Social Aspects of Drink: With Special Attention to the Prohibition Argument

I

ALCOHOL is a world-old and well-nigh universal article of consumption. For unnumbered centuries peoples in far-apart countries have habitually used a variety of alcoholic beverages made from grain, fruit, or milk (koumyss, kefir). When the art of distillation had been mastered and finally made a commercial venture, spirits of all kinds became generally available, and, through the improved channels of transportation, reached the uttermost confines of the globe. At the present time, according to Dr. Hartwich, the only ‘alcohol-free’ races are certain aboriginal remnants in Ceylon, Malacca, and among the Indians of South America. The consciousness of dangers (chiefly individual) from the intemperate use of alcohol is also of great antiquity; but it remained for modern times to discover in the abuse of alcohol a social-hygienic problem of the first magnitude. Great wisdom beyond this we have not yet attained.

Our temperance preaching has not wholly emerged from the vituperative stage. It is still the all-absorbing occupation of the reformer to denounce the wickedness and nefarious schemes of the ‘trade.’ But it is not helpful, for vituperation is a form, not of communicating truth, but of self-indulgence.

It is a dull weapon of attack, and bars the way to an objective and passionless consideration, without which progress halts. To a great extent, even the so-called ‘alcohology’ of the latter decades savors of invective and extravagant rhetoric. But, more important, it astounds the critical investigator by the crudity of its methods of investigation, the triviality of much subject-matter, the glaring methodological defects, and the consequent questionableness of its general conclusions. But if evident untruths underlie some of the fundamental conceptions of the present-day systems of temperance doctrine, the protagonists of the status quo in liquor legislation are equally unscientific and guilty of untruths when they prate about the usefulness of alcohol in all its forms, shutting their eyes almost willfully to its menaces.

Like the common run of alcohol literature, the practical temperance policies insisted upon are not based on real knowledge won through methodical observation and intensive study of the social aspects of the drink question. Indeed, our fact basis is amazingly weak. We do not know definitely the extent to which alcohol is abused within any state or any of its civil subdivisions, such as city, village, or rural district. We have no clear conception of the characteristics of the different types of alcoholic persons; we have not penetrated their lives; the kind and amount of injury they do themselves and others are known only in the most general way and have not been ascertained in casu. The development of alcoholism in the individual, and the circumstances of an individual or social character that give rise to and perpetuate it, have not been studied. We declaim about the use of alcohol as a social disease, yet are curiously ignorant of its deeper-lying causes, its manifestations and progression. There is no competent social organ delegated to observe the ravages of this disease and lay bare the many-sided conditions that determine it. In fact, we lack the expertness needed in devising new measures of protection, as well as in tracing the effect against the drink evil of those we have adopted.

Yet the temperance question touches various phases of community life which can be made the object of exact investigation. In this field as elsewhere, legislation must be preceded by accurate information, not only concerning social phenomena—the bad conditions of life — which instigate the reform work, but also about the circumstances that produce the phenomena. Unless such information is gained, all proposals for reform are likely to become one-sided and involve the danger that, in endeavoring to suppress an evident evil, we may originate others less easily discovered and perhaps more threatening.

Of course, the present directors of the temperance movement in our country will not accept this plea; for theirs is the enviable belief of not needing to learn. Are not the children of our forty-eight states taught the precise physiological effects of alcohol in small and larger doses, although the scientist may still grope for the truth? Are not our towns and highways adorned with ‘ posters5 stating in exact percentages the human miseries that flow from intemperance? And are there not traveling exhibits that have ‘scientifically’ charted every social relation into which alcohol enters, so that one may take in at a diagrammatic-statistical glance any fact — from the effect of one glass of beer upon a person’s industrial efficiency to the hereditary influence of parental alcoholism upon the offspring? The finality of the case against alcohol seems indubitable since we are assured, under congressional frank, that the registered mortality due in some way to alcoholism equals the total registered mortality of all but infants for the whole country! Although the temperance question is fundamentally a problem in adjusting social conditions, physiology, medicine, and statistics are called upon, not merely as witnesses, but as judges who have rendered the unalterable verdict against alcohol.

