MEN are beginning to investigate the effects of the liquor traffic as never before. To a large extent what has passed as statistics of the crime have been heretofore too much in round numbers, and from conjecture more than from actual figures. The State of Massachusetts has set a grand example in this respect. Under instruction from her Legislature, the Bureau of Statistics devotes, in the Report just out, 240 pages of tabulated work to the general question of drunkenness and liquor-selling, and then 51 pages to the specific question of the influence of intemperance upon crime.
From the magnitude of the question, the inquiry under this head was necessarily confined to Suffolk county (Boston and vicinity). There it has had the most patient and thorough investigation ever made in America, with the following results. It covers only the one year, ending Sept. 1, 1880:—
Total number of convictions in the county, 16,897.
For the various grades of drunkenness, and for selling liquors unlawfully, 12,289.
For crimes, not included in the 12,289, there were in liquor at the time of committing, 2,097.
In liquor at the time of forming purpose to commit crime, 1,918.
Intemperance habits such as tend to induce crime, 1,804.
Of the entire 16,897 convictions, only 1,158 were total abstainers, and these were for such offenses as peddling without a licence, truancy from school, keeping unlicensed dogs, refusing to assist officers, selling tobacco without a license, forgery, and the like.
These figures are startling. They are not new to those who have given the subject some thought, but they must have some weight with those who cannot be moved by the moral aspect of the question. And yet some men are indifferent to all these things! The lives and morals of their own children do not move them. But a better day is coming.