[Preventive Measures.]
This leads us to the question as to whether or not legislation with a view to prevent the sale of alcohol would further or retard race progress. Experiments of this kind have been, and are being tried—notably in Scandinavia and the United States; and there are those who strongly advocate preventive legislation in our own country.
But has this enforced diminution of one particular form of vice given us any guarantee as to immunity from the other forms into which the habitual drunkard may develop? That preventive measures have diminished drunkenness cannot for a moment be denied, but this diminution is certainly not more notable than the corresponding change in the habits of the English upper classes brought about entirely by the force of conscience and habit. Granted that preventive measures will improve the individual, we have to ask ourselves the question, how will they improve the race?
[Drink among Australian Convicts.]
Dilke informs us[19] that the convict element may now be disregarded in Australian society. In the case of some their crime was an accident, and criminal tendencies would not be transmitted to the children they left behind them. On the other hand, the genuine criminal and also the drunken ne’er-do-well left no children. Drink and vice among the “assigned servants” class of convicts, and an absence of all facilities for marriage worked them off the face of the earth, and those who had not been killed before the gold discovery generally drank themselves to death upon the diggings.
We have here a very clear case in which alcohol acted as a most beneficial selecting influence. Had there been prohibiting laws, preventing the sale of alcohol, the innately depraved would have left behind them descendants imbued with the paternal instincts.
[Drink and Prevention in America.]
In the United States there is and has been a strong feeling against the liquor traffic, not only on the part of those who hold that drinking is in itself wrong, and leads to crime and misery, but on political grounds as well. The Americans drink, not at meals as we do, but at the drinking-saloons and bars, and the habit of “treating” to liquor is universal. These drinking-saloons are, too, the cause of much of the political corruption deplored by the better class of Americans; there are many reasons, therefore, for the introduction of local option, or even prohibition, and in many of the states stringent anti-liquor laws are consequently enforced. Inasmuch as these laws have been in operation for some years, we can study their effect on those who have been subjected to them.
We are told[20] that in Maine a Prohibitionary Law was enforced in 1851, lapsed for two years (1856 and 1857), but has continued since that time up to the present date. We have, therefore, an experiment in liquor prohibition lasting for forty years. In Maine, the manufacture and sale of alcohol in any form is illegal, and punished by imprisonment and fine. The law is enforced, and we are told[21] regarding its operation that, “by tending to drive the traffic into by-ways and disreputable ‘dives,’ by removing the visible temptation offered by open bars and saloons, by making it relatively if not absolutely difficult to obtain drink, and by throwing a general atmosphere of subterfuge and disrepute about the trade, it has been a material agent in suppressing a demand which is not only regarded by many as morally wrong and physically ruinous, but is rendered by the operation of the law disreputable. These tendencies, receiving support from the general voice and sentiment of the women, have so influenced manners that, whatever share in the result ought to be assigned to the effect of prohibition, it is a fact that the demand for liquor, or the desire for it, either in large quantities or small, proceeds only from a limited section of the population.” If now we turn to the statistics of crime, pauperism, and insanity, we shall find a result which may appear a startling one to many. The statistics of the Insane Hospital show a great and progressive increase of patients, from 75 in 1850–51 to 685 in 1891–92. In regard to in-door paupers, the ratio is slightly lower than that of the neighbouring states:—
| 1880. | 1890. | |
|---|---|---|
| Maine—ratio of paupers per million of population | 2319 | 1756 |
| Other states, non-prohibitive | 2339 | 1790 |