VHPTT''
AUGUST, 1917
he Commoner
T'urw'
Cost of Alcoholic Beverages to Nati
By A. CASWELL ELLIS,
The University of Texas.
To start out in a .ight for life with a keg of
beer strapped on your back is madness, no mat
ter how much you enjoy a glass on occasion.
FAILURE TO STOP GREAT WASTE NOW IS
TREASON
The United States is face to face with a. crisis
in her own history and in the history of the hu
man race. Whether government of the people,
by the people, and for the people shall perish
front the earth rests largely in our hands. Op
posed to us is the greatest miLItary and indus
trial machine the world has ever seeu. For
three years it has withstood the attacks of
twenty million brave men armed with all the
weapons of scie- cer adding each year new areas
to its conquests and today having in the field
more men and equipment than ever before.
Seveu million able-bodied, men havo already
been killed and over fifty million more are either
in the trenches and training camps or are busy
making munitions and army supplies. It is im
perative that those left for the factories and
field be brought to the highest possible efficiency,
and that every useless expenditure of material
and men be stopped at once. Failure to strip
our nation of its greatest needless handicap to
efficiency as we enter this war would be a col
losal mistake, to dodge the iscue from cowardice
or from selfish, considerations fs treason.
THE LIQUOR BUSINESS: THE LARGEST
SINGLE WASTE
The nation's largest single waste i& undoubt
edly in the liquor traffic The loss from the use
of alcoholic beverages falls mainly under five
heads: (1) The amount of foodstuffs used in
their manufacture, and. the human energy, the
houses, and transportation facilities employed
in the business; (2) the sickness and death re
sulting from the use of alcoholic beverages; (3)
the lowered efficiency in work resulting from
drinking by millions; (4) the crime due to
drink; (5) the waste of public funds due to de
bauchery in public office because of the liquor
fight.
THE FOOD WASTE
Th internal revenue reports for 19 1G show
that 3,603,911,916 lbs. of grain and molasses
went that year into distilled spirits, and the
census of 1909 CVol. V, p. 602) shows that
2,260,266,146 'pounds of corn, malt and barley
went that year into fermented liquors. The fifty
percent increase from 1900 to 1916 in the
amount brewed would make 3,390,399,219 lbs.
as the amount used for fermented liquors in
1916.
A group of the most distinguished and reli
able physiologists and economists in Harvard
and Yale have shown thatufter taking out one-
sixth of this 6,994,311,135 lbs. of foodstuffs to
produce denatured alcohol, there is left enough
wasted food material each- year to supply the
energy requirements, of seven million men for a
year.
Why should we waste this enormous food
supply and then ask the women to peel the po
tatoes a little thinner and force millions of poor
women and children to go on half rations?
Is such saving drops at the spigot while wast
ing a stream at the bunghole a reasonable act?
THE MEN AND MATERIAL WASTED
But the' waste of foodstuff is only the begin
ning. "The Other Side" (April 2, 1917), pub
lished by the National Wholesale Liquor Dealers
Association, gives 1,600,900 as the number of
wage earners employed In tie liquor business in
the United States. The recent advertisement Tby
the brewers states that hundreds of thousands
of men are employed by them alone. I can not
vouch for the reliability of these figures, but
even half tha .nany, or 800,000 men, are work
ing in the alcoholic beverage business, they are
badly needed now in tie new places created by
the war and hose tLat will be left vacant by the
two million men who are going to the trenches.
Je are short of clerks, accountants, carpenters,
tmckmasons, bunding material, freight cars,
teams and wagons, autos, industrial alcohol, and
Klass jars. Our nation needs now for more use
ful service to humanity mot merely the seven
MUion pounds of foodstaff worse than wasted,
out the hundreds of thousands of men, distill
es, breweries, warehouses, stores, freight cars,
on
nHvn?!:Iir5 CXaCtl' ,,ow """ oc-ctv pays
fnrt ..mi U'. 8upport " a " "ray of men
and billions of pounds of material .n,i T
mont employed in the liql,0r has L The" iow-'
est estimate made by a responsible par Iv and
III I bv'oTH rCVC"U rOI,orla' "' "E ! -mount
paiu oy our nation over tho hire rn i u
fhiu'V;!50'000'000- ; '-"
the value of the average corn crop of the nat'on
and nearly three times the value of a Average
cotton crop at ten' cents a pound. it in mo
? a amUnSf the SI,ecial v'r les for the
iffj; i J-naS bt?e" 8l,own clear,y ' inter
ested scientific men that even the little food
value of the two ounces of alcohol that the boay
can use m a day is in nearly every case more
than made up for by bodily wastes produced by
the presence in the body of alcohol, this vast
sum is just as completely wasted by the nat'on
as if we used all those .hundreds of thousands of
men and myriads of tons of food and equipment
in shovelling sand on the beach to the right all
the morning and then back to the left aga'n all
afternoon for the period of the war. Is that the
act of intelligent beings?
COST OF SICKNESS AND DEATH RESULTING
FROM ALCOHOL
But what we are doing is worse than paying
two billion a year for shovelling sand on the
, beach. We are allowing the sand to be shovelled
into the organs of our bodies and the wheels of
industry. Sixty-eight thousand mer. and women
(valued at $1,700.00 each, or a total of $116,
000,000.00 worth) die in the United States each
year frqjn diseases produced by alcohol. The
records of 43 'American insurance companies
from 1885 to W8 covering two million policy
holders, rliov a death rate in excess of the aver
age for very moderate drinkers ot 18 percent,
for those occasionally drinking to excess ot 50
percent, and for heavy drinkers of 86 percent.
A number of large separate companies here and
abroad have recently published results of their
experience that are more striking even than the
above. (See Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1916.)
