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peace than Portland, Maine. Among the 15 cities with higher rates, six are in Southern cities where conditions, as already stated, are not comparable.

What do these facts portray? A more strenuous endeavor to repress public intoxication in prohibition cities than elsewhere? That would hardly be consonant with facts in regard to license cities, for instance, in Massachusetts, where visible intoxication is less and the standards of enforcement of law and order just as high. Indeed, it is a question whether statistics of arrests in prohibition cities express as fully the local extent of drunkenness as the same kind of statistics in license cities. Where the traffic in drink is outlawed, there is always much secret consumption. The multiplication of intoxicated persons upon the streets is so much evidence of violation of the laws and may invite raids. In short, there is incentive on every hand to shield intoxication from publicity. But, without any allowances for these circumstances, the proportion of drunkenness in these prohibition cities is, upon the face of the returns, greater than in most cities where the liquor trade is licensed and regulated. There are some natural reasons for this state of affairs. Sumptuary laws do not destroy the appetite for drink, but lead to a larger consumption of the more intoxicating kind of liquors which, on account of smaller bulk, can be transported and sold with less fear of detection. This is common experience. Another factor is the deadly intoxicating effect of the "hard" liquors usually sold contrary to law.

At best, statistics of arrests must remain an imperfect test of the state of sobriety in a community. A truer gauge would be detailed statistics of consumption which, however, under present laws regulating trade can never be compiled for the individual municipality or, indeed, for any State.

But statistics of arrests for drunkenness are competent evidence as showing whether or not prohibition laws are effective. Moreover, they throw some vivid light upon the public burden consequent upon a more or less wide-spread misuse of intoxicants. It requires little imagination to read into statistics of arrests such as given for Portland or Wichita, a story of ceaseless police activity in dealing with intoxicated persons, of court rooms crowded with sodden humanity, of women and children who suffer in consequence, etc., etc., and it is a story eclipsing in several ways that from many other cities where, at least, no boast is made of having

done away with the burden of public drunkenness. How the further burden of drunkenness appears in prohibition States in relation to poverty, crime, insanity, etc., will be discussed in succeeding pages.

II.

POVERTY AND DRINK

Among modern charity workers there is a growing disinclination toward expressing causes of poverty in terms of percentages or, indeed, to trace any given case of destitution to a single cause, for instance, intemperance. That the liquor habit makes for poverty is as clear to them as it was to their less well-informed predecessors in philanthropy. But the recognition is gaining ground that too much is often made of it because of its very obviousness. It lies on the surface and seems so indisputable. In seeking an answer to the question, how far intemperance is the cause of want, it is easy to overlook its correlative, how far intemperance is the result of want? To know that the person who knocks at the almshouse door is now, or has been, intemperate, is not enough; one must also ascertain whether the drink habit undermined economic efficiency in the first place, or whether, prior to becoming a cause of misery, it was the effect of wretched social or industrial conditions or resulted from mental weakness. Of course, whether intemperance has its origin in despondency over impending want or in despair over present destitution or other troubles, it soon ceases to operate as a result and becomes a cause of acuter distress. But it is a long way from such general admissions to a statement of the precise extent to which intemperance causes poverty. It is easy to ignore. the more subtle factors in the face of a single bad habit which visualizes a cause of poverty.

There are chiefly two things, broadly speaking, which condition a state of destitution: one is opportunity and the other is capacity. Lack of opportunity to earn a living as a widespread cause of destitution is not simply a socialistic doctrine. This needs no further demonstration than the every-day experience of charity workers in times like those through which the country passed during the winter of 1907-8. That the most abject poverty directly traceable to general economic conditions can exist in countries

whose inhabitants are noted for abstemious habits, may be witnessed to-day, for instance, in Italy and Japan.

Only very recently has serious consideration been given to lack of capacity as a cause of destitution. Reference is not so much to the lack of capacity due to absence of industrial training, which has long been recognized, but to the incapacity resulting from want of normal physical and mental powers. This kind of incapacity as a prolific source of poverty has hitherto largely been ignored; in particular has its relations to habits of intemperance been overlooked. To state the proposition differently, it has been overlooked that intemperance so often is a result of mental deficiency. This can no longer be regarded as a question of opinion, but must be accepted as an authoritative fact. Dr. Branthwaite, the inspector of Inebriates' Homes in Great Britain, states that 62 to 63 per cent. of all the cases committed to State reformatories are mentally defective. To quote his words, "mental incompetence stopping short of insanity, holds a prominent position in the cause of habitual drunkenness.. .It is morally certain that

