infancy, and the chances of begetting feeble-minded or degenerate children, are markedly greater for even moderate drinkers than for abstainers. Children of total abstainers have a great advantage, on the average, in size, stature, bodily vigor, intellectual power; they stand, on the average, between a year and two years ahead in class of the children of moderate drinkers, they have less than half as many eye, ear, and other physical defects. This proved influence of even light drinking upon the vitality and normality transmitted to children should be the most serious of indictments against self-indulgence. Truly the sins of the fathers are visited upon the second and third generation.1 (2) The economic waste is enormous. (a) Over two billion dollars a year were spent by the people of the United States for intoxicating beverages before the amendment was passed. About a hundred million bushels of grain were consumed annually in their production, besides the grapes used for wines. Nor did the money spent for liquors go in any appreciable degree into the pockets of the farmers who raise the grains; less than a thirtieth part found its way to them, the brewers, distillers, and retailers getting about two thirds. The money invested in the beer industry alone was in 1909 over $550,000,000. The importance of our former liquor bill can be realized by a simple computation; it would suffice to pay two million men three dollars a day, six days in the week, year in and year out; it would suffice to build four or five Panama Canals (at $400,000,000) a year. When we reckon up the present liquor bill of the world, a sum many times this, we can see what a frightful waste of man's resources is going on; for not only 1 See Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, vol. IX, p. 234; H. S. Williams, op. cit., pp. 44–47. 2 See Independent, vol. 67, p. 1326; Year-Books of the Anti-Saloon League. For this whole subject of the cost of the liquor trade, see chap. v, in H. S. Warner, op. cit., and the bibliography appended. is there no return in production, but there is a tremendous additional drain of wealth caused indirectly thereby. 1 3 (b) Among the factors in this additional drain of wealth, which must be added to the figures given above in estimating the total financial loss to the community, were: the loss in efficiency of workers through the usually unrealizedtoxic effects of alcohol; the loss of the lives of adult workers due to alcoholic poisoning an annual loss greater than that of the whole Civil War; the support by the State of paupers, two fifths of whom, it is estimated, owed their status to alcoholism; 1 the support by the State of the insane, from a quarter to a half of whom owed their insanity directly or indirectly to alcohol; the support of destitute and deserted children; the maintenance of prisons, of courts, and police - the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that eighty-four per cent of all criminals then under conviction in the correctional institutions of that State committed their crimes under the influence of alcohol.4 When we add to this the still greater numbers of incapables supported by their families and friends, we realize that the national drink bill was really very much greater than the mere sums spent for liquor. Comparative statistics show graphically how strikingly pauperism, crime, and destitution are diminished by prohibition. It is variously estimated that a fourth or a third or more of all acute poverty was due directly or indirectly to alcohol. It is a pity that the financial burden of the war, and the heavy increase in the cost of living, conceal from us the great gain made by stopping this leakage of the national wealth. Bad as conditions now are, they would be far worse without prohibition. (3) The moral harm of alcohol is comparable to its physical and economic harm. 1 See H. S. Williams, op. cit., p. 85 ff. 2 Ibid., p. 63 ff. ♦ Ibid., p. 72 ff. (a) As we noted when considering the value of alcohol, the higher nature is stupefied, leaving the emotions less controlled. The silliness, the irritability, the glumness, the violence, the lust of men are given freer rein. The effect of alcohol is coarsening, brutalizing; we are not our best selves under its influence. The judgment is dulled, the spirit of recklessness is stimulated — an impatience of restraint and a craving for further excitement. Even after the palpable effects of a potation have disappeared, a permanent alteration in the brain remains, which makes it likely that the drinker will "go farther" next time or the time after. The accumulation of such effects leads finally to the complete demoralization of character, to the point where a man's higher nature can no longer keep control over his conduct. This is what is meant by saying that alcohol undermines the will power.1 In particular, sexual sins are more readily committed after drinking; and the gravity of the sex problem is so great that this fact alone justifies the banishment of alcohol, the greatest of sexual stimulants.2 (b) A very large proportion of the crimes committed were committed under the influence of alcohol. In Massachusetts, for example (in 1895), only five per cent of convictions for crime were of abstainers. In general, statistics show that from a half to three quarters of the total amount of crime had drinking for a direct contributing cause. When we add to this the crime-inducing influence of the poverty, illhealth, and immoral social conditions caused by drink, we can form some idea of the moral indictment against alcohol.3 1 See H. S. Williams, op. cit., p. 56 ƒƒ. 2 Cf. Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, p. 189: "Even a slight exhilaration from alcohol relaxes the moral sense and throws a sentimental or adventurous glamour over an aspect of life from which a decent young man would ordinarily recoil; and its continued use stimulates the senses at the very moment when the intellectual and moral inhibitions are lessened." H. S. Warner, op. cit., p. 261 ff. So many other baneful influences have affected our society as a result of the war that the gain through prohibition is not yet as obvious as it will be when social conditions become more normal. But the earlier experience of "dry" vs. "wet" States was conclusive. (c) The liquor trade was one of the most powerful of all "interests" in the corruption of politics.1 It was fired by a grim determination to keep its business from extermination, and always maintained a powerful lobby at Washington and at the State capitals. In many places it had for years a strangle hold on legislation. It allied itself with the other vicious interests that live by exploiting human weakness, it had a vast revenue for the purchasing of votes, and, in the saloon, the easiest of channels for reaching the bribable voter. The fact that, in spite of its power, it has been destroyed in this country is one of the hopeful signs for the future of political democracy. In sum, we can say that the evils caused by alcohol, instead of having been exaggerated, were never until recently sufficiently realized. The old "temperance" reformers, though their data were inadequate, were fundamentally right. What should be the attitude of the individual toward alcoholic liquors? In the light of our present knowledge, the attitude toward liquor demanded of the individual by morality admits of no debate. He may love dearly his wines or his beer, but his enjoyment is won at too dear a cost to himself and others; his support of the liquor trade is very selfish. He has no right to poison himself, to impair his health and efficiency, as even a little drinking will do. He has no right to run the 1 H. S. Warner, op. cit., chap. XI, risk of becoming the slave of alcohol, as so many of the most promising men have become; the effect of the drug is insidious, and no man can be sure that he will be able to resist it. He has no right to spend in harmful self-indulgence money that might be spent for useful ends. He has no right to incur the, however immeasurable, moral and intellectual impairment which is effected by even rather moderate drinking. He has no right to bequeath to his children a weakened heritage of vitality. He has no right, by his example, to encourage others, who may be far more deeply harmed than he, in the use of the drug; "let no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." The influence of every man who is amenable to altruistic motives is needed against liquor, wherever it is now sold; the great advantages gained by the United States in freeing itself from this ancient curse must be shown to the world. It is a genuine hardship to those who have been accustomed to their beer or whiskey to have to give it up. It is a pity that future generations in this country must miss the delights of rare wines and cordials, highballs and cocktails and punches, with their accompaniment of conviviality and good-fellowship. So much of the world's literature is saturated with alcohol! Our children will inevitably have their wistful moments when they will long to taste these now forbidden joys. For this reason it is highly important that, at least for a generation to come, they should be made to realize clearly the evils that made it necessary to banish alcohol. The former Kaiser remarked, a few years before the Great War, that when it came success would belong to the army that used the least alcohol. That army was the American army. In the competition between nations that has ensued the United States has an equally great advantage, if it is to be, for some years, the one great nation of abstainers. |