In Europe, far-seeing temperance advocates realize the instability of the ‘scientific’ foundation upon which it has been sought to rear the dogma of universal prohibition. But the leaders in this country continue to misplace emphasis upon statements selected from the teachings of physiologists, medical practitioners, and investigators, as well as upon inferences from social statistics. This appeal to authority carries unreasonable weight with the general public; for as a people we are singularly prone to accept generalizations dressed up in a quasi-scientific garb, when they are given repeated currency by that portion of the press whose chief function it is to spread inaccuracies. Probably Dr. Karl Pearson goes too far in saying, ‘We found that the whole “scientific” basis of the movement [temperance] was worthless.’ Physiology and medicine are invaluable allies in the fight against alcoholism, but not as final arbiters of legislative policies. Nor does the state of our knowledge about the relations of social ailments to drink enable us to prescribe a specific. But reformers assume generally that further pursuit of knowledge is superfluous; and it is therefore necessary to outline the more important ‘findings’ about alcohol resulting from recent authoritative investigations.

II

From the social point of view, the contentions between certain schools of physiology in regard to the precise effect upon the human organism of alcohol in large and smaller quantities is relatively unimportant. Their conclusions of general significance merely reinforce what observation and experience have taught: namely, that alcohol in large quantities operates as a dangerous poison, while in smaller quantities, particularly in certain diluted forms, it may not injure the adult body. The elaborate inquiries made in order to fix the safe minimal dose of alcohol have yielded quite varying results, some placing it at 25 grammes per day, others as high as 100 grammes.

No exact limit can be fixed, for the reaction of the individual to alcohol differs greatly, not only according to age and sex, but according to constitutional peculiarities and acquired qualities connected with the drink habits of the individual. There is no method by which we can measure the degree of individual tolerance to alcohol, and therefore it is impossible to generalize about the safe minimal quality. Then, too, much depends upon the purity of the beverage used, the concentration of alcohol, whether it is consumed at once or at intervals, with meals or before them, during a day’s work or after its close, as well as upon habits of life generally. Again ordinary experience comes to our aid, teaching, among other things, that some adults are peculiarly susceptible to the toxic action of alcohol and should shun it, while others are not injuriously affected when using it in moderation; and that alcohol has no more place in the diet of the young than coffee, tea, and spices.

Also, from the social point of view, the dispute as to whether alcohol is a nutritious substance has only an academic interest and does not cover a real issue. One must accept as incontestable that, as alcohol is burned up in the body, it saves carbohydrates, fat, and albumen, and is therefore to be reckoned among the nutritive substances. Dr. A. Forel, the eminent Swiss temperance leader, admits this, but suggests that alcohol be designated as a ‘ poisonous nutriment,’ whatever that may mean. The fact that alcohol in large quantities has a toxic effect does not detract from its position as a nutriment in the physiological view. Yet to advocate alcohol as an article of consumption for the sake of its food-value is clearly inadmissible. In its most wholesome form, in pure beers, it is a poor substitute for other food. Alcohol does not sound its own warning against use in unduly large quantities by producing that sense of repletion which is characteristic of ordinary foods. Simply the question of cost determines the unwisdom of regarding alcohol in any form as a food, unless it be in very special cases under medical direction.

