State Superintendent of the California Anti-Saloon League
SOME good citizens seem to think that wine and beer are not seriously harmful, and that prohibition of the whole traffic in alcoholic beverages is too radical. We commend all such to a study of conditions in the great wine and beer drinking countries of the world. Nowhere else is the alcohol problem so acute to-day as it is in France and Belgium. France leads the world in its consumption of wine, Belgium in its consumption of beer.
The Most Drunken Nation on Earth
Speaking in the Sorbonne, January 3, 1910, M. Joseph Reinach, a member of the French House of Deputies, said:
"If France does not wish to die, she must burn out the cancer which gnaws within her, which is making greater ravages in the twentieth century than ever famine and the black death made in the middle ages. . . .
"We have become the most drunken nation on earth, and that, gentlemen, in thirty years. The number of drink shops has reached the frightful figure of 477,000, one for every thirty adults. In many of our great cities and seaport towns, the number of drinking places has, since 1880, doubled, nearly tripled. In hundreds of villages, one counts a saloon for every tenth, nay, every fourth or third house. And in spite of this supersaturation, the increase continues. More than six new saloons are on the average opened each day. Since 1880 our consumption of absolute alcohol has doubled, in some provinces sextupled. And the consequences of this immense poisoning — who does not know them? They are written in the flesh of the nation. Ask at the Ministry of Justice for the statistics of criminality; at the Ministry of the Interior for those of madness, of suicide, of tuberculosis; at the Ministry of War for the conscript lists. In ten departments the number of rejected conscripts has risen from six per cent to twenty per cent. In all France the number of suicides has doubled, of insane has advanced by a continual progression from 47,000 to 70,000. More than half the crimes against persons are committed by alcoholists."
Both Lines of Defense Broken
The country people constitute the natural first line of a nation's defense against alcohol; the women its second line. In France both are being broken through. M. Reinach says, "Alcoholism is destroying the peasantry of the healthiest and most beautiful regions by inducing tuberculosis."
Dr. Bourgon, writing of Normandy, says, "Eight out of ten working women drink, and their mistresses as well." When the women drink, the children drink, too. A French teacher tells of three-year-olds who drink a quart of wine a day, and another tells of children of twelve who drink a quart of brandy daily. In France, men, women, and children are sick with alcoholism; and unless something is done quickly to stay the ravages of drink in that land of wine, it will soon cease to rank among the great nations of the earth.
Italy's Great Danger
In Italy the Societa Umanitaria of Milan has recently published a little volume, the very name of which is suggestive — "Alcolisimo e un pericolo per Italia" (Alcoholism Italy's Great Danger). In that book we are told that investigation was made among 36,000 school children of Milan; and of the boys, twenty-five per cent admitted having been drunk on more than one occasion, while eleven per cent of the girls made the same confession.
The Milan prosecutor says, "It falls to my lot frequently to have to sum up the causes of a tragedy in two words — wine and knife." From Parma comes the warning, "The increase in wages and the cheapness of wine have led to a growth of drunkenness."
Insanity, too, is on the increase. Wine alcoholism is shown to be responsible for a large part of it. Wine has not saved Italy from the alcohol curse.
Beer Has Not Saved Germany
Beer has not saved Germany. That country consumes twice as much beer per capita as does America, and nearly five times as much wine. This, however, only whets the appetite for stronger drinks, and so we find that Germans consume one and one half times as much distilled liquor per capita as do the people of the United States.
Dr. Emil Muensterberg (brother of our own Professor Muensterberg of Harvard, who not long ago sounded the praises of beer to the American public) recently said: "The consumption of alcohol in Germany is exceptionally great. . . . Fifty thousand insane are in German asylums yearly whose sickness can be traced to alcohol."
Berlin has over 800 animierkneipen (beer dives), employing 1,786 "waitresses." Dr. Muensterberg says that in these places "thousands of fresh young women go to destruction in a short time and are rarely to be rescued." These girls drink with the men and so stimulate trade.
No wonder Von Moltke said, "Beer is a far more dangerous enemy of Germany than all the armies of France."
Nowhere is the alcohol problem more acute to-day than in these wine and beer lands. If the United States are to be saved from the curse of alcoholism, we must not compromise with either wine or beer, but must outlaw the whole liquor traffic as we have outlawed slavery; lotteries, polygamy, and race-track gambling. There will be no better time to clean up the whole Pacific coast than November 3, 1914. Let us do it.
