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Preventable Disease Due to Alcohol

Compared with Other Preventable Diseases

Deaths of Men 25-65 Years Old.

United States Registration Area 1900-1908 [about one-half United States.]

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"Alcoholic Indulgence stands almost if not altogether in the front rank of the enemies to be combated in the battle for health."-Prof. William T. Sedgwick.

1. Does not include deaths from general alcoholic paralysis or other organic diseases due to alcohol. Liver Cirrhosis due to alcohol conservatively estimated at 75 per cent. of total cases.

Copyright 1911, by Scientific Temperance Federation, Boston.

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Scientific Temperance Federation, 23 Trull St., Boston Scientific Temperance Federation, 23 Trull St., Boston

THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE FEDERATION

American Branch of the International Temperance Bureau

An Educational Temperance Organization Purpose. To make known in every possible way, in popular form, the proved facts of science concerning the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics, in order to secure intelligent conviction based on demonstrated fact.

Methods. The dissemination of facts by the following and other methods: Personal Correspondence, An Editor's Press Circular, Loan Exhibit of Scientific Charts, Popular Leaflets, The Scientific Temperance Journal, A Stereopticon Lecture.

The Scientific Temperance Federation has a unique place to fill: a distinct message and work. Its aims are fundamental and practical.

Its Membership

Advantages. All members are entitled to ask for special information on temperance topics and to receive free, notices of useful new publications, samples of leaflets or other information published by the Federation.

Associate Membership is open to all who desire (1) to have fuller acquaintance with the alcohol and narcotic question which membership in the Federation affords, or (2) to help extend popular knowledge of the truth on these subjects, or (3) to promote a rational educational method of preventing intemperance. Members' fees $1.50 annually and all members may receive the SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE JOURNAL at the special price of 50 cents.

THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE FEDERATION, 23 Trull Street, Boston, Mass.

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SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE JOURNAL.

Psychology of Alcoholism

By George B. Cutten, B. D., M. A., Ph. D.

A popular summary of research (750 references) on
effects of alcohol on nervous system, intellect, will,
emotions, senses, insanity, and of cures by hypnotism
and conversion.
Price postpaid $1.65

Alcohol and the Individual

By Henry Smith Williams, M. D., LL. D.
The valuable articles published in McClure's on
the relation of alcohol to individual well-being and
efficiency, with extracts from article of the Doctors
Rosanoff, in attractive book form. Every temper-
ance organization, minister and teacher should se-
cure a copy and use it.
Price postpaid $.55

TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS.

Alcohol and the Individual
Scientific Temperance Journal
Psychology of Alcoholism
Scientific Temperance Journal

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23 Trull Street, Boston, Mass.

Please mention the Scientific Temperance Journal when writing to advertisers.

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Vol. XXI

A

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BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1911

The Kings

By Louise Imogen Guiney

man said unto his angel :
'My spirits are fallen low,
And I cannot carry the battle
O brother! where might I go?

"The terrible Kings are on me
With spears that are deadly bright;
Against me so from the cradle
Do fate and my fathers fight."
Then said to the man his angel :
"Thou wavering, witless soul,
Back to the ranks ! what matter
To win or to lose the whole,

"As judged by the little judges
Who harkened not well nor see
Not thus by the outer issue,
The wise shall interpret thee.

"Thy will is the sovereign measure
And only event of things:
The puniest heart, defying
Were stronger than all these Kings.
"Though out of the past they gather,
Mind's doubt and Bodily Pain,
And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
That is kin to the other twain ;
"And Grief, in a cloud of banners,
And ringletted Vain Desires,
And Vice, with spoils upon him
Of thee and thy beaten sires,
"While kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is with broken sabre
To rise on the last redoubt.”

-Selected.

No. 3

A

The Effect of Alcohol upon Productivity

GERMAN social student has made an analytical study of the losses German industry suffers from the incapacities of workmen caused by drink.

One notable loss is caused by absence from work on Mondays and the days following holidays.

Various industries in the Rhine region of Germany for instance, suffered so seriously from the absence of their employees on working days that an investigation was made by a society organized for the promotion of industry. Different establishments were asked to report the number of absences on working days. From this report it turned out that a large percentage of the absences occurred on Mondays. Some concerns reported that a number of workmen did not appear until Tuesday, and then not to work. Many factories reported that they could not count on having all their workmen together until Wednesday or Thursday.

Comparisons of the absences on Monday and on Thursday in a hemp spinning house in Cologne showed that the Monday absences amounted to 4.77 per cent. of the whole number of workers; of Thursday to only 1.44 per

cent.

