CHAPTER XVI
THE ALCOHOL PROBLEM
OF all the problems relating to health and efficiency there is none graver than that of the narcotic-stimulants. With the exception of tobacco, which is probably, for adults, but mildly deleterious, their use is fraught with danger, both physical and moral; beyond the narrowest limits it is certainly baneful, while it is as yet an open question whether even a very slight use is not distinctly harmful. The exact physiological effects of the several narcotic-stimulants are different, but they are alike in stimulating certain activities and depressing others; and their attraction for men is similar. Opium, morphine, and cocaine are more powerful drugs, and more inherently dangerous; but alcohol is much the most widely used and so most productive of evil. The hypodermically used narcotics need not be here discussed; for although they can give a far keener pleasure than alcohol, the penalty they inflict is more evident. Moreover, since their sale is not pushed by such powerful interests as continually stimulate the use of alcohol, they can, by the vigilant enforcement of existing laws, be readily removed from any general use. We turn, then, to the consideration of the one which has got a universal hold on the imagination and social habits of men, the only one that constitutes at present a serious and complicated problem.
What are the causes of the use of alcoholic drinks?
(1) We may dismiss at once the suggestion that alcoholic liquors are drunk for the pleasantness of their taste or for their food value. To some slight extent these factors enter in; but neither is important. The taste for them is for most men an acquired taste; and with so many other delicious drinks to be had, especially in recent years, drinks that are far less expensive and without their poisonous effects, it is safe to say that the mere taste of them would not go far toward explaining the lure they have for men. As to their food value, there are those who justify themselves on the score of the nutrition they are getting from their wine or beer. But careful experiments have shown that the food value of alcohol is slight; and certainly, for nutrition received, these are among the most expensive foods, to be ranked with caviar and pate de foie gras. Beer is the most nutritious of the alcoholic drinks; but the same amount of money spent on bread would give about thirty times the nutrition, and a more all-round nutrition at that. Alcoholic liquors as food are, as has been said, like gunpowder as fuel very costly and very dangerous. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, Alcohol, p. 133; H. S. Warner, Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem, p. 80, and bibliography, p. 95.]
(2) A much commoner plea for drinking rests upon its sociability. But this is a matter of convention which can readily enough be altered. There is nothing inherently more sociable in the drinking of wine than in the drinking of grape-juice, or coffee, or chocolate, or tea. Indeed, one may well ask why the chief social bond between men should consist in drinking liquids side by side! Games and sports, in which wit is pitted against wit, or which bring men together in happy cooperation, together with the great resource of conversation, are more socially binding than any drinks. There will, indeed, be a temporary social hardship for many abstainers until the custom is generally broken up; one runs the risk of being thought by the heedless a prig and a Puritan. But that is a small price to pay for one's health and one's influence on others.
(3) More important than any of these causes is the craving for a stimulant. The monotony of work, the fatigue toward the end of the day, the severity of our Northern climate, the longing for intenser living, lead men to seek to apply the whip to their flagging energies. This stimulus to the body is, however, largely if not wholly, illusory. The mental-emotional effects, noted in the following paragraph, give the drinker the impression that he is physically fortified; but objective tests show that, after a very brief period, the dominant effect upon the organism is depressant. The apparent increase in bodily warmth, so often experienced, is a subjective illusion; in reality alcohol lowers the temperature and diminishes resistance to cold. Arctic explorers have to discard it entirely. The old idea of helping to cure snake bite, hydrophobia, etc, by whiskey was sheer mistake; the patient has actually much less of a chance if so drugged. Only for an immediate and transitory need, such as faintness or shock, is the quickly passing stimulating power of alcohol useful; and even for such purposes other stimulants are more valuable. Reputable physicians have almost wholly ceased to use it. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 4, 124-127; H. S. Warner, op. cit, pp. 87]
(4) The one real value of alcohol to man has been the boon of stimulating his emotional and impulsive life, bringing him an elevation of spirits, drowning his sorrows, helping him to forget, helping to free his mind from the burden of care, anxiety, and regret. As William James, with his unerring discernment, wrote twenty-five years ago: "The reason for craving alcohol is that it is an unaesthetic, even in moderate quantities. It obliterates a part of the field of consciousness and abolishes collateral trains of thought." [Footnote: Tolstoy also hit the nail on the head in his little essay, Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?] This use, in relieving brain-tension, in bringing a transient cheer and comfort to poor, overworked, worried, remorseful men, is not to be despised. Dull lives are vivified by it, a fleeting anesthesia of unhappy memories and longings is effected, and for the moment life seems worth living.
