by compelling it to seek new channels of distribution. Nothing can longer conceal this profound, essential weakness of all our successes."

It is quite in accord with this fact that thousands of retail dealers have secured tax stamps for the sale of alcoholic beverages, although it might be imagined that the free importation would afford an adequate safety valve. The opinion that the prohibition laws would disappear at once if it were really impossible to secure alcoholic drink, is shared by opponents and partisans of the movement in the United States, which shows how little the question of abstinence has to do with prohibition legislation. Free importation, while not the price paid for prohibition, is nevertheless in many places the conditio sine qua non.

RESULTS IN CITIES.

By far the most interesting part of the articles is that in which the author points out the effects and successes of prohibitory laws in the several cities that have been made "dry."

The causes for these cities going "dry" are twofold. On the one hand, the sober country population of a State by virtue of its numbers compels the cities to close the saloons, and on the other, the city itself passes the law.

The latter class of cities, as Rudolf shows, are as a rule suburbs in which the more prosperous people settle. Considering that in America even more frequently than in England, the common man likes to have his own house, the origin of such garden cities adjoining the industrial and commercial centres is explained. It is natural that the property owners seek to keep the saloons out of these neighborhoods, particularly as across the water our comfortable beer gardens and halls which one visits with wife and children are unknown, while the saloons which take their place are not infrequently of a low and disorderly character. For that reason the value of property in the vicinity of such places goes down. On that account these cities as a rule prohibit the liquor traffic and are able to enforce the law, especially as the central city with its lawful saloons is within easy reach. Whenever one is attacked by thirst one can ride for a nickel or two to the license city and enjoy one's drink. Of the persons arrested in Old Boston for drunkenness forty-four per cent. are from the suburbs which are “dry."

For that reason a vote on making the entire State "dry"

would give a very different result in such cities. One example: In the State of Massachusetts the vote on closing the saloons in their own territory was favorable in 275 communities, on closing the saloons in the entire State in 145, the latter being almost exclusively smaller communities. The secretaries of the Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society, say: "Unless it were possible to secure alcoholic drink in Boston there is no doubt that all the suburbs would once more follow the issuing of saloon licenses." (This is further corroborated by the fact that all the bigger cities which adopted prohibition without having a safety valve of that sort, abolished it within a short time.)

The author thus reaches the interesting conclusion that the traffic, which cannot by any possibility be abolished at the present time, has simply been confined to certain places.

The author is obliged to state that the sales of beer are increasing from year to year. It is seen that the former intemperate consumption of whisky has given room to a sane temperance with a glass of beer. The consumption of beer has increased from 6 liters per capita in 1850 to 77 liters in 1910.

From all these things the author has gained the impression that the high tide of abstinence has been passed for some time, which is the opinion of most competent observers.

Tea and Beer.

(Letter in London Times.)

Tea ought to be taxed on very much the same grounds as justify the taxation of alcohol; because, even if not an actual poison, it is at any rate a pernicious luxury, and to speak of it as a "food" is really too ridiculous. "If bad beer has killed its hundreds, bad tea has killed its thousands." (The Rev. W. Morgan.) "In the form and in the quantity now indulged in, tea-drinking ranks high as a source of much of the ill-health of to-day." (Dr. Thomas Harrington.)

Let us at least give up the absurdity of classing it as a "food." Taken in moderation, good, sound beer is probably more useful as a food.

IN

MORTALITY AND ALCOHOL.

An Expert Opinion as to Dr. MacNicholl's Statistics.

(From the New York Evening Post.)

N his analysis of "The Psychology of Socialism," Gustave Le Bon makes the profound observation that "beliefs that have become transformed into sentiments act not only upon our conduct in life; they influence also the sense we attach to words" (p. 66, ed. 1899), and in his work on "The Crowd-A Study of the Popular Mind," he notes that "to exaggerate, to arm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning, are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings" (p. 57, ed. 1900). In these two observations of the eminent French psychologist is to be found, in all probability, a complete outline of the genesis of the ridiculous, utterly unsupported, and otherwise inexplicable allegations regarding the supposed mortality due to alcohol which are perennially being launched by ministers, physicians, and other temperance advocates who presumably are not deliberately making false statements.

