the target — averaged but 4.6. Under the 
 gentle influence of the very moderate liquor allow- 
 ance, the false shots ran up to an average of 27. 
 
ALCOHOL AND WAR 125 
 
 Had these soldiers partaken of anything like the 
 quantity of liquor many thousands of our fellow 
 citizens consider necessary in order adequately to 
 celebrate "pay night," Lieutenant Boy's awkward 
 squad would have required a barn for a target. 
 And even then they might have missed a fair 
 proportion of shots, unless perhaps they happened 
 to be placed inside the barn. 
 
 In the endurance tests of 200 shots apiece there 
 was an average of 359.5 points when no beer was 
 taken. But with two-thirds of a pint of beer 
 under their cartridge belts the soldiers averaged 
 only 277.5 points. 
 
 "Assuming," said Lieutenant Boy, in reporting 
 his results, "that a hitting value of 4 points is 
 equivalent to putting one man out of action, in 
 the first abstinent series 99 men would be struck 
 by the 200 shots; in the beer series only 69 — a 
 difference of 30 men." 
 
 One understands, in view of these results, why 
 they say in Sweden that "Lieutenant Boy has 
 shot moderate drinking to death." 
 
 It may be well here to emphasize that Lieu- 
 tenant Boy's was not an isolated experience. His 
 results have been duplicated and corroborated 
 time and again. One classical and even more 
 
126 ALCOHOL 
 
 convincing demonstration was reported by a cap- 
 tain in the Bersaglieri — a corps of the Italian 
 service — whose regiment, under the influence of a 
 pint of Chianti per man, averaged only 3 hits out 
 of 30 shots, while on their "normal" days they 
 averaged from 25 to 26 hits out of 30. 
 
 This deficiency, which the "temperate" use of 
 beer and wine causes soldiers in the calculating 
 of distances, in setting of sights, in loading, in 
 firing, and in general judgment of a situation, is 
 paralleled by many other injuries to an army's 
 effectiveness. 
 
 For one thing, alcohol lowers marching capacity. 
 This has been repeatedly tested in various of the 
 continental armies, notably in the Bavarian regi- 
 ments. For example, in the "cold weather march," 
 a trial of marching capacity was made over approx- 
 imately 65 miles of road between non-abstainers 
 and abstainers. Of the first category, only 46% 
 completed their task. While, of the sober contin- 
 gent, 92% reached their goal. Of the first 25 
 men to arrive at their destination, 63% were total 
 abstainers. 
 
 General Lord Kitchener now enforces abstinence 
 among his troops. He has profited by the cam- 
 paigning experiences of General Wolseley of the 
 
ALCOHOL AND WAR 127 
 
 British army, who tried out the effects of alco- 
 hol drinking on endurance. To some of his men 
 General Wolseley gave alcohol, to others none. 
 The results were carefully noted by his officers and 
 regimental surgeons, and demonstrated conclusively 
 that the men receiving no alcohol were livelier, 
 fresher, and in more buoyant spirits, and also 
 marched better than those who had alcohol. In 
 fact, the difference was so marked that later. 
 General Kitchener gave strict orders that no 
 alcoholic drinks of any kind were to be taken with 
 the army. 
 
 The African explorer, Dr. Peters, saw in the 
 successes of the Japanese army in Manchuria the 
 first decisive victory of the temperate peoples over 
 the alcoholized nations of the world. 
 
 Count von Haeseler, of the German Army, 
 asserts: "The soldier who abstains altogether can 
 accomplish more, march better, and is a better 
 soldier than the man who drinks even moderately. 
 Brandy is the worst poison of all. Next to it 
 comes beer." 
 
 Sir Frederick Treves, Bart., one of the most 
 distinguished and scholarly of living surgeons, adds 
 this concerning alcohol and deficiency: "It is well 
 known that troops cannot march on alcohol. I 
 
128 ALCOHOL 
 
 was with the Relief Column that moved on to 
 Ladysmith. In that column were some 30,000 
 men. The first who dropped out were not the 
 tall men, or the short men, or the big men, or the 
 little men — but the drinkers." 
 
 And General Leonard Wood writes me to the 
 effect that "My personal impression is that the 
 general effect of alcohol is unfavorable. I think 
 soldiers are much better off without it than with 
 it. Men who do not habitually use it are much 
 less susceptible to fatigue and exposure than those 
 who do." 
 
 Not only is the work value and endurance 
 eflSciency of fighting men materially reduced by 
 their indulgence in alcohol, but it has been shown 
 that their physical efficiency suffers also. For 
 proof of this, we need go no further than our own 
 Navy, which, as is well known, "went on the 
 water wagon" July 1, 1914. 
 
 But it is not generally known that the most 
 potent reason which influenced the action of the 
 Secretary of the Navy in proclaiming navy-wide 
 prohibition was the fact, revealed by the Medical 
 Inspector of the United States Navy, that there 
 were nearly 10 times as many cases of alcoholism 
 admitted to hospitals in the American Navy as in 
 
ALCOHOL AND WAR 129 
 
 the British Navy, and 50 times as many as 
 in the German Navy — in both of which famous 
 institutions of learning, alcohol is practically 
 taboo. 
 
 Secretary Daniels concluded that if alcohol was 
 sending so many men to the hospitals, it must 
 undoubtedly be rendering inefficient a much greater 
 number who did not get as far as the hospital. 
 So, in the fair name of efficiency, alcohol is banned 
 forever from the American Navy. 
 
 In these piping times of war when one of the 
 chief soldierly activities consists in digging trenches, 
 the "slowing up" effects of alcohol have been 
 interestingly noted. Dr. Parks, of the British 
 Army, tested this matter out in an eminently 
 practical way. 
 
 Two groups of men were set to digging, and the 
 amount of work done by each group was most 
 carefully estimated. One of these bodies was 
 allowed a full ration (which in England means a 
 pint) of beer. The other group received no alcohol 
 of any kind. 
 
 It was found that the abstaining group rendered 
 from 18% to 20% more work value than the 
 beer-drinking group. But the most interesting 
 factor of the experiment developed when these 
 
130 ALCOHOL 
 
 groups were transposed — the teetotalers receiving 
 beer, the drinkers going back to tea. For the 
 figures automatically reversed themselves, and 
 showed the same proportion of approximately 
 18% to 20% less work accomplished by the 
 drinkers as compared with the non-drinkers. 
 
 If we multiply 20 % of a laborer's daily wage by 
 the number of laborers in the United States who 
 drink, we may perhaps get a fair idea of the amount 
 of money actually lost to railroads, contractors, and 
 employers of labor everywhere, as a result of the 
 drinking habits of their employees. 
 
 And this also is curious, and highly interesting 
 to a hero who must part with a much-valued leg, 
 or a large fragment of his skull. When a man is 
 narcotized by one variety of dope, it is diflScult to 
 subject him to the influence of any other — even 
 though this be for his own good. This was defi- 
 nitely established during the Morocco campaign, 
 when army surgeons found it almost impossible to 
 chloroform drinking soldiers. Their narcotized and 
 alcohol-soaked systems were practically unaffected 
 by other narcotic poisons. 
 
 Drink is not very popular in any of the armies 
 of the world, and it is rapidly becoming less so. 
 
 So far back as January 1, 1906, the Swedish 
 
ALCOHOL AND WAR 131 
 
 Government forbade the sale of beer and spirits 
 in all army canteens. Subsequently, during maneu- 
 vers, entire districts in which the army operated 
 were put under strict prohibition. And the Danish 
 Government no longer permits spirits to be sold in 
 its army. 
 
 On November 2, 1911, the German Navy dis- 
 charged a broadside into John Barleycorn's ada- 
 mantine hide by sending this trenchant order to 
 the Baltic Naval Station: "Henceforth the grog 
 receptacle is to be used as salt-holder for the 
 crew." 
 
 And to still further hit Gambrinus below his 
 Germanic belt, the document entitled "Alcohol 
 and the Power of Resistance," which has been 
 put into the hands of hundreds of thousands in 
 the German armies, contains this significant and 
 thought-compelling passage: "Many do not suspect 
 what a destructive poison they are taking into 
 themselves, and what devastation this poison has 
 caused, and still causes, among the German people. 
 They do not understand what moderation in the 
 use of alcohol is, and that the limit at which it 
 begins to work injury to mind and body is very 
 soon reached — much sooner than the majority of 
 German people believe." 
 
132 - ALCOHOL 
 
 Which stimulates this further inquiry. Why 
 should not the experience of military and naval 
 men apply with equal force to all the vast activ- 
 ities of industrial life? And if they so apply, 
 why should not the Government demand of its 
 employees, and corporations ultimately require of 
 their workmen an abstemiousness that inevitably 
 makes for a vastly increased efficiency? Indeed, 
 why should not mankind in general, as a matter 
 of health and principle, desist from putting into 
 its stomach that which insidiously and perni- 
 ciously increases deficiency — which makes second- 
 and third-rate men out of first-class human 
 material? 
 
 It remains to be seen, however, whether or not 
 the voluntary abstention from alcohol by the King 
 of England and innumerable high dignitaries will 
 do for the sobering of Britain what the prohibitory 
 Ukase did for Russia, and whether the expected 
 increase in the efficiency of those engaged in 
 turning out implements of wholesale murder will 
 develop. Also whether the noble self-sacrifice of 
 their rulers will pacify these bully Britons, and 
 make them more contented with their beerless 
 lot. 
 
 I should be inclined to hazard the prognostica- 
 
ALCOHOL AND WAR 133 
 
 tion that nothing short of a sweeping prohibitory 
 enactment will divorce the Englishman from his 
 ale. For, "Britons, never, never will be slaves." 
 Except when they want to be. And where liquor 
 is concerned it seems quite patent that they want 
 to be. Until the masses in England are impressed 
 with the conviction that drink is an evil no suasive 
 measures will likely be successful. 
 
 This agitation will probably cause the enactment 
 of mildly restrictive measures, early closing hours, 
 laws against drunkenness, etc. Or England may 
 take over the breweries and distilleries, and make 
 an honest dollar for herself by going into the 
 poison-peddling business. 
 
 Of course, the staggering drink bill of England 
 is a powerful inducement for some sort of restric- 
 tion. For common sense teaches that one cannot 
 pay war taxes as they should be paid — in order 
 to have a first-class war — and buy booze at the 
 same time. At least, not as the Britons have 
 been buying it. 
 
 For in 1912 they spent $807,766,650 for various 
 and sundry drinks, but in 1913 they "blew in" 
 $833,405,000 for similar purposes. And 1914 was 
 even worse, although no one yet knows officially 
 just how much. The government, however, figures 
 
134 ALCOHOL 
 
 that it received $198,250,000 in revenue, as its 
 share of "the swag." 
 
 But when it throws away many times this sum, 
 and at the most crucial epoch in English history, 
 it may well contemplate, as through a glass darkly 
 in the dim distance, a national prohibitory law — 
 lasting during the period of the war, at any rate. 
 
 France has already — with the endorsement of 
 the Academy of Medicine — abolished the manu- 
 facture and sale of absinthe, and has materially 
 curtailed, by precept, plea, and petition, the con- 
 sumption of alcoholic liquors, cordials, and wines. 
 In fact, it is not outside the bounds of possibility 
 to believe that the European war may yet drive 
 those engaged in it into complete abstention. 
 This, as a matter of internal defense, against an 
 implacable internecine foe. 
 
