NAWSA

SUBJECT FILE

Tilton, Elizabeth H

Mrs Wm Tilton

Chmn Org Com
Mass Woman
Suffrage Assn

THE TANDEM THAT WINS--ORGANIZED TOTAL ABSTINENCE
RUNNING AHEAD AND PROHIBITION FOLLOWING AFTER

Is Beer the Cure for the
Drink Evil?

By Elizabeth Tilton

Reprinted from
The Survey of February 24, 1917

Copyright, 1917, by
Survey Associates, Inc.

Is Beer the Cure for the Drink Evil?
By Elizabeth Tilton
"In London at various periods in the early part of 1916 a total 
number of 903 cases of drunkenness were analyzed, of whom 566 
were men and 337 women.  Dividing the cases according to cause 
of drunkenness it was found that 40 per cent had become drunk 
on beer or stout, 35 per cent on spirits excluding rum, 8 per cent on 
rum, 10 per cent on spirits and beer, 4 per cent on other drinks.  The 
remaining 17 per cent did not know the nature of their drink."--
Lord D'Abernon, chairman British Board of Control, October, 1916. 
      "The so-called abstinence movement in the middle of the nineteenth 
century was only against distilled liquors and came to nothing, or 
rather it drowned in beer." -Professor Forel.

Is beer the cure for the drink evil?  That is the question 
that I want to answer in this article, and I purpose to 
do it by presenting three cases- first, the case against 
so-called moderate drinking, second, the case against 
beer itself, and third, various beer experiments that have been 
tried.
      Frankly, when I became interested in alcohol-prevention 
work, I believed that men must drink and that, therefore, the 
best thing to do was to abolish by law distilled liquors like 
whiskey, and keep beer for the laboring man and wines for 
the clubman.  I fancy I had the idea of the old poem:
   For the want of a drop of good beer
    Drives lots to tipples more dear,
                      And they licks their wives
                       And destroys their lives
     Which they would not have done upon beer.

      I believe today that men can "lick their wives" on beer and 
most decidedly "destroy their lives"; in short, that there is 
no efficient way out of this drink evil but total abstinence supplemented 
as fast as the sentiments ripens by prohibition of 
all alcoholic liquors.
      My change of opinion was due first to a study of the scientific 
case against moderate drinking. 
   This case is a fairly young one, having its aggressive beginnings 
in the eighties of the nineteenth century. Professor Kräpelin, 
of Germany, is the father of the many tests that 
have convinced many thoughtful men that even moderate 
drinking lowers efficiency.  Professor Kräpelin came at his 
truth by accident.  He wanted to measure the mind's action 
in sickness and in health ; to do this he had to throw a healthy 
man into temporary ill-health by giving him drugs.  Among 
these he gave alcohol and was surprised to find how depressant 
was its effect.  Thereafter, he made many experiments 
with moderate doses (from seven and one-half to 
sixty grams), noting the time-reactions, the quickness of response 
to a given stimulus, before and after alcohol.  I think 
even the most severe critics agree that these experiments did 
indicate that even so-called moderate drinking will "slow a 
man down." 1
      Many experiments followed Kräpelin.  In passing, I will 
give one test as an example of many.  It was made by Herr Joss, 
at the Protestant Seminary in Berne, Switzerland. Joss 
tested the capacity of some students to do mental arithmetic. 
(Internationale Monatsschrift, 1900;  No. 12.)
      Finally he took eighteen boys (about seventeen years of 
age) and formed them into two equal groups, the "sober" and 
the "drinking" group.  All of these students boarded at the 
Seminary and had, therefore, the same living conditions. 
Seven were abstainers, the rest drank their occasional glass of 
beer.  The sober group (including all the abstainers) during 
the experiment never took any alcoholic drink.  To the drinking 
group Joss gave a little over a pint, later a little over a 
quart of 4.5 per cent beer.
        He found that both quantities gave an immediate momentary 
increase in mental capacity.  He gives tables showing 
precisely what both quantities did to the "sums" of his pupils 
and I give below the essential result:

Experiments With Beer
Eighteen students: 9 took about a pint of beer (5 dl.), 9 took no alcohol.  
Possible number of right solutions --- Actual number of correct solutions 
                                                                      Without alcohol     With alcohol
Immediately after taking.. --- 400                      254                        268
After 1 hour...                           360                      197                        185
After 2 hours...                          360                     215                         197
After 3 hours...                          360                     209                         176
Nine took about a quart of beer (10 dl.); 9 took no alcohol.  
Possible number of right solutions --- actual number of correct solutions 
                                                                       Without alcohol     With alcohol
Immediately after taking..       400                     268                         300
After 1 hour...                             360                    212                         189
After 2 hours...                           360                    210                         149
After 3 hours...                           360                    208                         151

      It is seen that even the brimming pint of beer, while it 
gave, as did the larger amount, a momentary acceleration, 
thereafter decreased mental capacity.  Herr Joss sums up 
his experiments thus: "Temperate use of alcohol, that is, 
one to two glasses of beer, caused an initial facilitation of 
mental work but showed serious after-effects since after 
1, 2, 3, hours a considerable lessening of performance appeared 
(thus, 1 hours, 4.9 per cent; 2 hours, 10.9 per cent; 
3 hours, 12.5 per cent)." The genial Joss says further: 
"We hope that this use of alcohol caused no enduring harm.  
At first there was a threat of moral injury as the drinker 
group took to their glasses with considerable pleasure, were 
happy over their initial victory.  But gradually the jubilations 
went dumb.  The good fellows sat before their quart of 
beer as if it were a bitter medicine.  They were heartily 
glad when the struggle was over."
      Now, of course, the making of these experiments is very 
delicate and it has been thought loopholes in them invalidated 
the exactness of each statement.  I give below some of the 
principle criticisms 2 showing why there has been a call for 
more careful tests.  Benefiting from the experience of the men 
who have gone before, the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory, 
Boston, is engaged in making an extensive investigation, 
covering a period of years, of the physiological effects of 
alcohol.  The first volume of these researches is already published 
and I give herewith a short account of these experiments, 
in so far as the language of the work will permit of 
elucidation.  
      There were ten normal subjects.  They were not total 
abstainers, their histories were rigidly studied and their 
living conditions at the time regulated.  Two doses of alcohol 
were given, dose A, 30 cubic centimeters; dose B, 45 cubic 

1 Even Dr. Ulrik Quensel, of Sweden, whose rigid examinations of anti-alcohol 
literature are quoted in the Brewer's Year Book, says of the 
Kråpelin tests: "New investigations made on a larger number of persons 
and with a greater variety of method are desirable, but Kråpelin and his 
followers, nonetheless, established that alcohol in comparatively small doses 
affects disadvantageously certain activities of psychic life."

2 Objections, for example, are that some of the experiments were not made 
on enough people; that the alcohol was not diluted or was gulped down; 
that the experiments were made on abstainers, upon whom the effects of 
alcohol would be greater than upon drinkers; that the self-consciousness of 
the men experimented upon would change results; and, again, that not 
enough was known of the living conditions of the men taking the doses.

Kirby in New York World
"BALKY MAUD"
William Jennings Bryan has announced that prohibition is
the next great issue before the Democratic party

centimetres. Thirty cubic centimeters is about the amount
of alcohol in a quart of beer or a wine-glass of whiskey. The
alcohol was taken in dilution and sipped naturally. Although
the subjects knew of the experiment, several of the tests were
on actions so purely reflex as to seem to exclude any invalidation
because of self-consciousness. For example, the
purpose of the first experiment was to discover whether or
not the so-called moderate doses of alcohol above mentioned
made the knee jerk come less quick and strong. Great care
was taken to control the tests. A small hammer, magnetically
released, administered a blow on the tendon beneath the kneepan

Kirby in the New York World
A BAD CASE OF NERVES
Governor Whitman, a Republican, has come out for prohibition
for New York state, without naming the brand

and an instrument called  a Blix-Sandestrom kymograph
run at the rate of 100 millimeters per second recorded
the action. The variations in the response are recorded to the
1/1,000 of a second. 3
  Though there were "wide individual departures from the
average," the data on the whole support the conclusion of a
decreased response under alcohol, that is, the jerk did come
less quick and strong or, to use the book's own vernacular,
"the latent time of response was increased 10 per cent and
the degree of the thickening of the muscles decreased 46
per cent." Indeed to quote Dr. Fisk, "so extreme was this
effect that it made it impossible to measure the knee-jerk of
several subjects after Dose B."
  The next experiment was also on another action most purely
reflex, on the eye-wink. Here again it was found that alcohol
impaired the normal wink, so to speak; it did not come so
quickly or flash so far (latent time of response being increased
7 per cent; extent of the lid movement decreased 19
per cent). After this, somewhat higher mechanisms were
approached, finger movements, speed and accuracy of eye-movements
in looking from one point to another, speech reactions
to a series of words, and so on. Dr. Benedict, one of
the experimenters, sums up the final results thus: "With
only one apparent exception (the eye reaction after Dose A)
alcohol regularly tends to depress neuro-muscular action."
Or if you like Connie Mack's vernacular better, "Alcohol
slows a man down."
  So also does sleep slow a man down. The fact, however,
that the slowing down which follows alcohol quickens the
pulse rate, "prohibits us," says our experimenter, "from regarding
the neuro-muscular depression incident to alcohol as
a conservative process like sleep."
  This last word of science on alcohol and efficiency is one
more confirmation of the former Kräpelin tests, indicating that
the case against moderate drinking is proved; if by moderate
drinking you mean the amount of alcohol that would be contained
in a wine glass of whiskey or in from a pint to a quart
of beer. There is as yet no proof that a "thimbleful drink"
will harm a healthy adult.
  But this--the point where alcohol becomes harmless--lets
us into a whole world of discussions. As long ago as 1903, C.
Fränkel sent a questionnaire on this subject to ninety-three
professors of medicine Germany. Many of the answers
were opinions based on no special scientific data. C. Fränkel
himself gives the gist of the replies thus: "Adult and healthy
persons can stand small quantities, 30 to 40 cubic centimeters
of alcohol (as much as about one quart of beer, a tumbler of
wine, or a wine-glass of brandy) in the course of a day without
any evident and injurious effect. Even these should avoid
the regular consumption also of small quantities. He only
is truly moderate who does not use alcoholic beverages every
day, but does it only occasionally and within the above-mentioned
limit." (Brewers' Year Book, 1914). Quensel, also
widely quoted by the brewers, gives all sorts of opinions. For
himself, he says, that if all men could keep within the limit
of about 30 cubic centimeters daily, it is probable that we
should not have any serious alcohol problem, especially if this
dose were not a daily habit. "But," he adds, "to determine with
exact scientific accuracy where abuse begins is not at the present
time possible." Many, of course, point out that the dose would
vary with the individual, and that there is always the risk
of increasing the dose, temperance in drugs being well-nigh
impossible to mankind as a whole. Dr. Scharffenberg, probably

3 For a fuller amount see Alcohol and Physiology, by Eugene Lyman Fisk
Atlantic Monthly, January, 1917. Without the statement of this kind middle
man, I could not have presented a clear statement of the above.

the most prominent advocate of total abstinence in Norway,
says: "I . . . think it improbable that very small
doses of alcohol could injure the health, though I believe that
daily use is risky. . . . It seems to me impossible to fix
certain daily dose as harmless, and personally I am absolutely
unconvinced that the maximum dose of 30 cubic centimetres,
defended by various doctors, would, taken daily, be
harmless for everybody, even if it were possible to keep
to it."
  Now to readers who never think about drinking from one
year's end to another (and they are legion among my readers),
a pint of beer seems a goodly amount. My saloon friends,
however, say something like this: "You drink till you are lit
up--whiskey, a musty, then ale, ale, ale! Talk flows, wonderful
warm talk." But the price that is paid for this divine sense
of well-being is more than the cost of a glass of whiskey or a
pint of beer. In other words, in order to get this euphoria,

"YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER BUT-"
Drawn some time ago by Bradley of the Chicago "Daily News," who died on January 9. A Democratic Congress has taken
some long dry steps but the national prohibition amendment to the federal constitution, now out of committee in the House,
is not expected to pass the Senate in these final days of the session

the addict of the saloon must use quantities far exceeding the
possibly harmless amounts mentioned above, and must increase
his amounts because it is the nature of sedatives that
to continue an effect they must be used in ever-increasing
doses.
  There are men, however, like Dr. Ulrik Quensel, who believe
that it would be better to educate men to the above
extreme moderation than to total abstinence. These are the
moderates. Others, like Professor Von Gruber, president of
the Royal Hygienic Institute, Munich, or Dr. Scharffenberg,
of Norway, believe that total abstinence is the more practical
thing. This is the idea of the Abstaining Doctors' Society
started in Europe by Professor Forel, 1896. These men point
out that this alcohol question is not a personal question nor
yet alone a medical question. It is also a social question, and
while many selected individuals might bring themselves to
"thimbleful drinking," mankind in bulk is not equal to this
moderation. They point out that the liquor traffic welcomes
the ideas of Quesnel and the other moderates, realizing instinctively
that the majority of men can never conform to an occasional
thimbleful. What the liquor interests fights is total

abstinence and prohibition, the ideas that men need not drink
and that liquor should not be accessible.
  When I came to know the scientific movement against moderate
drinking, when I found how small possible harmless
doses were, making them for the people that I wanted to help
ludicrously impracticable, and also keeping wide open the
door to immoderate drinking, I went over to the total abstainers,
precisely as the railroads have gone over to them.
They do not say "Go into a saloon and drink a tablespoonful
of whiskey and no more." They say "Don't go into a saloon
and don't drink at all." They refuse to countenance, as far
as their employes are concerned, the drink custom or the
liquor traffic.
  The psychology that builds up a drinkless world is there,
the practical reasoning that gets results is there in the stern
covenanter policy of "no quarter." And I am with it, because,
with the abstaining doctors, I feel that the drink problem is not

personal nor medical alone, but social. It is not a question
of what you might do, but what mankind in bulk will do when
exposed to a world that sanctions the drink custom and the
open saloon.
  The readiness of scientific men in Germany to sacrifice their
beer for the good of the race is very impressive to me. We
read not only of abstaining doctors, but of every kind of
abstaining societies, even to abstaining philologists. Vorwärts,
the organ of the Social-Democrats, demands nothing short of
complete abstinence. And since 1900 beer consumption in
Germany has shown a declining tendency. It seems strange
that the physician and the scientist, with us, is so often white-blooded
about a movement so plainly hygienic and social and
moving so fast abroad. We are strong in Prohibition that says
No to the traffic, but weak in that stronger things, Organized 
Total Abstinence that says No to the Custom.

   The Case Against Beer
  The case against moderate drinking really makes the case
against beer. There might, however, be those who reason

that beer is less harmful, and so may be used as a half-way
house, a step toward the final goal, total abstinence. Let us take
up, then, the relative harm of distilled liquors and beer.  This
takes us straight to Germany, the land that has tried beer, if
ever land has.  Hear Germany talk and a picture immediately
arises of the excessive drinking induced by beer.  Speaking of
Munich, Kräpelin says:  "The daily amount there runs from 
four to eight quarts a day;  and about 40 per cent of these 
beer drinkers add small amounts of distilled liquors, and some
men drink daily ten, fifteen and twenty quarts."  We do not
in America drink beer to such excess, possibly because with us
it is not considered bad form to drink whiskey.  Consequently,
a man who wants to secure "the kick," for which so many
drink, hurries the result by drinking whiskey and then beer. 
In Germany whiskey is more the drink of the lower classes. 
     Let us now get a picture of the recent German battle against
beer.  Etiology, the science of the causes of disease, came forward
in the eighties.  Beer was found to be a chief offender. 
Noted investigators of this disease-maker were Bauer and Bolinger. 
They found that out of 5,700 autopsies conducted in
a series of years in the Pathological Institute of Munich only
six women (the more temperate sex) had died of that enlargement
of the heart afterward called beer heart.  But one
out of every sixteen males had died of it.  Sendtner, following 
up these researches, found that while the general death rate
elsewhere (according to the Gothaer Life Insurance) was 5.8 
from heart disease, in beer-soaked Munich it was 11.9.  He 
also found that brewery hands in Munich had an even higher
death rate from heart disease than did the Munich population
in general.4  Gradually diseases arising from excessive beer-drinking
became acknowledged ;  the well-known psysiologist, 
Professor von Struempell, brought the matter sharply before 

4 These figures bring to mind Arthur Hunter's investigation covering forty-three
life insurance companies and 2,000,000 policyholders. 

BREWERIES     
                                                                                                     Death rate
                                                                                                   above normal
Proprietors, managers, superintendents                                35 per cent 
Clerks                                                                                             30 per cent 
Foremen, masters, beer-pump repair men, journeymen     52 per cent 

Starrett in New York Tribune 

ST. GEORGE AND THE FLAGON 
No single issue proposed by England's war government
brought forth such strong protest as the proposal for
national prohibition.  The outcome was a compromise by
which the sale of liquor is greatly curtailed 


the German public in the nineties.  In an article in the
Deutsche Monatsschrift (Vol. IV, p. 242) he says: 
     "Formerly whiskey and brandy were the universal evil-doers, 
the only despised drinks as against 'noble' wine and
'harmless' beer.  At present we know that in practice the 
injurious effects of beer are at least as frequent, if not, indeed,
more frequent, than those of distilled liquor.  For beer-drinking
has pressed into all grades of society, and while distilled
 liquor, with rare exceptions, finds its victims only in
the lower sections of the working population, we find the 
injurious effect of too free beer-drinking (Gambrinism, as 
I call it) especially among the more cultivated classes. 
Gambrinism, moreover, differs medically in many respects
from simple alcoholism, although the special alcohol
effect is to be taken into account in excessive beer-drinking.
For although the percentage of alcohol (beer 2 to 4 per cent), 
is not especially high, yet this low percentage is counteracted
by the great quantity drunk;  100 cubic centimeters of beer
contain only 3 grams pure alcohol, but a liter contains 30 
grams.  A moderate beer drinker, who daily drinks his five
liters, thus gets every day 150 grams of absolute alcohol into
his body.  But what gives beer its typical earmark is the fact 
that beer contains comparatively great quantities of fat-forming,
or at least fat-encouraging, foods (malt).  Most heavy
beer-drinkers are, therefore, overfed.  Hence the fatness which
may itself become a source of illness.  Finally it must be
noted that perhaps beer contains besides alcohol other injurious 
substances from the hops, whose effect is also to be taken
into account." 
     Again, in a lecture at Nuremberg, this same writer says: 
     "Nothing is more erroneous from the physicians' standpoint
than to think of diminishing the destructive effects of alcoholism 
by substituting beer for other alcoholic drinks, or that 
the victims of drink are found only in those countries where
whiskey helps the people of a low grade of culture to forget
their poverty and misery." 
     I am well aware that the brewers, who, being human, are
fighting hard to save their business, can find contrary utterances
--especially those made fifteen years ago, before the total 
abstinence principle was so fully established.  But it seems to
me that the moderation and beer voices are growing less frequent; 
that the Kaiser represented the best recent thought of
Germany when in 1910 he asked his naval cadets to teach the
men under them to give up alcohol.  I will quote, also, utterances
of various doctors and scientists. 
     Prof. Emil Kräpelin:  "In the production of alcoholism
in Germany, beer undoubtedly plays the chief role.  It must
be conceded that beer is capable of producing typical delirium
tremens." 
     Prof. Gustav von Bunge:  "No other drink [referring to
beer] is so insidious.  It has been in Germany worse than the
whiskey pest because more apt to lead to immoderate drinking."
     Professor Möbius, Leipsic:  "I know little of whiskey and
wine-drinkers.  With us it is beer that ruins the people." 
     Dr. Johannes Leonhart, a distinguished scientist:  "The 
question concerning alcohol is not whether Smith or Jones 
believes that he can take two or three glasses a day without
harm, but how is it possible to diminish the immense amount
of injury from it that the whole German people suffer?" 
     Professor Forel in the American Journal of Insanity 
(1900):  "One only needs to study in Germany the 'beer
jokes,' beer conversation and beer literature.  They have 
stifled in young Germany the idealism, the taste for the classics
and the finer mental pleasures throughout broad parts of the
nation and in both sexes, to an extent that makes one cry for
help.  Among the academic youth of Germany the drinking
of beer has truly killed ideals and ethics and has produced an
incredible vulgarity." 


     Dr. Hugo Hoppe, nerve specialist, Konigsberg, points out
that before the beer invasion of the nineteenth century women
and children drank rarely.  Now most well-to-do women take
their beer with every meal.  "Into the children's world also 
beer has penetrated."  This is in line with the Russian Medical 
Society, which, when it went on record for national prohibition, 
discussed the reintroduction of beer, but declared against 
it because beer, being weaker and pleasant to the taste, had
great attractions for women and children. 
     Beer not only would seem to lead to immoderate use (where
whiskey is under the ban), but also to family drinking. 
"There has been a tendency," says Dr. A. Delbrück, author
of Alcohol and Hygiene (pp. 480-482), "to make a great distinction
among drinks on the basis of concentration, and thus 
to declare beer a suitable means for driving out spirits:  Surely
wrong!"  He then points out the following facts, first, that
in the case of the very light beer (1.5 to 2 per cent alcohol) 
it is the custom to make it "digestible" by adding a glass of
whiskey.  Again there is the universal law that the alcohol
drinker goes gradually from the weaker to the stronger drinks. 
But disregarding these two facts, says Dr. Delbrück, it is a
matter of common knowledge that men drink beer and wine 
in much greater quantities than they do whiskey.  His figures,
showing the quantities drunk in various German and Austvian
localities, prove that these beer-drinkers get into their system 
as much alcohol as does the drinker of distilled liquors.  He
shows, also, that Bavaria, the country that drinks the most
beer, absorbs more pure alcohol than the country that has the 
highest distilled liquor consumption, Denmark.  It may be 
said that alcohol taken as Bavaria takes it, that is, more in
dilution, is less harmful.  According, however, to Dr. Delbrück,
although it is true that whiskey may do more harm
than beer to the mucous membrane of the digestive tract, and 
possibly to the liver, the other endangered organs, brain,
heart, reproductive glands, kidneys, blood vessels, are washed 
by alcohol in approximately the same concentration whether 
it is drunk in spirits, beer or fruit wine, and there is added
in the case of beer the immoderate amount of fluid so injurious
to heart and kidneys.  Dr. Delbrück also declares that
beer, besides being a creator of special diseases on its own 
account, can produce delirium tremens.  Jacobson found in
the general hospital at Copenhagen (the brandy country) that 
6 per cent of the cases of delirium tremens came from cases
where beer was the exclusive drink.  In the Drink Cure, 
Ellikon, at Zurich, there were always found a considerable
number of patients who had drunk no whiskey at all;  also
some who had drunk only beer and fruit wine. 
     Commenting on all this, Dr. Delbrück declares that while
it is true that delirium tremens and liver trouble are much
more frequent with whiskey drinkers, yet this is completely
cancelled, he believes, by diseases of other organs caused by
beer.  "In short," he says, "we must conclude that beer is by 
no means a harmless drink, but it must be classed as an equal
with distilled liquors." 
     Dr. Delbrück is a strong advocate of total abstinence.  he
declares that moderation has too long been the ideal, that
under it men have moved from temperance to intemperance. 
He believes history shows that headway has been made
against drinking only in times of a continuous, bitter struggle
for total abstinence. 

