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I
SURPRISING
FACTS About
the LIQUOR
BUSINESS
T HE much maligner. ‘'Demon Rum’ assumes a far
different aspect from what we have always been
led to expect when we realize that a large share
every dollar spent for alcohol goes to meet the ex
pense of some of the most necessary institutions of our
Civilization. Indeed, when viewed in this light, the liquo r
traffic becomes less a demon and more an angel in dis
guise, for without its financial aid the nation would, for
a time at least, find it hard to get along.
It will surprise everybody who has not taken the
trouble to investigate the subject to learn that all the
expenses of our courts, our police, our prisons and even
our public charities are met by revenues from the
liquor traffic in the shape of license fees charged saloons
by States and municipalities and taxes imposed by the
All the Expenses of Our Prisons, Police, Courts, and Even Our Public Charities,
Are Paid by
federal Government on beer, wines and
liquors. And after the liquor business has
paid all the millions of dollars required for
the support of their institutions there still
flows from its capaolous pockets a stream of
revenue sufficient to go a long way toward
paying the cost of our National Guard and
other heavy Government expenses.
This Is not a new state of affairs, hut one
which has existed for years, and it becomes
more favorable to the liquor business with
every increase in the license fees, such as
was recently made in New York and other
States.
That there should be any ground for the
assertion that the liquor business serves any
useful purpose is all the more surprising, be
oause the anti-saloon forces have always
maintained that the saloon is an
“A large share of every dollar the saloonkeeper takes in goes - to help pay the cost of running our
prisons, police forces, courts, hospitals, asylums and almshouses, all of which are supported by
revenues from the liquor business.”
unmixed evil
which gives nothing In return for all that it takes from
a community. Only the other day. for example, a well-
ivnov. n prohbltionist made the statement that ‘‘the
revenue the liquor denier gives the State does not pay
a half or a quarter or a tenth of the costs he imposes
upon us lu the maintenance of prisons, hospitals and
asylums."
The statistics show that this a,id other similar state
ments are Inaccurate and without the slightest founda-
i.iou in fact. Far from [laying only a quarter or a tenth
oi the costs ol pi Isons, hospitals and asylums the liquor
business pays all these costs; and,
In addition, i-t pays the entire ex
pense of the police and the courts,
and also contributes liberally toward
other useful and necessary Govern
ment expenditures.
Of course, the Prohibitiouists
maintain that a large proportion of
the inmates of our prisons, hospitals
and asylums were brought there as
a result of the liquor business. But
until it can be shown that if we
Why We Really Ought to LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES
Or. L. K. HIRSHBERG,
By
I
A.B., M.A., M.I)., Johns Hopkins-
F you want to be healthy and happy you
should keep on the sunny side of the street
Just as much as you can. The more sun
light you get the better, even in the hottest
weather. Uuless your body has been weakened
by drinking or other excesses sunlight will
make your bean beat better, your liver do
more efficient work, and every organ and tissue
in your body lake on new activity, in fact, the
human race would be far better off if all our
buildings were made of glass or some other
transparent material which would permit every
nook and corner to be permeated with sunlignt.
The world is just beginning to realize how
essential sunlight Is to all living things. ,\ot
only does it help a human being to digest food
more easily and keep in better health but, sci
ence now declares, it actually enables a man to
do more work and a woman to become more
beautiful.
All these beneficial effects are due to the
almost endlesB variety of unseen rays con
tained in every bit of light that emanates from
the sun. Although these rays are invisible to
human eyes science is able to identify many of
them by the use of ingenious screens which
cut off all the white and colored light that is
visible. It Is those unseen rays which cause
the chemical change in a photographic plate,
produce the aurora borealis, exert a curative in
fluence upon leprosy and tuberculosis, (111 the
atmosphere on the sunny side of the stree'
with oxygen and nitrogen and do many other .
marvellous things.
In short, the consequences to life from these
rays are so tremendous that many birds, butter-
tiles, moths, ilies, sea urchins and other crea
tures are made by nature to seek light at an.
cost. Nature lias taught the brute woi,u for
ages what nmu is just beginning to And out,
that it is better that a few birds bump their
lives out against a light-house, or a moth bo
burned in a flame, or even a few sick men be
sunstruck, than that the whole race of birds,
moths and men be deprived of the effects of
sunlight.