 It would seem, if war is destined to have such a 
 salutary effect upon drunkenness, that it might 
 not be a bad thing to have a little one right here at 
 home, where, in New York City alone, we have a 
 drink bill of $100,000,000 per year, and are the 
 proud possessors of 1 saloon for every 30 familes. 
 
 Indeed, the conclusion can hardly be avoided 
 that, with a per capita consumption of 21.98 
 gallons of intoxicating liquors in the United States 
 
ALCOHOL AND WAR 135 
 
 (Government Report of 1912) something worse 
 than a war is happening to American manhood. 
 Representative Hobson states the problem some- 
 thing in this wise, using the figures of the British 
 Government and the English life insurance com- 
 panies as a basis for his computations. 
 
 If a young man at the age of 20 is a total ab- 
 stainer and remains one, his life prospect is 44 
 years, and he will live to an average age of 64, 
 but if he is a moderate, regular drinker his prospect 
 of life will be 31 years, and he will live to an 
 average age of 51 — losing 13 years out of his life. 
 If he drinks heavily, his life prospect is 15 years 
 and he will die at the average age of 35 — losing 
 29 years out of his life. 
 
 Conservative estimates place the number of 
 confirmed drunkards in the United States at 
 something over 1,000,000, the heavy drinkers at 
 something over 4,000,000; the temperate, regular 
 drinkers at over 20,000,000. 
 
 A soldier wounded in battle and losing 10 
 years of his life as a consequence, would be 
 classed as seriously wounded. The confirmed 
 drunkards and heavy drinkers together, 5,000,000 
 in number, must be looked upon as mortally 
 wounded, and the temperate regular drinkers as 
 
136 ALCOHOL 
 
 seriously wounded, making a total of over 25,000,- 
 000 Americans wounded by alcohol today. The 
 estimates for the white race make over 125,000,000 
 white men today wounded by alcohol, which, it 
 must be conceded, is a right tight little showing. 
 
Chapter XIII 
 EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 
 
 THERE are now more than a million responsible 
 positions in the United States which are 
 closed to the man w^ho uses alcoholic liquors. Not 
 for the purpose of restricting the liberty of the. 
 employee, but to protect against waste and acci- 
 dent. From every point of view this ultimately 
 proves to be greatly to the advantage of the 
 employee. 
 
 Long since, railroad managers discovered that a 
 source of enormous preventable loss could be 
 traced to the trainman whose brain powers were 
 slightly affected by alcohol. It was not necessary 
 that he should stagger, or that he should indulge 
 while on duty, to make him a source of acci- 
 dents. 
 
 Railroading preceded the laboratory experiments 
 in demonstrating that a much smaller quantity 
 of alcohol than is required to make a man drunk 
 weakens his memory for orders, his power to read 
 
 137 
 
138 ALCOHOL 
 
 signals quickly, and his ability to act with prompt- 
 ness and accuracy. It was discovered also that 
 the after effects of an evening's debauch do not 
 disappear with recovered ability to talk and walk 
 straight; nor are these katzen jammer trimmings 
 entirely dispelled by a night's sleep. Hence, for 
 the safety of the traveling public, and for the 
 protection of the employees themselves, the rail- 
 roads generally have come to require total ab- 
 stinence from all employees holding places of 
 responsibility. Therefore, the familiar slogan 
 *' Safety First" is being replaced by the more 
 practical one "Sober First." And with "Sober 
 First," safety is practically assured. As Mr. 
 Edison well says, "There is as much place in 
 business for alcohol as for sand in an engine." 
 
 In fact, kings and rulers, business men and 
 corporation lieads, social reformers and the Church, 
 are agreed that alcoholic drink works definite and 
 positive harm. And now industry is figuring on 
 this problem: If a single glass of beer lowers a 
 man's efl&ciency 7%, what is the total loss of 
 efficiency of one who has soaked his system in gin, 
 whiskey, brandy, and other red-hot liquors, and 
 what does this alcoholic saturation cost his em- 
 ployer in dollars and cents .^ 
 
EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 139 
 
 The answer to this is significant, and it is 
 becoming progressively more so. For everywhere 
 the intelligent minds of the world recognize that 
 alcohol weakens both muscle and mental power, in 
 addition to its detrimental influence on the moral 
 and ethical character. Indeed, Mr. Edward A. 
 Perkins believes that: "As time goes on, the re- 
 quirements for exact and high-class work by men 
 in the trades is increasing, and they cannot afford 
 to allow their brains to be clouded by the effects 
 of liquor." This is rapidly becoming the con- 
 viction of employers of labor generally. 
 
 Our government has been stringently criticized 
 by business interests for its position on the liquor 
 question. For the imposition of a United States 
 Tax as a revenue measure has undoubtedly made 
 the United States Government an ipso facto partner 
 in the liquor traffic. Many attempts have been 
 made to break up the alliance between the govern- 
 ment and the liquor and brewery interests. If 
 these attempts succeed — which now, as many 
 industrial leaders predict, seems likely in the not 
 distant future — it will be owing to the chang- 
 ing front of our industries toward the alcohol 
 question. It is quite within the bounds of 
 probability that drastic action will soon be taken 
 
140 ALCOHOL 
 
 to prevent the further swallowing up of profits 
 by alcoholism. 
 
 This movement was begun by the railroads as a 
 protective measure. Now it seems certain that 
 every great industry in the country will, within a 
 short time, establish equally stringent rules govern- 
 ing the habits of its employees. Even now drink- 
 ing spells dismissal for employees of scores of 
 companies, employing thousands of men. 
 
 This has led Midas' Criterion, the standard 
 liquor trade magazine, to complain that "One of 
 the most pregnant signs of the times is the steady 
 and increasing tendency for big corporations to 
 encroach on the personal liberty of workmen." 
 And the Brewers' Journal, of December, 1914, 
 echoes plaintively: "There are even companies 
 and individual employers who threaten to dis- 
 charge employees for drinking alcohol at any time. 
 They do not care if that is social and economic 
 slavery. Their main object is to protect their 
 pocketbooks." 
 
 Yet during 1914 hundreds of industries have 
 been aligning themselves in the efficiency campaign 
 against "booze." An order was issued by the 
 United States Steel Mills, operating throughout 
 the Mahoning Valley, that in the future promotions 
 
EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 141 
 
 will be made only from the rank and file of those 
 who are abstainers. 
 
 The great steel mills of Homestead, Pennsylvania, 
 employing 12,000 men, also declare that a man, by 
 entering a liquor saloon, automatically severs his 
 connection with the company. 
 
 Recognizing the loss in eflficiency due to drinking, 
 the Philadelphia Quartz Company was prompted 
 to conduct a pledge campaign among its workmen. 
 The men were offered a 10% increase if they 
 would agree, in future, to use no liquor, and to 
 hereafter avoid places where it was sold or dis- 
 pensed. Ninety-nine per cent made the required 
 promise. The manager of the plant contends it is 
 only common sense to believe that a strictly sober 
 man is worth more to his employers. 
 
 Among musicians this same loss of efficiency has 
 been experienced. The members of Sousa's Band 
 and many of the leading orchestras in America are 
 not permitted to drink spirits — not even wine or 
 beer. The reason given is that alcohol impairs the 
 hearing and the accuracy of the sense of melody 
 and harmony, as well as lowers the delicate muscu- 
 lar control required of the lips and fingers. 
 
 Recently the Illinois Steel Company, in order to 
 reduce their accident and indemnity losses, installed 
 
142 ALCOHOL 
 
 in conspicuous places throughout its works electric 
 signs asking this pointed question: 
 
 "Did booze ever do you any good — help you 
 get a better job — contribute to the happiness of 
 your family?'* 
 
 Milk venders now make regular trips through 
 the factory, supplying the men with a beverage 
 better than beer. By an educational campaign, 
 and by taking away one of the incentives to drink- 
 ing, the Company hopes to reform its drinking 
 workmen. Those who persist in drinking will lose 
 their jobs. 
 
 In discussing the effects of abstinence upon in- 
 dustry in Russia, the editor of the Saturday Evening 
 Post observes that: "The suppression of the 
 government alcohol monopoly entailed a diminu- 
 tion of 470,000,000 rubles" — roughly half as many 
 dollars — "in the budget of 1914; but the benefits 
 of this suppression are already felt. Though it was 
 feared the calling of so many men to the colors 
 would seriously embarrass industry, it has been 
 found that, thanks to the suppression of the traffic 
 in alcohol, the results of labor are from 30 % to 50 % 
 higher than before." 
 
 In fact, the sentiment of governments and of 
 employers of labor generally, is accurately summed 
 
EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 143 
 
 up in the words of Andrew Carnegie: "There is 
 no use wasting time on any young man who 
 drinks liquor, no matter how exceptional his 
 talents." 
 
 And most significant of all, Mr. C. L. Close, 
 manager of the famous Bureau of Safety of the 
 United States Steel Corporation — a gentleman of 
 wide experience in the social and economic aspects 
 of labor — gave it as his opinion that as a result 
 of the combined effort of American industries, the 
 manufacture and sale of liquors and beer will 
 shortly be at an end in this country. 
 
 Industry demands energy of men today — also 
 accuracy. In Germany particularly, the great 
 industrials are highly active, and grimly deter- 
 mined in their endeavor to slit John Barleycorn's 
 weasand. 
 
 In the great mines and iron works all over 
 Germany and Austria, in steel mills, foundries, 
 gas and electric works, on the Imperial Docks, on 
 surface, subway, and steam railroads; in ship yards, 
 factories, and great contracting enterprises; thou- 
 sands of booths have been established for the sale 
 of tea, coffee, milk, cocoa, "soft drinks," and 
 "zitrolin" — a manufactured lemonade of whole- 
 some quality. Some idea of the magnitude of the 
 
144 ALCOHOL 
 
 movement may be recognized when it is known 
 that the sale of innocuous drinks in these booths 
 runs annually into the millions of bottles. 
 
 In our own country the substitution of benign 
 beverages for "booze" has met with much favor. 
 This safety device was adopted by Mr. Ralph H. 
 West, President of the West Steel Casting Com- 
 pany, of Cleveland, Ohio, who tells me that he 
 has recently installed refrigerators in which to store 
 milk for his men. Many of these now take their 
 lunch out of doors in the shade, instead of pursuing 
 their original custom of indulging in a mad race 
 for a saloon when the noon whistle blew. The 
 firm supplies ice gratis. A pint of milk costs the 
 men 4 cents. 
 
 Some drink not only their noon bottle, but order 
 another for the mid-morning, or one to be drunk 
 in the afternoon, during the heat of casting time. 
 Best of all, the men are finding that milk supplies 
 an invigorating and lasting strength, and they are 
 realizing the immense benefit of this change from 
 "booze" to food. 
 
 Also, the big South Works Plant of the Illinois 
 Steel Company recently established a number of 
 milk stations for the purpose of weaning its em- 
 ployees from beer. In less than 6 months these 
 
EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 145 
 
 stations were selling 1400 quarts of milk a day. 
 Fourteen saloons in the immediate neighborhood 
 were forced to go out of business for lack of trade. 
 