In the course of my somewhat protracted study of this subject, the results of which were published in book form under the title of "The Mortality of Alcohol," I came across many statements and apparently specific figures as to the number of deaths caused by alcohol, without so much as a shred of proof or semblance of fact behind them, though emanating from eminently respectable sources. And during the previous week the daily press reported, and discussed at some length, perhaps the most extraordinary and most comprehensive budget of assertions on these lines which has yet found its way into type-namely, the address recently delivered before the American Society for the Study of Alcohol and Other Narcotics, at Atlantic City, by Dr. T. Alexander MacNicholl, of this city. Some of the statements therein contained were at such utter variance with the indisputable facts in the case that I could not believe that Dr. MacNicholl had been correctly reported, so advised him by telephone, and informed him that I should emphatically take issue with him on certain points had he made the statements credited to him in the report of his address published in the World of the 4th inst. Having been informed by

him that the report in general, and certain alleged statements of his (cited by me) in the convention, were in substantial accord with the address which he had delivered, I feel that I am justified in refuting certain glaring inaccuracies in his paper, which, if permitted to go unchallenged, could only operate to make of the broadly debatable phases of the subject another case of "confusion worse confounded."

AUTHORITIES DISAGREE.

The terminology of the "mortality of alcohol" is still in a somewhat nebulous condition, the best authorities on the subject are by no means agreed as to the precise limitations of the phrase, and Le Bon's observation that "beliefs that have become transformed into sentiments influence the sense we attach to words," doubtless applies to the anti-alcoholists' interpretation of the phrase. No man lives, or ever has lived, who could authoritatively fix the number of deaths due to alcohol. And any man's approximation of the number is meaningless and valueless until the basis of his calculation has been clearly predicated. Even making full allowance for all the radically different viewpoints, Dr. MacNicholl's suggestion of an annual "mortality from alcohol in the United States of 680,000" is a travesty on the official mortality of this country. As I shall demonstrate, that preposterous figure is also incorrectly calculated on the alleged statement of the authority (?) cited by him, to wit, Sir Thomas P. Whittaker, who, according to Dr. MacNicholl, recently presented to the British Parliament "statistics compiled by the leading insurance companies (which) show that out of every 1,000 deaths among the population at large, 440 are due to alcohol."

Sir Thomas Palmer Whittaker has for many years been associated with the management of the United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution, which was established at London in 1840, has maintained since 1841 a separate section for abstaining policyholders, and hence is by far the most noteworthy of the extremely limited number of life insurance companies in the world which have established special clause for abstaining policyholders. Notwithstanding Sir Thomas's presumptive bias against "the mortality of alcohol," in default of a properly-attested copy of the report which he is said to have made to Parliament, which I have not yet been able to locate, I can scarcely believe that he went on record with the statement charged to him. If he did

make any such statement, he must have fancied himself in possession of "leading insurance companies"" figures of which the insurance world at large has never heard.

DEATHS IN 1910.

According to Bulletin 109 of the Bureau of the Census (p. 38), in 1910 there were 805,412 deaths among the 53,843,896 people in the Registration Area, or a general death rate of 15.0 per 1,000 of population, and by reference to page 54 of that same Bulletin it will be found that 266,770, or 33.1 per cent., occurred under age twenty. Applying the general death rate in question to the total population of Continental United States in 1910, 91,972,266, the presumptive total number of deaths in the country as a whole in 1910 would have been 1,379,584, and, even had 440 of every 1,000 of those deaths been due to alcohol, the number so chargeable would have been only 607,017, instead of 680,000, as Dr. MacNicholl somehow figured out. As I have stated, the official mortality figures of the Bureau of the Census show that in 1910 no less than 33.1 per cent. of all deaths, from all causes, at all ages, in the Registration Area occurred under age twenty, and if that same percentage applied to the country as a whole, 456,642 of the total number of 1,379,584 deaths must have been at ages below twenty, thus leaving a total of only 929,942 at age twenty or over. Probably even the most zealous temperance advocate would admit that only a comparatively small percentage of the 680,000 supposed deaths from alcohol occurred in infancy or childhood, and, if all the 680,000 were to be charged up to ages twenty and over, it would appear that 73.1 per cent., or practically three out of every four deaths of both sexes, from any and every cause, at adult ages were due to alcohol!

According to the exhaustive investigation conducted by the Harveian Society of London, in 1882, alcohol played some part in about 14 per cent. of the adult mortality of London, thirty years ago; the official mortality statistics for leading cities and towns of Switzerland suggest that alcohol is directly or indirectly responsible for something less than 10 per cent. of all deaths at adult ages; and my recent investigation of the alcoholic mortality of this country, based on the detailed estimates of the medical directors of three large insurance companies, led to the conclusion that possibly as high as 7.7 per cent. of the deaths at adult ages were