Prohibiting Distilled Liquors
and Keeping Beer 
I will now pass to the third party of my article--experiments
with beer.  In 1830 England decided to woo men, if possible, 

Cesare in New York Sun 

THOU SHALT 
NOT [KILL] 
DRINK 

THE NEW SIXTH COMMANDMENT
War has decreed sobriety, not only for soldiers but even
more as an efficiency measure for the men who are making
munitions and battleships in the factories at home. 

from drinking distilled liquors by allowing beer saloons without
license-fee.  These sprang up like mushrooms, the result
being (Delbrück, Alcohol and Hygiene, page 542) that beer
consumption rose 25 per cent in the next five years, while at the 
same time spirits consumption rose 8 per cent.  England found
that temperance in drugs was an impossibility, and the whole
scheme was finally pronounced a fiasco.  Early in the history 
of the bill, Sydney Smith wrote:  "The new beer bill has
begun its operations.  Everybody is drunk.  Those who are 
not singing are sprawling.  The sovereign people are in a 
beastly state." 
     A beer experiment was also tried in Iowa.  In 1855-58 
Iowa was under prohibition.  In 1858 the law was amended
to allow beer and certain wines.  The great trouble was that 
the beer saloons would sell whiskey under the guise of beer, 
and there seemed no betterment in it (Canadian Sessional
Papers, No. 21, p. 255).  There is, of course, more money
in whiskey than in beer, and hence a temptation to introduce
whiskey on the sly into beer saloons.5 
Massachusetts tried a beer experiment between 1870-73. 
In 1869, Massachusetts was under prohibition.  In 1870, the
law was amended to allow ales, porter, beer and cider.  Records
of the increase of drinking in places where the beer saloons 
were opened may be found in the report of the (Canadian) 
Commissioners to Inquire into the Workings of the Prohibitory
Law, Ottawa, 1875.  Drunkenness and crime increased, and 
everywhere we hear the complaint that the beer saloon would
sell whiskey under the guise of beer.  In New Bedford, 1872, 
the year in which beer saloons were opened, the number of 

5 For personal memories of the beer law in Iowa, write to Major Fleming,
State Historical Library, Des Moines, Iowa.

crimes increased over 68 per cent, and cases of drunkenness 
over 120 per cent. 
Hamlett Bates, police justice, Chelsea, Mass., said on
January 3, 1873:  "The sale of beer should not be legalized.
Almost every beer saloon is a rum-shop."
For the effect of the beer law in Suffolk county, practically
the city of Boston, see the comparison below between the
prohibition year of 1867 and the beer year 1870. 

BEER EXPERIMENT IN BOSTON, MASS. 
October 1. 

Confined in Suffolk Jail. 
1867  (dry)     173 
1870  (wet) with beer     222 
Difference in favor of prohibition     49 

Committed to Suffolk County Jail. 
1867  (dry)     3,736
1870  (wet) with beer     5,262 
Difference in favor of prohibition     1,562 

Committed to City Prison, Boston. 
1867  (dry)     10,429
1870  (wet) with beer     12,862 
Difference in favor of prohibition     2,433 

(Report of Canadian Commissioners, page 75.) 

In 1874, Massachusetts was again under prohibition, and
Mr. Schade, of the Brewers Congress, reported a decrease of
sales of 116,585 barrels in Massachusetts that year over the
previous year when the beer law was in force. 
It is, however, only fair to say that both the beer experiments 
of Iowa and Massachusetts were tried at times not
favorable to reform, the mind of the country being absorbed
in slavery or reconstruction. 
Not so, however, the near-beer experiment of Georgia
(1908-1916).  this came alongside a rising tide of anti-booze
sentiment.  Georgia passed a prohibition law in 1907.  In a 
few months the law was punctured to allow near-beer.  In
Atlanta, near-beer was beer up to 3.99 per cent.  Thus was
Georgia dubbed the "wettest dry state."  It seemed to be
generally conceded that the bulk of the rural districts remained
dry despite the beer amendment.  The people were afraid to 

have saloons, and got around it by various devices, raising the 
license fee to farcical heights, and so on. 
Most of the cities, on the other hand, Savannah, Augusta
and others flouted the beer law.  In Augusta, where I was, 
the saloons ran full blast, selling whiskey unmolested, and so 
it was in most larger places, according to Mr. Eichelberger, 
of the Anti-Saloon League.  But in Atlanta, a modern go-ahead
southern Chicago, the beer experiment seemed to have 
been better carried out.  Judge Broyles was a strong prohibitionist
who prosecuted whenever he found whiskey in  the
saloons.  But as for the beer in the saloons being near-beer,
Judge Broyles said:  "A near-beer law is practically unenforceable,
as you cannot have a chemist with every barrel to see
that the beer is light."  Any beer was sold.  It was certainly
wet prohibition.  Georgia repealed her beer law, and on May
1, 1916, became a real prohibition state.  Of Georgia under 
her new prohibition I shall write elsewhere. 
Summary:  I believed at one time that the thing to do was
to abolish distilled liquors and keep beer under a disinterested
management.  These beer experiments, taken as a whole, gave
me pause.  But suppose we could achieve a successful beer
experiment, one where no whiskey would be sold by the saloon-keepers. 
Should I now advocate it? 
I should not--my reasons being, first that scientific experiments
show that the amount of beer that a man can take without
harm is far below any amount that would satisfy men who
desire drink as a regular part of their lives.  The experience 
of Germany shows that once whiskey is declared unfashionable,
men drinking, as so many do, to be "lit up," drink so immoderately
of beer that they suffer not only from the alcohol in
beer, but from overnourishment and perhaps from overworking
the heart.  Beer is a special disease-maker and also a
brutalizer.  For myself, I often wonder if there is a real connection
between Finland's low alcohol consumption and her
low infant mortality, and between Germany's high beer consumption 
and high infant mortality.  However, about this I
do not know. 
But this one thing I do know--that beer is in no way, shape
or manner a cure for the drink evil. 

The consternation of the 
German beer-drinker when, 
in 1910, the Kaiser asked his
naval cadets to teach their
men to give up all alcohol. 
Silhouette by Judge Charles
B. Wheeler, of the Supreme
Court, Buffalo.  


I-[*IX*]-4 

recuperate only to be brought back when they were well again to finish
out their prison term. 

"Really!" said John Bull, "all this stuff about these women in
my paper amaze me.  Such turbulence is not to my liking.  I want peace
and foreign affairs.  Let the fools have the vote!" 

So led by countless valiant women (after the war) England got
votes for women. 

I kept watching it all, touching it all, and now sometime along
here I was invited to be on the Executive Committee of the Woman's
Suffrage Association of my own State. 

I accepted -- that is I emerged from an utterly conservative
background to what was then considered radicalism -- red and ripe to
be smashed by all mankind still in its senses. 

It shows how constant agitation agitates you over to the other
 side for even after hearing Emmeline Pankhurst, about 1910, I had 
tucked a little anti-suffrage into my own lectures on Modern Criticism. 

I had cast the eye of my audience back over centuries, had declared
that men had always been the stronger animal, woman's function
had been to temper this male but to compete with him, she could not
do it.  She had her place in the scheme of things but with rare exceptions
she could not compete in the business or political worlds.  These 
were man-[*made*][leade] and women would simply dissipate her powers in trying
to compete in the male [the] preserves. 

I had got that off to my conservative clientele!  History teaches 
it - "Scan the corridors of history and you will see it!"  I had said--
and been applauded.  But now I was agitated over to being a Suffragist
but not a [*Militant..*] 

There I sat at my first Suffrage Committee meeting.  Mrs. Maud
Wood Park, pretty as any pink rose-bud you ever saw, Mrs. Louis A. 
Brandeis, whose husband Wilson was soon to place in the Supreme Court. 
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, with her dark Eastern eyes, and cameo 
profile, daughter of the famous early crusader, Lucy Stone.  Miss

Who is Wise? 
Who Isn't Wise.

This is an interlude - not a chapter. 
It is for politicians, [and prophets]. 
It shows no man can prophecy 
ahead about politics - not even 
the wisest or most informed. It 
is a conversation I had with 
Mr. Gillette in 1924 when he was 
running for the United States 
Senate. Mr. Gillette [was] had been 
in the National House of Representatives 
for years and years. He 
was a seasoned Statesman. In 
latter days he was Speaker of the 
House and had recently given up 
that office to run for the Senate. If 
any man could prophecy from 
first hand, nation-wide information 
and long political training 
he was that man. Here we are, 
meeting at the request of Mr. Robert 
A. Woods and talking, in the 
summer of 1924 when Coolidge 
was [elect] up for election. 

But I never lost the sense that there would be in this 
Dark Ages before the New Cycle was on, Obsolescence 
spots - like Obsolescence in the South - cherishing 
the culture, the holy zeal, the refinements, the 
lovely loyalties, the best of a great civilization. 
There were these spots in the Dark 
Ages. They kept the ideals warm and after 
a thousand years this process produced the 
Renaissance.

"Obsolescence won't be all bad," I would 
say, "And besides there is something in 
obsolescence - something golden!

Didn't I know - had I not spent an 
entire winter in the pine-scented 
stillness of Obsolescence?

When all is lost, what a turning within to the 
soul takes place. Ferraro thus described it.

There is perhaps he says, no tragedy like to the ruin of an ancient 
civilization. For ten centuries mankind had labored to create 
a State which should be perfect and it had ended 
in what? In the most appalling crisis of anarchy 
and disorder which was ever produced by the violent 
and corrupt [force] despotism of brutal force...What 
civilization would not [have despaired], in the face 
of such a cruel deception, have despaired of itself 
and of its future?"

But underneath there goes out of anarchy 
something golden: - a religious conception 
that set the world at naught. The goodness 
or badness of the State made no difference, nothing 
counted but the inner man: "The moral 
and religious perfection of the individual." This 
conception revolutionized the ancient attitudes 
and finally conquered anarchy. The world 
purified returned to its order. Astounding 
revolution!

Bathed in the fire of anarchy the soul 
replenished itself. Real values re-appear. 
Civilization finally reappears a little higher up 
than when it disappeared. So it was. So 
it will be - cycle on cycle, without end.

This is an interlude - not a chapter. It 
is for politicians only. It shows that 
what Gladstone said is true - even 
the wisest can't prophecy overnight 
about happenings political.

Here is a conversation I had w

Gladstone said no man can prophecy 
overnight about pol

Dear Aunti.

When you receive this 
begin to send letters to 
Bonneville Hotel 
Tacoma.

Yesterday I lunched at 
the Montecito Club - with 
American men not one of 
whom works for his 
living. I don't believe 
in idlers & the one 
beside me was so nice 
I wanted to tell him

to do something with 
all his wealth but 
I refrained.

On my [the] other side was 
a pale gentleman. He 
finally confesses that 
it was the first lunch 
party he had been to 
for 10 years - being 
rather broken in health, 
that he had dreaded 
it greatly and not 
that he was here he 
felt nervous tremors 
coming on - 

He feared he should have to pay for 
it with two days in bed. I made 
my voice very low and and calm 
and tried to carry him through. 
After that a Dr. Biddle from 
Philadelphia took me for a 
long ride. He is out here 
getting a divorce. He was 
very stupid. In the eve. I talked 
to the normal school girls -

If an envelope comes from the 
American Magazine - open it - 
& if there is a cheque in it -

don't send it but put it in my 
middle desk drawer.

On the whole I am hav'g a pleasant 
time - The flowers & trees bloom away, 
the weather never changes - one vast, 
substantial smile. - I believe they 
liked my talk on the Budget better 
than I thought at the time. I am 
asked to stop off at Rochester on 
my way home & give it and I may 
do it - This is no climate for work - 
nobody can work in it. You just sit in 
the climate. A pathetic letter fr. Mr. Sawyer - 
"we are all at once old." - I should write better letters 
but I lectured 5 times last week & shall lecture 6 this wk.

T's arrest.  It was a hot, 
dusty road - We drove to 
The Bull - The Inn where 
Mr. Pickwick staid at Rochester 
and where we 
saw the ball-room where 
Mr. Leekman & Mr. Juigle  
went that famous eve. & 
got into such trouble - 
After that we went & had tea 
with Mrs. Dag (Miss Bullard 
of Boston - Pres. Eliot's neice). 
She lives in the Rochester 
Close - was very cordial & 
has asked to lunch Friday. 
(We have many friends 
in common & I shall go.)

Mon. I went sight-seeing 
in the heart of London by 
myself - & had a lovely 
time - wandering in the 
long twilight all around 
Chancery Lane. I inquired

for Symonds Inn - remembering 
that was where before 
Ada & Richard of Bleak 
House lived. A man insisted 
on going to hunt it up for 
me. Then I confessed it 
was in Bleak House & might 
be fictitious.