Without considering yet the physical penalty that must be paid for this evanescent freedom, we may make the obvious remark that it is a morally dangerous freedom. As the Odyssey has it, "Wine leads to folly, making even the wise to love immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent." Alcohol slackens the higher, more complicated, mental functions-our conscience, our scruples, our reason- and leaves freer from inhibition our lower passions and instincts. We cannot afford thus to submerge our better natures, and leave the field to our lower selves; it is a dangerous short cut to happiness. A far safer and more permanently useful procedure for the individual would be so to live by his reason and his conscience that he would not need to stupefy them, to forget his life as he is shaping it from day today. And the lesson to the community is so to brighten the lives of the poor with normal, wholesome pleasures and recreations, so to lift from them the burdens of poverty and social injustice, that they will not so much need to plunge into the grateful oblivion of the wine-cup.
(5) The most tenacious hold of the alcohol trade lies, however, in two things not yet enumerated. The one is, that much use of alcohol creates a pathological craving for it; the man who is accustomed to his beer or whiskey is restless and depressed if he cannot get it, and will sacrifice much to still for the nonce that insatiable longing. The other and even more important fact is, that the sale of liquor is immensely profitable to the manufacturers and sellers. The fighters for prohibition have to encounter the desperate opposition of those who have become slaves to the drug-many of whom may never get intoxicated, and would resent the term "slaves," but who have formed the abnormal habit and cannot without discomfort get rid of it. They have to meet the still fiercer hostility of those who are making money from the sale of liquor and do not intend to let go their opportunity. What are the evils that result from alcoholic liquors?
The one real value of alcohol, we have said, lies in its temporary mental effects. It raises the hedonic tone of consciousness; it brings about, when taken in proper amounts, the well-known happy-go-lucky, scruple-free, expansive state of mind. What now is the price that must be paid for its use?
(1) The physical harmfulness of even light drinking is considerable.
(a) Alcohol, even in slight doses, as in a glass of wine or beer, has poisonous effects upon some of the bodily functions, which are clearly revealed by scientific experiment. [Footnote: See, for one testimony out of very many in medical literature, an article by Dr. Herbert McIntosh in the Journal of Advanced Therapeutics for April, 1912, p. 167: "Alcohol and ether are the two great enemies of the electrochemical properties of the salts necessary to organic life." He speaks of "paralysis of the vaso-constrictor nerves," "inhibition of the cortical centers," etc.] Hence the temporary cheer must be paid for with usury by a much longer depression, resulting from the poisonous effects of alcohol upon the body. A jolly evening is followed by the familiar symptoms of the morning after. The extent of the physical and mental depression caused is not always realized, because it is spread out over a considerable period of time and may not be acute; a healthy person can stand a good deal without being conscious of the ill effects. But they are there. In bodily vigor, and so in mental buoyancy, the abstainer is IN THE END better off than if he drank even a little, or seldom.