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ebrations of the Rhine workmen, the representative of the Bochmer Chamber of Commerce reported that a quarry in his district was scarcely able to fill its contracts as a result of "Blue Monday." The infliction of fines for inexcusable absences seems to have little effect; the drinkers count it as a part of the cost of their indulgence. These losses of the manufacturers are the heaviest where groups of workmen are all compelled to lose time through the absence of one man, especially when it is a matter of skilled labor, which cannot easily be replaced. Special complaints in this respect were made by a jute spinning mill, a cotton factory, a wall-pattern factory and a chocolate factory.

DIMINISHED WORKING ABILITY ON MONDAYS

Among the industries whose records showed diminished working ability of employees at the beginning of the week was a mine in the Black Forest. The working ability of the hardest drinkers (shown by the amount of material excavated) was lowest on Monday. It increased until Saturday when they were able to do from 50 to 100 per cent. more than on Monday. Other workmen averaged from 2.53 per cent. to 13.38 per cent. more on other days of the week than on Mondays.

Quite different figures were obtained from a manufacturer of optical instruments in Jena. Here the men worked under the most favorable conditions-an eight-hour day, a high degree of intelligence in the men, and city institutions which provided rational en

joyments. The difference between the working ability of Monday is here only 1.03 per cent. less than on other days of the week. This difference the managers attributed not to Sunday drinking, but to the very common disinclination of routine workmen to resume uninteresting work after a day's intermission. To this may be added the interruption of practice from Saturday until Monday. But both of these factors, in the absence of heavy Sunday drinking are here seen to amount to but little in comparison with the Monday shortage where such drinking prevails.

EXTENT OF THE PROFIT LEAKAGE

A very exact set of figures showing the common drop in working ability following Sunday was obtained from a bottle factory in Dresden*. It shows the total number of bottles made by five glass-makers in the period of three weeks. In every case the least work is done on Mondays. In all cases the efficiency rises during the first days of the week after the rest-day and reaches its highest point, in two cases on Thursday, in two other cases on Friday and in one case on Saturday. The total output of work by the five men is about 28.5 per cent. less on Monday than the average for the other days of the week. Saturday shows only an insignificant sinking of the efficiency curve, while Tuesday shows yet a considerable inferiority. The firm explains Tuesday's record by the fact that in Dresden on Monday as well as Sunday, there is much public dancing, in which many of the workmen take part, only a small part of the workmen, mostly old, married people, work the same on Monday as on other days. THE REMEDY, IMPROVED SURROUNDINGS AND HABITS

The investigations of Dr. Stehr covered all grades of work. On the one hand were the isolated mining works in the Black Forest, more than an hour from the next small village, with men of most inferior quality of whom gross muscle work is demanded, who neither know nor have access to better pleasures than alcohol. In Jena were found nearly their antipodes; workmen in the most favorable hygienic conditions imaginable, engaged in a work requiring for the most part high qualities, with keen intelligence, sufficient leisure and abundant opportunities to engage in the higher enjoyments. In the Rhineland was a working class required to do monotonous, purely mechanical work under externally unfavorable working conditions and although better pleasures were easily accessible, they have no desire for other enjoyments than those attached to alcohol. In *See diagram p. 36a.

Dresden the workmen were in the midst of lively intercourse with the great city.

"BLUE MONDAY" COSTLY TO BOTH MANUFACTURER AND WORKMAN

If the statistical material here furnished will not permit us to state exactly the extent of the role which alcohol can and does play in the percentage of otherwise possible work, we may yet draw from it, says Dr. Stehr, the following very significant conclusions:

1. "Every trial of work, even that requiring only a minimum of intelligence shows throughout the whole week the injurious influence of immoderate use of alcohol on Sunday.

2. "The smaller product of Monday is not attributable solely to Sunday indulgence in alcohol; the physiological disinclination to begin work again and the loss of practice during the resting-time, diminishing productivity in a small degree, difficult to measure, and varying with the individual and kind of work. In order to determine exactly the damage through irrational pleasure, the factors of disinclination to resume work and loss of practice would have to be deducted. A clue to the size of these two factors is furnished us by the differences in the Zeiss workers (1.13 per cent.).

3. "The extent of the damage resulting from Sunday indulgence in alcohol addicts, with men engaged in crude muscle work may exceed 50 per cent. With workmen designated 'normal' and only given to what is called moderate use of alcohol, it may amount to 2.5-13.3 per cent.

"With the Dresden bottle workers it was about 28.5 per cent. below the average for the rest of the week; with the umbrella workers of the Rhineland it was from 2 to 23.9 per

cent. 4. "The more the workman is accustomed to indulge only on Sunday in the immoderate use of alcohol, the more his efficiency curve shows a steady upward direction in the course of the week; in substance it is the expression of the disappearance of the alcohol intoxication.