the large majority of the cases included in the defective section of the table (1124) start life handicapped by weakness." Dr. Gill, the medical director of the Langho Inebriates' Reformatory in England, states that 66 per cent. of those committed are mentally defective, and quoting Dr. Branthwaite's figures as corroborating his own, goes on to say that these figures are of the greatest importance “and reveal a state of affairs that has never been suspected.” These statements apply, to be sure, to persons committed to reformatories for “inebriates"; but even of the inmates of the so-called "retreats," a higher class, Dr. Branthwaite says that the fact of their having become slaves to drink "is in itself evidence of the existence of some defect in power of judgment and control over impulses.' Mental deficiency is, however, not the only cause of drunkenness which has received much less attention than deserved. Dr. Branthwaite in his report to the Home Office on this question says: "In addition to transmitted tendency, wilful indulgence, and early environment, there are some other causes for drunkenness which have been forced upon our attention, the most important being ill health, accident, and old age. It is, perhaps, hardly realized how potent ordinary disease and ill health are in the making of inebriates. Predisposition, in the shape of hereditary defect, may be present, and undoubtedly is present, in many persons who

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nevertheless manage to live sober lives. Although sometimes it necessitates a life-long fight against inclination, their resisting power enables them to keep clear of that which would otherwise be their ruin. But when disease or ill health impairs vitality, this resisting power is lessened, and predisposition assumes unchecked sway."

Concerning the relation of old age to intemperance, Dr. Branthwaite says: "There is every reason to believe that 65 per cent. (of aged inmates) have, in their early days, lived decent, useful lives, and that their drunkenness of later years has been due to naturally reduced vitality, with an accompanying defect in power of control. The sequence of events is the same in most oldage cases: Loss of work from incapacity due to approaching age, consequent idleness, poverty, friendlessness, impaired power of control, drunkenness. The history is one which might well be as common amongst the higher as amongst the lower classes of society and would certainly be so but for the fact that, in the former, there is usually some interested relative in a position to assume guidance during the later years of life; in the latter there is neither relative able to assume control, nor money to provide hired supervision."

These conclusions from a scientific and unprejudiced investigation can scarcely be said to be reflected in current statements concerning the relation of poverty to drink. Of course they find no place in the sweeping assertions made by those who connect every social ill with intemperance, but they have not in the past received sufficient attention from those whose work it is to understand poverty and relieve it.

The applicability to our condition of the English inquiries concerning the cause of inebriety can not be questioned. If mental weakness, ill health, accidents and old age, in short incapacity, are at the bottom of so much habitual intemperance, it follows that our estimates concerning the extent to which poverty is caused by drink must be rigidly revised, for they have not considered sufficiently the origin of the drink habit, but, having discovered its existence, cheerfully set it down as a cause regardless of its genesis. In other words, accepting the view of the English medical authorities, it is impossible to establish a definite relation between poverty and intemperance from which generalization can be made. because so many confirmed inebriates are unfit to struggle with

normal persons in competition for a livelihood, or because drunkenness originates in conditions which of themselves are sufficient to produce poverty.

The currently accepted statement in regard to intemperance as a cause of crime must be modified in the light of this new view. In this place some of the most trustworthy results of special investigations of the subject shall be briefly referred to.

Mr. Charles Booth, in his investigation of poverty, found that in the workhouses at Stepney, London, 26 per cent. of the 634 inmates had been pauperized by drink and 21.9 per cent. of 736 cases at St. Pancras workhouse.

These figures are quite at variance with the results from various other European investigations. The German Imperial Statistical Bureau found in 1885 that only 2.1 per cent. of 1,367,347 cases were pauperized by drink. Dr. Bóhmert, in his study of poor relief in 77 German cities, found only 1.3 per cent. Even smaller percentages resulted from investigations made in the cities of Madgeburg and Stuttgart. Austrian statistics led to similar conclusions, namely, that intemperance is the cause of pauperism in from 1 to 3 per cent.

Among investigations in this country the one conducted some years ago by the Committee of Fifty takes first rank as a careful and unbiased study. As a final result of this inquiry it was found that of 29,923 cases reported by charity organization societies and other organizations dealing with the poor in their homes, 18.46 per cent. are attributable to the personal use of liquor; 2.07 per cent. to the intemperate habits of one or both parents, 0.45 per cent. to intemperance of legal guardians, and 7.39 per cent. to the intemperate habit of others, not parents or guardians. Thus the average percentage of poverty due directly or indirectly to drink was 25.06 per cent., with 6.03 per cent. of the total number of cases unaccounted for. In contrast, Mr. Charles Booth, pursuing an investigation in England on the same lines, finds that among 4,000 cases of poverty in East London, 13 and 14 per cent. were. due to drink, the higher percentage being connected with a greater degree of poverty. In another investigation made by him comprising 5,000 cases of persons living poor and irregular lives, he found 10 and 11 per cent. of their poverty attributable to drink, dropping to only 5 per cent. for another 3,000 cases of persons who were poor but not so irregularly employed.

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