Sunlight should he sought by all except the
aged and infants. In its sparkling radiations
microbes die. decay ceases, the iron in the
blood becomes chemically strong; ozone Is
manufactured from the dirt and dust, which are
also destroyed; the perspiration becomes active
and carries off waste from the muscles and
cleanses the akin; dead tissues are purified and
the musclee iwigorated; and all life is made to
thrive.
Professor Whitman has discovered that even
a faint shadow causes a leech to sway from
side to side and become restless, and Dr. Dolly,
in a brilliant experiment, has proved that a
butterfly will live three times longer In sunlight
than in shadow. Professor Yerkes lias also
shown that the jellyfish is inactive in the dark,
hut becomes very strenuous in sunlight.
Even earthworms, according to Professor
Mast, of Johns Hopkins, are favorably influenced
by the very light they seem to avoid. He says:
“1 have kept earthworms continuously exposed
to strong diffuse daylight in excellent condition
for weeks. Exposure to light is not avoided by
them on account of possible injury by the sun’s
rays, out in order for them to shun the birds
that prey upon them. Eight itself would make
the earthworms better creatures if it did not
reveal them to their enemies, the birds.”
Professor Mast thinks that the happy influ
ence of sunlight upon man and other animals is
the result of evolution which began with its
marvelous effect on the green plants. Sunlight
makes the green loaves form starches and other
compounds for the use of animals. Those effects
of sunlight are, he says, the foundation stones
of the sun's activities on ever) living tiling.
Probably sunlight helps man to make foods
for his muscles and tissues just as it does the
greeu plant. Certainly it improves his health
and facilitates all forms of effort. An amoeba
beeames busy in the sunlight, so does your
white blood corpuscle; a deadly disease germ is
destroyed by the sunlight, so are the dirty coin,
of your skin as they peel off from sunburn.
Ui these important discoveries about the
sun’s rays should impress us with the advisa
bility of getting ail the sunlight we can. The
homes where we live and the schools, factories
and offices where we work, should be designed
with a view to admitting a maximum amount of
the sun’s beneficial rays. The Government has
set a good example in this respect by devoting
over half the space of'ilie new
post-office building in Wash
ington to an arrangement
which permits the interior to
be flooded with sunlight, and
Mayor Preston of Baltimore
predicts that in the not very
tar distant future every schoul-
housc w-ill have its roof and
four walls built of glass.
had no saloons we would need to have no police,
prisons, courts or charitable institutions there will al
ways be something to be said In favor of the liquor
business whose revenues form the sole support of these
institutions
While it is difficult to get exact figures on this sub
ject, because of the confusion in public bookkeeping,
there are enough available to support the case for the
liquor business. The last general compilation of
governmental expenditures is contained in the cen
sus report of 1902. This shows that the entire an
nual expenses of the State and local governments for
charities, insane and penal institutions were' theu a
trifle more than •'5100,000,000. The total receipts from
liquor licenses were $55,000,000, and the Federal internal
and customs revenue from liquors $200,000,000 addi
tional. Thus the revenues from the liquor business
would pay all the expenses of our penal and public
charitable institutions and leave $155,000,000 for other
uses.
It may be objected that there are otlie. charges which
should be considered, as. for example, court proceed
ings and police. The entire expenditures of States and
Whiskey and
Beer Taxes
localities Cor courts, military and police for the year
1902 were not quite $100,000,000. Adding all this to the
expenses already given, makes a total of $200,0u0,000.
The revenue from the liquor traffic would pay this, too,
and leave a balance of $50,000,000 for other purposes.
Take the case of New York S^ate. While the total
expenses in that year for charities, insane and penal in
stitutions amounted to $20,000,000, the liquor licenses
produced nearly $12,000,000, and this was before the in
crease in the tax, which now makes them yield $18,-
000.000. On a per capita basis the share of the Federal
receipts from the liquor traffic paid by the State
of New Y’ork was more than the $20,000,000 spent f<v
the above-enumerated institutions.
It is also pointed out that it is not reasonable to
charge up the expense of all the asylums, almshouses,
prisons and hospitals to the liquor business. This is
shown by the State of Kansas which has been for a
number oi years under prohibition laws. Kansas re
ports a total expenditure for these purposes of
$1,000,000, approximately *1.10 per capita. This is only
80 cents per capita less than the average for the
United States. But if this excess In other States were
all chargeable to the liquor traffic, the total difference
would have amounted in that year to less than one-half
the receipts from liquor licenses alone.