(b) Careful and repeated experiments seem to show that even a very little drinking-a glass of beer or wine a day- decreases the capacity for both muscular and mental work. This loss of ability is not usually perceptible to the drinker; he often feels an illusory glow of power; but he cannot do as much. A bottle of beer a day means an appreciable loss in working efficiency. [Footnote: Accounts of the experiments will be found in H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 5-23, 128, 137; H. S. Warner, op. cit, p. 116. They had some realization of this truth even in the days of the Iliad. Hector says, "Bring me luscious wines, lest they unnerve my limbs and make me lose my wonted powers and strength.">[
(c) Even a moderate use of alcohol increases liability to disease and shortens the chances of life. In any case of exposure to or contraction of disease, the total abstainer has a proved advantage over even the light drinker. The British life insurance companies reckon that at the age of twenty a total abstainer has an average prospect of life of forty-four years, a temperate regular drinker a prospect of thirty-one years, and a heavy drinker of fifteen years. Many other factors enter into the individual situation, of course; we know many cases where inveterate drinkers have lived to a ripe old age; it takes a great deal to break the iron constitutions of some men. But averages tell the story. An authority on tuberculosis states that "if for no other reason than the prevention of tuberculosis, state prohibition would be justified" The use of alcohol predisposes the body to many kinds of disease; and according to conservative figures, approximately seventy thousand deaths yearly in the United States are caused by alcoholism and diseases that owe their grip to the use of alcohol. Besides this, a great deal of insanity and chronic invalidism, and a large proportion of deaths after operations, are due to this cause. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 25- 43, 149, 150; H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap. IV, and bibliography at end.]
(d) The chances of losing children at 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. [Footnote: See Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, vol. IX, p. 234; H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 44-47.]
(2) The economic waste is enormous:
(a) Nearly, if not quite, two billion dollars a year are spent by the people of the United States for intoxicating beverages. Between fifty and seventy-five million bushels of grain are consumed annually in their production, besides the grapes used for wines. Nor does 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 finds 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. [Footnote: 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.] The importance of the national 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 total 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 is there no a tremendous additional drain of wealth caused indirectly thereby.
(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, are: the loss in efficiency of workers through the- usually unrealized- toxic 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, owe their status to alcoholism; [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 85] the support by the State of the insane, from a quarter to a half of whom owe their insanity directly or indirectly to alcohol; [Footnote: Ibid, p. 63] the support of destitute and deserted children; [Footnote: Ibid, p. 89 ] the maintenance of prisons, of courts, and police - the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that eighty-four per cent of all criminals under conviction in the correctional institutions of that State committed their crimes under the influence of alcohol. [Footnote: Ibid, p. 72] When we add to this the still greater numbers of incapables supported by their families and friends, we realize that the national drink bill is 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 is due directly or indirectly to alcohol. Our municipalities are always poor; all sorts of needed improvements are blocked for lack of funds. If this leakage of the national wealth can be stopped we shall be able with the money saved to create a radically different and higher civilization.
(3) The moral harm of alcohol is comparable to its physical and economic harm.
(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. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 56] In particular, most sexual sins are committed after drinking; and the gravity of the sex problem is so great that this fact alone would justify the banishment of alcohol, the greatest of sexual stimulants. [Footnote: 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.">[
(b) A very large proportion of the crimes committed are 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 has drinking for a direct contributing cause. When we add to this the crime-inducing influence of the poverty, ill health, and immoral social conditions caused by drink; we can form some idea of the moral indictment against alcohol. [Footnote: H. S. Warner, op. cit, p. 261.]
(c) The liquor trade is the most powerful of all "interests" in the corruption of politics, one of the most demoralizing phases of our American life. [Footnote: H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap. XI.] The saloon power is in politics with a grim determination to keep its business from extermination. It is able to throw the votes of a large body of men as it wills. It maintains a powerful lobby at Washington and at the state capitals. In many places it has had a strangle hold on legislation. The trade naturally tends to ally itself with the other vicious interests that live by exploiting human weakness-the gamblers, the fosterers of prostitution, the keepers of vile "shows"; it has a vast revenue for the purchasing of votes, and, in the saloon, the easiest of channels for reaching the bribable voter. Corrupt political machines have been glad to use its support, and have derived a large measure of their strength there from. Were the liquor trade destroyed, the greatest obstacle in the way of political reform would be removed. In sum, we can say that the evils caused by alcohol, instead of having been exaggerated, have never until very recently been sufficiently realized. The half hath not been told.