5. "The more rational a workman is in his enjoyments the nearer his Tuesday's efficiency approaches the maximum of his output, which is oftenest reached on Thursday, and the more constant, as a rule, is his daily working ability."-Translated and rewritten for THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE JOURNAL.

Willie-Pa. Pa-Yes.

Willie Teacher says we're here to help others. Pa-Of course we are.

Willie Well, what are the others here for?-Chicago News.

W

The Hague Congress Against Alcohol
BY REV. U. F. MUELLER, C. PP. S.

WHEN the XIII Congress Against Alcoholism, held in The Hague, Sept. 11-17, 1911, closed, someone remarked that it had had more of a religious coloring than any of its predecessors. And so it was. It was opened with religious exercises, both Catholic and Protestant, and was participated in by over 70 Catholic priests and the Pope's representative, the Bishop of Harlem, and by a very large number of ministers and many denominational abstinence societies. Clearly the leaders of the various Christian bodies are awakening to the dangers which threaten Christianity through the spread of acute and chronic alcoholism. The discussion also showed a more marked tendency toward enlisting the help of religious influences in the treatment of drunkards.

But this does not mean that the Congress was less scientific. There was much of universal interest and value although most of the topics dealt largely with European conditions.

WHAT TO DO WITH THE DRINKER

The first day's session was mostly occupied with the "Treatment of the Drinker." European physicians have no faith in Keely-cure or Oppenheimer treatment. Instead they bring the drinkers into institutions where, surrounded by abstainers and engaged in pleasant work, they live a life of abstinence for at least six months, more often a year, and receive solid instruction as to the effects of drinking. As a rule, they leave the "drinkers' home" cured. But hardly 40 per cent. stay cured; owing to their surroundings 60 per cent. sooner or later suffer relapse.

Most relapses, according to Dr. Stein of Budapest, are due to the suggestive influence of the moderate use of alcohol upon drinkers, i. e., because the moderate use produces temporary pleasure, there is an instinctive feeling that more alcohol would produce still more pleasure, hence the inability to stop before intoxication is reached."

Home treatment of drinkers was the theme of Mr. Joseph of Geneva, Switzerland, who insisted that "there is only one means by which alcoholic patients can be cured, viz., abstinence. The most crucial point in winning the drinker is to get him to admit that he drinks immoderately."

But perhaps it will be found still more difficult to carry out the suggestion of Miss Wilhelmina Lohmann of Birlefeld, Germany, that "the wife of the drinker must above all become an abstainer and join a total abstinence

society to be able to influence her husband to follow suit." We said her advice was more difficult to follow, because the writer on his trip through the fatherland became sadly aware that it is easier to gain the men than the women for abstinence.

Difficult, too, were some other means suggested as, for instance, Dr. Feldmann's (Birlefeld): "Educate your patient to abstinence by personal contact and by placing him in an atmosphere of abstainers." But this atmosphere is still lacking. For what are 200,000 abstainers among 65,000,000, especially if almost one half of that number are children?

ALCOHOL AND THE STATE

Dr. Morller rightly emphasized the "duty of the state to erect homes for the cure of drinkers."

We do not know whether it did, but it certainly ought to have wrought some consternation upon the representatives of the various governments, when this scholar, gray of hair and old in experience, bluntly announced: "It is the duty of the state to care for the drunkards because it tolerates the existence of alcoholism even to the extent of helping by law the sale of alcoholic drinks, or at least it neglects to fight against their sale."

Legislation and Alcoholism was discussed by Dr. Hercod of Lausanne, and Dr. Johu Scharffenburg of Christiana. Both emphasized the importance of "solid anti-alcohol education" as a necessary preliminary to legislation. On the other hand, Dr. Scharffenburg pointed out that abstinence alone is not sufficient. Both education and legislation are

necessary.

In the discussion, "Government and the Anti-alcohol movement" Henry Hayem, LL. D., of Paris, tried to show that the production and sale of alcoholic beverages is not production of wealth in the true sense." This was supplemented by H. Schmid, also of Paris, who directed the attention of governments to the physical, moral and spiritual damages of the use of alcohol, which are so great as to threaten the very existence of the alcohol-using nations.

ALCOHOLISM AND THE CHILD

The most interesting and learned address was by the veteran of the continental antialcohol movement, Dr. A. Forel on "blastophthoria." By blastophthoria Prof. Forel understands "those causes which deteriorate the germs of the future progeny in such a manner that their products, although otherwise of

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