But, more than these, the waste of human life has been abridged by the sweeping reform effected in regard to the abuse of alcohol. That was a grand report made to Congress by the men and women of the "Alcohol Commission" of 1910. It is said to have been principally written by the chairwoman of the Commission, who was then, and continues to be still, Professor of Political Economy in Harvard University. Local option in nine-tenths of our States, with prohibition of dram-shops everywhere: what a change from a century ago! A man was almost mobbed in Boston the other day for selling liquor to a minor. On being taken before a magistrate, and afterwards tried in court, he was imprisoned for three years. Arrests, fines and imprisonment for selling whiskey by the glass, rather frequent ten years ago in New York, are seldom now heard of. The American people are sober! It looks like a monstrous and incredible folly that we read of, that, once, even otherwise sensible and well-meaning gentlemen would, on occasion, get staggering drunk.
Wines of the finest quality, equal to the best of Europe, are made every year in California, New York, and Missouri; and they are occasionally placed upon the table at entertainments. But it is regarded as an intolerable indecorum for a gentleman to drink more than a single glass, or a lady half a glass, at a time.
There is no doubt that the large and magnificent coffee and cocoa houses (the latter most commended on hygienic grounds), in all our great cities, have made much more practicable the shutting up of the drinking saloons that formerly lined our streets.
Another great sanitary improvement was the destruction, a few years since, of all the tenement houses of New York and Boston, and the prohibition by law of their re-erection. The mortality of New York was lessened by one-third the very next year after it was done. I am glad to hear that, following this good example, a Citizens' Philanthropic Building Association has bought up most of the ground in the worst parts of the down town Philadelphia suburbs, in order to put up blocks of model lodging-houses there. It seems unfortunate that the terribly destructive fire in Philadelphia in 1890, occurring when all the fireplugs were frozen with zero weather, should have laid waste Arch, Market, Chestnut, and Walnut Streets, rather than those dens of poverty and misery.
When the new water supply for New York city and the Hudson River towns from the Adirondack region, and those for Philadelphia from the upper Delaware and Perkiomen, are completed, and sewage irrigation relieves the rivers everywhere from pollution, it may be hoped that the yearly mortality of our great communities may be brought down below 15 in 1000; once thought to be the acme of healthfulness.
Cheapening of food goes on remarkably, along with close and high culture of the ground. Proper appreciation of the share taken by the atmosphere in the nutrition of plants has made soil construction a much simpler and surer thing than formerly. Roof-gardens in towns are very common and successful; half of the vegetables consumed in Baltimore are said to be grown on roofs. I once saw a book entitled "Our Farm of Four Acres;" and another, "Ten Acres Enough." Very little skill should be needed now to enable a frugal family to live well on two or three acres of well-made ground.
August 20th, 1931.
I bought yesterday a pound of the best grass-flavored adipo-butyrin (as good as any dairy butter) for ten cents; a sirloin of good western beef for twelve cents a pound; and, best of all, a bushel of Rocky-mountain grasshoppers, as crisp and delicious as could be, for only thirty-seven cents! They say, the supply of these last delicacies will be short this season; as hardly any have appeared yet in Kansas or Nebraska. Excursions for procuring them from farther west are, however, quite frequently made.
I saw an account of the sale of some Southern lands in this morning's paper. The best farm land in Virginia brings 400 to 500 dollars an acre. Some in South Carolina has brought 400 and 500; good Maryland farms 5, 6, and 700 dollars an acre. Manufactories, too, are in active operation in all the old Cotton States. It has happened, as every one might have known would be the case, that when a generation or two had passed after the cessation of slavery, and the old hatreds had been buried in the graves of the men and women who nursed them, prosperity would increase in the South to an extent that could hardly be imagined under the slaveholding régime, the "dark ages" of America.
How fast arts and inventions are accumulating! The nineteenth century seems likely to be equaled if not surpassed in new material appliances of civilization and luxury. Railroad speed now often reaches ninety miles an hour, upon the straightened and generally elevated tracks in use; with the automatic block-signal system so complete, that collisions are nearly impossible. Coal-oil is now much used in locomotives, and almost universally on ocean steamers. The supposed dangers of its conveyance and employment have been readily met by suitable precautions.