In the layman it may seem almost presumptuous to dwell on the extensive scientific inquiries made in regard to the effect of smaller quantities of alcohol upon the different functions of the human body. The scientists themselves, however, do not assume to have reached final conclusions on many essential points. Moreover, their conclusions do not harmonize. Thus Dr. Kraeplin, who is perhaps most frequently appealed to as an authority on account of his great contributions to the study of the action of alcohol on the nerve-system and the functions of the brain, believes himself to have demonstrated that, for instance, the ability to add numbers, read signals, set type, and so on, is weakened after the use of alcohol, at any rate after the lapse of some time. In particular does he believe that he has shown that the ' higher’ psychic functions, such as the differentiation of mental impressions, the analysis of thoughts, and the control of expressions of the will, are disturbed even by the use of very minute quantities of alcohol; while the ’lower ’ functions, such as the repetition of a speech or poem, and the ability quickly to find a rhyme and the like, may be heightened by the use of alcohol. But several later investigators, among them Dr. Rüdin, Dr. Joss, and others, have arrived at quite other results, not nearly so damaging, regarding the effect of alcohol on the psychic functions. One must therefore conclude that in these respects the present standpoint of science does not permit hard-andfast assertions of a general nature. This is particularly true in regard to the effect of alcohol on the more subtle psychic functions. Latterly investigators have begun to ask whether alcohol, in inhibiting certain functions and setting others free, may not in many instances perform a beneficent rather than a harmful service.

Few individuals, however, allow their personal habits to be swayed by the qualified dicta of scientists. Alcohol has become one of the most favored and widely used means of enjoyment because of its effect upon the subjective condition of being. Taken moderately, alcoholic beverages diminish the sense of lassitude, still the feeling of discontent and disquietude, heighten self-esteem, and unlock the doors to a livelier communication with one’s fellow beings. The reasons why men drink thus also point to the deepest source of the drink peril. It has been asked if a higher complex civilization can forego the use of alcoholic stimulants without danger to its continuous development. But that question at least is so far beside the mark, as from a physiological point of view alcohol is no more a necessity of life than tobacco or coffee; and this fact alone cannot decide the stand of society toward public temperance policies. Unnumbered sober-living people, who are capable of judgment, believe from personal experience that the use of alcoholic beverages benefits them in different ways. Science recognizes this and can at present make no other reply than that given by the seventy physiologists at the Physiological Congress held in Cambridge, in 1898: —

‘Briefly, none of the exact results hitherto gained can be appealed to as contradicting, from a purely physiological point of view, the conclusions, which some persons have drawn from their daily common experience, that alcohol so used (taken in diluted form, in small doses, as indicated by the popular phrase, “moderate use of alcohol”) may be beneficial to their health.’

III

Merely the denial of physiologists that alcohol, in the form of beverages commonly used, is to be regarded purely as an injurious substance or as a ‘poison,’ cannot determine our attitude toward prohibition. We are told to weigh the pleasures or benefits of drink against the misfortunes and social ill-being it causes. Yet, though evidence tell overwhelmingly against alcohol, there still confront us these two fundamental questions: Can national prohibition stop or in a notable degree ameliorate the evils resulting from alcoholism? Can the result be accomplished with greater certainty and less risk through other means? The second question will be answered in the last article of this series. The reply to the first must be based on accurate knowledge of the kinds and extent of the injury wrought by the abuse of alcohol, for otherwise we cannot decide wisely about the protective measures to be taken or perceive the sacrifices it may be necessary to make.

Within the slender frame of a single article one can hardly attempt more than the most summary consideration of the social conditions and phenomena seemingly bound up with the alcohol problem. Perhaps none is more fundamental than that of the relation of alcohol to heredity. Many have come to regard alcohol as one of the most important causes of a family degeneration which manifests itself in different ways. The evidence is culled from numerous observations of families of alcoholists, in which the children exhibit more or less pronounced indications of mental and physical defect. Some go further and hold alcohol responsible for a diminished reproductiveness, the frequency of miscarriage, and increased infantile mortality. Doubtless the abuse of alcohol is not without influence in these respects; and most investigators agree to the extent that mentally or physically abnormal children are more frequently found in the families of drinkers than elsewhere. But opinions diverge sharply on the interpretation of the causes that determine such conditions.