 In this connection, Mr. E. H. Foote, Treasurer 
 of the Grand Rapids Chair Company, writes me: 
 "It is well understood that a booze-fighter cannot 
 remain with us. . . . We have a milkman who 
 delivers milk in bottles every morning. A boy 
 takes orders from the workmen for the amount 
 they wish, settles with the milkman, and delivers 
 the milk to the employees." 
 
 And Mr. F. F. Smith, President of the Os- 
 born Manufacturing Company, informs me that: 
 "Several years ago we installed a coffee urn in our 
 plant, from which we supplied to all employees a 
 large cup of good coffee, with cream and sugar, 
 at $.22 per month, this being the amount which 
 we find covers the exact cost of material, labor, 
 gas, etc. Our superintendent reports that under 
 this arrangement he knows of but one man in our 
 factory who now visits a saloon at noon." 
 
 Mr. George H. Barbour, Vice-President of the 
 Michigan Stove Company, in a very interesting 
 communication, states: "I was told by a gentle- 
 man who visited Europe just before the war, in 
 going through some of the largest manufacturing 
 
146 ALCOHOL 
 
 institutions in England he noticed the absence of 
 beer drinking. The proprietors volunteered the 
 information that the men were not drinking so 
 much as they used to. They found that drinking 
 beer made the men dull and slow-witted, so they 
 sent to Japan and bought a quantity of the very 
 best tea, which at certain hours in the morning 
 they steep and deliver to each man. Many of 
 these men have since entirely abandoned the use 
 of beer. The managers are jubilant over the 
 change in the situation." 
 
 Also, there are many firms who are carrying on 
 an educational campaign to help their men to 
 become sober from intelligent choice. The iron 
 and steel industries are putting leaflets in the pay 
 envelopes of their employees, each of which con- 
 tains some strong argument against the use of 
 alcohol. The railroads also hand these out from 
 their pay cars, and the large posters are put in 
 cabooses each month. This for the protection of 
 men and the public, and the prevention of eco- 
 nomic loss. 
 
 One significant fact, however, which has been 
 generally overlooked, is the loss incurred by 
 industry in training new men to fill the places of 
 those incapacitated through drink. This was 
 
EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 147 
 
 brought out very interestingly by Mr. Melville W. 
 Mix, President of the Dodge Manufacturing Com- 
 pany, and head of the Manufacturers' Bureau of 
 Industry, in a recent address before the National 
 Committee for Industrial Safety. Mr. Mix said: 
 
 "It has been figured that the average cost of 
 apprenticeship, including the cost of bringing a 
 man to the working efficiency necessary to profit, 
 is somewhere around $1000. If this man is dis- 
 abled from any cause, the employer must immedi- 
 ately recognize the charge for the cost of training 
 another workman, in addition to whatever damage 
 he may be called upon to pay." 
 
 Another loss sustained to industry by alcohol 
 appears in the impairment of skill which may 
 remove the worker from the ranks of the skilled 
 into the ranks of the great horde who have merely 
 muscle power to sell. For into the training of the 
 skilled artisan goes not only his own time and 
 effort, but the labor and expense of the employer 
 who furnishes plant, machinery, tools, and foremen, 
 and who bears the necessary losses while the 
 artisan is being trained in handling the employers' 
 material and machinery. 
 
 Industry sustains a further loss as a result of 
 imprisonments for drunkenness. Four out of every 
 
148 ALCOHOL 
 
 5 men imprisoned for drunkenness in Massachusetts 
 for the year ending September 30, 1913, were 
 between 17 and 50 years of age, and therefore at 
 that very period of Hfe when their industrial output 
 should be greatest. These men lost an aggregate 
 of 300,000 working days, and probably about the 
 same number of days in looking for work after 
 their release from jail. 
 
 Mr. E. B. Gaskill, Superintendent of Parsons 
 Pulp and Lumber Company, insists that "careful 
 observation has shown that with a pay-roll of 300 
 men the actual number of lost days in the month 
 without a saloon in close proximity will amount to 
 2 days on an average of 24 days' work to a man. 
 With a saloon near by it is conservative to say 
 that the average would drop to 20 days' work in a 
 month, or a loss in average of 4 days per man or 
 1200 actual days' loss to labor." 
 
 The Reo Motor Car Company kept a record of 
 the loss of time after 5 successive pay-days 
 (Wednesdays). In the 10 weeks covered by the 
 record, no fewer than 190 employees lost from half 
 a day to 3 days following their being "paid off." 
 Fifty-six men "celebrated" for 3 days each, which 
 little "jamboree" cost them $6.75 apiece, or a 
 loss equal to about 25% on their two weeks' 
 
EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 149 
 
 wages. The employer's loss is even heavier, for 
 when one or more men fail to appear, machines 
 and other men must wait until their places can be 
 filled." 
 
 Spoiled work is another not inconsiderable part 
 of the loss which drink lays upon industry. In one 
 of the Coatesville Steel Mills, during the period 
 when the saloons were open, it was not at all 
 unusual for from 20 to 40 tons of steel to be spoiled 
 in the rolling following pay-days, thus reducing 
 the earnings of every "piece worker" in the mill, 
 because of the semi-intoxicated condition of some 
 of their fellows. But with the closing of the 
 saloons, this is now ancient history. 
 
 The employer must therefore set down in the 
 debit column against alcohol the work spoiled by 
 the unsteady or careless hand, time lost through 
 preventable accident and sickness and alcohol- 
 delayed recovery, the added expense for accident 
 compensation, the total of which debit cannot at 
 present be even estimated in money loss. 
 
 Also alcohol, by drugging the brain, clouding 
 the vision, and lowering the ideals, may complicate 
 the adjustment of those delicate mutual prob- 
 lems of the interests arising between employer and 
 employee. 
 
150 ALCOHOL 
 
 And so the great business interests of America 
 have noted the experiments of the savants and 
 scientists, and have interpreted them in terms 
 of work values. They recognize that what has 
 occurred in the famous universities and psychologi- 
 cal laboratories of Europe points losses on a small 
 scale that industry is continually suffering on a 
 large scale. 
 
 They have interpreted these epoch-marking 
 experiments of Schnyder, Kraepelin, and other 
 European and American scientists to mean that 
 industry is paying millions of dollars annually in 
 preventable losses by accident, spoiled work, and 
 inefficiency. Translating the experiments of Berg- 
 man, Ridge, Mayer, and Kinz into work output, 
 employers are beginning to comprehend that if 
 an office worker takes even a moderate dose of 
 one glass of beer daily, he decreases his efficiency 
 by an average of 7%. 
 
 In other words, it requires 15 men, indulging in 
 one glass of beer daily, to do the work which prop- 
 erly should be done by 14 abstainers. They are 
 realizing that a drinking man cannot stand extremes 
 of temperature as well, that he cannot hear or see 
 or smell as well, that he cannot lift as much or 
 lift it as often, that he cannot walk as far, dig as 
 
EFFICIENCY AND DEFICIENCY 151 
 
 much, or carry as enduringly as though he were 
 abstinent. 
 
 And with what Herbert Spencer would call 
 "altruistic egoism," business is determined that 
 for the mutual interests of workman and employer 
 drinking shall cease. 
 
Chapter XIV 
 WHAT INDUSTRY THINKS OF ALCOHOL 
 
 SOME months ago I wrote to heads of insurance 
 companies, industrial corporations, railroads, 
 and colleges; also to safety experts, statisticians, 
 and those who have made a study of efficiency 
 and economics. Of 500 letters sent I received 
 403 replies. I quote from a few of these, which 
 are representative of the mass opinion. Practi- 
 cally the only voice which did not condemn 
 alcohol in business came from a manufacturer of 
 beer pumps. 
 
 Mr. Norman F. Hesseltine, Manager Contrac- 
 tors' Mutual Liability Insurance Company, writes: 
 "Our experience has proved that accidents are 
 caused by drink. An accident which would not 
 incapacitate normal healthy men, disables those 
 whose systems have previously been injured by 
 drink. Excessive drinking seems to run to certain 
 occupations; especially among teamsters and steve- 
 dores. . . . 
 
 153 
 
154 ALCOHOL 
 
 "A significant and interesting case has recently 
 been decided by an arbitration committee of the 
 Industrial Accident Board of Massachusetts: Sam- 
 uel Archibald, deceased, employee; Edward A. 
 Masefield, employer; Globe Indemnity Company, 
 insurer; (May 20, 1915). The employee was an 
 old alcoholic, who recently had been drinking. It 
 was found that severe injuries caused considerable 
 shock, and led to the development of delirium 
 tremens, which his system favored, resulting in 
 death; that the injuries were the contributing 
 cause of death, and that the widow, being wholly 
 dependent, is entitled to $4000 in 400 weekly 
 payments of $10 each. This amounts in substance 
 that an old alcoholic can throw onto the employer 
 and the industrial community the burden of his 
 own debauchery." 
 
 Mr. Francis Norie-Miller, of the General Accident 
 Fire and Life Assurance Corporation, Ltd., writes: 
 "I have come unhesitatingly to the opinion that 
 the effect of alcohol is to degrade in every particu- 
 lar, mentally, morally and physically. Those of 
 my employees who have indulged freely have 
 become absolutely useless. Poverty and misery 
 have resulted. Their children I find weak, physi- 
 cally and mentally, and I feel that not only for the 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 155 
 
 sake of the present generation, but for the sake of 
 generations to come, every community should have 
 prohibition to the extent that it would be as 
 difficult to obtain strong drink as to obtain strong 
 poisons." 
 
 The Aetna Life Insurance Company states: 
 "The regular use of intoxicants in any considerable 
 quantity is bound in time to make a workman 
 undesirable as regards both his liability to cause 
 accident and his efficiency." 
 
 The Fidelity and Casualty Company adds: "No 
 man under the influence of alcohol, even slightly, 
 should be permitted to remain in the works, much 
 less to work. Nor should a man whose nerves 
 have been rendered unsteady by the habitual use 
 of alcohol, or by a recent debauch, be permitted 
 to operate dangerous machinery or to carry on 
 dangerous work. He endangers not only his own 
 life, but the lives of others." 
 
 Mr. Thomas D. West, Chairman of the West 
 Steel Casting Company and Chairman of the 
 American Foundrymen's Association, says: "I am 
 seeking assistance that would help drive back 
 saloons from manufacturing and industrial establish- 
 ments. For the past 5 or 6 years I have been 
 going through an experience that has been costly 
 
156 ALCOHOL 
 
 to our firm, and injurious in creating an appetite 
 for drink with workmen, but have finally ended it 
 by buying the saloon which caused our troubles. 
 This saloon was close to our oJ9Bce and gate en- 
 trance. We have paid 4 times the value of the 
 property in order to become proprietors and close 
 it up. 
 
 "I know of no greater injury and injustice that 
 can be brought to a manufacturer than by having 
 saloons close enough to be a standing temptation 
 for workmen to steal out and obtain intoxicants. 
 I am urging the American Foundrymen's Associa- 
 tion to assist in persuading our State Legislatures 
 to pass laws which will absolutely prohibit the 
 operation of saloons within 500 to 1000 feet of any 
 foundry, mill, or industrial establishment. 
 