"Bleak House," he 
explained. "I know every 
word of it! I'll show 
you where Miss Flite 
lived!" So in & out we 
went - & there I saw 
the place and the fields 
she let the birds in to. 
He was a very ordinary 
young man but steeped 
in Dickens! - insisted 
that I should take the very 
walk the little creature used 
to take when she "whisked" out & round the corner 
to the Courts to be there in time to hear [?Landyce?] & 
[?Landyce?]. I staid around Staples Inn &c 
eating strawberries till 9 at night - when it 
began to grow dark - so I came home.

Then yesterday was the Darwin [?]. 
Mr. William Buckler took me. He was a Trinity 
man & showed me [?] & everything was beautiful. 
Harvard does look like 2 [?] after these 
divine places. I had a great pleasure.

Then we went to Lady Jebb's to lunch. She 
was a charming woman. I sat beside a Mr. 
Woodward. Pres. of the Carnegie Institute in 
Washington. Cambridge had just given him a 
degree. He was a nice, wholesome chap.

He had, however, to bring with him into 
distinction the wife that he had. She was a 
good hearted creature. "What I like" said she 
to me across the table, "is folks - & we are 
having a lot of folks" - but we all liked 
her just the same. In fact, she was very nice 
on the whole.

We all went off to Lady Darwin's tea. 
It was in a lovely quadrangle of the College. 
All the Darwin's received & around them were 
many distinguished people to see. - Mrs. Huxley - 
Mrs. Sidgwick - Balfour's sister &c - 
I met a good many people - Lady Jebb being 
the most untiring hostess - & here I am this 
morning resting.

With dear love B.


Letters o the Ed

Dear Sir:

I want to say to the many women who have 
written me about my letter in which I said that 
we must harness the women-power of our towns 
[bet] more systematically to our war-work, that 
in Cambridge by posting on church-lawns and the 
wooden poles, so kindly loaned us by the Electric 
Light and Telephone Cos, posters asking for knitters, 
also by putting the feech in our local papers we 
raised our output in one months, thus 
Pairs of socks - Sweaters Helmets. 

May. - 

June -

But this is only a beginning of what must be as 
our army enlarges: not only knitting but surgical 
dressings and every kind of med must double & 
treble on us. To meet this we have decided to 
have a captain in every precinct. Every Saturday 
she will place our posters on the poles of her 
precinct and on the church lawns, telling the 
women the weekly needs.

Then, when a precinct does not give its quota of 
woman-power to war-work, we shall know 
it and get after it, so to speak.

The longer I live, the more I know that it is precinct 
by precinct organization that does it.

Work will win the war, [or jus] but any work won't win the war = it must be organized, precinct by precinct 
work, - The woman-power of the town known and systematically 
grown to the work to be done - But up to now, unless 

2
I am greatly mistaken, [it] the woman-power 
is about at one-third of its maximum because 
it is hit or miss instead of precinct by 
precinct.

The Woman's Council of National Defence 
are doing good work, to quote their own jingle in 
"taking the eat of out wheat and tooting the 
tute in substitute." Another good work that 
they could do would be to co-ordinate the war-needs, 
advertise them systematically, and see 
to it that the town's women-power is harnessed [got] to the 
[needs of the] war-work, - not perhaps a third of it 
as now, [fe] but every ounce of it.

Elizabeth Hewes Tilton 
Cambridge Unit, Red Cross-

PREDICTS MASSACHUSETTS WILL 
GO FOR HOOVER 

Noting that the Boston News Bureau places Massachusetts in the 
doubtful column in the November election, Mrs. William Tilton, 
Chairman of the Women's Allied Organizations which has had some 
connection with almost every election since 1916, says: 

The only thing that can make Massachusetts go for Smith is that 
the Republican Party gets lazy or runs too non-committal a campaign. 
Experience in many Massachusetts campaigns makes me 
reason thus. It is a Protestant State, the vote being about 
40% Catholic to 60% Protestant. But even so the legislature 
comes in year after year about 70% Protestant. This shoes how 
many Catholics vote Republican. The fear is that we shall lose 
the Republican Irish Catholic. I believe we shall lose some 
of these, but not enough to swing the election. For the high-grade 
Catholics will vote for Hoover, for my dealings with them 
has taught me that they are strongly imbued with the clean-living, 
Puritan ideals of America. They will vote neither for 
a wet nor for Tammany. Also many of the Yankee Democrats will 
vote for the humanitarian Hoover; also many independents. This 
will go far to offset the loss to the Republican Party of the 
Republican Irish Catholic vote. 

As for the wet and dry issue, Smith and Raskob will be asked to 
state the magical formula which is going to remove speak-easies, 
bootlegging, not bring back the saloon and yet give all classes 
equal access to liquor. There is no such formula. The wet and 
dry issue will really recede as Smith and Raskob falter for a 
saloonless solution. As it is, the state votes about 48% wet 
to 52% dry. A few of what Francis Parkman called the half-
taught plutocrats may leave that the Republicans to vote for a 
Tammany Hall President. But just as many Yankee Democrats 
would leave their Party to vote for a Humanitarian Hoover. 

The whole thing keeps evening up to a point where it gives at 
least a 60% Republican vote. 

The fact is the real issue is not Protestant or Catholic or Jew; 
nor wet and dry. It is, shall certain elements of civilization 
found in our Big Cities invade the cleaner levels bequeathed 
us by our pioneer forbears? You cannot run a democracy on the 
Tammany grafter and the Chicago gangster. You cannot fool the 
fathers and mothers, whether Jew or Gentile into thinking that 
it is to the advantage of their children to put in power Tammany 
underworlds, represented by a man who is on record as voting 
against legislation to lessen gambling, prostitution and saloons 

This is a Fathers' and Mothers' Campaign regardless of race, 
creed or color. The Parents of Massachusetts, albeit the Sta 
is 92% urban and 66% of foreign extraction, will give around 
a 60% vote against a Tammany President. At least, this is my 
guess from long experience. 

Elizabeth Tilton

11 Mason St., 
Cambridge, Mass.



PREDICTS MASSACHUSETTS WILL 
GO FOR HOOVER 

Noting that the Boston News Bureau places Massachusetts in the 
doubtful column in the November election, Mrs. William Tilton, 
Chairman of the Women's Allied Organizations which has had some 
connection with almost every election since 1916, says: 

The only thing that can make Massachusetts go for Smith is that 
the Republican Party gets lazy or runs too non-committal a campaign.  
Experience in many Massachusetts campaigns makes me 
reason thus. It is a Protestant State, the vote being about 
40% Catholic to 60% Protestant.  But even so the legislature 
comes in year after year about 70% Protestant.  This shoes how 
many Catholics vote Republican.  The fear is that we shall lose 
the Republican Irish Catholic. I believe we shall lose some 
of these, but not enough to swing the election.  For the high-grade 
Catholics will vote for Hoover, for my dealings with them 
has taught me that they are strongly imbued with the clean-
living, Puritan ideals of America.  They will vote neither for 
a wet nor for Tammany.  Also many of the Yankee Democrats will 
vote for the humanitarian Hoover; also many independents.  This 
will go far to offset the loss to the Republican Party of the 
Republican Irish Catholic vote. 

As for the wet and dry issue, Smith and Raskob will be asked to 
state the magical formula which is going to remove speak-easies, 
bootlegging, not bring back the saloon and yet give all classes 
equal access to liquor.  There is no such formula.  The wet and 
dry issue will really recede as Smith and Raskob falter for a 
saloonless solution.  As it is, the state votes about 48% wet 
to 52% dry.  A few of what Francis Parkman called the half-taught 
plutocrats may leave that the Republicans to vote for a 
Tammany Hall President.  But just as many Yankee Democrats 
would leave their Party to vote for a Humanitarian Hoover. 

The whole thing keeps evening up to a point where it gives at 
least a 60% Republican vote. 

The fact is the real issue is not Protestant or Catholic or Jew; 
nor wet and dry. It is, shall certain elements of civilization 
found in our Big Cities invade the cleaner levels bequeathed 
us by our pioneer forbears?  You cannot run a democracy on the 
Tammany grafter and the Chicago gangster.  You cannot fool the 
fathers and mothers, whether Jew or Gentile into thinking that 
it is to the advantage of their children to put in power Tammany 
underworlds, represented by a man who is on record as voting 
against legislation to lessen gambling, prostitution and saloons 

This is a Fathers' and Mothers' Campaign regardless of race, 
creed or color.  The Parents of Massachusetts, albeit the State
is 92% urban and 66% of foreign extraction, will give around 
a 60% vote against a Tammany President.  At least, this is my 
guess from long experience. 

Elizabeth Tilton

11 Mason St., 
Cambridge, Mass.

(Editorial - Unity). 

TESTIMONY FOR PROHIBITION. 

Many Americans, as they travel abroad, display their habits of drink, conspicuously. 
Extravagant stories about drinking in America have passed into the
current coin.  Prohibition promises to be a burning question in the coming Presidential
election.  All of which leads me to give my testimony on the subject. 

1.  To start with, I admit having a prejudice against strong drink.  I well
recall the "town toper" - a terror to small children, the neighbors passing our 
house daily on the way to the "Green" for their "morning nips";  the Saturday night 
crowds when scores indulged in a "spree".  I heard often, that "people have always 
drank and always would" also that "it was impossible for a man to break off."  There
was growing up in my mind a prejudice against strong drink. 

Several of my boy class chums died drunkards, in early manhood.  A classmate
and roommate, in college, died a drunkard.  Splendid fellow.  From the very
beginning of my pastorates, in Nebraska and Ohio, I quickly discovered that the
keeper of drinking places was the chief enemy of work for the girls and boys, in
building up character, that I had devoted my life in doing.  I was able to find a
reason for the business of practically everyone in town, except for that of the 
saloon-keeper. 

2.  I early possessed a bias for total abstinence and prohibition.  I signed
a total abstinence pledge when I was twelve years old.  I have never been sorry. 
My father signed such a pledge almost exactly a century ago.  So, it runs in the
family.  For fifty years I have personally witnessed the development of the temperance
movement in Ohio (Mt. Vernon and Cincinnati), in Illinois (Chicago and Oak
Park) in Nebraska (Crete) and in Seattle.  When a little boy, my own eyes looked upon
a band of women knelling before a saloon, praying for its closing.  They were the 
best women in the town.  That was an incident of the "Women's Crusade" that resulted 
in the closing of several hundred saloons.  It startled the nation.  It meant that 
the women of the land and appealed in vain to judges, husbands, legislators to save
them and their families from the shame, poverty and beastliness growing out of the
business. Their last appeal was to God.  They did not appeal in vain.  While the
"Women's Crusade" (has the time not come for a Women's Crusade to destroy the
"war-machine?") spent its force and disappeared - out from it sprang - the
Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League.  One proceeded to
educate the children of the nation on the evils of strong drink, while the
other sought to send to the state legislatures men who were opposed to the
saloon.  Both of the organizations with great sacrifice and toil, succeeded in doing
a good job.  They wore both absolutely above board and honorable in the work.  The
money they used came chiefly from penny-collections in schools and churches. 
I have known Howard Russell, founder of the Anti-Saloon League, for years - our
acquaintance dating as far back as our college days in Oberlin.  He is a man of
rare spirit and without guile. 

For years I have watched the struggle of the people to break from the thralldom
of the Saloon.  I have seen it in small towns, in counties, in cities, in whole
states.  The movement displays itself about the same, everywhere.  The people stand
the evils of strong drink as long as possible - and then it is seen that the Saloon
is a public nuisance, which must be stamped out, by law.  I have seen every method
tried:  license (high and low), local option, prohibition (local, county, state). 
I have seen commissions go to a foreign land (where it was said the evil was being 


2.-
curbed ) and recommend a new plan, which however did not last long.  I have seen prohibition
adopted, rescinded and then re-adopted - with the result that the people - in
spite of the press and the business men - almost invariably return to prohibition. 
The consistent trend of public opinion has been toward state prohibition, with federal 
prohibition lying back in the minds of the people.  Of course, all informed people 
know that over thirty states had adopted prohibition before  the War.  The movement
usually began locally among pastors and teachers and the women ("idealists" as they
are described) and then moved on until the "solid business" community would be won
over, as to its practicability and benefit.  The symptoms are so familiar to me, that 
I have full confidence, that when a time of decision may come over national prohibition,
the people will not give it up, nor go back to state control. 