What should be the attitude of the individual toward alcoholic liquors?
In the light of our present knowledge, the attitude toward liquor demanded by morality of the individual 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 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 stumbling-block 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, to counteract its lure; we must create a strong public sentiment and make it unfashionable and disreputable to drink. Happily the tide of liquor-drinking, which has been rising rapidly in the last half- century, owing to the increase in prosperity, the great influx of immigrants from liquor-drinking countries, and the stimulation of the trade by the highly organized liquor industry, has at last, by the earnest efforts of enlightened workers, been turned. Men of influence are standing out publicly against it. Grape-juice has been substituted for wine in the White House; Kaiser Wilhelm has become an abstainer, with a declaration that in the present era of fierce competition the nations that triumph will be those that have least to do with liquor. So conservative and cautious a thinker as ex-President Eliot of Harvard has recently become an abstainer, saying, "The recent progress of science has satisfied me that the moderate use of alcohol is objectionable." The yearly per capita consumption of alcoholic liquors, which rose from 8.79 gallons in 1880 to 17.76 in 1900 and 22.79 in 1911, fell in 1912 to 21.98. It is to be devoutly hoped that the tide will ebb as rapidly as it rose. What should be our attitude toward the use of alcoholic liquors by others? The consideration of this question falls properly under the head of "Public Morality." But it will be more convenient to treat it here, following the presentation of the facts concerning alcohol. The right of the community to interfere with the conduct of its members will be discussed in chapter xxviii, and we must assume here the result therein reached, that whatever is deemed necessary for the greatest welfare of the community as a whole may legitimately be required of its individual members, however it may cross their desires or however they may consider the matter their private concern. The argument against prohibition on the ground that it interferes with individual rights would apply also to child-labor legislation, to legislation against street soliciting by prostitutes or the sale of indecent pictures, and, more obviously still, against anti-opium and anti-cocaine legislation. As a matter of fact, the older individualistic point of view has been generally abandoned now, and we are free to discuss what is desirable for the general welfare. We may at once say that whatever method will most quickly and thoroughly root out the evil should be adopted. Different methods may be more or less efficacious in different places; it is a matter for legitimate opportunism. But the goal to be kept in sight can only be absolute prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and importation of all alcoholic liquors for beverages. Education on the matter, and exhortation to personal abstinence, must be continued. But education and exhortation are not alone sufficient; self-restraint cannot be counted on, constraint must be employed.
"High License" and "Regulation" have been thoroughly tried and have not checked the evil; moreover, it has been a serious blunder to make the State or municipality dependent upon the liquor trade for revenue, and therefore eager to retain it. The "State Monopoly" system has not proved a success in this country in lessening the evil; it made the liquor power a more sinister influence than ever in politics. If liquor must be sold, the "Company," or Scandinavian system, which eliminates the factor of private profits, without fostering political corruption, is probably the least harmful method of selling. But no method of selling liquor can be more than a temporary expedient. We must work inch by inch to extend the boundaries of absolutely "dry" territory. "Local Option" has been of very great value in this movement, and may still in some States be the best attainable status. Option by counties, with a prohibition of the shipment of liquor from "wet" to "dry" counties, is the preferable form. Statewide prohibition, for a while in disrepute because of open violation of the law, is again gaining ground, ten of the forty-eight States being entirely "dry" at time of writing. The ultimate solution can only be the adoption of an amendment to the National Constitution enforcing nation-wide prohibition; the agitation for such an amendment is already acute, and the promise of its passage within a generation bright. The arguments against prohibition are not strong. That the law is poorly enforced in localities where public sentiment is against it is natural; but no law is universally obeyed, and that a law is broken is a poor reason for