It has for long been alleged that the amount of drinking amongst women is increasing. When writing an academic thesis on the consequences of city life, I attempted to discover definite evidence on this point. Nothing that could be called precise was forthcoming, though the evidence was abundant that the general assertion is correct. Drinking amongst women means, of course, drinking amongst mothers. It means drinking by unborn children. No one concerned with the fundamentals of national well-being can ignore anything so minatory. Within the last few years, much attention has been directed to the subject, and the Church of England Temperance Society, for instance, sent out a form of inquiry to the medical profession as to their experience in this matter. It may now be stated, without any fear of contradiction, that drinking has greatly increased amongst women of all classes during the last twenty years, and especially, it seems probable, during the latter half of that period. Along with it has gone an increase in the amount of drug-taking; some, at any rate, of the drugs being not dissimilar to alcohol in their action upon mind and body.

It is here necessary not so much to discuss the causes of this fact as to insist upon its consequences and indicate some possible remedies. So far as one can judge there seem to be three principal causes for this increase of drinking amongst women, and quite briefly they may be named in order to guide the subsequent discussion, though it is not necessary to occupy space here in discussing all the evidence for this diagnosis.

A cause of some importance at work amongst women of the middle and upper classes would seem to be the general tendency to revolt against sex restrictions and limitations. In order to prove themselves the equals of men, women proceed to demonstrate that they are capable of imitating men's vices and indulgences. The trainer of chimpanzees for the music-hall acts on the same principle. Directly the animals can smoke and drink, they are such good imitations of men, in his judgment and that of his patrons, as to be worthy of exhibition. Any ape, any boy, any man, can learn to smoke and drink. It may be taken for granted that any woman can do likewise, but the actual demonstration is worse than superfluous.

Much more important as a cause of the increased drinking amongst women of the lower classes are the modern conditions of factory and industrial life which so largely take women out of the home; the making of life being neglected in order to serve some industry or other which, if it costs the loss of the coming life, is a national cancer, however grateful its expansion may appear to the capitalist or the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As the nation cares nothing for its girlhood nor for directing employment and education for the supreme business of motherhood, upon which the national existence is always staked, vast numbers of women in early adolescence are now exposed to the very conditions of temptation outside the home to which so many of their brothers have succumbed. The factory girl learns to drink, and when she marries she takes her drinking habits with her into her home. Modern industrialism, therefore, is to be cited as one of the causes for the increase in drinking amongst women. It may be noted that, in Italy, the temperate race which, according to one elegant but baseless theory, has been evolved through ages of past drinking, is proving itself intemperate when its members are exposed in towns to the industrial conditions which look like national success and the continuance of which would mean national ruin.

A third cause of this increase is to be found in the greatly enhanced facility with which alcoholic drinks can now be obtained by women, not merely outside the home, but within it. So far as Great Britain is concerned we must trace disastrous consequences to the "heaven-born finance" of a former illustrious Chancellor of the Exchequer, who made a little money for the State by selling to grocers permission to sell alcoholic liquors. That was a great blow at womanhood and especially motherhood; not to mention its lamentable effect in raising the death-rate amongst grocers in that intensely obvious and inevitable manner, the increase of temptation, which nothing can persuade the enemies of temperance reform to understand.

It is bad enough that women should be able to obtain alcohol as they do by means of devices which may often prevent their habits from being discovered at all until irreparable mischief has been done. Here the cunning and the greed of commercialism have set to work to fool the public and poison it by a systematic practice which is injurious to all sections of the community, but especially to women, and which cannot be too widely reprobated and exposed. All honour is due to the British Medical Journal, the official organ of the British Medical Association, for its recent attention to this subject. No one can challenge it when it makes the following assertion regarding meat-wines and other specifics containing alcohol, which are now so widely advertised and consumed:—"It may be pointed out that by the use of these meat-wines the alcoholic habit may be encouraged and established, and that it is a mistake to suppose that they possess any high nutritive qualities." The following are analyses to which everyone ought to be able to have reference, and further information regarding which may be found in the British Medical Journal for March 27 and May 29, 1909. Let the reader first note what proportions of alcohol are contained in the accepted wines, the danger of which is admitted by all, and then let him compare those figures with the figures which follow:—

ALCOHOL IN ORDINARY WINES

per cent.Fluid drachms in a wineglassful.
Port203¼
Sherry203¼
Champagne10/151¾
Hock101½
Claret91½

ALCOHOL IN MEAT WINES

per cent.Fluid drachms in a wineglassful.
Bendle's20.33¼
Bivo19.23
Bovril20.153¼
Glendenning's20.831/3
Lemco17.262¾
Vin Regno16.052½
Wincarnis19.63