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The Scotch Highlander and the native of our own Appalachian Mountains both have the same contempt for a government which would tax spirits distilled from the produce of their own lands. The book is interesting chiefly for its quaint presentation of the subject. In the chapter on "The Moral Aspect of Smuggling" the author regrets that "the Highland clergy, with one exception, are guilty of the grossest neglect and indifference in the matter of wiping out the practice. Smugglers are formally debarred from the Communion Table in only one Highland Parish." (The book can be obtained through P. S. King & Son, London, England.)

CAUSES AND CURES OF CRIME, by THOMAS SPEED MOSBY (C. V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, Mo.), is a book which recent circumstances. have made of particular interest. Some time ago the newspapers published broadcast the announcement that out of 1,478 prisoners in the Eastern Penitentiary (Pennsylvania), 1,008 had signed a petition asking the next legislature to put the saloon out of business. This "human document," as it was fondly called by prohibition advocates, would not have been seized upon so eagerly had its would-be sponsors been more familiar with the literature of criminology.

In the chapter entitled "Individual Factors of Crime" the author treats of this very matter. The relation of alcoholism and crime have been made the subject of exhaustive research.

"Investigators are frequently misled by the convicts themselves. It is well known that criminals who are victims of the opium habit will never let the fact be known if they can possibly conceal it, but most convicts who have been addicted to the use of alcoholic drinks in any degree do not hesitate to proclaim themselves the victims of intemperance. Most criminals who have used liquor at all will attribute their whole misfortune to drink, thinking thus to evade moral responsibility for the crime. Thus, one prisoner told me that he held up a street car and robbed the conductor, 'because I had been drinking.' As to precisely what quantity of intoxicating liquor must be consumed in order to induce the robbery of a street car, let savants judge. I afterwards discovered epilepsy and insanity in the family history of this man."

SHALL I DRINK? In this book the REV. JOSEPH H. CROOKER has collected all of the arguments and material published in recent years on the negative side of this question and purports to give a scientific presentation of his point of view. He quotes copiously from the publications of the Scientific Temperance Federation and

uses its "valuable copyrighted" charts. The book is a hodgepodge and is written from a most biased viewpoint. Its only value lies in the fact that it is a sort of anthology of prohibition argu

ments.

The author seeks to prove, in the chapter "The Drink Superstition," that origin of the habit of drinking is found in the superstition that by intoxication men become filled with the spirit of God. As it was regarded as the divine life-giver, men used liquor in their sacrificial feasts. It created friendship between men and the gods.

The Rochester Herald in its issue of August 10, 1914, remarks editorially, that the Rev. Mr. Crooker is putting the cart before the horse, and says: "We do not believe that men began to drink out of any such notion as that. Men began to drink for the same reason that men drink now-because it satisfied their thirst. The real reason why men have always drunk, and why they doubtless always will, is found in the fact that a drink makes them feel better than they feel without it." (The book can be obtained from Pilgrim Press, New York City.)

THE PREVALENCE OF OCCUPATIONAL FACTORS IN DISEASE

Under this title, E. R. Heyhurst, Director of the Division of Occupational Disease in the Ohio State Board of Health, has written a valuable paper printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association of December 14, 1914. He accompanies his carefully presented statistical material, obtained from a study conducted under the Occupational Disease Fellowship of the Otho S. A. Sprague Institute for Infectious Diseases, with suggestions for the elimination of occupational factors.

Only the summary of his findings is herewith reproduced. The study is of very great interest and should serve to dispel many current erroneous notions about the causes of disease in industries, particularly that in regard to the importance attached to alcoholism as a factor.

SUMMARY

As a result of considerable study of hospital and dispensary cases and records, of vital statistics, and of field investigations, we reach the following conclusions:

1. Occupied persons, other than agriculturists, suffer an enormous mortality, (figures show 74 per cent.) from well-recognized preventable and prematurely degenerative diseases.

2. Occupational diseases exist because industrial health-hazards exist. Responsible employers do not realize the existence of either, while treating agencies take little cognizance of employments.

3. From one-fourth to one-third of the medical afflictions of tradespersons are due in whole, or in great part, to industrial healthhazards.

4. In institutions, the vast majority of industrial diseases are lost sight of through failure to recognize properly the industrial relations of the patients, to make etiologic diagnoses, and to classify properly in subsequent filing.

5. Specific occupational diseases, such as lead poisoning, are not recognized in more than one out of three or four instances, more especially the chronic cases.

6. Present-day institutional records are of value only in showing the enormous numbers of representatives of groups of indus

THE PREVALENCE OF OCCUPATIONAL FACTORS IN DISEASE 249

trial pursuits who are below the physiologic normal, and who seek medical aid for preventable afflictions. Such records have little value to the student of economics.

7. A most important first remedy is a proper nomenclature for industrial relations to take the place of the word “occupation.” Such a nomenclature is here propounded. The chief feature of this is the introduction of the term "industry-department-process" for the word occupation. Adoption of this proposed term, furthermore, renders a logical classification of occupations possible. No such classification now exists.

8. The powers and functions of the community health-governing body should be extended to the prompt investigation of all industrial complaints, and to the prompt remedying of them without the necessity of preliminary legislation against certain alleged responsible industries.

9. In spite of the fact that the State in which this study was made has an occupational disease law, workers are still coming into its charitable institutions from the same types of trades, and in some instances, from the same manufacturing establishments, in even greater numbers than at a period three years previous, when the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases made its investigation. This, we charge, is most directly due to the non-existence of a correlating body between the hospital and the factory.

10. Too much importance is usually given to alcoholism, with a failure to appreciate that subjection to industrial health-hazards in itself induces and promotes stimulantism.

As a noted health officer has stated, many occupational afflictions might well be made the subject of a grand jury investigation, and others, of a coroner's inquest. The vastness of the public and private sums now spent on preventable sickness and death should induce those who pay the tax to bend every effort to run down these contributory factors and abolish them.

THE CAUSES OF INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS

It is being spread abroad that intoxication is responsible for a large part of industrial accidents. For instance, at the recent meeting of the National Council for Industrial Safety at Chicago, the chief inspector of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Safety said that 60 per cent. of the industrial accidents in the United States should be charged to liquor. At the same time A. T. Morey, of the Commonwealth Steel Company, declared that "it is recognized that most industrial accidents are brought about through the use of alcoholic stimulants." It is also observable that in the orders promulgated by various railroad companies and other corporations attention has been focused upon liquor, and it is implied that alcohol is very largely responsible for the numerous industrial casualties.

How far are these allegations true? Or how far do they seem intended to find a convenient scape-goat and perhaps hide the many other conditions productive of accidents, some of which perhaps the corporations are reluctant to improve? Now neither of the startling assertions cited above is supported by any evidence whatsoBut it is possible to give some light on the situation in regard to accidents and that from official sources, and the latter tell quite a different story.

ever.

CHIEF CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS LONG KNOWN

For years there has been persistent agitation to provide for the safety of workers and for bettering dangerous and insanitary conditions on railroads, in shops, factories and mines. And during all this agitation one heard very little about drink as a cause of accidents and disease. That's a new development. In regard to the frightful rate of accidents on railroads, the years of effort to secure the Safety-Appliance law will be recalled. Time and again the railway employees were refused the simple protection that lies in automatic couplers, grab irons, air brakes, etc. It was cheaper to sacrifice lives than to provide these things. The railroads fought the law and have often been found guilty of violating it.

Speaking of the recognized causes of industrial accidents the Factory Inspector of Pennsylvania said in 1894: "Many accidents

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