removing it from the statute books. No one would suggest repealing the laws against burglary or seduction because they are daily disobeyed. This pseudo-concern for the dignity of the law is simply a specious argument advanced by those who have an interest in the trade, and accepted by those who suppose liquor drinking to be wrong only in excess and harmless in moderation. The reply is to show that alcohol, practice that is always harmful must be fought by the law as well as by moral suasion. Public sentiment must be educated up to the law; and the existence of the law is itself of educative value. Moreover, the old observations of non-enforcement must now be modified; recent experience shows that the prohibition States are on the whole increasingly successful in enforcing their laws. The new national law prohibiting importations from "wet" to "dry" States helps immensely; and with the forbidding of importations from abroad and of the manufacture of liquor anywhere in the country, the problem of enforcement will settle itself. Except for the precarious existence of "moon-shiners," and for what individuals may make for themselves, the stuff will not be obtainable. [Footnote: For the arguments for prohibition, see H. S. Warner, op. cit, chaps. IX, XII. Artman, The Legalized Outlaw. Fehlandt, A Century of Drink Reform. Wheeler, Prohibition.] That prohibition involves the ruin of a great industry is true; these millions of workers will be free to give their strength to productive labor, these millions of dollars can be invested in some industry useful to mankind. Confiscation will work hardship to the brewers and distillers; so it does to the opium-growers, the makers of indecent pictures, and counterfeit money. A trade so inimical to the general interest deserves no mercy. The States that have unwisely used the "tainted money" drawn from the industry by license will have a far richer community to tax in other ways; for every dollar got in liquor-license fees, many dollars have been lost to the State. As Gladstone said, "Give me a sober population, not wasting their earnings in strong drink, and I shall know where to obtain the revenue." Pending the enactment of legal prohibition, what is called industrial prohibition is proving widely efficacious. Growing numbers of manufacturers, railway managers, and storekeepers are refusing to employ men who drink at all. The United States Commissioner of Labor reports that ninety per cent of the railways, eighty-eight per cent of the trades, and seventy-nine per cent of the manufacturers of the country discriminate already against drinkers. The only other point to be noted is that the saloon-the "public house," the "poor man's salon"-must be replaced by other social centers, that give opportunities for recreation, cheer, and social intercourse. The question of substitutes for the saloon will be alluded to again, in chapter xxx. [Footnote: See Raymond Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon. H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap. VIII. Forum, vol. 21, p. 595.] The nation-wide campaign against alcohol is on, the area of its legalized sale is steadily diminishing. We who now discuss it may live to see it swept off the face of the earth; if not we, our children or children's children. And we must see to it that no other drug opium, morphine, or the like gets a similar grip on humanity. Our descendants will look with as great horror upon the alcohol indulgence of our times as most of us now do upon opium smoking. "O God, that men should put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!"
The best book for practical use is H. S. Warner's Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem (revised edition, 1913), where extensive references to the authorities will be found. Two other excellent popular books are H. S. Williams, Alcohol (1909), and Horsley and Sturge, Alcohol and the Human Body (1911). See also Rosanoff, in McClure's Magazine, vol. 32, p. 557; Rountree and Sherwell, The Temperance Problem and Social Reform; T. N. Kelynack, The Drink Problem: Scientific Conclusions concerning the Alcohol Problem (Senate Document 48, 61st Congress, 1909); and the five volumes of conclusions of the Committee of Fifty, published by Houghton, Mifflin Co, under the general title, Aspects of the Liquor Problem; a summary of these conclusions is published with the title The Liquor Problem, ed. F. J. Peabody. Barker, The Saloon Problem and Social Reform. Fanshawe, Liquor Legislation in the United States and Canada. C. B. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, chap. XVI. The best available data, to date, on the physiological questions underlying the moral questions may be found in G. Rosenfeld, Der Einfluss des Alkohols auf den Organismus (1901) A.B.Cushney, The Action of Alcohol (1907)-paper read before the British Association; Meyer and Gottlieb, Pharmacology (1914).