Perhaps no modern investigator has subjected the mass of material relating to this subject to such a fair, thorough, and exhaustive test as Dr. Ulrik Quensel, Professor of Pathology at the University of Upsala.¹ The writer therefore feels safe in setting forth his judgment on the scientific value of the conclusions reached by writers like Bezzola, Bunge, Forel, Gruber, Legrain, Laitinen, Saleeby, Helenius, and a host of less-known spokesmen for theories about the race-destroying effects both of acute and of chronic alcoholism.

Dr. Quensel, in summing up, considers whether the a priori assumable direct effect of alcohol in poisoning the sex-cells and their heredity-bearing substance, or the indirect effect of alcoholism on the family and the environment in which the children are reared, is of the greater significance. He rejects the theory, advanced by Forel and others, of a direct destructive effect of alcohol on the germ-plasm, in cases of both acute and chronic alcoholism, saying, ‘The facts hitherto brought forward do not constitute binding evidence of the general validity of the theory.’ Its theoretical possibilities he does not deny. In particular, moreover, he is skeptical as to the opinion that ‘ even a moderate use of alcohol or a single accidental intoxication, by its direct effect on the germ-plasm, can cause changes transmissible to the offspring.’ But he is not blind to the possibility that a chronic misuse of alcohol may have an injurious effect on the organs of reproduction.

It is frequently the case, says Dr. Quensel, that the alcoholic himself has an inherited psychopathic tendency which made him a drinker in the first instance, and which eventually may be transmitted to his children. The statistical literature so largely called upon to prove the transmission of degeneracy and certain forms of mental disease through alcohol, he dismisses by citing the words of the eminent medical statistician, Dr. Weinberg, who says, ‘Almost everything remains to be done to produce exact workable statistics free from objections.’

Of course. Dr. Quensel is not oblivious to the manifold indirect effects alcoholism may have upon family life, and its consequences for the children. The obvious poverty resulting from alcoholism and the associated unhygienic conditions of living, hardly need mention; but justly to apportion the exact value of all such influences in the individual instance is almost insuperably difficult.

According to Dr. Quensel, we do not know definitely ‘that alcohol, as such, diminishes reproductiveness.’ The frequently excessive infantile mortality in the families of alcoholics, he finds may be due to a congenital weakness in the children, which nevertheless may also be explained by the untoward outer conditions referred to. The assumption that a psychic abnormality in the children of drunkards, especially in the form of feeble-mindedness, idiocy, and epilepsy, results from the parental abuse of alcohol, he regards skeptically, stating that the causation in this form of degeneracy is exceedingly complicated and not yet demonstrable. On the other hand, he believes that the indirect influences of alcoholism bear widely upon the development of the children, and may suffice to make its progress more or less abnormal.

The prohibitionist conception of alcoholism as the most potent race-destroying agency is therefore wholly untenable.

The Swedish committee of physicians concludes its chapter on alcohol and heredity as follows: ‘To speculate about alcohol as a cause of the degeneration or dying out of whole nations, is under these circumstances unjustifiable, at least in case one bases its influence upon an assumed effect of the individual on the offspring. That alcohol through its social consequences under certain conditions, for instance among aborigines, may bring a people to the brink of destruction, is certain. But in regard to European civilized peoples — an impartial investigation of their relation to alcohol seems to favor the hypothesis that “the organ of heredity,” perhaps through selection, has acquired the ability to protect itself against alcohol, rather than the popular assumption that this organ — on account of its supposed fine structure — is especially exposed to all the poisons circulating within the body and thereby surrenders the generation to destructive agencies of all kinds.’ ²

IV

Allied to the basic question of alcohol as a direct factor in degeneracy is that of its position as a cause of insanity. The popular picture of its importance in this respect is much overdrawn; and for this exaggeration the propagandist temperance literature is responsible. As a rule, the nerve and mental ailments of alcoholic origin are clearly distinguishable. This is true, for instance, of alcoholic polineuritis, which sometimes is associated with mental disturbances. Alcoholic hallucinations and delirium tremens, the commonest form of insanity caused by drink, are easily recognized. Of less certain etiology are rarer forms of derangement such as ‘alcoholic paranoia.’