Similarly, the reports t the South Australian
sick benefit societies show that societies admit
ting both drinkers and non-drinkers have 92
percent more cases of sickness per member than
do societies admitting only abstainers, and that
the members remain sick, or the average, 70
percent longer. The records of the Leipsic sick
benefit societies show that between 25 and 45
years of age habitual "drinkers" were sick
2-7(10 times as often as the average insured
person. American, English and other records
show similar facts. One-fourth of our insanity
(costing $40,000,000.00 per year) and probably
one fifth of feobfemindodness. are due to alcohol.
Also, every commission that has investigated
vice has reported alcohol as responsible for a
large part of moral debauchery, and probably
over 50 percent of venereal disease. Half of the
houses of shame in Cincinnati actually had to
close for want of support when the selling of
alcoholic drinks was forbidden in all such places.
Laboratory experiments have clearly shown that
minute quantities of alcohol in the blood lower
the powers o the blood serum and blood cor
puscles to resist the germs of many diseases.
These and numerous other similar facts make It
very conservative to say that 10 percent of the
preventable dis.ase of the nation is due to the
use of alcoholic beverages. As our annual loss
from preventable disease is admitted to be
SI 500 000,000.00 this means that at least
$150,000,000.00 is wasted by us each year
through diseases caused by alcohoL
$600 000,000.00 WASTED THROUGH LOW
5 'BRED WORKING CAPACITY
No one knows exactly how much the produc
tive capacity of the nation is lowered by reduc
Inn of working power in moderate drinkers
when LT s5ck Tests made by unbiased jcient
5L in Germany and Switzerland showed that
Jfn J, little as two to four mugs of beer a day
and mcreaseu percent. Memory power
percent or more, although In thlo and In tho
simple activities the subjects thought they wore
doing better whoa under tho Influence of Iho al
cohol, Numerous studies made in school nnd
lactory work lrve shown that alcohol usually
reduces working power cons'dcrabjy and in
creases accident- .md the destruction of ma
terial. While there may bo some exceptions to
the ru'e, it is certainly a a;c estimate to as
sume that moderate drlnlccn are on tin average
10 percnt logs efneient beca-'sa of alcohol. If
one person it live is a mo.lciatc drinker, then
- percent of our national efficiency Is destroyed
by alcoholic h veragCB. The products of human
dlllc enr? on farms, and In mlncH, factories, etc.,
n the Uniteu States, are worth about thirty
nni nAAPCVar' fWC lWCOIlt Of this, or $000,-
000.000.00, Is therefore the price we pay In lower-id
efficiency for uilng alcoholic bovoragoa
very temperately.
$300,000,000.00 WASTED IN CRIME
Conservative est'matoH by well Informed men
fen '.Tl811 Crlmc in thc UnIlC(1 Stfttc at
$600,000,000.00 per year. The lowest estimate
made of the part of this crime due to alcohol Is
JO rercent and tho highest Is 70 percent. Prob
ably ahout GO percent, or $300,000,000.00
worth, is tho amount of crime due directly or
Indirectly to our toleration of alcoholic drinks.
UNKNOWN MILLIONS WASTED THROUGH
DEBAUCHERY OP PUI3LIC OFFICE
While we have many worthy offic'ala, both
pro's and antl's, who are well prepared for the
duties ot their offices, It Is painfully obvloui
that hundreds of millions of money and Invalu-
able opportunities for development of our re
sources arc wasted by officials elected not foi
their fltnes8 for the office, but because either oi
their friendliness for or hostility to thc Hquoi
interests. This will continue as long as anj
considerable body of voters is left who attack
the saloons, and It looks as If such a body will
continue at least for the period of this war.
TOTAL PRICE PAID FOR HAVING ALCO
HOLIC IJEVERAGES
For the privilege of using alcoholic beveragct
indiscriminately, then, we are paying each yeai
this price:
The lahor ot ahout a million
men; 7 billion pounds of ood
stuff; houses, land, transport
ation, etc., all to the value
of $1,750,000,000.00
68,000 men and women killed
by alcohol 1 IG, 000, 000. 00
Sickness produced by alcohol.. 150,000,000.00
Lowered efficiency In work due
to alcohol 600,000,000.00
Crime due to alcvhol 300,000,000.00
Debauchery in public office.. 1
Total yearly cost of alcoholic
beverages $2,916,000,000.00
This is nearly double the amount of the spe
cial taxes asked lot the support of the war for
the first year Can any rational man Justify the
waste during this emergency of three billion a
year. Including the use of seven billion pounds
of foodstuff, and the labor of a million men,
merely in order that drunkards may have better
oppcrtunities to get drunk and moderate drink
ers may lower their working efficiency with
greater convenience?
WHAT CAN BE DONE? "
Plainly the manufacturedfstribution and sale
of alcoholic beverages ought to be stopped at
once. The property employed in the business
and f.ie stock of liquors on hand should be taken
over by the govern -lent Immediately and paid
for ft a price that is fair Go the owners as well
as the public. Every reasonable help should
also be extended to those now employed in the
business in finding promptly another employ
ment. Such a plan would really benefit all con
cerned, as 't would give thc liquor men the only
chance they are likely ever to have to dispose of
their property before it is confiscated. On the
other hand, the government can now with com
parative ease find a use for most of the distill
eries, breweries, and ether equipment in making
mun' !ons, industrial alcohol, and other supplies
urgently needed. The supplx of liquors on hand
could be converted Iro munitions or sold for
medical purposes as seemed nest. In this way
neither the liquor men nor the public will uffer
seriously, while the nation will step up on
plane of vastly higher efficiency in this war aad
In the peace that will follow.
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