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.