The causative relation of alcohol to other forms of mental disease is even more obscure. In general, the abuse of alcohol appears symptomatically in a number of dissimilar psychoses, such as dementia praecox, maniac and paralytic conditions of exaltation, and others. It is accepted that alcoholism may contribute directly or indirectly to upset the psychic balance of persons predisposed to mental disease and thereby help to give it form. The whole case can be put briefly in this way: The mental diseases occurring in intemperate persons are partly of a specific character, partly those in which alcoholism is contributory, and partly those in which it must be regarded less as a cause than as an expression of the abnormal psychic constitution which becomes more clearly revealed by mental disease.

Much of the flatulent statistical material invoked to prove that alcohol is a most prolific source of insanity is of the imaginative or made-to-order variety. The United States Census report on the insane in hospitals shows alcoholic psychoses to be the diagnosis in but 10.1 per cent of the whole number of patients admitted to all hospitals for the insane during 1910. Yet the inference that none of the persons involved would have become insane except for the abuse of alcohol is not at all permissible. Quite apart from any inclination to exaggerate, and apart from a frequently antiquated classification of mental diseases, the average hospital diagnostician does not or cannot procure the data which invariably enable him to determine whether alcoholism is of a mere incidental kind and a symptom of an abnormal make-up or an already existing mental disease, or a true etiological factor.

In curious contrast to the abovementioned percentage of alcohol psychoses in all the hospitals for the insane in the United States, is the result of an investigation made in 1915 under the authority of the Massachusetts State Board of Insanity. It relates to 793 cases in the State Hospital for the Criminal Insane. Of this number, no less than 340 were originally committed from the so-called State Farm, to which chiefly drunkards, tramps, and others of the same strain are sent; the remainder for the greater part being committed from other penal institutions. Thus the character and past of the inmates would seem to give promise of yielding high percentages of alcoholic psychoses. Yet the ‘ probable diagnosis agreed upon’ (by the competent alienist in charge of the investigation), in conference with ‘the Superintendent and other members of the staff,’ discloses chronic alcoholic insanity in 8.8, acute alcoholic insanity in .3, chronic alcoholism in .1, and feeblemindedness plus acute alcoholic insanity in .1 per cent of all the cases, or a total of 9.3 per cent with stated alcoholic psychoses. Such figures should at least make one very cautious about accepting current statistics purporting to establish alcohol as probably the chief causative factor in insanity.

It is finally to be remarked that mental diseases directly attributable to alcohol as a rule pass quickly away. This is particularly true of delirium tremens, and also of hallucinations. Alcoholism, especially in large cities, is ‘certainly the cause of a large number of mental diseases, but only exceptionally of those which in popular parlance are designated by that name; and as alcoholic mental derangements are of a temporary character and due to a certain outward and not insuperable cause, they do not have such serious consequences either for the individual patient or for society, as commonly have the other mental diseases.’

The medical literature on alcohol as a factor in disease is perhaps more prolific than conclusive. To begin with, the effect of the abuse of alcohol on the human organism is of such a character that froma pathological-anatomical point of view it is hardly permissible to designate specific diseases as being of purely alcoholic origin. In other words, the disease changes which occur in different organs, and which are more or less conditioned by the abuse of alcohol, should not be regarded as peculiar and independent manifestations of disease, for theymaybedueto several other causes; they are not necessarily characteristic of drunkards, since alcohol is only one of their etiological factors. Some of the ‘approved textbooks’ quite overlook this truth.

Of course, the question is not of a moderate use of alcoholic beverages, for this is conceived to mean one without deleterious effect upon the condition of health. That some persons react unfavorably to alcohol in any form and in the smallest quantities, usually points to a psychopathic condition or to a peculiar nervous make-up. An analogous example is that of otherwise healthy persons who, for instance, cannot use tobacco and coffee without disagreeable consequences, or who are ‘poisoned’ by eating certain foods.