Were the liquor business to be abolished, as the pro
hibitionists urge, the nation would he forced to raise,
by direct taxation or in some other way the *255,000.-
000 which is received annually from this source and
which is more than enough to pay all the cost of police,
prisons, courts and public charities*
<
How MORE BABIES Alone
Can’t Make NATIONS GREAT
S
OME people persist in believing that a nation must
continue to increase in population in order to
keep pace with its rivals and be able to maintain
'( Its independence and influence, says Dr. Woods Hutcli-
| inson. This theory was all right many years ago, hut
\ to-day the nation with the largest population is not
l necessarily the strongest nation. In this age, science
’■ and brains are more than a match for numerical
s strength, and a nation that depends upon population
( for its success will have a poor chance in competition
< with smaller and brainier races.
As civilization advances the birth rate declines, and
the higher the intelligence of a people the lower will
be their birth rate. Crude, uncivilized peoples are
RUDDERS lo Keep AUTOS from SKIDDING
T HE two front wheels of a motor car
are connected by a rigid axle which
is capable of being turned so as to
proceed in a direction not quite parallel with
that connecting the two hind wheels. By this
arrangement the car is steered; and when,
by means of it. the front wheels are
turned so as to run at an angle with their
previous course, the hind wheels have to
follow them as best they may. litis pre
sents no difficulty if the machine is go
ing at a slow pace, and it the road is
firm and dry. But when the road is slip
pery front rain or oil, the momentum which
the machine has already attained causes
it to press the front wheels sideways in
stead of forward. Then the phenomenon
known as “skidding” appears, and the
front wheels slip instead of revolving.
In a racing automobile on a circular
track there Is still another danger. Any
body much longer than its diameter, when
propelled at high' speed, lias a natural
antipathy to turning to the right or left
—a fact which is taken advantage of in
the construction of bullets, torpedoes, and
dirigible balloons-—and if it is compelled
to do so, suddenly develops centrifugal
force. If the body is in the shape of a
parallelogram running on four vheels,
this shows Itself by the outer, or “off,’
side lifting front the track, while the in
ner side bites into it.
On a racing track this tendency is coun
teracted by building, at the angles where
the cars have to turn, a steeply sloping
oank up which they climb sideways, so
that the track, in fact, lifts frs do the
outer wheels, and the car heels over un
til it almost seems as if its occupant
must fall out. By this the liability to
skid is probably much increased.
An English automobile engineer raises
the question of whether the present mode
of steering racing cars is not mechanically
wrong. For road cars the old method of
altering t^e car’s course by sotting the
front wheels askew may still be good
enough. Bui steamships, torpedoes and
aeroplanes, ail of them machines driven so
as to produce as much momentum as pos
sible—arc all steer
ed by r it d d e r s
placed not in front,
hut in the rear; and
that a rudder
can be made to bite
as well on a track
as in the sea or the
air may be seen
from the analagous
case of the bob
sleigh or the Cana
dian toboggan. If
this principle were
applied to racing
cars much skidding
might be avoided.
YOU MIGHT TRY-
To Clean Brass.
H ALF a lemon dipped in coarse salt and rubbed thoroughly over the sur
face is an excellent way to clean brass work.
A Shampoo for Pussy.
T O BE well cared for, a cat should occasionally have a shampoo. Dry
oatmeal is the best thing to use for the purpose. It should be rubbed
into the fur well, allowed to remain live minutes, and then whisked out
with a brush.
For White Furs.
HITE furs can be freshened by rubbing info them a generous amount
W
of damp cornmeal. After letting dry, shake and brush out thoroughly.
noted for the rapidity with which they multiply aud
also for their weakness.
The higher the birth rate the greater the death rate.
Small families are stronger and more vigorous than
targe families. Where there are a great many children
born in the family, the first two or three will be below
the average, being weaker and less able to withstand
the pressure of existence than the later children. This
is accounted for on the theory that in the first children
the oarents have not thoroughly blended their quali
ties, but that as they go along they gradually bring out
their good traits and mix them in the same child.
As a type advances in the scale of civilization, its
rate of reproduction decreases. The highest type o
animal produces only one child at birth. Twins and
triplets are usually the result of a revision to a type
of long ago, and they are caused by tile splitting into
two or three parts of the original germ. Twins are not
as sturdy as other children in the same family.
There is nothing in science to support the lheu:y:
that a high rate of child birth is a sign of prosperity
and progress in a nation. The contrary is more likely
to be true. The defective classes in a community breed
a great deal faster than the normal, although their off
spring are not as vigorous and do not survive as well
as the children of normal people.