3.  I have many times been impressed how many people in other lands are
looking to America to make a success of prohibition.  Prohibition has provoked other 
hands the increased sobriety.  While in Australia, a few years ago, scores of people
would say, "you must not let it fail in America.  The world is expecting to get
courage from the American pioneer work in the fight with strong drink."  It was the
same in New Zealand.  Coming home by way of India, I was deeply impressed with the 
fight of the Indians to throttle strong drink.  Commercial interests there as everywhere 
were debasing the people.  Indians said to me, America must not fail us.  We
look to you for encouragement."  It will be recalled that Gandhi, in his broadcast 
address to America, laid special emphasis on his fight against strong drink, in which
he looked to America for sympathy.  Americans will not fail the world in her great 
social experiment. 

4.  I have faith to believe that Americans will not be reactionary, and 
go back on their forward movement to develop a sober citizenry.  This is revealed,
when those who favor repeal are asked to name what will take the place of prohibition.
It is noticeable, that this has been the final unanswerable question - it
has been impossible to point out a better method.  I cannot conceive of the American 
people, given their second sober thought, being willing to revoke the Prohibition
Amendment - and, if ever they did, they would go back to it.  Suggestions like prohibition
being the cause of crime, or cutting off a large income from taxation, or 
interfering with trade - I have heard these or their ilk so often, that they sound
stale, though spoken by orators.  It is impossible for a city of country to drink
itself rich or healthy or good. 

I am certain that men like Governor Roosevelt, Governor Smith, President
Butler, President Hibben would not like to be classed as reactionaries.  They overlook
the fact that Prohibition is as distinctly a great human movement upward, in
America, as was the movement for the abolition of slavery.  It is in line with the
best American traditions.  I call upon them to come out from their abiding place among 
the moss-backs.  These men (and others) complain of law-breaking.  This is not due to 
Prohibition (might give the devil of War a little credit).  If these men (and
others who share their reactionism) would use their powerful influence in the
direction of observance of  this great law of the Constitution - there would be 
less law-breaking in the land.  Why not be good sports - to say nothing of being
good Americans - and when a law for human improvement, like Prohibition, has won its
way fairly and honestly into the Constitution - why not admit that they have lost,
and at once help to adjust public life to the new law?  Who wants to be a champion
of Lost Causes?  Good citizens adjust themselves to new traffic laws, instead of
sulking in their garages.

3.- 

My friend, Judge Griffiths, of Seattle, told me that he had of late 
crossed the American continent four times and had not seen a single drunken man 
He is no "fool", for he was once chief-of-police in Seattle. I have had exactly 
the same experience. I admit that I am a minister, and do not seek the gutter-life 
when I go to Paris. But, if the Judge and I can travel, together 25,000 miles, 
and not have the landscape spoiled by sight of a drunkard - it is safe to say 
that American has travelled far upward since the days when every village produced a 
"village-toper". 

I am proud of being for Prohibition. I am not proud of those Americans 
who are reactionaries and place obstacles in the way of its enforcement. When I 
consider that the Anglo-Saxon is as an Englishman said a "race of drunkards" and 
that drunkeness is a low type of beastliness - the beneficial results of Prohibition 
so soon in America are nothing short of miraculous. I put down in my 
"American" calendar as events of prime importance:

1. Abolition of human slavery, 
2. Abolition of rum slavery, 
3. Abolition (coming) of war slavery. 

Sydney Strong.

Sydney Strong

MASSACHUSETTS CIVIC LEAGUE

COMMITTEE ON PRISON PROBLEMS

ALLISON G. CATHERON, Chairman   
JEFFREY R. BRACKETT                         
EDITH N. BURLEIGH                               
JOSEPH LEE
FLORENCE H. LUSCOMB          
CORNELIUS A. PARKER             
                                                      
3 JOY STREET, BOSTON
Telephone, Haymarket 2102
IMMEDIATE OBJECT

To secure legislation providing examination, classification
 and treatment in specialized institutions 
of all convicted prisoners. 

HERBERT C. PARSONS
JOSEPH G. THORP
Mrs. WILLIAM TILTON
Mrs. GEORGE WHITING
Mrs. WENONA OSBORNE PINKHAM, 
Secretary

ADVISORY COUNCIL
Rev. FREDERICK B. ALLEN, Boston
Mrs. JOSEPH W. ATTWILL, Lynn
Mrs. MARY E. BACHELDER, Haverhill
THEODORE D. BACON, Salem
Mrs. FREDERICK P. BAGLEY, Boston
Mrs. FRANCIS L. BALL,  Fitchburg
Mrs. FRANK ROE BATCHELDER, Worcester
JOHN L. BATES, Auburndale
RALPH S. BAUER, Lynn
Dr. E. H. BIGELOW, Framingham Centre
ALEXANDER H. BILL, Cambridge
Mrs. WALTER BLACK, Jamaica Plain
FRANK L. BOYDEN, Deerfield
ROBERT S. BRADLEY, Boston
FRANK L. BRIER, Boston
Dr. AUGUSTA F. BRONNER, Boston
ARTHUR H. BROOKS, Boston
JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS, Cambridge
LAWRENCE G. BROOKS, W. Medford
Dr. G. PERCY BROWN, Barre
Mrs. MARY T. O. BROWN, W. Medford
Mrs. ADDISON C. BURNHAM, Newton Centre
ALLSTON BURR, Chestnut Hill
Judge FREDERICK P. CABOT, Boston
Dr. RICHARD C. CABOT, Cambridge
Miss JULIA F. CALLAHAN, Lynn
ANDREW CAMPBELL, Orange
H. L. CHIPMAN, Sandwich
Prof. GEORGE B. CHURCHILL, Amherst 
Mrs. MURDOCK M. CLARK, Cambridge
Mrs. EARNEST A. CODMAN, Boston
GEORGE W. COLEMAN, Wellesley Hills
Rev. A. Z. CONRAD, Boston
Miss FRANCES G. CURTIS, Boston
Rt. Rev. THOMAS F. DAVIES, Springfield
Mrs. MARGARET DELAND, Boston
CHARLES DeNORMANDIE, Boston
Mrs. CHAS. P. DICKINSON, Fitchburg
Rev. ROBERT C. DOUTHIT, Petersham
Dr. HELEN I. DOHERTY, Boston
CARL DREYFUS, Boston
ROSCOE C. EDLUND, Springfield
Gen. CLARENCE R. EDWARDS, Westwood
Pres. CHARLES W. ELIOT, Cambridge
Rev. SAMUEL A. ELIOT, Cambridge
GEORGE H. ELLIS, Boston
Dr. KENDALL EMERSON, Worcester
Mrs. MANNING EMERY, SR., Framingham
Miss EDITH C. FABENS, Marblehead
WILLIAM S. FELTON, Salem
Hon. EUGENE N. FOSS, Boston
CHARLES H. W. FOSTER, Boston
Miss SOPHIE M. FRIEDMAN, Boston
Rev. P. H. GALLEN, Dalton
Prof. N. R. GEORGE, Cambridge
WILLIAM J. GOLDTHWAIT, Marblehead
Mrs. A. W. GOODNOW, Jamaica Plain
Rev. GEORGE A. GORDON, Boston
Judge ROBERT GRANT, Boston
Rev. WALTER F. GREENMAN, Greenfield
COURTENAY GUILD, Boston
Mrs. HERBERT J. GURNEY, Wollaston
Mrs. JOSHUA HALE, Newburyport
Mrs. WILLIAM HEALY, Boston
Mrs. ROBERT F. HERRICK, Milton
Mrs. ROLAND G. HOPKINS, Chestnut Hill
LEWIS R. HOVEY, Haverhill
ARTHUR S. JOHNSON, Boston
Rev. C. R. JOY, Dedham
Mrs. PAUL M. KEENE, Brookline
Rev. LEONARD S. KNIGHTWINE, Fitchburg
Rev. W. APPLETON LAWRENCE, Lynn
Rt. Rev. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Boston
Judge FRANK LEVERONI, Boston
Rev. HARRY LEVI, Brookline
Mrs. J. THAYER LINCOLN, Fall River
Miss KATHERINE P. LORING, Beverly
ARTHUR H. LOWE, Fitchburg
ARTHUR LYMAN, Waltham
DAVID J. MALONEY, Chelsea
Rev. HAROLD MARSHALL, Melrose
Mrs. COLIN W. McDONALD, Roxbury
CHARLES H. McGLUE, Lynn
(OVER)

  Prison reform is the urgent necessity of 
the present time. It can not be accomplished 
in a day, nor without well considered plans, 
steady work and the hearty support of men and 
women who care for human welfare. 

  The Massachusetts Civic League has helped 
to bring about the removal of the insane from 
the town almshouses, the separate treatment of 
juvenile offenders, schools for the feeble-minded, 
the probation system. The object now 
to be attained is the classification of our 
convicted prisoners and their care in institutions 
adapted to their special needs. 

  The population of our jails and houses of 
correction is miscellaneous to the last degree, 
mainly unemployed, offering contacts that are 
damaging, half of them serving their sixth or 
more sentence. 

  Because of repeated failures of the legislature 
to enact the needed legislation, the 
Massachusetts Civic League is now circulating 
an Initiative petition. If the legislature 
again fails, the measure will be submitted to 
the people at the next election. 

  Although much of the work of securing the 
necessary 20,000 names for the petition and of 
enlightening the people has been done by volunteers, 
there are expenses for printing, postage, 
traveling and clerical assistance, for 
which $2.000 are needed. 

  Will you help us with as large a subscription 
as you feel that you can give? 

Sincerely yours, 

Mrs. Roger W. Cutler, Chairman
Miss Katherine P. Loring
Thomas P. Beal
Philip Stockton
3 encls. Finance Committee


RACE SURVIVAL PLATFORM
SUGGESTED BY DR. ELIOT

Mrs. Wm. Tilton's Message to the 
Mothers and Parent-Teacher 
Associations  

Call 

  At the convention of the Mothers 
and Parent-Teacher Association 
meeting, held in Louisville Kentucky 
on Monday, Mrs. Wm Tilton 
of this city who is the legislative 
chairman of the organization submitted 
the following remarks: 
  We stand today in a world seemingly 
baffled by the hugeness of 
its problems. Everywhere is lack 
of confidence and aggression. This 
is the more serious because from 
now on the platforms of the coming 
political campaigns of 1924 will be 
forming from the year's yeald of 
ideas and ideals. 
  Our part is to see that the noble, 
the progressive ideas are the ones 
to grow the tallest 1923 and so 
be harvested into the platforms of 
1924. We the people, can degree this 
year whether we want this baffled 
world, yearning for bold rectitudes 
and a ringing moral leadership, but 
finding it not, to continue? Or we 
can, by sowing the faith and creed 
that is in us, break down the spirit 
of inaction, aloofness and lawlessness 
abroad, and demand a nation 
marching breast-forward towards 
the only things that count, the 
things that make the race survive. 
  President Emeritus, Charles W. 
Eliot of Harvard University has 
suggested that we should do well 
to sow deep the following ideals.  
He gives us a Race-Survival Platform 
thus: 
1. Immediate entrance into the 
League of Nations. 
2. Enforcement of the Prohibition 
Amendment and the Volstead Act, 
3. Improvement of the public 
schools by introducing into their 
programmes universal physical 
training and instruction [??] the 
meaning [?? ???]  


in the hands of the State and 
municipal authorities.  
  But some of you, being Republicans, 
could not sow quite all that, 
but all of us can frame from his 
suggestion a non-partisan program 
that we can sow thoroughly the 
coming year. 
1. Peace--Entrance into an Association 
or League of Nations on a 
basis to be determined by Congress.  
2.  Prohibition--Strong enforcement 
of the Prohibition Amendment 
and observance of all law. 
3. Preventive Campaigns--Instruction 
everywhere against all race-destroying 
influences, such as, 
alcohol, prostitution, congestion 
of population, physical debility, 
etc, etc.  
4. Public Education--Such Federal 
aid, either temporary or permanent, 
as shall give equal education 
opportunities, bringing the 
backward districts abreast of the 
time.  
  Here are antidotes against the 
vacillating trend of the day. Here 
is no hauling down of our flag in 
the 1924 election to the most selfish 
and the most criminal elements 
of our nation, the bootlegger and 
his patron. Here is no inaction 
killing the Peace of our world by 
letting us slip into an isolation at 
once dangerous and ignoble. Here 
is the soil from which there may 
grow in 1924 platforms to be proud 
of.  
How to Proceed: 
  Let every one of our 400,000 members 
constitute himself or herself a 
Committee of One to Speak Up for 
Peace, for Prohibition, for Public 
Education, etc. Out-spoken public 
Opinion is the first need. 
  The second need is Organized 
Public Opinion. Get every club or 
group to go on record for these 
Race-Survival Issues and send this 
record to the Republican and Democratic 
National Committee with an 
urgent request that they be incorporated 
in the coming platforms.

