citizen). It seems to me that the reason for this difference lies distinctly in the fact that the countryman, who will gratify his appetite for drink, has no choice but the concoction of ardent spirits, high wines, or whatever it is which the local publican sets before him. To him the word "wine" suggests a luxury beyond his venture or his purse. And so for the price at which, in a large city, he could obtain half a bottle, or even a bottle, of wholesome red wine, the consumption of which at a settling would do no possible harm, he throws into his stomach a glass of biting poison, and, horrible to relate, another and another; whereas the whole bottle, or at least the half bottle, probably shared with a neighbor, would have satisfied his craving without ruining his digestion or stealing away his brains. This clause of our discussion runs largely into our IX. But meanwhile here are some figures which may startle prohibitionists as completely as did the figures given in these pages four years ago, which went to prove that habitual drunkards lived longer than total abstainers. (These figures have been strenuously denied in declamation and denouncement. I have yet to learn that any attempt has been made by industry in collection of counter-figures to demonstrate their fallacy.[1]) But here are certain other figures: It appears by the official report of Dr. Nagle to the Health Department of the city of New York for the first thirty-one weeks of the year 1893 (the city then prior to the consolidation or to the present "Raines" law) that in the community (as it then was of 1,765,645 inhabitants) out of 29,080 deaths only twenty-nine were directly traceable to the use of liquor. And this in a community where 10,749 liquor saloons were in operation from sunrise to midnight daily, not to mention the use of wines and liquors in hundreds of hotels and clubs and of wines and malt liquors on tens of thousands of private tables. These figures are startling, and read quite as extravagantly as those quite to the reverse conclusion with which the prohibition-
- ↑ Perhaps for convenience of reference the figures heretofore found so startling may be repeated. Of 4,234 deaths collected by the British Medical Association, divided for reference into five classes—namely: a, total abstainers; b, habitually temperate; c, careless drinkers; d, free drinkers; e, habitual drunkards—the ages of death of those in each class were registered, together with the causes of death; and the average of death for each class computed with the following result:
Total abstainers lived on an average 51.22 years; Habitually temperate lived on an average 62.13 " Careless drinkers lived on an average, 69.67 " Free drinkers lived on an average 57.59 " Habitual drunkards lived on an average 52.03 " To cancel such a statement as this, some industry is required on the other side; at least a collection of 4,234 other cases. Anybody can say that a laboriously tabulated statement is false. But it requires patience to demonstrate it.