France is excited over her population’s coming to a
standstill. She sees Germany steadily increasing and
fears that some day the preponderance in population
on Germany’s side will be disastrous for France. But
if the population of France is at a standstill, the na
tion’s advance in thrift, intelligence and other good
qualities is not. The French people are making a great
progress in mental development, which more than off
sets their failure to show an increase in numbers.
LESS Chance of LONG LIFE Than There Used to Be
T
If Your BUTTER TASTES BAD,
Perhaps There’s IRON IN IT
T HE disagreeable flavor which perfectly good but
ter often develops after being kept for several
months is due to a slow chemical change pro
duced by minute particles of copper, iron and other
metals which get into the butter during its manufac
ture. This is the opinion of the experts of the United
States Department, who set out some time ago to solve
the mystery of good butter so frequently turning bad.
If butter is properly made it can be held in storage
from the Summer season when It is plentiful, until Win
ter. when it is scarce, without materially Injuring its
quality. Yet, as farmers and wholesale dealers have
learned to their sorrow, the finest butter stored under
ideal conditions, often comes out of storage so tainted
that it is unsalable, or greatly lessened in value.
The fact that this damaged butter had a peculiar
metallic taste, led the Government’s experts to think
that bits of rust and metal might be at the bottom
of all the trouble. A test was made by adding quanti
ties of iron varying from one to five hundred parts to
i million parts of cream. Butter made from this cream
quickly developed a bad taste, that, although slight,
was quite noticeable, and tbe longer the butter was
kept in storage the more pronounced the disagreeable
flavor became, due doubtless to the very slow chemical
changes produced by the iron.
Butter was also made from cream which had stood in
rusty cans, and in every case this butter had a peculiar
taste and was easily picked out from all other samples.
The buttermilk also had a decided metallic taste.
The influence of copper on the flavor of butter was
studied in a similar manner, and it was found that
copper, even in small quantities, seemed to cause inore
niarked changes of flavor in butter than did the iron.
Vith a decided tendency toward a lishy flavor after be-
in ' kept In storage. ’
8
These experiments plainly show that If cream is
kept in rusty cans, or if it comes in contact with iron
or copper in the separators, drums or pasteurizers, it
is quite liable to take up sufficient bits oi metal to
give It a bad flavor.
How You Can Tell an EGG’S AGE
W
’HE fact that the average length of life
is somewhat greater than it used to be
has made many of us prone to believe
that we have a better chance of living to a
ripe old age Ilian our fathers and grandfathers
did. This pleasant idea, however, is entively
erroneous. Not only is the expectation of fur
ther life at the age of sixty, fifty or even forty
years not improving, but it is probably a slim
mer chance to-day than it was a hundred years
ago. In fact, Prof. Herbert W. Fisher, of Yale
University’, goes so far as to say that our con
ditions of life are approaching a point where
the very existence of the human race is threat
ened. , . .
The average length of life is increasing he-
cause epidemic diseases are suffering defeat at
the hands of our sanitary fighters. But the
saving in this direction is largely of infants
and young children and has no effect on an
adult’s chances of living long. As Prof. Fisher
points out it is easy to see how average longev
ity’ may improve aud yet the ship of life be
all the while going on the rocks.
Suppose, he
says, that
among 10,000
} people dying
S to-day, some
\ die at an
> hour old, some
( at forty years,
> some at one
s hundred; the
How Fresh Eggs and Old One
Behave in a '! umbler oi Yatcr.
ITH eggs the precious things their present high
prices make them it is important ’tor every
housewife to know a simple and accurate meth
od of testing their freshness.
There is no better indication . of an egg than its
density, eggs that float being a bad investment. All
you need to test eggs that are under suspicion is a glass
of water, into which you drop them one by one, while
you watch closely how they behave.
A fresh egg will sink when placed in water and rest
on its side; if three weeks old it. will incline slightly
with the small end down; if three months old it will
stand on the small end, aud if older it will float, with
the large end out oi water more or less, according to
its age.
