In regard to out-door paupers, the census attaches to Maine a number very considerably in excess of the average. As regards prison population, Maine has a low but decidedly increasing ratio, which comes out especially clearly in the case of the juvenile offenders in reform schools:—
| 1880. | 1890. | |
|---|---|---|
| Maine—ratio per million of population in reform schools | 176 | 256 |
| Average in other nine North-Eastern states | 469 | 425 |
In Kansas, another state in which prohibition prevails, dating from 1881, the United States census tells us that there were more prisoners in its penitentiary and county gaols in proportion to its population in 1890 than there were in 1880, and that of all the neighbouring states Kansas had in 1890 absolutely the largest ratio of prisoners to population. In Iowa, the third state in which prohibition has been most effectually carried out, we are told[22] that “in one small town prohibition was so effectually enforced that, when the bishop of the diocese visited it, an intended celebration of the Sacrament had to be abandoned because no wine could be obtained. In this town we are also told that opium dens are formed as the alleged result of prohibition, and my informant, whose testimony was unimpeachable, was told by a physician practising there that the use of opium in the place was a positive curse; he had twenty or thirty cases on his hands of persons suffering from the habit, both men and women.”
[Public Habit and Conscience the best Preventive.]
One may often draw false deductions from statistical evidence through ignorance of facts, which qualify and give quite another colour to the figures quoted, but the above data suggest that any lasting prohibition, other than the dictates of a man’s own conscience and sense of self-respect, may do more harm than good; for when not upheld as a fashion, excessive drinking can only be looked upon as a symptom of a debilitated or depraved nature, which, without access to drink, would show itself depraved in other ways, and which, if artificially kept sober and assisted thereby to live, will tend to perpetuate itself and widen the circle of its depravity.
May it not be said that a clear case is to be made out for the introduction of preventive measures in districts where drunkenness has become a matter of universal habit or fashion, where, therefore, the selective action of alcohol—from the fact that almost all take it—is reduced to a minimum, and where, from its general consumption in injurious quantity, the debility possibly transmitted may be considered as reaching towards a maximum? In this case preventive measures, introduced perhaps for a few years only, would be instrumental in getting the people into more reasonable habits of living, and might enable those who possessed the necessary tastes to cultivate such pastimes and recreations as mould keep them free from falling victims to a vice, to which they had previously given way rather from force of imitation than from any strong personal predilection. On the other hand, from our point of view, that of racial progress, the case for preventive interference is not so clear when introduced into a district where the population have in the mass learnt to lead sober lives, where drunkenness is looked upon as a vice, and where only those naturally without self-respect and proper self-control fall victims to drink; the artificial interference prevents the operation of a selective influence which eliminates from society many of its most undesirable elements. Under these conditions excessive drinking is but the symptom of something which lies deeper, namely, an organic defect, a poor and vicious type, and its prevention cures the symptom, while the disease remains and perpetuates itself to the hapless children of the future.
[The Power of the Community over the Individual.]
It might appear to the superficial reader that I am advancing arguments which would give a moral sanction to the broadcast scattering of the germs of phthisis and enteric fever, and to the leaving of unlimited whisky as a stumbling block at the doorsteps of one’s weaker neighbours. This is far from being the case. While it is undoubtedly true that the germs of phthisis have from time immemorial been freeing humanity from an unhealthy variation to which we are subject, and while alcohol has on the whole been ridding us of the vicious and uproarious since our forefathers first drank mead from the teats of the she-goat Heidhrun, yet it does not follow that any individual or set of individuals have a right to take upon themselves the responsibility of retaining and meting out such selective treatment.
Were there, indeed, no other means of improving the race and eliminating its at present inherent faults, it might be different, and, perhaps, one could hardly say that society might not take upon itself the responsibility of the actual outrooting of these faults by drastic measures; but other ways are open to it. At present society claims the right to exterminate the murderer, and a few decades back the life of the thief was also taken. But while these lives were taken by a custom which is the survival of retribution, and in which the State takes the place of the injured person or family, there is a growing feeling that such a motive is not of the best or highest, and that the only excuse for the disposal of the life or person of the individual is that of the seeking of the general well-being of the State. When we consider the enormous sacrifice in modern times of what were at one period thought to be personal rights (such as the right of every man to ill-treat and neglect his wife or children, or to live in whatever insanitary house or room he pleases, or to work as long as he wishes, etc. etc.), we can hardly draw, even in imagination, a line beyond which the State may not, at some future time, see its way to make claim upon the individual. It is, however, very improbable that the advanced politicians of any century will ever call for a general battue upon the inveterate drunkards or consumptives, nor is there any likelihood of the work of preventive medicine abating for one single instant, even for the sake of the race. The love of the individual is antecedent, both in the history of humanity and in the life history of each individual, to any regard for the race, and the latter is but an extension of the former feeling. While, therefore, there are certain and sure means of improving the race by simple and unheroic measures, no one would for a moment dream of depriving the individual of all that modern medicine and civilisation can do for him.