ADVISORY COUNCIL (continued)
JOHN MELPOLDER, Springfield
ALBERT B MERRILL, Brookline
Mrs. KATHARINE H. MILLARD, North Adams
Mrs. ERNEST H. MILLER, Fitchburg
W. D. MILLER, South Ashburnham
Pres. LEMUEL H. MURLIN, Boston
Miss LAVINIA H. NEWELL, Boston
JOHN A. NICHOLLS, Brighton
THOMAS C. O'BRIEN, Brighton
Rev. GEORGE P. O'CONOR, Boston
Miss FANNY C. OSGOOD, Boston
Mrs. ERNEST H. PAGE, Fitchburg
Rev. ENDICOTT PEABODY, Groton
Rev. MALCOLM E. PEABODY, Lawrence
Mrs. GRACE MORRISON POOLE, Brockton
CHARLES DUDLEY PORTER, Haverhill
Mrs. I. K. E. PRAGER, Allston
Mrs. ANDREW PRATT, Fitchburg
ALFRED W. PUTNAM, Boston
Mrs. THOMAS REES, Jamaica Plain
R. AUSTIN FOX RIGGS, Stockbridge
Rev. E. TALMADGE ROOT, Somerville
Mrs. E. TALMADGE ROOT, Somerville
Dr. MILTON J. ROSENAU, Brookline
BERNARD J. ROTHWELL, Boston
Rev. EUGENE R. SHIPPEN, Brookline
Rt. Rev. CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY, Boston
Mrs. FRANCIS E. SLATTERY, Brighton
Miss MARGARET SLATTERY, Malden
Mrs. FREDERICK G. SMITH, Somerville
Dr. HENRY R. STEDMAN, Brookline
PHILI STOCKTON, Boston
Judge MICHAEL H. SULLIVAN, Boston
Miss ALICE P. TAPLEY, Boston
Mrs. NATHANIEL THAYER, Boston
Dr. D. A. THOM, Boston
F. B. TOWNE, Holyoke
Mrs. EDWARD F. WELLINGTON, Malden
Mrs. WILLIAM M. WHEELER, Jamaica Plain
Mrs. EVA WHITING WHITE, Boston
Mrs. LOUISE GORHAM WILDER, Barre
BUTLER R. WILSON, Dover
Miss HELEN M. WINSLOW, Boston
Miss MARY E. WOOLLEY, South Hadley
Dr. ALFRED WORCESTER, Waltham
ENDORSED BY
State Federation of Women's Clubs
Boston City Federation of Women's Clubs
Mass. Federation of Churches
Greater Boston Federation of Churches
Mass. League of Women Voters
Boston League of Women Voters
National Civic Federation, Prison Committee
National Civic Federation, Legislative Committee
National Civic Federation, Massachusetts Section
Mass. Society for Mental Hygiene
Catholic Charitable Bureau
Family Welfare Society
Women's Auxiliary, Mass. Civil Service Reform Association
Executive Committee, Mass. Association of Women Lawyers
Margaret Brent Civic Guild
Women's Trade Union League
Newburyport Chamber of Commerce
Newburyport Woman's Club
Community Welfare Council of Newburyport
Social Service Council of Unitarian Women
North Adams Woman's Club
North Adams Women's Christian Temperance Union
North Adams League of Women Voters
Fitchburg Community League
West Somerville Civic Association
Somerville Women's Christian Temperance Union
Somerville League of Women Voters
Legislative and Executive Committees Women's Church Societies, Somerville
Boston Central Women's Christian Temperance Union
Brockton Woman's Club
Haverhill Woman's Club
Danvers Woman's Association
Heptorean Club of Somerville
Newton Federation of Women's Clubs
Fall River Woman's Club
Political Science Club of Lynn
Amesbury Woman's Club
Elizabeth H. Whittier Club, Amesbury
Executive Committee, Church Home Society
Presbyterian Ministers' Association
Methodist Preachers' Meeting
Brookline Friendly Aids
Women's Society Jamaica Plain First Congregational Church
Women's Society Jamaica Plain First M. E. Church
Auburndale Congregational Church, Men's Class
Amherst Woman's Club
American Association of University Women, Boston Branch
Department of Social Service, Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts
Boston Society of Psychiatry and Neurology
Women's Relief Corps
The Old Colony Union
15

Committee on
War-Time
Prohibition
Mr Wm T Ex Sec.
see letterhead
used for carbon
copies of letter
in 1923 of]
[?] Congress of 
[?]
folder "Mr Wathem
[letter?]

The Whence and Whither of Prohibition

Elizabeth Tilton, Chairman Poster Campaign, Boston Associated Charities 

A minority in this country is not yet converted to prohibition.  It will
be the natural strategy of the liquor interests to make this unsaving remnant
just as noisy as possible.  Therefore, we who believe in prohibition have before
us a five years' fight, at least, with a noisy minority that will be ably led
by what George Brandt calls "that raging wild animal, the man who sees his
purse in danger." 
We must do battle at once and continuously for the thing we have
created, the very greatest of things, a beneficent law, the 18th amendment
to the constitution. 
Our first move, then, as good fighting men, is to be clear why we, as
social workers, are for total abstinence and prohibition. 

Race-Hygiene Movement 
I imagine, at bottom, we are against alcohol because both science and
common sense tell us that alcohol is a race destroyer.  Not only does it bring 
disease and lowered efficiency to the drinker, but also, according to careful
experiments by Laitenen and others, it brings lowered efficiency and disease to
the drinker's progeny.  If our western race is to hold its own, it can hold it
only by turning back a racial decline already  apparent in Europe.  Indeed in
France, the most alcohol-saturated people of us all, the decline has reached 
a point where annual deaths often exceed births.  If this historic tendency is
to be turned backwards, there must arise in the next one hundred years a
vast health crusade and one of the first principles of this crusade against the 
diseases that depopulate, venereal, tubercula, etc., etc., will be to cut out
that racial poison, alcohol. 
So, I say, I believe we as social workers are against alcohol because we
are for race hygiene. 

Why Prohibition
But why are we for prohibition as well as for total abstinence, we who
are converted?  Of course, there are a few social workers, sports in the
genus, not yet converted. 
I will be frank and say that ten years ago I was a sport, not a convert. 
I looked on prohibition as a badly dressed performance of fanatics.  But I
was converted.  Figures did it, figures volleying and thundering from every
district where prohibition had been tried, figures from courts, police records,
charity organizations made me a granite prohibitionist. 
I was simply compelled to acknowledge that prohibition wrought good
without any great corresponding evils to offset the good. 

Drug Fiends 
I looked into the evils usually to find them greatly exaggerated or mere
bogeys.  For example.  I was told that prohibition had turned the drinkers 

Copyright, 1919, by the
National Conference of Social Work
In complete Proceedings of the annual meeting, cloth bound, $2.50.
Pamphlet 221, Price 10 cents.
Reduction on quantity orders.  Write for descriptive list of publications.
315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, Ill. 

1 




of Richmond, Virginia,, and Charleston, South Carolina, into drug-fiends.
Therefore, I went myself to the institutions in these cities where they confine
the drug-fiends.  And there were no records showing increase in drug-fiends. 
I could nowhere find proof that men deprived of alcohol turned en masse 
to drugs. 

Personal Liberty
The personal liberty argument never troubled me.  Personal liberty to
injure my fellow men.  I always knew to be not liberty but license or to
quote the United States Supreme Court (Crowley vs. Christensen, 137 U. S. 
89-92.  Nov. 10, 1890) : 
"Even liberty itself, the greatest of all rights, is not unrestricted liberty to act
according to one's own will.  It is only freedom of restraint under conditions
essential to the equal enjoyment of the same right by others.  It is, then, liberty
regulated by law." 

Business Ruined 
Never could I anywhere find that business went to pieces under prohibition.
On the contrary bank deposits usually rose, along with business in general. 
How touching and telling was the great increase in the sale in little 
children's shoes in Seattle and the increased sale in milk in Denver after 
the introduction of prohibition. 

No Beer, No Work 
As for labor revolting, I found that once prohibition had established
itself, labor rejoiced and said so, thus: 
Otto R. Hardwig, President Oregon State Federation of Labor:  "Though I
have practiced Prohibition all my life, I have always opposed its adoption, because
I felt it was an infringement on personal rights;  but since it has become a law 
here, the benefits derived have been so great and beneficial that I am a champion 
of Prohibition from now on." 
John L. Donnelly, President Arizona State Federation of Labor:  "Arizona
workers are certainly better, morally and financially, than before  Prohibition
was adopted." 
Wm. C. Thornton, President Denver Trades and Labor Assembly:  "You
cannot pick up a corporal's guard of dry Unionists in Colorado who would vote
for the return of the saloon.  Where workingmen bought whisky before, they are
now putting their money into shoes for the babies." 
In short I traveled through this country surveying prohibition for myself, 
I hunted every adverse propaganda to its lair, only to find the arguments
for stand out like granite, the arguments against melt like a miasma 
before the sun.  I came to the conclusion as I went from state to state, that 
Poe had said the untruest line in all poetry when he said,
Man convinced against his will
Has the same opinion still. 
Most of our big cities had been forced dry against their will by the
outlying vote of the state, but they did not even pretend to have the same
opinion still.  Richmond, Virginia, is the best laboratory in which to study
prohibition that I know;  the data is so get-at-able.  It was put dry against its
will, but said that character of Richmond, Judge Crutchfield, veteran judge
of the police court off and on, for forty-five years, to me: 
"Put it down that old Crutchfield voted wet, wet as a rag, but put it down
now that if old Crutchfield had to vote again, he would vote dry with a big D."
So it was everywhere--men converted all along the line. 
But the compelling thing was those figures, figures in institutions after 
institution.  There they lay in Richmond, for years averaging more or less
the same, till that November, 1916.  Then something had struck them all--
almost over night--as it were.  They had all slid down.  Now war prosperity
had been coming to Richmond, but it did not come on a sudden.  But prohibition
came on a sudden and down went the records in the City Home where 

2 


they harbored the chronic alcoholic, the county jail, the state penitentiary,
the juvenile court (a remarkable one), where they handled not only the
children but the wife-beatings and desertions.  One example is typical of all. 
The average number of prisoners at the state prison in Richmond in the
month of December, for the five years before prohibition, had been 97.  The
first December under prohibition (1916) it was 70;  for the same periods of 
January (average for five years) 42.6;  first January under prohibition, 22.
February showed a reduction from an average of 58 to 35. 
November 1, 1916, the day prohibition began, the number of convicts and
jail-birds on the road force was 1,697;  March 6, 1916, it was 1.412. 
I was compelled to say, prohibition helps, therefore let even the New
York social worker put Bohemian and snobbish longings behind and help 
prohibition. 
Detroit has just been surveyed by George B. Wilson, B. A., Howard
Medalist of the Royal Statistical Society of England.  He said to me:
"Detroit to a Britisher presented every difficulty possible to prohibition.
1.  It is 45 per cent foreign-born--from drinking Europe. 
2.  Hostile to prohibition as proved by the voter. 
3.  Suffering under very imperfect judiciary.
4.  Industrially immensely wealthy and therefore with tendency to high
drink consumption.  But nonetheless, the results of prohibition are startling
police and court records have already been in our press but Mr. Wilson had
dug out extra records that simply bump down, one after another. 
From the medical officer of health records he found deaths from alcoholism 
reduced 82 per cent;  cirrhosis of the liver, 11 per cent;  suicides, 33 
per cent;  deaths from fall, 28 per cent;  fatal industrial accidents, 30 per
cent, and accidents in general, from the state board of industrial accidents 
had fallen from 18,386 to 14,615--that is 20 per cent.  The public welfare
department records showed that the men who repaid for lodging advanced
on trust had risen 50 per cent.  Families helped with provisions and books
had fallen 25 per cent--that is, from 12,274 to 9,157. 
Now, granted that prohibition helps, what I want to leave in your mind
is precisely what help is needed for prohibition. 