The immoderate use of alcoholic drink frequently leaves unmistakable traces of its action, but may also be very obscure in its effects. The relationship between excessive drink habits and ill-health is made evident also from the fact that, after a period of complete abstinence, certain notable symptoms of physical derangement to which drinkers are subject may wholly disappear. Moreover, continued abuse of alcohol may reveal symptoms of disease, as well as changes in different organs, that are objectively demonstrable. But the positive connection between alcohol and disease can as a rule be determined only when a complication of different disease-symptoms has made its appearance, or when a single manifestation of disease can be viewed in the light of a previous abuse of alcohol.

Aside from this, ordinary experience tells us that through the economic conditions it creates, and by impairing one’s vitality and in other ways lowering the power of resistance, habitual alcoholism predisposes and exposes to disease. The moral aspect of the case is a different story and does not belong to the present discussion.

The insistence of current anti-drink literature that alcohol is a direct cause of certain diseases makes it desirable to mention briefly what deductions medical science appears to warrant. Among infectious diseases the greatest attention has been devoted to pneumonia in its relation to the drink habit. Many medical statisticians have endeavored to show an excessive mortality among alcoholic persons from this disease. Its fatality when complicated with delirium tremens is well known. But the latest and most extensive statistical investigations do not point to a marked difference in the proportion of deaths as between alcoholists and others who are stricken by pneumonia, especially when the relatively rare cases of delirium tremens are excluded. In other words, and in general, the evidence available is not of the supposed conclusive character.

A similar status exists in regard to tuberculosis. The common assumption that drinkers are particularly exposed and more quickly succumb to pulmonary tuberculosis than other persons does not always agree with direct observations; and the statistical inquiries made in this field are neither so extensive nor so complete as to make them authoritative. It does not suffice merely to ascertain the alcoholic habits of tuberculous persons; the investigations must be made to include large numbers of persons who abuse liquor generally, in order to ascertain the frequency of tuberculosis among them. The subject is still obscure.

The exceedingly common conditions of disease due to a hardening of the arteries have been made the subject of an unusual amount of research, but without establishing the exact rôle played by alcohol as a ‘cause.' All one can say safely is that, as in many other manifestations of disease, the tendency is to exaggerate rather than to minimize the effect of alcohol.

Cirrhosis of the liver is habitually designated as specifically a ‘drunkard’s disease.’ The experimental investigations made are very far from justifying this. One thing only can be said with a degree of finality: that excessive drinking predisposes to this particular disease as to several others. It would carry us far beyond the scope of this article to mention even cursorily the different bodily ailments in their possible relation to alcoholism.

The actual mortality due to drink cannot be stated. American statistics on this point, also, must be received with great reserve, because they avowedly do not attempt to account for the facts. European statistics are not of general applicability; they seem to indicate an excessive mortality within certain occupations in which alcoholism is most likely to be prevalent, and are in harmony with everyday observation and experience. This field of statistics is largely unworked.

The returns of certain life-insurance companies are widely used for the purpose of proving the greater longevity of abstainers than of moderate drinkers. The classifications followed, however, have been so unsatisfactory and open to possible errors that the conclusions drawn are chiefly of speculative interest. Beyond doubt, the matter at issue can be ascertained, but only after years of patient labor of much more intensive and continued kind than any hitherto attempted. The material presented for this country has been singularly unsatisfactory because of the loose way in which it has been collected and presented. Necessarily, no proof is needed to show that the expectation of life is shortest among the habitually intemperate.