 "I believe that if a vote of all workmen was 
 taken, 70% of them would favor keeping saloons 
 well back from workshops, and would prefer the 
 drinking of non-intoxicants during working hours 
 and at lunch time rather than beverages that befog 
 their brains. The readiness to which employees 
 have taken to drinking milk sustains me in this 
 belief." 
 
 Mr. D. E. Dempsey, formerly with the New 
 York Central Iron Works, insists that: "Alcohol 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 157 
 
 is the greatest and most common evil that affects 
 employees — making their services inefficient and 
 expensive to the employers in every line. ... A 
 large percentage of those that report and remain 
 at work Monday (it is a common custom to report 
 for work and then leave again) utilize nearly one- 
 half their time between the drinking water fountain 
 and the toilet, and after Labor Day or a holiday 
 celebration this condition is extended for several 
 days. 
 
 "Accidents on Monday and. after holidays were 
 mostly through carelessness caused by *big heads.'" 
 
 Mr. F. S. Chase, Treasurer of the Chase Rolling 
 Mill Company, Waterbury, Connecticut: "We pay 
 off Wednesday afternoon and for years have noted 
 that Thursday morning shows more absentees, 
 more tardy arrivals, and more inefficient work than 
 on any other day. The work of the habitual drinker 
 is not done so well. He is more likely to suffer ac- 
 cident himself, or to cause accident to others." 
 
 Former United States Senator William A. Clark 
 has written a significant letter from which I quote: 
 "The disqualifications of persons addicted to alco- 
 hol were so striking that I peremptorily declined 
 to engage any one upon whom I could discern the 
 effects of indulgence in alcohol. . . . 
 
158 ALCOHOL 
 
 "I look upon alcoholism as a disease, which in 
 its incipiency may not be very serious, and might 
 be thwarted by the exercise of sufficient will — 
 before volition is entirely destroyed and the subject 
 a hopeless wreck/' 
 
 Mr. E. H. Weitzel, Manager of the Colorado 
 Fuel and Iron Company, expresses himself in these 
 positive terms: . . . "The officers of our Company 
 have always recognized the injury to employees 
 and to the business incident to the use of alcohol. 
 . . . When all saloons in the coal mining district 
 were closed the efficiency of the workmen greatly 
 increased. The coal production for the first 18 
 days of April averaged 5.85 tons per day for each 
 miner's work. This before the Government closed 
 the saloons. During the first 18 days of June 
 (with all saloons closed) each man produced 6.52 
 tons, which meant an average increase in wages of 
 over 11% per man. 
 
 "I have just made careful analysis of our 
 accidents during January, February and March, 
 1914, when the saloons were open; and May, June 
 and July, of the same year, when they were closed. 
 For the first 3 months mentioned, the hospital 
 cases due to accidents amounted to 2.79 per IGOO 
 men employed. For the second 3 months they 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 159 
 
 amounted to 2.01 per 1000 employed. In the case 
 of the minor accidents which were treated at the 
 camps, and not sent to the hospital, in the 3 
 months under the saloons our accidents of this 
 class amounted to 3.67 per 1000 employed, while 
 under prohibition they amounted to 1.07 per 1000 
 employed. Our fatal injuries for the 3 months 
 under the saloon amounted to 1.01 per 1000, while 
 under prohibition months they amounted to .8 per 
 1000. 
 
 "This has confirmed the view long held by us, 
 that if saloons and drinking could be eliminated in 
 the coal district, not only the miners, but the 
 companies, would be greatly benefited." 
 
 Mr. James Douglas, President of the Phelps, 
 Dodge & Company, Inc., sent me an exhaustive 
 report of conditions in their mines, from which I 
 abstract the following: "We have looked up the 
 matter of accidents of the first 4 months of 1913, 
 1914 and 1915. In addition to this we made a 
 comparison for the months of April, 1914, and 
 April, 1915, to find out the difference in time lost 
 per 1000 shifts worked. 
 
 "In April, 1915, there were 33,135f shifts worked 
 at the mine. There were 631 shifts laid off, which 
 for every 1000 shifts worked would give 19,043 
 
160 ALCOHOL 
 
 laid off. In April, 1914, there were 42,663| shifts 
 worked at the mine, and 2619 laid off, which gives 
 61,387 shifts laid off for each 1000 worked. This 
 means that there was about 3| times as much 
 laying off in 1914, under an alcohol regime, as in 
 1915, under prohibition." 
 
 I am indebted to Mr. Bishop White, Vice- 
 President of the American Chain Company, Inc., 
 for this thoughtful letter: "I am particularly 
 well acquainted with the chain business, but find 
 the worst conditions of all in the Cragley Heath 
 district near Birmingham, England, where excessive 
 drinking makes it absolutely impossible to depend 
 on chain makers. The problem in that district and 
 in that particular trade is recognized as the most 
 serious one which employers have to face. It is 
 chiefly responsible for the loss to Great Britain of 
 the chain business which they, at one time, con- 
 trolled. This business has gone largely to the 
 Continent. 
 
 "We have attempted to discourage drinking in 
 various ways. For instance, we have found the 
 greatest trouble in foundry hands. A molder's 
 work is hard and dirty, and he finishes the day by 
 pouring his molds. The handling of the molten 
 metal results in extreme heat, and the work has 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 161 
 
 to be done on the run to prevent the metal from 
 cooling. As a result, we have found that molders, 
 almost to a man, go directly from work to a 
 saloon, and are very large consumers of beer. 
 This condition is aggravated by the fact that the 
 work does not attract a very high type of labor, 
 but on the other hand is very well paid. 
 
 "We have found one effective deterrent. We 
 furnish in foundries adequate shower baths with 
 plentiful supplies of hot and cold water, soap and 
 towels, and find that very soon the employees get 
 into the habit of coming to work in street clothes, 
 instead of in their working clothes, and the fact 
 that they take a bath and change to their street 
 clothes before leaving the foundry seems to give 
 them the let-down which they doubtless actually 
 require after pouring. As a result, they leave the 
 shop some 20 minutes or half -hour later — have 
 not the time to spend drinking before their dinner 
 hours at home, and do not feel the need of drink. 
 This policy, with no reference of any sort to 
 drinking, is a very satisfactory solution of the 
 problem so far as we are concerned." 
 
 Dr. C. A. Lauffer, Medical Director of the 
 Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Com- 
 pany, takes the broad view in these matters which 
 
162 ALCOHOL 
 
 one would look for in a medical man. Dr. Lauffer 
 says: "We have about 15,000 injuries to handle 
 every year. Alcohol is a minor contributing fac- 
 tor, as men under the influence of liquor are dis- 
 charged and ejected from the plant. Watchmen 
 allow no one to enter who is under the influence of 
 liquor, and men who value their jobs will keep 
 away until they sober up. 
 
 "Notwithstanding this, there have been 7 serious 
 accidents, the result of alcohol, which would not 
 have happened had the men been sober. 
 
 "To what extent fatigue, with the consequent 
 blunting of perceptions, has been responsible for 
 hundreds more, no man can tell. A sick wife, a 
 bad cook — many things besides alcohol will dull 
 the faculties, and diminish that reserve of self 
 defense that subconsciously protects a man In 
 dangerous situations against accident." 
 
 Dr. Lauffer also furnished a report from four- 
 teen Industrial surgeons, who met to discuss the 
 standardization of first-aid treatment. These 
 whose professional lives are dedicated to the men, 
 furtherance of the principles of "Safety First," 
 represent corporations employing nearly a million 
 men. They conclude that "the fatigue of the- 
 day-after-the-night-before is back of the justifiable 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 163 
 
 hostility of industry to the indiscriminate sale of 
 alcohol." 
 
 Mr. J. B. Mansfield, Vice-President of the J. E. 
 Bolles Iron and Wire Works, says: "We have 
 overcome the 'Monday morning nightmare' by 
 paying our men on Tuesday instead of Satur- 
 dav. . . . 
 
 "Forty per cent of our accidents are among men 
 who take intoxicating liquor. Ninety per cent of 
 serious accidents occur among men who drink. 
 Not a single serious accident has happened to an 
 employee who was a total abstainer since our 
 Compensation Law went into effect. We now 
 discharge and refuse recommendation to an em- 
 ployee who comes to work Monday morning 
 smelling of whiskey." 
 
 Mr. C. B. Calder, Vice-President of the Toledo 
 Shipbuilding Company, communicates: "When the 
 Pittsburgh Steamship Company's ships were built 
 by J. D. Rockefeller and managed by L. M. 
 Bowers, he enforced restrictions against all use of 
 alcohol. When I took charge of the Dry Dock 
 Engineer Works I found that the men were in the 
 habit of sending apprentice boys out during 
 working hours for a pail of beer. This was peremp- 
 torily stopped, and now it is but rarely indeed 
 
164 ALCOHOL 
 
 that a workman has his pay garnisheed, an em- 
 barrassment which was formerly very common." 
 
 Mr. Z. Clark Thwing, Vice-President of the 
 Grand Rapids Veneer Works, calls it "That indus- 
 trial vampire, alcohol." He says: "We simply 
 will not employ a man in any capacity that is even 
 moderately intemperate, because under our State 
 Workmen's Compensation Act, the financial risk is 
 too great. . . . The extension of the Compensation 
 Laws throughout the country will, from a purely 
 business standpoint, do more for the cause of tem- 
 perance than is now generally supposed." 
 
 Mr. W. Boardman Reed, Consulting Engineer, 
 declares: "I cannot see why there should be any 
 difference in opinion as to the effect of alcohol 
 upon the human system, and there certainly is not 
 among employers of labor. 
 
 "While it is true that the human system can 
 doubtless absorb a certain amount of alcohol, as it 
 can almost any other poison without an apparent 
 effect as to efficiency, it is simply a question as to 
 the amount that is used and the ability of each 
 particular person to absorb as to whether his 
 efficiency is affected or not." 
 
 Mr. F. C. Kelley, Superintendent of the Knox- 
 ville Railway and Light Company, writes: "When 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 165 
 
 first I was employed by this Company a man was 
 never questioned concerning his habits, so long as 
 he did not get drunk on the job. Even when he 
 did, it was very often passed up without mention, 
 especially if he did not do anything reprehensible. 
 
 "I found that these men spent at least 30% of 
 their earnings for drink, which would cause them 
 to lose at least 10% of their time. They did not 
 make eflScient workmen, they did not advance in 
 their work, nor were they nearly so reliable as 
 abstinent men. ... A man in the service now 
 has to answer for drunkenness, whether on or off 
 duty, and up to the present date, I cannot recall a 
 single accident caused by intoxication, since this 
 rule was put into effect." 
 
 Mr. C. Edwin Michael, President of the Virginia 
 Bridge and Iron Company, advises me that, in 
 his opinion, ''The use of alcoholic beverages is a 
 pure economic waste." Also he observes that: 
 "There are manv cases of death from 'sunstroke' 
 occurring among our employees in heated weather, 
 which may undoubtedly be attributed to the 
 excessive use of alcoholic drink. I have also 
 observed the usual increase of Monday morning 
 accidents due in great measure to the nervous 
 condition following alcoholic debauch." 
 
166 ALCOHOL 
 
 Mr. E. C. Spear, Treasurer of the Cheney 
 Bigelow Wire Works, argues that: "There is not 
 the sHghtest question as to the effect of alcohol on 
 working men, or any one ^ else, for that matter. 
 It cannot be anything but detrimental to the man, 
 or to the people for whom he is working." 
 