What To Do Now 
In my mind, the fight lies in two directions, one an educational fight with
special emphasis on beer and wine;  second, a political fight. 
You know the prohibition amendment says that both the federal and
state officers shall have the power to enforce the law (that "congress and 
the several states shall have concurrent power," is the expression used). 
Now the opposition will naturally try to go at once into politics and 
elect wet legislatures that will pass a state dry law that is very wet and very
out of harmony with the federal law, a situation that will leave the federal 
officers forced to one policy and the state officers to another.  This would 
simply confuse enforcement to an unbearable degree.  Then, the other step
would be this, that where states passed a good enforcement law, to have a 
referendum, trusting to the foreign populations in the large cities to overturn
the good state enforcement law. 
Now the Anti-Saloon League taught me something that I think social
workers do not visualize clearly enough, that, if you would win your reform
there is a step to be taken beyond the meetings and the publicity, the step that 
crystallizes the sentiment into votes.  A cause is like this:  99,000,000 of our
people are always indifferent to any reform.  Connected with it are three 
groups, the little band actively for, the little band actively against, and, then,
the third group, the opinion-makers of the district, usually leaders of groups. 
The side that finally succeeds in getting the opinion-makers wins. 
We want now to manufacture dry legislatures.  To do this, find out 

3 



when you go home who is being groomed for the primaries;  get leading
men to wait on these men at once and ask them to take a dry vote to their
legislature.  It is amazing how few men it takes to influence a man before
the primaries, how many after.  If every associated charities would appoint
a committee to wee that only dry men go through your next primaries, you
would be making the state enforcement law that dovetails in with the federal
law and facilitates enforcement as nothing else can. 
Well, that is the next step, get the opinion-makers of your town to
build up a dry legislature, build it now behind the primaries. 

Education 
The other step is constant education that shall finally build up the
Kansas state of mind, liquor a back number that no sane man can tolerate. 
The special step in this fight is to explode the beer and wine fallacy.  Distilled
liquor is fairly well in hand but beer and wine have yet to be conquered. 

Teach Men That "Beer is Booze" 
First, point out that once we allow the return of even light beer, we
admit in all probability the return of the saloon and the brewers in politics. 
This means the opposite of prohibition.  Second, point out that experiments 
forbidding distilled liquors but allowing beer and wines have been tried and
have always failed.  For example, Massachusetts was under prohibition in
1869.  In 1870 towns that wished were allowed to have saloons that could sell
beer, cider, porter, ale.  New Bedford opened beer saloons in1872 and crime
rose 68 per cent;  arrests for drunkenness, 120 per cent.  Wherever the beer
bars opened, results were similar. 
Georgia tried a beer experiment from 1908-16.  Distilled liquors could
not be sold in saloons, only light or near-beer.  In Atlanta near-beer was
beer up to 3.99 per cent.  Judge Broyles, then of the police court of Atlanta, 
said, "A light or near-beer law is practically unenforceable as you cannot
have a chemist with every barrel to see that the beer is light.  Any beer
will be sold.  Besides, men do get drunk on 2 per cent beer if they take
enough of it."
The fact is, once you open the saloon, you cannot regulate what will
be sold.  Again, what one man can carry easily a second man cannot carry
at all.  I myself had a case where a man was drunk for three weeks on
nothing stronger than Sterling ale. 
I visited Savannah, Georgia, the year after the state had changed from 
beer saloons to no saloons.  I found the police thankful for the changed 
law on the ground that now they had a law that was enforceable;  one "you 
could handle."  The figures from the police records were so striking as to
quiet forever all longings for 2 3/4 per cent beer. 
I first visited the police station.  "I was a wet," said the Chief of Police, "but
now am a dry;  conditions in the homes of the poor are so much better," and he
gave me the following figures.  The first figures (1915) are for Savannah under
spotted prohibition, which allowed beer in saloons, but now whiskey;  the second are
for Savannah under prohibition (no saloons) in 1916-1917.  The periods compared
are ten months before and ten months following prohibition (May 1, 1915,
to March 1, 1916, and May 1, 1916, to March 1, 1917):
Arrests for assault with intent to murder, 49;  reduced to 18 or 64 per
cent less. 
Disorderly conduct reduced from 2,117 to 1,052, or 51 per cent less. 
Drunkenness and disorderliness, 1,197 to 343, 72 per cent reduction.
Lunacy reduced from 61 to 28, or 54 percent reduction. 
I next saw Dr. Brunner, secretary of the Board of Sanitary Commissioners. 
He said:  "Two years ago I called prohibition poppycock, but prohibition enforces
is a mighty good thing, and we have got that mighty good thing here."  He
declared that the prisoners' chain gang of negroes had carried under "spotted"
prohibition from 600 to 700 negroes.  After five months of prohibition the gang
had dropped to approximately 200 and stayed about there ever since. 

4 


"And look at my homicides," said this convert to prohibition;  "prohibition
began May 1, 1916: 
"In 1915--24 homicides (negro by negro).
"In 1916--10 homicides (negro by negro). 
"And eight of the homicides took place before prohibition became law." 

Beer, the Disease Maker 
Another phase in the beer problem is that beer, whether it makes you
drunk or not, is a great disease maker. 
Listen to the famous physiologist of the famous beer country, Professor
von Struempell.  (See Deutsche Monatsschrift, Vol. IV, p. 242) : 
Formerly whiskey and brandy were the universal evildoers, the only despised
drinks as against "noble" wine and "harmless" beer.  At present we know 
that in practice and injurious effects of beer, are at least as frequent if 
not, indeed, more frequent, than those of distilled liquor.  For beer-drinking has 
pressed into all grades of society, and while distilled liquor, with rare exceptions,
finds its victims only in the lower sections of the working population, we
find the injurious effects of too free beer-drinking (Gambrinism, as I call it) 
especially among the more cultivated classes.  Grambrinism, moreover, differs
medically in many respects from simple alcoholism, although the special alcohol
effect is to be taken into account in excessive beer-drinking.  For although the
percentage of alcohol (beer 2 to 4 per cent), is not especially high, yet this
low percentage is counteracted by the great quantity drunk;  100 cubic centimeters
of beer contain only 3 grams per alcohol, but a liter contains 30 grams. 
A moderate beer-drinker, who daily drinks his five liters, thus gets every day
150 grams of absolute alcohol into his body.  But what gives beer its typical
earmark is the fact that beer contains comparatively great quantities of fat-forming, 
or at least fat-encouraging, foods (malt).  Most heavy beer-drinkers are,
therefore, overfed.  Hence the fatness which may itself become a source of
illness.  Finally it must be noted that perhaps beer contains besides alcohol
other injurious substances from the hops, whose effect is also to be taken into
account. 

Again, in a lecture at Nuremberg, this same writer says : 
Nothing is more erroneous from the physicians' standpoint than to think
of diminishing the destructive effects of alcoholism by substituting beer for
other alcoholic drinks, or that the victims of drink are found only in those
countries where whiskey helps the people of a low grade of culture to forget
their poverty and misery. 

Careful investigations during a series of years made at the Pathological
Institute, Munich, showed that 16 per cent of the male patients had died of
beer drinkers' heart. 
The fact is, men drink alcohol for the drug effect, "the kick," and once
deprived of whiskey, they drink just so much more beer. 
As for light wines, the idea that they are harmless is even a greater 
fallacy, for these run from 6 to 12 per cent alcohol.  French statistics leave
no arguments for wine.  Even if it is not so intoxicating as the heavier
drinks, it too, is a disease maker, breeding, by lowering resistance, all the
things the race cannot afford, tuberculosis, venereal disease, insanity and
the greatest malady of France, depopulation. 
In France, over 100,000 persons die yearly of tuberculosis and investigation 
by Merman, director of public hygiene, showed (1906-10) an exact
correspondence between the districts where they drank most and those where
tuberculosis gave the highest rate. 
France abounds with alcohol-insane.  The wine-drinking country of Italy
shows 28 per cent lunatics in asylums alcohol-insane.  In the United States 
the figure runs 10 per cent alcohol-insane.
Dr. Jacquet gives the following figures from his hospital, 1912, of the
children of alcoholism : 
111  Moderate drinkers had lost 66 children. 
80  Heavy drinkers had lost 73 children. 
117  Very heavy drinkers had lost 220 children. 

France, the most alcoholized of the nations, is the nation where
annual deaths often exceed births. 

5 



Germany, alcoholized with beer, has a high infant mortality. 
Finland, the country in Europe with the lowest alcohol consumption, has
the lowest infant mortality.  In short, there is nothing in all this talk of
a separate peace for wine and beer but money for the liquor interests and
the ruin of prohibition for us. 
The only way out is the drastic way, the way of total abstinence that
says no to the custom plus prohibition that says no to the traffic, the ever-ready
opportunity. 
I know the word bone-dry has no romance in it.  It comes distastefully 
to the ears of the Bohemian and the snob.  But Bohemians and snobs never
yet made the cleaned-up blood that saves the race.  The bone-drys make
that blood.  I am here in the name of clean blood to ask you to be bone-drys. 
I am here in the name of race-hygiene to ask you to do your part to
stem the health breakdown of the western race now upon us by turning
your backs completely on a race-destroyer like alcohol. 
Fight, like Covenanters of old, on the side of the bone-drys. 
Help congress to pass a drastic, bone-dry, beer and wine prohibition
enforcement law, with a definition of intoxicating liquor down to one-half
of one per cent alcohol. 
Help the legislators in your state to pass a similar bone-dry state enforcement
law, one in harmony with the federal law. 
Most of all help us to keep up the education for a bone-dry state of
mind--the state of mind that knows that if you are going to drive back
the tides of degeneracy facing western civilization, you have got to drive
back alcohol.  Drive the truth home.  Keep driving it home.  As you have
made men think, deep men thinking. 
We are out to change the world's mind.  It can be done.  I came yesterday
up from the world prohibition conference in Washington.  With me
was Mrs. Falconer of Slaton Farms.  Five years ago she took me to the
City Club in Philadelphia to speak on the alcohol problem.  The manager
came up to me, others, too, and whispered,  "Don't mention the word Prohibition.
It is taboo in Philadelphia." 
That was five years ago--and last winter Pennsylvania ratified the 
prohibition amendment. 
You can change the mind of a race if your facts are sound and you
are determined.  Be determined.  Raise high the bone-dry flag and carry
on until there is not left in this great continent a public official that winks 
at non-enforcement of this virile law.  It is a far goal to the day when
there shall not be left even one nullification policeman.  But it is all gold
when reached.  Carry on to this goal! 

For copies address Mrs. William Tilton, 11 Mason St., Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

6

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important subjects, such as Uniting Native and Foreign-
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Descriptive lists and prices gladly sent. Write: 
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK, 
315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, Ill.