A device embodying this principle has lately been
patented. It consists of an air chamber of aluminum,
on the outside of the stem of which is a rule. The egg
is placed on a wire holder at the bottom of the instru
ment aud placed in water. The depth the instrument
sinks, as shown by the rule, indicates the density of the
„gg. at-:i enables you to tell at a ;k: t-e vlietlier it is
t: c.».. boon kepi a loir . ,c it. •• .ora;.".
e e right. ISIS, by the Star Company. Great Britain Ki
average being forty . Suppose that in a corre
sponding 10,000 dying in the next generation
ten years apiece have been added to the lives
of 5,000 babies who formerly would have died
in an hour. This adds 50,000 years to the total,
or 5 years to the average. But suppose that at
the same time, a year has been lopped off from
the lives of 1,000 men who die at ages above
forty. This cuts off 1,000 years for the total,
or one-tenth of a year for the average.
In mere years, then, there is still a net gain
of 4 9-10. But in human destiny the net result
is not gain, but loss. The years given to the
babies are less significant than the years taken
from the men. The years given to the babies—
with no years to follow—are not serviceable
years. The years taken from the men are the
best years of the best lives in the community.
The appalling fact is that although at all
early ages (usually under fortyV there has been
gain, yet at all ages beyond that point, there is
a steady and progressive loss. The authority
for these facts is abundant. They were re
vealed by the late Conservation Commission
and are being every day reiterated by the life
insurance authorities. The same facts are, in
deed, the burden of the statistical songs of all
nations as sung at the recent International 'Hy
giene Congress at Dresden. All had lost, except
England and Sweden,
Epidemic diseases are responsible for most
of the deaths under forty; organic diseases
do most of the killing over that age. Sudden
assaults from outside the body causo epidemic
diseases while organic disease^ are due to a
gradual derangement inside. This derangement,
Prof. Fisher declares, is due to our modern
ways of earning a living.
“Directly or indirectly,” he says, “all organic
diseases are occupational; and as only tw<j
deaths in a hundred are free from some dis
ease or other—despite the defeat of epidemic
diseases—-the great fact of occupation looms
up as the most important fact In life.
“Our division of labor is the curse of our
times because it deprives us of opportunity for
versatility and ties so many of us to the deadly
monotony of a single repeated operation of
the hand or brain. Versatility is the unescap-
able condition of life. We can never thrive
until we live according to that condition.
“Nothing more signally illustrates how dia
metrically we are travelling against our own
interests than the much-vaunted feat of modern
efficiency whereby a bricklayer now lays ten
bricks in the time he could formerly lay but
one. He lays the ten by no longer having to
stoop for them. Did you ever hear of calis
thenics? If you will stand with legs apart and
arms outspread, and then turn your arms
right angles to your legs, and then stoop and
touch the floor, you will be performing the
most important evolution known to calisthenics,
ft is precisely the evolution of. which the
bricklayer has been deprived.
“Civilization will continue to prepare and
promote its own destruction until it stops
counting progress in economic terras—fry num
ber and s-peed—and begins counting it in terms
of health.”
How TELEPHONES Ruin Girls* HEALTH
W
^■^■jrORK. at a telephone switchboard is not only
trying to a girl's temper but if she undertakes
to follow it for. any length of time it is very-
liable to ruin her health. The enormous strain the
work imposes on the eyes is the reason given in a r< -
port of the American Medical Association for the net
that the average length of service, even under good
conditions and in the cases of healthy girls, rarely ex
ceeds three years.
There are in the Uniteu States aoout 125,hOb tele
phone girls. The working hours are about eight per
day, and the average number of calls is about 140 per
hour, running, at the busiest times to 225 or more.
The operator siis facing a switchboard covered with
numbers, each ruin her having a small signal F h . »v ,
flashes on and off as tho call i-r completed. T.ha't the
tils Ke*er\ . C.
person calling raises Ins receiver, a light flashes on tie
switchboard at “centra.,” and this light continues to*
mm until the operator “plugs” the number, receive,/
the call, plugs the number called for, auu the callni
.person raises hi.; receiver from the hook. When the re
ceivers are finally replaced on their hooks, both light-
flash and burn until the operator removes the connect
ing plugs. „
To complete one call means four flashes of light. The
operator’s eyes are thus exposed to from 500 to 1,000
flashes of light every hour, to say nothing of the mental
iia Cal strain under which she constantly works.
Althougn more than $700,000 was spent in 1911 in the
hor t° provide the Lest possible working conditions
me switchboard girls, yet the average length of ser-
Uo ;r not «xceed three years. Headache, dullness
’ thsustion, nerve strain, insomnia and colas
. v»i iAt* y; -Antonis that follow work of this kind.
or
v'iCM