 Mr. Geo. T. Fonda, Safety Engineer of the 
 Bethlehem Steel Company, holds: "Regulation of 
 the use of alcohol in the industries in general, will 
 soon become a matter of serious consideration on 
 the part of manufacturers in this country." 
 
 Mr. Henry R. Towne, Chairman of the Yale & 
 Towne Manufacturing Company, informs me that 
 when alcohol was first interdicted in his plant his 
 men rebelled and refused to work. After accepting 
 conditions, however, most, if not all, of the work- 
 men admit that enforced abstinence has been 
 beneficial to them, and "they were glad it had 
 been insisted upon." 
 
 Mr. Howell Cheney, of Cheney Brothers Silk 
 Manufacturing Company, says: "Unquestionably 
 employees themselves realize the evils of intemper- 
 ance, for our men will not admit to their Benefit 
 Association those who are known to be habitual 
 drinkers, nor will they pay benefits for sickness 
 caused or increased by drinking." 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 167 
 
 Mr. H. E. Bullock, President of the Illinois 
 Malleable Iron Company, says: "On the days 
 succeeding our pay days our molders do not put 
 up as large heats, and the percentage of scrap 
 increases. With men in higher positions we are 
 insisting on sobriety. Latterly have been having 
 many of them take the Normyl temperance cure. 
 I would be glad if your book shows some way of 
 securing temperance among teamsters. Almost 
 invariably these seem to be drinkers." 
 
 Mr. S. P. Bush, President of the Buckeye Steel 
 Castings Company, concludes that: "Fully one-half 
 and probably more of the cases that have come 
 under my observation where men have become in- 
 efficient or in a condition of distress has been the 
 result of drink. The use of stimulants lowers the 
 vitality and enormously reduces efficiency." 
 
 Mr. Fred J. Miller, Manager of Factories of the 
 Remington Typewriter Company, comments that: 
 "Business men, members of clubs, etc., are now 
 drinking much more than are working men, and more 
 of these are lessening their efficiency by drinking." 
 
 Mr. L. H. Ranney, Secretary of the International 
 Harvester Company, states: "We permit no em- 
 ployee to remain in the service whose work is 
 in any way affected by intoxicants." He empha- 
 
168 ALCOHOL 
 
 sizes this from their Book of Rules: "Rule 7. 
 
 « 
 
 If you are tired it is rest that you need. Avoid 
 whiskey and other intoxicating drinks; they weaken 
 both mind and body. If you need a stimulant try 
 hot coffee" 
 
 Mr. F. K. Copeland, President Sullivan Machin- 
 ery Company, writes: "Whenever we know of a 
 man who is intemperate, we refuse to employ him. 
 This has become absolutely necessary under the 
 Compensation Laws. I believe these laws are just 
 and reasonable, and that Compensation is a proper 
 charge against our product; but in return for this 
 outlay we expect our men to be in full possession 
 of their faculties, both for their own safety and 
 the safety of their fellow workmen." 
 
 Mr. Walter S. Bickley, President of the Penn 
 Steel Castings and Machine Company, concludes 
 that: "It is the lowest paid workman who finds 
 time and money enough to remain away after pay 
 day." 
 
 Mr. J. T. Jewett, Jr., President of the Standard 
 Pulley Company, says: "We always have con- 
 siderable trouble Mondays because of men who do 
 not show up for work at all, or if they do are unfit 
 for work on account of having 'a Monday morning 
 hold-over.'" 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 169 
 
 Mr. M. L. Pulcher, Vice-President Federal Motor 
 Truck Company, writes: "I attended a luncheon 
 the other noon where there were twelve automobile 
 men at one table, and not a single drink was 
 served. It was remarked by one of the men 
 present that the change in regard to liquor had 
 been very great — some 4 or 5 years ago there 
 would have been a drink before every plate. . . . 
 Indeed, I am greatly in favor of a restrictive move- 
 ment. Not prohibition, for I have lived in counties 
 that were under local option, and there was more 
 booze consumed then than when the saloons were 
 open. The type of prohibition I favor is National 
 Prohibition — no booze of any kind made, sold or 
 delivered." 
 
 Mr. H. E. Miles, President, Trade Board of 
 Industrial Education of Wisconsin, has written a 
 most interesting letter, from which I extract the 
 following: "A man seeking employment showed 
 me recommendations from several large brewing 
 establishments. Noticing my hesitation, he said: 
 'While I have worked in breweries, I have never 
 drunk. Drinking, you know, is prohibited in 
 breweries.' 'Why.^' I exclaimed, 'I understood 
 that working men in breweries commonly receive 
 their daily stint.' *Yes,' he said, 'but not the 
 
170 ALCOHOL 
 
 office men. While the manufacturers make booze, 
 they don't permit any of it in their books or 
 business.'" 
 
 Mr. S. W. Otley, Vice-President of the Detroit 
 Steel Casting Company, says: "Our practice has 
 been to pay twice a month — on the 10th and 
 25th. We have recently issued an order changing 
 pay day to the Saturdays nearest the 10th and 
 25th. We did this because there was so much 
 drunkenness following pay day that our force was 
 disorganized and our work was demoralized." 
 
 It is evident that the employment of women 
 simplifies the industrial problem in more ways than 
 one. For Mr. William Dow, of the H. J. Heinze 
 Company, believes that: " Our general manufactur- 
 ing help is so extensively made up of women that 
 we have very much less difficulty on account of 
 alcoholism than would most other concerns." 
 
 And this opinion is shared by Mr. E. L. Hart- 
 pence, of the Acme Wire Company; Mr. H. F. 
 Hurd, of the Peabody-Cluett Company, and a 
 number of others who have kindly answered my 
 inquiries. 
 
 The attitude of the railways concerning alcohol 
 is tersely and emphatically put in a communication 
 from Mr. W. S. Stone, Grand Chief of the Brother- 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 171 
 
 hood of Locomotive Engineers, who states: "We 
 have no data upon the experience of the organiza- 
 tion which would help you, for the reason that our 
 organization does not permit members to remain 
 members who indulge in the use of intoxicating 
 liquors: In fact, the rule of nearly all railroads, 
 commonly known as Rule G, prohibits the tak- 
 ing of a single drink, either on or off duty, and 
 men are discharged for frequenting places in which 
 liquor is sold." 
 
 Mr. J. W. Lee, Jr., of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 Company, tells me: "The Pennsylvania has but 
 one rule on this subject of intoxicating liquors, 
 which says: *The use of intoxicants by employees 
 while on duty is prohibited. Their habitual use 
 or the frequenting of places where they are sold is 
 sufficient cause for dismissal.'" 
 
 Mr. J. J. Sullivan, President of The American 
 Railways Company, writes: "We consider the risk 
 of an accident caused by the negligence of one 
 given to the drink habit so great that our rules — 
 which are made for the best interest of the public 
 — are strictly enforced. We know that efficiency 
 is reduced by alcoholic indulgence." 
 
 This sentiment is echoed by many other promi- 
 nent railroad officials. 
 
172 ALCOHOL 
 
 Mr. M. C. Brush, Second Vice-President of the 
 Boston Elevated Railroad Company, says that it 
 is gratifying to note that even in the Union of the 
 railroad's employees, special attention is called to 
 the personal responsibility of employees in the 
 avoidance of accidents, and their observance of 
 the rule prohibiting the use of liquor is urged. 
 
 Mr. J. M. Davis, General Manager of the Cin- 
 cinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railway Company, 
 in concluding a generous letter of appreciation, 
 says: *'I personally believe there is more sobriety 
 among railroad men as a class, when the number 
 of employees is considered, than in any other 
 business." This sentiment is echoed by an official, 
 high in the service of the Boston & Maine Rail- 
 road. 
 
 Some expression of opinion for or against the 
 effects of prohibition may be of interest here. 
 Mr. James Bowron, President of the Gulf States 
 Steel Company, WTites: "Our record with the 
 accident insurance companies is so extremely good 
 that it has been frequently commented upon, 
 and our staff is disposed to regard the low acci- 
 dent rate as measurably due to our freedom from 
 drunken and tipsy workmen. 
 
 "Looking at the matter from an entirely different 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 173 
 
 angle, I may say that I am also Vice-President of 
 the Bessemer Coal, Iron and Land Company. 
 Prohibition was voted in this county (Birmingham, 
 Alabama) on the same day in October, 1907, that 
 the height of a panic was arrived at by the suspen- 
 sion of the Knickerbocker Trust Company and 
 the adoption of clearing house regulations restrict- 
 ing all drawing on private accounts to $100 at any 
 one time. This is a mining and manufacturing 
 community, and more than half the blast furnaces 
 in the district shut down, throwing thousands of 
 miners out of work. 
 
 "The Bessemer Company had, for two or three 
 years previous to the panic, been selling large 
 numbers of lots to the miners on the instalment 
 plan, payments running over 10 years. Notwith- 
 standing the panic and the number of men out of 
 employment, instalment payments were better 
 met under a condition of panic plus prohibition 
 than they had been with high wages, full work 
 plus liquor. This showed in a remarkable way 
 the greater eflficiency of sober men in the matter of 
 wage earning. 
 
 "A real estate firm told me that their experience 
 in collecting rents was similar: Namely, that under 
 panic plus prohibition they collected their rents 
 
174 ALCOHOL 
 
 vastly better than under the condition of luxury 
 plus liquor." 
 
 Mr. Bowron's experience is paralleled by that of 
 Mr. H. G. Prout, President of the Hall Switch and 
 Signal Company: "For 11 years I was in charge 
 of the shops of the Union Switch and Signal 
 Company in Pennsylvania. These shops are 
 located in Swissvale, Edgewood and Wilkinsburg — 
 all prohibition boroughs. I went into that situa- 
 tion strongly opposed to prohibition. I came out 
 feeling that whatever injustice might be done to 
 individuals or vested interests by sweeping prohi- 
 bition laws, the gain to communities and to the 
 nation would more than compensate for such 
 injustice. 
 
 "It was my observation that our work people 
 living in these prohibition boroughs were an 
 uncommonly reliable, self-respecting set of citizens. 
 They were thrifty, and an important percentage of 
 them owned their homes." 
 
 Mr. T. I. Stephenson, President of the Knoxville 
 Iron Company, and many other executives ex- 
 pressed themselves in similar terms concerning 
 the effect of prohibition. I merely quote the 
 above as typical examples. However, the shield 
 also has a reverse side. 
 
INDUSTRY AND ALCOHOL 175 
 
 Mr. G. F. Meehan, of the Ross-Meehan Foundry 
 Company, Chattanooga, Tenn., says: "This state 
 has had a prohibition law for several years past, 
 and, in our opinion, this has served to cause more 
 drunkenness than we had previous to the passage 
 of this law, especially during the period when there 
 was a strict regulation of the saloons." 
 
 The President of a prominent New England 
 railroad says: "In my experience with other 
 corporations I have had as many as 30,000 men 
 under me at one time. The lines of these roads ran 
 through 4 states. In none of these was there 
 prohibition. Yet I had less trouble in 5 years 
 there than I have had in this, the oldest prohibition 
 state in the Union, in one year with about 2,000 
 men. In other words, my experience has been 
 that prohibition does not prohibit, and that the 
 drinking habit is far worse in prohibition states 
 than it is anywhere else." 
 
