Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, December 14, 1913, Image 78

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1 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