V

Undeniably, the abuse of drink results in more or less permanent economic distress, and even a moderate use in the individual case may spell an indefensible waste. Citations of ‘ national drink bills,’ however, are not especially impressive evidence on this point, since it cannot be shown that money spent for liquor would invariably be saved were the lawful opportunity for purchase cut off. Moreover, it is demonstrable that the sum spent annually in the United States on different articles of luxury, such as tobacco, confectionery, soda, tea, coffee, and many others, far exceeds the total sum expended for alcoholic beverages.³

We know then that economic injury wrought by alcohol is very great, but lack definite information about its extent and manifestations in different places and in the different strata of society. Efforts to state statistically the relation between poverty and drink, particularly those of earlier date, are in part faulty and therefore misleading. Whenever the investigators found indications of the drink habit, it was set down as a cause or probable cause. But to-day it is understood that the scientific investigator must inquire, not only to what extent the individual constitutional defectiveness causes both alcoholism and poverty, but also how far alcoholism results from distress occasioned by a variety of economic and social conditions. The results, for instance, of the investigation into the relation between poverty and drink made by the Committee of Fifty, which have been received as authoritative, and for which the writer had large responsibility, doubtless need to be revised in the light of modern teachings. All recent facts brought forward by social workers and investigators affirm this. Ignorance about the proportion of distress attributable to excessive use of drink we share with nearly every other civilized country. The most recent study of the subject is one just published by the Alcohol Commission of Norway and made by the Central Statistical Bureau of that country. The inquiry embraced all persons who received public poor relief in 1910. In the cities, drink is stated to have been the chief cause of distress in 4.8, a contributing cause in 1.8, habitual drunkenness during earlier years a cause in 2 per cent of all cases, — or a total of 8.6 per cent. The corresponding numbers for the rural district were 1.2, 0.8, and 2.5 per cent, or a total of 4.5 per cent. How far percentages for this country would correspond cannot be stated.

The technical and inherent difficulties of these inquiries are so great that mostly a dead statistical material results, which, however, may be useful in refuting popular fallacies. Even if it remains uncharted, the large economic misery caused by alcoholism cannot escape attention. Indirectly, it effects economic injury by impairing the physical and moral capacity for securing improved conditions of living; and a lessened demand for better things prevents social development generally from attaining higher levels. Directly, the abuse of alcohol leads to conditions of disease, loss of earning power, and unwillingness to labor. Permanent work-shyness is not under consideration, — for that has been shown to result from psychic defects acquired through mental ailments rather than from alcoholism itself, — but that idleness which frequently occurs after a periodic or sporadic ‘celebration.’

Cumulative evidence to show that the habitual use of intoxicants during work hours, even if it does not degenerate into drunkenness, tends to low’er one’s efficiency, is surely not needed. Alcohol and work do not belong together. How far even minute quantities of alcohol retard the normal responsiveness of muscle or mind when called upon for definite tasks is another question. So far experiments with the time-reaction of persons under the influence of certain quantities of alcohol and without it, cannot be regarded as conclusive; they have not been carried out on a sufficient scale to warrant generalizations, or with due regard to the tolerance toward alcohol on the part of the object of the experiment, or with the necessary freedom from psychic influences.

As a factor in industrial accidents, the abuse of liquor or intoxication by no means occupies the place popularly ascribed to it. The widely published statement that drink causes more than one half of all the industrial accidents in the United States is a fabrication and an absurdity. After a careful summing up of all available official data on this subject, Mr. Gustavus Myers says: ‘The returns show that deliberate recklessness or intoxication is not frequent as the cause of accidents, and in fact is so exceedingly slight as not to require serious consideration in the analysis of the immense number of accidents occurring in the United States annually.’⁴ The relation of drink to industrial accidents has recently been given attention in a study made in this country under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. It was found, among other things, that both output and accident immunity in factories vary inversely to fatigue. In the fourth hour of a working spell, both output and accident immunity appear at a low ebb as compared with the earlier hours. In endeavoring to find an explanation of the rise in accidents in the fourth hour of the morning and afternoon spells, the investigator refers to the drinking of alcohol before starting the spell as the only other possible cause (than fatigue). He says, ‘This explanation has been advanced by the Scientific Temperance Federation of Boston, and taken up by certain employers. To prove this contention, however, it would have to be shown, first, that the most debilitating effect of alcohol on control occurs just about four hours after the drinking, and not earlier or later, and consequently that such alcohol drinking is a regular habit among the workers.' The first point is of course not established either scientifically or from everyday experience. ‘All that we can say for certain is that if alcohol is taken at all in large quantities, the tension and muscular control that avoids accidents is lost immediately and in the first hour.’ The second, namely, that alcohol drinking is a regular habit among the workers, the investigator says, ‘can certainly not be established at all in some of our records.’⁵