 Yet whether prohibition prohibits or not, the 
 general opinion of industry concerning alcohol 
 may be summed up in the statement of Mr. A. J. 
 Thornley, Manager of the Narragansett Machine 
 Company, who says: "We do not know anything 
 about the scientific side of the bad effects of 
 alcohol on the human system. Our experience. 
 
176 ALCOHOL 
 
 however, in dealing with it from the industrial side 
 makes us ready to believe the worst thing that can 
 be said against it. Its use means inefficiency, 
 greater liability to accident, to insubordination, to 
 disorganization. We have proved this so thor- 
 oughly to our own satisfaction that the most 
 important rule in our plant is to the effect that: 
 'No drinking man need apply.'" 
 
Chapter XV 
 OLD JOHN B. AND THE COLLEGE MAN 
 
 IT is deeply to be regretted that the follies and 
 stupidities of the German Universities are aped 
 in many of our American colleges. In the club 
 rooms, and at Alumni reunions, it is common to 
 drink immoderately of beer drawn from the keg, 
 after the custom of the German schools — and 
 many a large head and "dark brown taste" follows 
 the morning after the night before. 
 
 The most regrettable feature of this lies in the 
 example. For, if the cultured and supposedly 
 educated youth of America find recreation in social 
 drinking, what reason, argue the unsophisticated, 
 is there for assuming that that way lies death or 
 life-shortening ? 
 
 Subsequent humiliation for their beery past will 
 not mitigate the pathological consequences of 
 methodical orgies. Though a sinner reform and 
 become a veritable saint, he will nevertheless be a 
 limping, halting saint. 
 
 177 
 
178 ALCOHOL 
 
 In fact, the immature undergraduate attitude 
 on this most momentous medical, social, and 
 economic problem of modern times was clearly 
 evident from the enthusiastic reception of a parody 
 entitled "It's a Dull Way to Prohibition," sung 
 by two members of the Class of 1917 at a recent 
 Harvard Union banquet. 
 
 The song burlesqued the undergraduate attempts 
 to make the Sophomore class "dry." And as I 
 write this, the youngest class at Harvard has 
 clambered up and onto the Beer Wagon, and with 
 loosened rein is scampering merrily after its 
 Sophomore brethren who, by a three to one 
 majority, recently voted for that first-aid to ner- 
 vous stupidity, the foaming beaker. Which helps 
 to prove that the average college man is an aca- 
 demician — hopelessly archaic in point of scien- 
 tific knowledge and sapiently certain of his own 
 cock-surance. 
 
 For, with students particularly, the action of 
 alcohol and special intellectual and nervous strain 
 operate frequently to bring about very obstinate 
 nervous troubles. There are many more break- 
 downs from beer than from books. 
 
 This fact is recognized by the scholarly men 
 who have charge of the United States Army and 
 
JOHN B. AND THE COLLEGE MAN 179 
 
 Navy Schools. These have absolutely forbidden 
 the use of all alcoholic liquors, including beer, to 
 their bright young students in the art of scientific 
 assassination. 
 
 These objections are shared by the majority of 
 our university heads. Their general attitude to- 
 ward alcohol is ably summed up in a letter from 
 Dr. Howard McClenehan, Dean of Princeton 
 University, who says: "We regard drinking as 
 harmful, especially for young men, and we there- 
 fore are making every effort to discourage and 
 prevent it. We forbid absolutely the keeping or 
 drinking of alcoholic liquors in college buildings or 
 dormitories. We forbid also the frequenting of 
 saloons and drinking places. In addition, the 
 University conducts a course of education upon 
 the influence of drink." 
 
 Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of 
 Harvard University, writes me that "My observa- 
 tion among students of Harvard University during 
 the last 65 years is that the use of alcohol among 
 them has very much diminished, — particularly 
 during the last 25 years. This improvement has 
 been the result of voluntary action altogether. 
 Locally in Cambridge the absence of saloons has 
 been of advantage. So far as I am able to 
 
180 ALCOHOL 
 
 judge, the recent physiological demonstrations, 
 that alcoholic drinks diminish efficiency in all 
 occupations, have not yet had much effect on 
 the educated class; but, as these demonstrations 
 become known, I cannot but think that they 
 will reenforce the general tendency towards tem- 
 perance. 
 
 "For myself, I can perhaps best put my con- 
 clusions about the use of alcohol in the following 
 way : — If I were to begin life over again, I would 
 start as a total abstainer from alcoholic drinks, 
 and would not offer them to friends or guests in 
 my house. This conclusion is based on the con- 
 viction that alcoholism is the greatest evil which 
 afflicts the white race, — first, because of its own 
 effects, and secondly, because it induces or promotes 
 other grave evils." 
 
 Dr. Eliot's hopeful attitude concerning the future 
 relations of alcohol and education is shared by 
 Roger I. Lee, M.D., Professor of Hygiene of 
 Harvard University, who answers my communica- 
 tion addressed to President Lowell by saying: 
 "There has been a striking decrease in the use of 
 alcohol among the students during the past few 
 years. This decrease seems to be a part oi the 
 general appreciation of the effects of alcohol. So 
 
JOHN B. AND THE COLLEGE MAN 181 
 
 far as can be determined, this decrease is con- 
 tinuous." Which affords much consolation to those 
 among us who would like to see deficiency replaced 
 by efficiency. 
 
 Dr. Arthur Hadley, President of Yale University, 
 raises a most interesting and unique question in a 
 communication in which he says: "In looking up 
 the records of the University Club I was greatly 
 impressed with the fact that ginger ale was much 
 more used than any other beverage; and from the 
 information given by the encyclopedia as to the 
 percentages of alcohol in ginger ale, beer, and 
 stronger drinks, I was convinced that most of the 
 alcohol consumed by the students was taken in 
 this form." 
 
 There is a scarcity of American statistics on the 
 subject of ginger ale and "temperance" drinks, 
 but an investigator has told us something of condi- 
 tions in Canada, and there is no reason to believe 
 that they differ materially among us. 
 
 We learn that out of 14 samples of ginger beer 
 analyzed 3 were strongly impregnated with alcohol, 
 while another so-called temperance beer contained 
 enough proof spirit to send some people home 
 talking to themselves. In Kingston one could buy 
 for 10 cents enough beer containing 2.86% of 
 
182 ALCOHOL 
 
 alcohol, to start a riot. In Winnipeg ginger beer 
 was found which contained 4.71 % of alcohol. 
 The enthusiastic temperance advocate might on 
 this suffer all the horrible effects of katzen jammer 
 and "morning after" repentance which would 
 normally accrue to him as a result of saturating 
 his system with the ordinary domestic or garden 
 variety of beer. 
 
 And also do not forget that cider — the "temper- 
 ance" drink of many college men who profess an 
 undisguised horror for alcohol — is decidedly alco- 
 holic. For, while it is sweet and harmless — for 
 a few days — alcoholic fermentation is quickly 
 established. And than a "hard" cider "jag" 
 there is nothing jaggier or more insidious in 
 developing an alcoholic craving — as many a 
 chronic drunkard can testify. 
 
 Briefly, the opinion of college heads concerning 
 alcohol is summed up in a letter from Dr. David 
 Starr Jordan, President of Stanford University, 
 who says: 
 
 "My experience with alcohol in relation to 
 students is that a boy that is convivially inclined 
 is not likely to do any very good work in the 
 University. We have for the last 6 or 7 years 
 practically excluded all students who visit saloons. 
 
JOHN B. AND THE COLLEGE MAN 183 
 
 The influence of alcohol is always to dissolve the 
 restraints and reserves which we call character 
 building, and that is true in the physical as well 
 as in the moral sense. I am convinced that alcohol 
 and accuracy do not go together." 
 
Chapter XVI 
 WHAT IT COSTS AND WHAT ITS WORTH 
 
 THE widespread use of alcoholic beverages lias 
 been conservatively estimated as causing the 
 loss of 21% in the efficiency of the nation's 
 workers. The production of wealth is reckoned 
 at about $32,000,000,000 yearly; the loss due to 
 deficiency (or diminished efficiency) in round 
 numbers is therefore fully $8,500,000,000. The 
 total cost of the Great War in Europe for the 
 first year was $15,000,000,000. 
 
 Mr. Bryan estimates, after careful statistical 
 study of the alcohol question, that the United 
 States spends annually almost $2,500,000,000 for 
 intoxicating liquors. 
 
 In a speech, made March 15, 1915, he said: 
 
 "The annual appropriations of the Federal 
 Government are little less than $1,250,000,000. 
 Think of this nation spending twice that amount 
 for alcoholic liquors. 
 
 "The cost of the Panama Canal was about 
 
 185 
 
186 ALCOHOL 
 
 $400,000,000. Is it not appalling to think we 
 spend for drink every year 6 times the cost of the 
 Panama Canal? 
 
 "It is estimated that we spend $750,000,000 
 annually for education. And yet we spend for 
 drink more than 3 times this amount. 
 
 "The nation submits to this taxation, which is 
 5 times as great as any taxation it would permit 
 any political party to levy." 
 
 Or consider it from this angle: America's fire 
 loss is far greater than that of any other nation. 
 As a result of our foolish and wasteful use of 
 wood for building material, we burn a house down 
 on an average of every 10 minutes, and the houses 
 thus destroyed during a year, if placed side by 
 side, would stretch in an unbroken avenue of 
 desolation from New York to Chicago. Yet the 
 financial loss from fire, according to a recent 
 report by the head of the New York City Fire 
 Department, is only $2.68 per capita, a mere 
 fraction of what drink costs. 
 
 Dr. Hopkins, whose "Wealth and Waste" is a 
 text book on the economics of the alcohol question 
 in over 400 colleges, has this to say concerning the 
 economic relations of alcohol and industry. 
 
 "Much less than $250,000,000 a year is the 
 
ITS COST AND ITS WORTH 187 
 
 national revenue of this country from liquor drunk; 
 the cost of which to the drinkers is not less than 
 $2,500,000,000; its cost to the people is vastly 
 more; and the people's loss on account of it is at 
 least $5,000,000,000 a year." 
 
 Each 12 months the 10,000,000 or more drinkers 
 in the United States pay over liquor bars more 
 money than the total of all the gold and silver 
 mined and minted in this country in 40 years. 
 
 Every 10 months the loss and waste resulting 
 from the liquor traffic in this country is greater 
 than all the gold produced in America since the 
 discovery of gold in California to the present time. 
 For since 1848 (when gold was first discovered) 
 California has not produced sufficient of the aurifer- 
 ous metal up to 1899, to pay for the liquor and 
 beer drunk in America for 16 months, — to say 
 nothing of the loss and waste caused by this 
 drinking. 
 
 Since the discovery of America the entire silver 
 and gold production of the world would not make 
 up a total of $20,480,748,600, the drink bill of this 
 country for 20 years. 
 
 Every 9 months our contribution to John Bar- 
 leycorn exceeds all the capital of all the national 
 banks of the United States. In other words, we 
 
188 ALCOHOL 
 
 are paying him more money than the whole circu- 
 lating medium of the nation — gold, silver, and 
 paper combined. 
 
