of a bank in matters of minor exchange, especially for poor people. Then, again, in the matter of toilet accommodations, in the matter of labour exchange, in the matter of amusements—in all these directions you can see the force of my observation, and the ground of my belief that it is chiefly thus that the saloon has its strong position in our society at the present time.

Very well, now; it seems to me most important that all this social value should not be simply swept out of existence until there are some agencies in society which can take up that work and carry it on as well or better, because it is all done at a tremendous disadvantage. You know that the economic basis for all this is not soundfar from it. We would all be better off if the saloon gave it up to some other competent agency. But I say again the point is that it is being done by the saloon and by nothing else with anything like the same efficiency. Until some agency comes along, therefore, which can gather up these various activities on a sound economic basis and perform them for the ordinary public, I, for one, am not willing to see the saloon abolished. I do not want to see it abolished, anyway; I very much want to see it reformed; and I merely point out to you, this line of social service, as one of the directions in which we must look for the strength of the saloon and, hence, for the foundation upon which we may build a sound and permanent reform.

It all depends, gentlemen, I think, upon the organization of a real temperance movement-something we have never had, to my knowledge, in this country-a real temperance movement, with a collateral interest, as your president intimated yesterday, in every social reform, in every social problem that bears upon the morbid craving for alcohol, whether as an anæsthetic or as a stimulant. A practical expression of temperance ideals, taking shape in saloon reform, it seems to me, is the only thing that is possible for us to contemplate. Repressive legislation is absolutely nothing. I am opposed to sumptuary legislation of every kind, not only against liquor, but every form of sumptuary legislation, because it runs counter to the permanent instincts of humanity. I am invariably reminded in discussing this, of the legislators of Bohemia who decided that the population was increasing too rapidly, and passed a law that there should be no more marriages for a year; and when the returns were in, that

year turned out, of course, to be the most fruitful of any that they had ever had.

The practical expression of a real temperance movement, gentlemen, it seems to me, must ultimately be in such places of resort as I have seen foreshadowed in your literature and in your pictures; such as those we have abroad, such as those we have in Italy, where it is a perfect delight to go. Resorts of this kind are not abused. It is not natural to abuse them, one does not want to. I never saw but one drunken man in all the time I was in Italy, and that was at two o'clock in the morning in the streets of Turin, and he was such a curiosity that the people followed him.

Under those circumstances alcohol is not abused, in a place of proper resort, a place where we can meet our fellow men under proper and respectable social circumstances. It seems to me that such is the practical expression which you, I take it, are inclined to consider. For such a measure, the thing is, first, by all these kinds of object lessons and inferences drawn from the activities all over the world, such as the British committees, the Russian committees of temperance, the Danish experiments, and so on, to get intelligent opinion in this country massed in favor of temperance rather than reactionary and silly measures that run counter to the strongest natural instincts. That is what we want, a real temperance movement; and when you, the practical men of the industry, get behind that movement, your practical expression will doubtless take shape in a real reform of the saloon. You will back the kind of institution that reflects a sentiment for true temperance and cultivates true temperance opinion; and then we will, in this country, have an institution like the Continental café, with differences perhaps, due to differences in climate and race and so on; but at all events, we will have a reformed and improved institution that will be the most important and most socially valuable and interesting and, from the point of view of all of us, the most gratifying and satisfactory improvement that can be thought of. (Applause.)

EFFICIENCY AND DRINK

Statement Issued to the Press by Colonel Gustave Pabst of Milwaukee, President-elect United States Brewers' Association,

Springfield, Mass., October 15, 1915.

The social and economic betterment of humanity is very much to the front nowadays, and mixed up with the endless discussion of this theme is the so-called liquor question. Indeed, the last-named appears to have overshadowed all other phases of this tremendous problem, of which it is, after all, but a part.

No longer than a generation ago reformers invariably attributed all the ills of life, including poverty, to drink; and as a matter of fact we have still with us a very clamorous element which still shouts that absurd social theory from the housetops. Of late, however, even the man in the street has begun to question whether drink causes poverty, or poverty causes drink. Once a man has honestly asked himself that question, he has taken a big step towards the truth.

The truth, it seems to me, lies somewhere between the two extreme views. Drunkenness and poverty act and react upon each other with infinite complexity. Drunkenness in some instances undeniably causes poverty, and it is equally true that poverty in many instances leads to drunkenness. But the great majority of people are neither drunkards nor paupers; and yet they are affected by the underlying social and economic ills which produce both.

In the light of modern sociology and economics we know positively that drink is not responsible for all the evils of life; on the contrary we see that the drink evil-the abuse of alcoholic beverages-is to a very large degree a product of modern industrial methods.

We are living at high speed. In every department of life the cry is speed, speed, and yet greater speed. The easy-going life of our forefathers has departed, apparently forever. The European immigrant, accustomed in the old country to the leisurely life of the

Continent, is caught up in the whirlpool and goes to excesses undreamed of at home.

Take conditions in some of our West Virginia coal mines, for example, the owners of which were extremely active in behalf of prohibition in the recent fight. Their men labor nine, even ten hours a day under hardships almost inconceivable. Here the cry for tonnage and still more tonnage drives the men to tasks at which a horse would balk. Is it to be wondered at when the miner, after spending a day straining in cramped conditions, breathing foul air and half choked with coal dust-is it to be wondered that that man seeks the only solace he knows for cruelly tortured nerves and muscles? Of course, if, when emerging from the shaft, he could step into a well-ordered home, take a cool bath and then an automobile ride, the miner might have no excuse to drink to excess. But the truth is, he is driven by low wages and the pace of the system to excesses for which surely he is not wholly to blame. Let us put the blame mainly where it belongs-let us put it on the "system."

The blessings of prohibition make no appeal to such a man. The only way to "reform" him is to reform the industrial system under which he labors, and to talk prohibition to him or to legislate prohibition against him is to give him a stone in place of the bread that is his due. At all events, that is the way it appears to be working out in the West Virginia mining region. There moonshine whiskey has taken the place of beer. All too often he drinks until he is unconscious of his troubles and of the wind whistling through the cracks of his mountain shanty.

And so in the other industries, we are speeded up to the breaking point. "Efficiency," which is merely another name for speed, has become the slogan of the modern industrial world, and it has been so long and persistently harped upon as to seem the sum total of human desires. Now while with legitimate efficiency we have no quarrel, there is a species of efficiency which deserves to be branded with its true name, which is, greed-the greed of a certain class of employer that sets all his machines on impossibly high gears and then tells his men that the reason they cannot meet his requirements is because they take a glass of beer. All drink, he declares, even used in moderation, lessens efficiency.

Certain great industrial concerns in this country have become