VI

The assurance with which intemperance is held responsible for the mass of criminality has at any rate the merit of being quite natural. When an offense is committed in a state of intoxication or by an habitual user of strong drink, the causal relations seem unmistakable, even inevitable, no matter how infinitely complicated the problem appears to the criminologist. The many men and women who populate our minor penal institutions on account of habitual drunkenness may be dismissed briefly. An unintelligent community may persist in regarding public intoxication as a crime and punish it accordingly; alienists have shown that the greater proportion of habitual inebriates of this class are congenitally defective, and that drink is but a symptom of their pitiful state. But they figure heavily in our prison returns, and provide the less conscientious reformer with a plausible reason for incontinent speech.

Also in case of well-defined criminality, it seems easy to fix a relation between it and alcohol, provided we are willing to accept the personal statements of offenders at their face value. It is characteristic of humanity generally, and particularly of the criminal, to offer excuses for wrong-doing; and when questioned about his drink habits he eagerly offers them as a palliating explanation of his offense. Thus it happened not long ago that more than a thousand convicts in the Eastern Penitentiary of Philadelphia declared drink to have precipitated their downfall, and solemnly petitioned for the enactment of national prohibition! The affair would not deserve serious mention except as a sample of the evidence offered, and doubtless accepted by many, as proof of the intimacy between drink and criminality.

Many crimes are known to be committed by persons while intoxicated or because they are intoxicated, especially those against the person. But the majority of crimes are offenses against property, which for their success require other habits than those of the confirmed drunkard. Those who prey upon society as gangsters, burglars, pickpockets, and gunmen are far more likely to be drug fiends than alcoholics. Police annals abundantly testify to this, as does the experience of those who are set as guardians over convicts. These are commonplace and rather superficial observations.

Two circumstances refute the popular view of the intimate causal relation between alcohol and criminality. One is that thousands are annually committed to reformatory institutions at so tender or youthful an age that the drink habit, if indulged in at all, cannot yet have become fixed. At most there might be a question, in such cases, of parental alcoholism, which by affecting the moral as well as the mental and physical stamina of the children may predispose them to a criminal career. At this point, however, the evidence conflicts with the second circumstance: namely, that the young delinquents, particularly those of our greatest centres of population, are extensively recruited from two races, the Hebrew and Italian, which are acknowledged to be among the least alcoholized in the world.

Modern tests have proved beyond peradventure that among both juvenile delinquents and adult criminals many are feeble-minded. One may be dubious about the extraordinarily high percentages of such abnormal individuals found by certain investigators, and refuse to accept generalizations; yet there is a multitude of offenders who may be given to drink, but in whom the habit signalizes a constitutional defect and is not the cause of a more or less irresponsible criminality. How far in these instances parental alcoholism affords an explanatory moment is unknown. Because the earlier statistical inquirers were oblivious to the presence of much feeble-mindedness in the criminal population, their findings are largely vitiated. So far from having proved the proportion in which drink is responsible for crime, the question still confronts us: Assuming that alcohol had never existed, how many and which of the criminal acts perpetrated during a given period would not have been committed?

In the present heated state of public opinion about the drink situation, he who attempts to differentiate the chaff of exaggeration from the known truth, in writing of its social aspects, must expect to be stigmatized as an advocate of drink. To the open-minded, however, the basic consideration is not how one may apportion the precise percentages of injury done directly or indirectly by drink, — the evil is patent enough, — but rather to learn by what means it most surely can be abated. And they will realize that to fashion safeguards to meet supposed social conditions not in consonance with the facts, is to court an unavoidable disappointment which can serve only to make the path of reform more difficult.