 Or attempt to visualize it in this way: Remem- 
 bering that the Washington Monument is 550 
 feet high, if the dollars spent for alcoholic drinks 
 were piled in a monument a foot square, it would 
 make a memorial to Old John Barleycorn 67 
 miles high, 670 times the height of the Washington 
 Monument. 
 
 Yet the money paid for drink is, by far, the 
 least significant part of the heavy tribute levied 
 by this emperor of drugs — Alcohol. His toll of 
 death, disease, degeneracy, and degradation is still 
 further supplemented by his influence in causing 
 crime, pauperism, prostitution, venereal disease, 
 and divorce. 
 
 Prisoners in the Eastern Pennsylvania Peni- 
 tentiary — in a petition signed by 1008 of their 
 1478 total, praying the Legislature to abolish the 
 manufacture and sale of liquors — ascribed 70 % 
 of all crime to its use. This was based on personal 
 canvass of the inmates. 
 
 Some 1200 convicts in the Illinois States Prison 
 at Joliet were preparing a similar petition to the 
 Legislature of that State, when, for some esoteric 
 
ITS COST AND ITS WORTH 189 
 
 reason, it was forbidden by the warden. But 
 from many prisons and penitentiaries in the nation, 
 and through many prison pubhcations, the states 
 and nation are being called upon to prohibit the 
 manufacture and sale of alcohol, to which from 
 50% to 90% of the convicts attribute their downfall. 
 
 The most reliable figures agree that at least 
 75% of all pauperism must be credited to John 
 Barleycorn's account. Drink leads to poverty as 
 inevitably as the drink habit leads to idleness. 
 Every drinking man loses an ever-increasing 
 amount of time from his work, while he develops 
 for this work an ever-growing disinclination, and 
 loses in his occupation an ever-increasing degree 
 of skill. 
 
 Also, it is conservatively estimated that 40% 
 of sexual immorality is caused by drink. Indeed, 
 as a result of inquiries and investigations in 
 hundreds of penitentiaries, reformatories, work- 
 houses, and hospitals, many are inclined to place 
 the rate much higher. But 4 out of 10 is a dis- 
 graceful enough tally, even for John Barleycorn. 
 
 According to the statistics of Professor Forel, 
 who probably knows more about the subject than 
 any living man, approximately 75% of venereal 
 disease is contracted by men under the influence of 
 
190 ALCOHOL 
 
 alcohol — chiefly by persons slightly intoxicated, 
 and rendered more excitable and irresponsible 
 thereby. The suffering, the misery, the heartaches, 
 and the broken homes that this entails is incal- 
 culable. 
 
 In discussing this subject Professor T. G. Masa- 
 ryk, of the University of Prague, said: "Drink 
 damages the relations of man to woman. These 
 are coarsened and degraded. The old Austrian 
 saying is that when Bacchus fires, Venus sits 
 behind the stove. Modern investigation indubita- 
 bly teaches that drinking corrupts the sex life of 
 our day. Alcoholism and prostitution are the chief 
 factors in the degeneration of nations." 
 
 And, it might be added, of divorce. For, 
 according to the Census Bureau, 1 divorce in 
 every 5 has intemperance as a cause. From 1889 
 to 1906 there were 184,396 divorces due to intem- 
 perance on the part of husband or wife. 
 
 Those who make money out of the rum traflic 
 exclaim: "We give employment to thousands. 
 Incalculable wealth would be lost if we shut up 
 shop. Numberless men would be thrown out of 
 employment — possibly to swell the long file of 
 the bread line." 
 
 The Booze Barons point with horror to the 
 
ITS COST AND ITS WORTH 191 
 
 gigantic sums of money removed from productive 
 activity, to empty warehouses and stores, workless 
 cooper shops, bottle and glass factories, insolvent 
 railroads — and perhaps even to a bankrupt 
 government — if rum is banished. 
 
 Which is equivalent to saying that no money 
 withdrawn from anything connected with the 
 liquor business would, or could, ever be profitably 
 reinvested. Or that the million and one splendid 
 enterprises — many of which now languish and die 
 for want of a little capital — would refuse to accept 
 money that had ever been corrupted in the liquor 
 traffic. 
 
 These may have been good arguments in those 
 days before the deadly multiplication table became 
 common even to school boys; before we understood 
 conservation of forces; and before we knew that 
 the light of the candle, when it was blown out, 
 remained right where it was — in the form of 
 potential energy. 
 
 Now we know that the highest proportionate 
 amount paid in wages in any industry is 88%. 
 This is for the construction and repair of steam 
 railroad cars. The proportionate amount paid as 
 wages in the manufacture of malt liquors is only 
 20.2%, that paid for wages in manufacturing 
 
192 ALCOHOL 
 
 patent medicines 15.5%, and that portion doled 
 out to those who manufacture distilled liquors is 
 less than 2%. 
 
 We also know that the capital invested in the 
 liquor traffic, based on the figures of 1912, was 
 $771,516,000. This capital employed but 62,920 
 workers — approximately 81 to every $1,000,000. 
 If employed in textile manufacturing, this same 
 investment would have paid wages to over 445,000 
 workers — more than 7 times as many as altogether 
 are employed in the manufacture and distribution 
 of malt and spirituous liquors. Or, taking the 5 
 great groups of legitimate industry, and averaging 
 their employment of labor, the $771,000,000 of 
 liquor capital would employ at least 5 times the 
 number of workmen that derive a living through 
 liquor. 
 
 So the drinking man maintains the Drink 
 Industry — and nothing else. And the Drink 
 Industry, as we have seen, employs fewer men to 
 the million of capital than any other leading 
 manufacturing interest. 
 
Chapter XVII 
 BREAKING TEE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 
 
 THERE is a cure for every drunkard in the 
 world. For every excessivist, no matter how 
 drink-drenched, how sodden, how hopeless-seeming; 
 no matter how degraded, how soul-seared; no 
 matter what his heredity, his environment, his 
 economic condition; no matter the number of 
 times he has mumbled — with parched, quivering 
 lips, the rosary of his black beads of misery and 
 self-debasement, or tried to pluck the climbing 
 sorrow from the wall of his heart of hearts — 
 somewhere, somehow, by some means — medical or 
 psychical — there is a cure for him. 
 
 The veriest slave, the most debased bondsman 
 of that mocking master that makes a dullard — 
 no, an imbecile — of the world, under wise and 
 skillful care can tear loose from the tentacles of 
 that ferocious polyp that is dragging him to slimy 
 death; he can be saved from this demon who is 
 piping him into the caverns of Hell. 
 
 Yet there is no rose-strewn, lightsome road to 
 
 193 
 
194 ALCOHOL 
 
 abstinence. For the most important necessity for 
 reform is willingness to be reformed, and unless he 
 is willing to make some sacrifice and "stand the 
 gaff" with patience and courage for a while, no 
 drinker can be cured. 
 
 Remember also that the remaking of a man is 
 not the work of a day nor a week — perhaps not 
 of a year. It may require time, and the liberal 
 expenditure of soul-strength before the guerdon is 
 finally won. After having been daily dosed in 
 every drink with apomorphine, or some other 
 emetic base of many "whiskey-cures," one can be 
 sickened to absolute loathing for alcohol. But 
 unless temptation is resisted when the desire 
 returns, as it frequentl}^ does, again and again, no 
 cure can be permanent. 
 
 Nothing which can be "dropped into the coffee," 
 administered in the food, or introduced into the 
 system in any secret way is of the slightest avail 
 in the cure of drunkenness. There is absolutely 
 no treatment that can be given "without the 
 patient's knowledge," that is of the slightest value. 
 For cooperation is required, the physical system 
 must be tuned up, and the alcohol sickness cured 
 — so that later the victim may refrain from drink, 
 or have the moral courage to flee temptation. 
 
BREAKING THE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 195 
 
 It is unfortunate that there is not something 
 that secretly could be given that would arouse the 
 dormant man, and kill the alcoholic craving within 
 him, but such does not exist — all the quacks 
 in Christendom to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 There is nothing that will compel a man, against 
 his will, to quit the use of alcohol. He may be 
 "doped" until he will vomit at the very sight — 
 let alone smell — of liquor. But so soon as he 
 can get alcohol without emetics, and is able to keep 
 it down — which he will be after a trial or two — 
 he knows that he is not cured, and nobody can 
 convince him that he is. 
 
 Every drunkard is a sick man. His tissues are 
 poisoned, his cells are loaded with under-oxydized 
 material, his elimination is imperfect, his nerves 
 have "gone to smash." His circulatory system 
 is affected, and his digestive apparatus is sub- 
 normal. 
 
 Assimilation and metabolism are perceptibly 
 "slowed up" — perceptibly to the trained eye of an 
 expert — and even normal muscle tone is lowered. 
 In short, though he may not know it, the drunkard 
 is a very sick man, and he must be brought to a 
 better condition of health before he can ban from 
 his system the devil of alcoholic desire. 
 
196 ALCOHOL 
 
 All medical means of curing inebriety, it is 
 needless to say, should be entrusted to wise and 
 experienced supervision. The firm restraint and 
 salutary restrictions of the hospital or sanitarium 
 are almost indispensable. A drug patient always 
 "does better" among strangers than among rela- 
 tives or friends whom he can wheedle, cajole, or 
 brow-beat at will. Therefore, a most important 
 adjunct in the cure of inebriety is a gentle, 
 mild-mannered nurse who invariably has her own 
 way. 
 
 That radical and very effective treatment for 
 drug addiction and inebriety, originated by Mr. 
 C. B. Townes, of New York, and described by Dr. 
 Alexander Lambert, has been most successfully 
 employed in thousands of desperate cases of 
 alcoholism, and has high endorsement. It is not 
 adapted to all cases — particularly where grave 
 debility exists, but the man who really desires to 
 be free is freed from his habit — provided that he 
 can be made to realize that he is mentally a trifle 
 unpoised, and that his nervous system is, for a 
 time, unstable, and not fitted to withstand the 
 strain and stress of hard work and worry. 
 
 This treatment, it goes without saying, must be 
 administered under the guidance of a competent 
 
BREAKING THE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 197 
 
 physician. Briefly, Towne and Lambert claim that 
 it is impossible, unless by some miracle of grace, 
 to cure a victim of alcohol while the physical 
 effects of the drug he is using are with him, con- 
 stantly and insidiously undoing the work of rejuve- 
 nation. Therefore, they first secure a thorough 
 elimination of the accumulated poison. This is 
 accomplished by giving the patient generous doses 
 of compound cathartic pills and "blue-mass," fol- 
 low^ed by a vigorous saline laxative. 
 
 This leaves the patient a "little the worse for 
 wear," but free from alcohol craving. For his 
 alcoholized protoplasm has been scoured clean. It 
 is then "up to him" to keep it clean. 
 
 Also, he must be brought to the highest pitch of 
 physical efficiency, by rest, exercise, diet, and a 
 judicious use of tonics. This may require 3 v/eeks 
 or a month — and if physical improvement can be 
 effected, the exhausted and debilitated condition 
 will not tempt to that dangerous "nibbling" and 
 flirting with the old enemy that has proved the 
 undoing of thousands. 
 