Elizabeth Tilton
Elizabeth Tilton, Unitarian feminist and
temperance crusader, was born March 13, 
1869 in Salem, Mass., and passed away at
her winter home in Winter Park, Florida, on
March 15, 1950.  On January 10, 1911, she
was united in marriage with William Tilton
of Cambridge Mass., who survives her. 
Since 1912 Mrs. Tilton devoted much of 
her time and energy to the causes of woman 
suffrage, peace, education and Prohibition.
She served in the past thirty years as organization
chairman of the Massachusetts 
Woman Suffrage Association, a director of
the Women's National Committee for Law
Enforcement, a director of the Anti-Saloon
League of America, chairman of the Women's 
National Committee for Education
Against Alcohol, president of the Unitarian
Temperance Society, chairman of the legislation
committee of the National Congress 
of Parents and Teachers, and chairman of
the Radio Education Committee of Washington,
D. C.  She was author of "Turning
Off the Spigot" (1914), "Save America" 
(1924), and contributed to the Woman's
Journal, Current History, and other publications. 

Mrs. Tilton was a gallant fighter, a hard-hitting 
opponent.  Her convictions were expressed 
in plain, forthright and emphatic
language.  Undaunted by the defeat of National
Prohibition, she continued her crusade
"to uphold the ideals that keep the 
body politic wholesome for boys and girls." 
She predicted the early return of Prohibition.
"Our task," she said in one of her last public
interviews, "is to keep the ideals warm. 
Quietly, we hold the saving remnant.  You've
got to let people begin to suffer.  Soon a 
new army will arise, an army of youth who
have suffered in the homes of lady drunkards." 
"Re-Puritanize or perish" was her
slogan, and to the end she was firmly convinced
that America must stage a character
comeback based upon Puritan ideals. 
W. H. G. 
[*Christian Reporter
April  1950*]


[*Tilton*] 
As soon as I get an envelope to fit, I am going to send you a copy
of material from Mrs. William Tilton's diary.  She it was who helped
with the Committee of 100 key men in Mass., and who opposed our fight
against Weeks.  Her papers came to me for Radcliffe and I kept some
of the duplicates to read aloud to M.W.P.  I'm sure you'll be
interested to read her account of the final year and her descriptions
of C.C.C. and M.W.P.  She was such a hustler, was Mrs. Tilton, but
she always had to be left to do things her own way and, young as I
was then, I thought she was the most difficult person in our organization. 
[*E L Stantial
to M  9 Pech  1951*]

97 Parker Street
Newton Centre, Mass. 

DIRECTIONS. 

The present healthy excitement against dog-racing
should be utilized to launch a War on the Wide-Open Town
which might be likened to a Rat-Scuttling Recovery as
well as Public and Private Relief. 

First, we must eradicate false arguments let loose
by Wet Campaign, (can't legislate morality;  we need the
revenue, etc.).  the inclosed paper is full of ammunition
to be used to undermine propaganda for saloon, race-track,
brothel.  Won't you ask your minister to preach from it? 

Second, we will send you fifty papers to distribute 
to your Bible Class, W.C.T.U., Parent-Teacher Association
or your Club.  Ask them to get arguments abroad - to
talk up "Wholesome America." 

Third - Most Important!  Get letters sent at once
to your State Senator and Representatives asking them: 
1,  to vote for bill prohibiting dog-races in Massachusetts; 
2,  to vote against the dozen or so lottery bills before
our legislature;  3,  the numerous liquor bills for looser
control of liquor, such a bill, for example, as that asking
that hotels may sell even in dry towns. 

Twice in the nineteenth century we had a similar
Character Collapse followed by Character Come-Back. 

Revive Wholesome America! 

Mabelle M. Groves, Secretary
Woman's Public Safety Committee 

Elizabeth Tilton, Collaborator. 


[*4*]
THE WOMEN'S VOTE. 
ARIZONA.  1912 population, 222,563;  vote 23,987 men
1916     "     255,544;  "  58,021 men and women. 
The 14% increase in population up to 1916 should raise the male vote
to a little under 27,345.  This would show that to make up the total
over 30,000 women voted.  Considering that there are 169 men to 100
women in Arizona, the proportion of the women of this State voting
is thus shown to be very much larger thab of men,and this would be
true even if we grant that the men may have voted way out of proportion
to increase in population. 

OREGON.  1912 population, 730,736;  Vote 137,040 men
1916     "     835,741;  "  261,650 men and women. 
Population has increased about 14%, so we should expect a male vote
in 1916 of 156,000.  This leaves of women voting in 1916 about
105,000.  Since there are less than two-thirds as many women as men
in the State, this is the right proportion. 

KANSAS.  1912 population, 1,717,924;Vote 365,444men
1916     "     1,829,545;  "  629,813 men and women. 
At the rate of over 5% increase shown by the population of 1916,male
voters should have increased to 384,000, leaving a balance of about
240,000 voters who are women.  This is 39% of the vote,which is
short by 7% of the women's due proportion,as in Kansas women form
about 46% of the population.
NEVADA.
1912 population, 90,718;  Vote, 20115 men
1916     "     106,734;  "  32,979 men and women.
The 16% increase in population should have called out a male vote of
23,333.  This leaves women vote of 9,646, or 29% of the total in
a state where women form 31% of the population, (220 mwn to 100
women.)--2% short of quota. 

MONTANA.  1912 population, 405,734;  Vote, 79,820 men 
1916     "     459,494;  "  177,679 men and women. 
The 13% increase in population should give in 1916 a male vote of
90,203.  The women of Montana must therefore have cast 87,476 votes
or 45% on the total in a state where they form but 34% of the population. 
(189 men to 100 women.) 

ILLINOIS.  In the case of Illinois we do not have to compare successive
presidential elections;  we know exact figures for 1916, for
the men and women's votes are on different ballots.  The figures
show 1m316,007 men and 876,700 women voting in November 1916.Thus 
the women cast a little under 40[%] of the vote in a state where they
form about 48% of population, falling short of their quota by 8%. 

WASHINGTON.  1910 population, 1,141,990;  Vote 183,879 men (election
of 1908.)
1912     "     1,281,508;  "  322,799 men and
women. 
The rate of  population increase over a two year period here is about
10%;  for a 4 year period 20%, which would raise the male vote in
1912 to about 220,000.  This leaves over 102,000 women voting in
November 1912- 31% of the vote or a little under their proprt proportion
in a state where they constitute 38% of the population.  In
1916 the vote of Washington was 380,994, an increase within 2% of the
increase in  the male and female population during the period,which 




                                                                                                          [*5*]
2
shown that neither sex had lost interest in the exercise of its 
voting right.  

CALIFORNIA. 1910 population, 2,577,137; Vote 325,652 men.
                      1912      "             2,564,641;   "     673,517 men & women.
With about 8% population increase in this state, male voters should 
have increased by 1912 to over 350,000. This leaves 325,000 women 
voting in 1912, which means in a state where there are 137 men to 
100 women, that they furnished their full quota.
                 The California vote of 1916 was 1,045,858, more than 50% 
increase, while population in their four years period had increased 
under 15%.  

COLORADO. At the 1892 Presidential election 93,843 men voted; at 
that of 1896, -189,141 men and women voted. Applying the census rate 
during these years the population had increased less than 12%, so 
about 105,000 men should have voted in 1896. This gives us 84,000 
women voting in this year, or 45% of the total vote. That is almost 
a full half of the voters were women (127 men to 100 
women.) In 1896 the proportion of women must have been smaller.  
                 In 1916, Colorado cast 293,966 votes. The population 
had increased during that ten years period somewhat under 30%; the 
vote had increased over 50%.  

IDAHO. In 1892, 16,409 men voted in Idaho. At the next Presidential 
election, 1896, the population had increased 72%, so about 
29,000 men could be expected to vote. As a matter of fact, 57,900 
voters turned out, so that almost 50% of the vote in that year can 
be credited to women, in a state which had in 1910, 25% more men than 
women, and in 1896 had an even greater proportion of men.  
                 In 1916 Idaho cast 134,615 votes, an increase of over 
130% over the 18996 vote, which population had only increased during 
the period somewhat over 60%.  

UTAH and WYOMING. Women have voted in these two states throughout 
statehood so it is impossible to comapre the vote before 
and after equal suffrage. But something can be said 
with regard to figures for voters over a ten year period, 
though the proportion of men to women voters cannot be given. In 
Utah, between 1900 and 1910, the population increased one-third, and 
the vote increased a very small fraction under a third, so the two 
have kept pace.  

                 In Wyoming, between 1900 and 1910, the population increased 
56%, while the vote increased very nearly 75%- that is, 
outran population by almost 20%.  

                 Comparison of the last two presidential elections in 
these two states show no waning in the electors' interest. In 1912, 
121,917 voters went to the polls, in 1910 the number was 143,035, 
a 17% increase in a period during which population had increased 
less than 10%.  

                 In Wyoming, the record for men and women voters in 
equally good. Between 1912 and 1916 the vote increased 20% 
(42,296 in 1912 and 51,840 in 1916), the population about 13%.  

                                                                                                           [*6*]
BS&AU 12646
NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION
Carrie Chapman Catt, President
171 Madison Avenue, New York
*(3) BI*

PRESS DEPARTMENT 
Rose Young, Chairman

January 4, 1918  WEEKLY BULLETIN OF SUFFRAGE NEWS
Information Service
SUFFRAGISTS WORK WHILE THEY WAIT
                 Under the leadership of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president 
of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the suffrage 
forces gathered at Washington, D. C. are concentrating every effort 
on the passage of the Federal Amendment in the House. No moment in 
the history of suffrage activities has been awaited with greater intensity 
than the tenth day of January.  

                 "Nineteen hundred and seventeen carried us over the top," 
said Mrs. Catt in giving her New Year's greetings to the suffragists 
of New York. "The New York suffrage victory was the beginning of 
the end of our long struggle and 1918 will, we believe, bring us into 
the promised land of equal opportunity. The Federal Suffrage Amendment 
will pass both houses of Congress this year."

                 The official figures for the New York State vote on woman 
suffrage gave a majority of 102,353 for the state. The total vote 
cast on the suffrage amendment, including the soldier and sailor vote, 
which carried strongly for the amendment, was 1,303,905.  

                 The last week of the Federal Amendment Drive opened on 
January 3 with hearings before the House Committee on Woman Suffrage, 
of which Representative Raker of California is chairman. Mrs. Catt 
and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw were the leaders for the suffrage forces. 
Suffragists from all parts of the country are in Washington to take 
part in the work preliminary to the taking of the vote and the South, 
which is generally supposed to be indifferent, if not opposed, to a 
federal amendment, is also well represented.

Consider Some More Facts. 
OPPONENTS of woman suffrage who try to  show that 
only enemies of the country masquerading as Pacifists 
and Socialists, voted for woman suffrage in New York on November 
6 have been bowled over so completely by the two-to-one 
pro-suffrage soldier vote that it is like offering sugar to a fly
drowning in molasses to ask them to consider any more of 
those "facts" by which Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, for instance, 
has sought to sustain their case. Yet there are some well worth 
considering before any more such hazardous suggestions are 
allowed to emanate from the anti camp. 
                 For instance while you are considering, consider the 10th in 
Manhattan, where Mitchel, who is alleged to have carried 
the vote of the patriotic, led by 1,200, and suffrage won by 
2,900. Consider the 7th, where also Mitchel led by about 1,100,  
and suffrage won by about 1,300. Consider the 9th, where 
Mitchel led by 1,700, and suffrage won by approximately 1,500. 
                 Consider the 21st in Brooklyn, where Mitchell received the 
highest district vote cast for him and suffrage received one of 
the highest pluralities recorded for it, namely, 1,966. And side 
by side with it, consider the 20th, where Hylan's pro-German 
vote is alleged to have elected him and note that here suffrage 
won by only 750.  [*Woman Citizen    Dec. 29. 1917*]

                 Consider the 1st Assembly District in Queens, with an industrial 
and largely German population, note that the Hillquit and 
Hylan vote together totaled 8,363, yet here was rolled up one of 
the heaviest votes against suffrage in the whole state, 4,235 voting 
No. It won by only 816 votes. Jump over into A. D. 4, 
Flushing, a residential district and not German, and note that 
while Mitchel was polling 3,720 votes, as compared with his 1,808 
in the First, suffrage was rolling up with a plurality of 1,300. 
We have quite a collection of these facts for the opponents of 
suffrage to consider as from issue to issue we deal them out.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.