"No one would think of taking the club away from the rich man. No one would think of denying him the privilege of having what he wishes to drink in these clubs. The hotel or high class restaurant which does not furnish beverages to its patrons has a hard time in the struggle for existence. Who will say that it is right to use all the power we can muster in an effort to abolish 'the poor man's club' and leave untouched the clubs of a privileged class?"

Recurring to the point of improving the saloon or finding a substitute for it, Dr. Reiland continues:

The Hofbrau

"There are such substitutes in other countries. houses and beer gardens of Germany are among the interesting places of Europe. Men go there with their wives and children and are able to purchase at small cost good food and pure beverages in clean and attractive buildings, and while they are thus eating and drinking may hear the best of music played by capable musicians. Drunkenness, vulgarity, rudeness and lewdness, so common in and around saloons in the United States, are never seen there.

"Something modelled after this kind can be established in New York, and I am convinced that any effort to do this would meet with a cordial and appreciative response, for it is a slander upon the less fortunate classes among our people to say that they will not appreciate an effort of this kind made in their behalf and that they would wilfully choose the inferior rather than the superior and prefer vice and dirt to purity and cleanliness. A transformation of this kind would be a distinct invitation to moral improvement and to temperance instead of drunkenness. The fact is, you have got to supply what the people demand so far as, in the judgment of our sanest people, the demands are right and help rather than hurt the whole social body.

"As between temperance and total abstinence I believe it is better to urge the former than the latter. Total abstinence should be the rule of life for those who cannot touch liquor without endangering their sobriety, but 'temperance' in all things is about the best text we can have for a rule of daily life."

Concluding his remarks on this part of his subject, Dr. Reiland declared his belief that

"If our national drink were beer and we should take care to see that it was clean and pure in the making and dispensing of it,

we would go a long way toward national temperance and self-respect. An American Hofbrau is worth working for."

Commenting on Dr. Reiland's ideas, the Chicago Tribune says: "The minister in question will no doubt be criticised severely by persons opposed to compromising with the saloon. Less partisan citizens are likely to commend him for the sanity of his criticisms and the practicability of the remedies he suggests."

REFORMERS ON EXCISE LAWS.

Dr. Frederic C. Howe, of the People's Institute, New York, recently expressed his views on the liquor question before the City Club of New York, and in an interview in the New York Times. He believes that the method of handling the saloon question gives rise to graft and vice. Dr. Howe said in part.

"The high-license feature of the present law has had a disastrous effect. We imposed a license fee of $1,200 upon every place where liquor is sold, and few have taken the trouble to follow carefully and estimate the cost of this sumptuary legislation. In our efforts to cure one evil, we have created a score of others, worse than the one at which we aimed.

"The license exacted in New York is equal to a tax of $25 per week. In order to pay the State that tax, which must be paid, regardless of business conditions, at least 1,000 drinks must be sold. At least 125 to 150 people must be induced to take a drink in every place in which liquor is sold, in order that the State may be paid its tax.

"In order to pay this tax, the saloon keeper must push the sale of whisky, rather than that of beer, and he sells to women, children and habitual drunkards.

"It is not impossible that this high license fee may make the saloon-keeper link gambling and a worse vice with his liquor business, in order to make both ends meet.

"The by-product of this high license has resulted in an increased number of drunkards and a body of drinkers worse harmed by their drink than drinkers need be. It has not decreased the number of saloons, and has almost done away with leisurely drinking, at least in the saloons.

"In European countries, where the high license is unknown, drinking is relatively harmless, because it is done slowly, and not

by stealth. It promotes sociability and thus adds to the happiness of the people."

Dr. Howe pointed out that our excise laws are the product of another day.

"We have advanced along other lines, and there is room for advancement in the solution of the liquor question. It will be found when the city is permitted to handle this question, as it does the health question and questions of other public welfare, and when it is permitted to allow the sale of beer in some places without a license fee, or with a very nominal fee, and, in other places, to exact a heavy fee; in this way, places would exist where a man could take his family, and enjoy a glass of beer, and the disreputable places would be rooted out, not only by an excessive license fee, but by the revocation of the license, which should be in the hands of the city, without appeal from its decision."

It is significant that Mr. Geo. Haven Putnam, the well-known publisher, who has served as a member of the Committee of Fourteen, holds views of the same general tenor. Mr. Putnam says (in the National Municipal Review):

"I do not myself believe that New York City or any other great community can be made moral by legislation. I am convinced that it is unwise and unfair to bring upon a body of officials the pressure and the temptation to which the officers and the rank and file of the police are exposed in having in their hands the opportunity of selling the privilege of breaking the law, and who are, in fact, under instructions, obedience to which is essential for their own continued service, to make such sale and to extend the continued protection.

"I believe that the control of its domestic affairs should be left in the hands of the voters of the city, and that the well-meaning up-State farmers, who can have no direct knowledge of our municipal conditions and difficulties should be freed from any responsibility for the management of our problems. The measures for the control or the supervision of vice of one kind or another would, under a home rule government, be shaped according to the standard of our own citizens. No laws can be effectively and consistently enforced which are not in accord with the ideals, the wishes, and the convictions of a substantial majority of the voters of the community. Laws which, instead of being enforced, are left as empty shams, lead to contempt for government and for the makers of law, and are

demoralizing as well to the officials, who are charged with their enforcement, as to the people who are permitted to break them at will or as a result of graft payments."

Mr. Putnam is persuaded that if the city of New York had in its hands the control of the liquor business, certain of the present restrictions would certainly be removed. Liquor selling on Sunday would, for instance, be permitted during certain hours, as is found advisable in London and in other European cities.

CHILDREN OF DRINKING PARENTS NOT INFERIOR.

TH

HE American Magazine, in its January, 1913, number, published an article by Albert Jay Nock, author of "The New Science and its Findings," which gave the results of Prof. Karl Pearson's investigation of the families of drunkards and teetotalers. The article was entitled, "Is It True?" and has elicited considerable press comment.

We summarize Mr. Nock's article below, in view of its importance. The findings of the Galton Laboratory investigations have been heretofore noticed in our Year Book.

"I had always been taught that drunken parents are apt to produce imperfect children," writes Mr. Nock, "and, for my own part, I never had any doubt about it, until I visited the Galton Laboratory for Eugenics at the University of London. The investigations of the Galton Laboratory, as far as they go, throw such serious doubt on the accepted belief, that we ought to suspend judgment and call in further evidence. The Galton Laboratory counts up the accomplished facts in order to see whether the thing really has happened, instead of following in the footsteps of other scientists, who simply argue that such and such a thing ought to happen, and therefore must happen. While the study of alcoholism may lead us to believe that drunken parents ought to produce a large percentage of defectives, the only way to turn this belief into a certainty is to count up the children and see whether they are really defective.

"When we see a man who drinks, and is poor, we infer that he is poor because he drinks. He may be, but again, he may drink because he is poor. Miss Willard said it was as often true one way as the other, and Tom L. Johnson agreed with her. Then there is a third distinctive possibility. He may be poor because he is inefficient; and his inefficiency and drunkenness alike may both be results of defective stock, which does not mean an inebriate stock, by any means.

"The Galton Laboratory has tried to find out the effect of parental drinking on children, by strict inheritance in physique or mentality. For this purpose, the Laboratory took reports of school-children in various cities of Great Britain. The children