 For the excessivist, there is no safe luiddle 
 course. There is no compromise. No one who has 
 ever been an addict can touch alcohol, without the 
 gravest danger of a complete relapse. The first 
 
19B ALCOHOL 
 
 drink — even the tiniest — may start up all the 
 old craving. Alcoliol and the nervous system of 
 one who has been addicted to it are incompatible, 
 for alcohol unites v/ith the brain and nerve fat to 
 form poisonous combinations, which prevent the 
 normal reaction of the brain cells. 
 
 So no confirmed alcoholic can hope ever again 
 to drink "in moderation." He may hold this faint 
 hope, against everything that is told him, but if he 
 yields to the temptation to again try, he is undone. 
 The attempts to nibble have caused the relapse of 
 thousands, who, had they been content to *'let 
 well enough alone/* vrould have remained cured. 
 
 Another remedy, which at first, because of its 
 secret composition, I hesitated to endorse, is 
 Normyl. Yet Dr. F. D. Essen, and other physi- 
 cians of New York, have had extraordinarily 
 successful experiences with it. Also the Normyl 
 Association is practically a philanthropy. 
 
 Physicians who have used Normyl declare that 
 it has not the slightest deleterious effect, can be 
 taken without detention from work, or without 
 resorting to sanitarium confinement, and cures 
 every case that will cooperate toward being and 
 rernyining cured. 
 
 In the sanitarium which the Normyl Association 
 
BREAKING THE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 199 
 
 has established in New York, several hundred 
 cures of alcohol and morphine addiction have been 
 effected, complete failures averaging considerably 
 under 10%. 
 
 Dr. Essen assiu-es me that, if an habitue really 
 desires to be rid of this habit (and the remedy is 
 even more successful in morphine and other nar- 
 cotic addictions than it is with alcoholism) in every 
 instance a cure will follow. 
 
 All desire for drink vanishes with practically the 
 first dose, and it is claimed that the suffering 
 resulting from the withdrawal of the alcohol or 
 opium is negligible. 
 
 Many indi\dduals, without apparent rhyme or 
 reason, periodically "go off" on ''sprees." Their 
 cycle may be a week, or it may be a year or more, 
 but they are as regular in this debauchery as is the 
 precession of the equinoxes. 
 
 ^Vhile this periodic narcotic craving may be a 
 form of mental disease — a symptom of a degenera- 
 tion which may ultimately result in a complete 
 nervous and mental breakdown — it is quite cer- 
 tain that a most important cause for sprees has 
 been overlooked. 
 
 This cause is chronic nicotine poisoning — more 
 particularly affecting cigarette smokers, or pipe or 
 
200 ALCOHOL 
 
 cigar smokers who "inhale." For those addicted 
 to sprees are, in a very large majority of instances, 
 either cigarette smokers or heavy users of tobacco. 
 
 The explanation is that these patients smoke 
 themselves beyond the sedative stage and into a 
 stale of nervousness, then increase their smoking, 
 in a vaiii attem.pt to gain sedation. Finally they 
 become so nervous through tobacco excesses that 
 they require a narcotic to quiet them, when they 
 tarn to our friend, John Barleycorn. 
 
 Their jaded and harassed systems are exceedingly 
 intolerant to alcohol, for, after the first few drinks 
 they are mentally "over the vv^ay." They then 
 decide that they might as well be drunk as be the 
 way they are, so go to the full spree. 
 
 However, if one honestly desires to quit the use 
 of tobacco the cure is comparatively simple. A 
 mouth wash and gargle composed of 
 
 One dram of silver nitrate, 
 30 grains of pulverized alum, 
 2 drams hydrogen dioxide, and 
 1 pint of distilled water 
 
 will do the work. 
 
 Use a small quantity whenever the desire to 
 smoke or chew manifests itself. It is absolutely 
 
BREAKING THE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 201 
 
 harmless, even on continued use — provided of 
 course that it be not swallowed. If this mixture is 
 used faithfully, the attempts to use tobacco will be 
 followed by a most emphatic nausea. Get rid of 
 the tobacco habit if you would get rid of the 
 alcohol habit, for they fit together and complement 
 one another like the tactile fingers and thumb of a 
 pick-pocket. 
 
 The more sugar one eats the less alcohol he 
 drinks. K one's sugar appetite be kept satisfied 
 he is quite unlikely to develop an alcohol appetite. 
 Dr. Andreas F. Christian, of Boston, who has been 
 conducting an exhaustive research into the cause 
 and remedy for the liquor habit, concludes that 
 the richest of ice cream and an abundance of the 
 finest chocolates are the best and surest cure for 
 alcoholism. 
 
 Dr. B. L. Spitzig, of Cleveland, suggests a 
 similar treatment. He finds that in alcoholism 
 there is most generally a positive aversion for 
 sugar. As the supply of alcohol is increased the 
 desire for sugars is correspondingly diminished, 
 until a time when alcohol is taken in preference to 
 carbohydrates. 
 
 This characteristic in the chronic alcoholic is 
 quite general. He rarely uses sugar in coffee, and 
 
202 ALCOHOL 
 
 cares little for pastry and starchy products. Stimu- 
 lating food, rich in condiments, is his mainstay, 
 and his appetite for stimulating drinks is thereby 
 increased. In consequence the body receives a 
 minimum of sugar, and becomes accustomed to 
 more alcohol, which replaces the sugar. 
 
 Therefore, in beginning treatment the diet is 
 modified to contain an abundance of sugar. Cereals 
 with cane sugar, sweet fruits, pastries, chocolates, 
 and ice cream are given. In some instances, owing 
 to a distaste for sugars, Dr. Spitzig suggests that 
 the change should be gradual, to prevent rebellion. 
 In such cases lactose is used, a dram every two 
 hours, given in the form of a medicinal powder, 
 to encourage the psychic effect. 
 
 Later, as the demand for alcohol is palliated, 
 ordinary sugars are taken with avidity. During 
 the entire treatment elimination is increased by 
 every known means; hot drinks, sweat baths, 
 purgatives, etc. The sugars are gradually reduced 
 as the patient resumes a normal condition. 
 
 The weaning from alcohol is accomplished by 
 the substitution of highly sugared liquors, which 
 are rapidly reduced in quantity. Toddies, juleps, 
 and sweet wines yield the best results. Sweetened 
 liquor relieves excessive craving in from 1 to 
 
BREAKING THE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 203 
 
 4 weeks. The average alcoholic omits alcohol 
 after from 3 to 5 days, but a premature withdrawal 
 is to be avoided. 
 
 Also, it is well known that rarely is there found 
 a drunkard who is fond of apples. In fact, it is 
 definitely proven that apples are an antidote for 
 the alcoholic craving. They create a distaste for 
 whiskey, and after one has eaten an apple he 
 cannot relish — and frequently cannot take with 
 any degree of comfort — a drink of liquor. 
 
 Therefore a large organization of serious-minded 
 women of Chicago have just completed arrange- 
 ments for a campaign in which they will fight 
 whiskey drinking with apples. They are confident 
 that the agent which is popularly believed to have 
 caused the fall of the human race may now regen- 
 erate a portion of it. With this organization of 
 women as close observers, Dr. Samuel Bailey, of 
 Iowa, has been experimenting on the anti-rum 
 qualities of apples. During his experiments Dr. 
 Bailey has cured several hundred drunkards by 
 feeding them apples when they wanted a drink. 
 
 Dr. Samuel McComb of the Emanuel Church 
 in Boston, has inaugurated a movement which 
 has met with splendid success among drunkards. 
 Combining the influence of prayer and mental 
 
204 ALCOHOL 
 
 suggestion the Doctor has succeeded in breaking 
 the shackles from scores of most debauched alco- 
 holics. His practice is sound. For modern medical 
 psychology now admits that there is in every man 
 a reserve fund of energy — a fund not commonly 
 utilized — but which, under great necessity, or 
 through the impulse of some overpowering dynamic 
 idea, may be drawn upon for the benefit of the 
 physical, mental, and moral organism. 
 
 A whole-hearted faith in God's healing and a 
 redeeming grace thus becomes the means of tapping 
 this subconscious reservoir of power, and may be 
 the basis of the success of Dr. McComb and others 
 who are faithfully and painstakingly working along 
 these lines. 
 
 Similar results follow psychological treatment at 
 the hands of men like Dr. John D. Quackenbos, of 
 New York, Dr. Boris Sidis and Dr. I. H. Coriat 
 of Boston, of Aschaffenburg, Kraepelin, and others. 
 For powerful suggestion, persistently repeated, fre- 
 quently induces a curative spiritual nausea — a 
 revulsion of soul against even the very odor of 
 alcohol. 
 
 An important matter in any cure for alcoholism 
 is properly regulated diet. Great care must be 
 taken to give all the most easily digested and 
 
BREAKING THE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 205 
 
 nourishing food the patient can utilize — and no 
 more. 
 
 The general health will also be benefited by 
 judicious exercise, plenty of fresh air, day and 
 night, tepid or cold baths — or hot baths at bed- 
 time — and proper mental occupation and divertise- 
 ment. Remember that the more vigorous the 
 physical condition, the less chance for relapse. 
 
 The lasting effects of any treatment are naturally 
 influenced by the environment to which a patient 
 must return. So if the environment is not good, 
 and it is possible to leave it behind, by all means 
 do so. 
 
 Excepting the elderly, or in those with weakened 
 hearts, physical exercise is the very best after- 
 treatment. The responsibilities of one's occupation 
 (unless one happens to be engaged in the brewery 
 or liquor business, in which case he had better seek 
 a less dangerous job) should be resumed as soon as 
 returning strength will permit. This shouldering 
 of responsibility is infinitely better than idleness 
 and the distrust of one's powers which idleness 
 engenders, and serves also to act as a hopeful and 
 powerful suggestion. 
 
 So alcohol addiction is curable. It requires 
 merely that the addict desire with his whole soul 
 
206 ALCOHOL 
 
 to be cured; that a method suited to his individual 
 requirements be selected; and that patient, doctor, 
 and family all work together — in absolute confi- 
 dence that a perfect, permanent result will follow 
 sincere and intelligent effort. 
 
 Yet our chiefest concern should be to prevent 
 rather than cure drunkenness. We have been 
 densely ignorant of the psychological and physical 
 effects of alcohol. We have hitherto known it 
 only in its gross, palpable effects. Now, however, 
 we know it in its less obvious, but not less disas- 
 trous consequences. 
 
 Simply because we feel strong and healthy, 
 because alcoholic drinks are pleasant and afford 
 a savor to our social life which makes their use 
 seemingly indispensable, and because we have 
 seen no immediate ill effects from this use, we have 
 refused to believe alcohol dangerous. 
 
 Now, however, we know better. What use we 
 are to make of this knowledge may be the most 
 important decision of our lives. I can truthfully 
 say that I, personally, have weighed alcohol 
 in the balance, and found it wanting. Calmly 
 and dispassionately, without the slightest desire to 
 proselyte or unduly influence, I pass the results of 
 these studies on to you. 
 
BREAKING THE ALCOHOL SHACKLES 207 
 
 I know that alcohol produces deficiency — in 
 industry, in health and length of life, in physical, 
 mental, and moral well-being. I sincerely hope 
 that you will give the subject careful consideration, 
 and shape your future course in accordance with 
 deliberation and judgment.