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a normal person. Between the responsibility of the occasional drunkard and the irresponsibility of the inebriate there are many grades of quasi-responsibility, the extent of which there is no means of estimating; such fine distinctions must be left for further experience to determine. In the meantime, considerable advance will be made. if the irresponsibility for habits, and for offences the results of such habits, is more widely accepted and acted upon, in the case of persons who are definitely inebriate.

"If irresponsibility be acknowledged, or even quasi-responsibility, the argument in favor of treatment as opposed to punishment must be recognized also. It is as illogical to punish an inebriate for an offence due to drunkenness, the while ignoring the motive force that determines the offence, as it would be to attempt the treatment of a disease without previously removing an obvious cause.

THE PREVALENCE OF INEBRIETY

"All that is known with any approach to certainty regarding private 'non-criminal' inebriates is that somewhere about 4,000 persons, resident in England and Wales, have submitted themselves to treatment in licensed and unlicensed homes, or have endeavored to find relief by resort to some of the best-known cures during the last three years. Knowing the vast number of persons who make enquiry regarding the conditions that govern admissions to institutions, and go no further with the matter for financial or other reasons, it is unlikely that this figure represents more than a quarter of those who are qualified for treatment. Most of the managers of Retreats, and homes for inebriates of all kinds, maintain that not more than 1 out of every 10 or 12 persons who apply for particulars is subsequently admitted. Accepting the first suggestion as more probably correct, and as more likely to understate than overstate the case, a round figure of about 16,000 is obtained, which is as close an estimate as circumstances permit.

"Turning now to the lower class inebriates, those who commit offences as the result of their habits, and are constantly in and out of prison in consequence, the facilities for estimate are not much greater.

"The Metropolitan Police Authority is the only one in the kingdom that makes any effort to separate inebriates from occasional drunkards, and this is only attempted (at present) in the case of women. During the three years ended December 31st, 1912, about

2,500 names of such women were recorded. It is therefore known that at least this number of women inebriates qualified for committal to Reformatories are in the Metropolitan Police District. How the number of male persons of similar type would compare with this it is difficult to say; it would probably be much smaller, as the drunken recidivist man is not so common as the recidivist woman. It is true that the number of men convicted at police courts usually equals and often exceeds the number of women; but, the fact that occasional drunkenness is more common in men than in women must be taken into full consideration.

"If to the 2,500 known women inebriates a further 1,500 men be added, an approximate 4,000 of both sexes is obtained, as the figure probably representing the number of London inebriates of the recidivist police court type. This number is equal to about 1 in 1,130 of the total population of the County of London and would seem to indicate the probability that about 32,000 of the same class can be found in England and Wales.

"This seems to indicate roughly that there are about 48,000 inebriates, of all classes, in England and Wales at the present time (about 1.42 per 1,000 of the population), of which number about 16,000 are persons in private life-whose habits have not led to conviction in police courts-and 32,000 known to have criminal or disorderly. tendency. Dealing in round figures this means, in relation to total population, approximately 5 per 1,000 of the former and I per 1,000 of the latter."

THE ELIMINATION OF THE UNFIT1

The general impression throughout the country is, that the criminal class is extremely numerous and dangerous. What are actually the facts? That in no community is there more than one individual in ten thousand in prison or in jail for any offense; that the percentage of criminals, so far as can be estimated, in no instance runs above five in the thousand, and yet we are legislating -against a mere one-half of one per cent., as if the whole stability of society was in danger unless we crushed the criminal out of exist

ence.

The situation is one of exaggerated dread and fear. We are afraid of the criminal; we are afraid of the defective'; we are afraid of insanity. We think that the race is in danger of going to all sorts of degenerative extremes if something radical isn't done to stop it. We talk about the rapid increase of insanity and the terrible strain in modern civilized life upon the brain and upon the nervous system. The real strain of modern civilized life is upon the lungs and upon the liver; not upon the nervous system. In no community has the percentage of the insane gone above three in the thousand, or about one-fifth of one per cent. The fear of the community about being overwhelmed by insanity has no logical basis. The number of feeble-minded in any community has probably never gone above one-fourth of one per cent. The number of drunkards -we hear that brought out as one of the besetting sins of the coming generation. Well, it may be; but did you ever happen to notice what was the first pledge of the first temperance society ever formed in this country? It was formed, I think, only a little over eightyfive years ago, and the pledge-it was of this compromise, that "We, the undersigned, do hereby solemnly promise and agree that we will not get drunk more than three times in the year, namely:-Fourth of July, Host Day," and one other. That was the attitude towards drunkenness one hundred years ago. To-day we consider that ludicrous, if not positively immoral. And do you remember about this generation being in danger of being swept off into delinquency by the charm of strong drink? In no instance where the matter

1 Extract from address of Dr. Woods Hutchinson, delivered at the New Jersey State Conference of Charities, Princeton, February, 1911.

has been gone into with any care (and I have made a wholesale study of that particular subject, myself, in two or three different. communities with which I have been acquainted)-in no instance was the percentage of drunkenness more than about two per cent.; and in most cases less than one per cent. of adult males who were in the habit of using liquor, not counting prohibitionists and others."

A COSMOPOLITAN'S VIEW OF ALCOHOL

What Sir H. H. Johnston has to say about alcohol in The Nineteenth Century and After (April, 1914) carries peculiar weight because of his wide knowledge of men in many lands. He confesses that alcohol in any form is obnoxious to him. Even as a child the smallest quantity of wine poisoned him and now a long residence in the tropics has so impaired his health that total abstinence has become a necessity. He cries out against the tyranny of alcohol which besets him on all sides and asks why it is so difficult to find a cheap, safe and palatable substitute.

Still Sir Johnston is far from being a fanatic on the subject of alcohol. "It would be absurd to say," he writes, "that the mass of Germans should give up beer and Rhine wines, that the French people should renounce claret, burgundy and champagne, or the Spaniards and Portuguese the natural unfortified wines of their own production. The increase in the birth-rate and the patently fine physique of the Spanish people show that wine-drinking does them no harm, and they are to a great extent at the present time still free from the undeniable curse of distilled alcohol. But in Germany it is equally clear, from such statistics as can be obtained, that a portion of the nation is ill-affected by its addiction to strong waters."

He finds that throughout France, Belgium, much of Italy, Germany and Austria, "the tourist who does not drink beer or wine for health reasons, and who is afraid of water because of uncertainty in regard to typhoid infection, is reduced virtually to gaseous and not very wholesome liquids from syphons or bottles, or to perpetual tea or coffee; and tea and coffee drunk to excess are nearly as harmful as alcohol. In Spain, curiously enough, where the native population drinks wine to such a considerable extent, it is far easier to get good, pure, cold water than in most European countries."

In citing examples of the tyranny of alcohol, the writer gives many instances of the ravages of distilled liquors. Russia, of course, provides a notorious one. In regard to Ireland, he speaks of the vast injury whiskey-drinking has wrought among professional and middle-class men. While admitting that "conditions in Ireland

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