Newark post., 1914-04-29
Are Social Workers Neglect
ing The Alcohol Problem ?

paign against Alcohol. Clipped
from "The Surrey" and reprint.
ed by request of local re0der.)
Are social workers neglecting the alco
hol problem9 1 think that there can be
but one answer,-they are. Note, fol
example, the goals for social service in
the New Year s Survey-better housing
shorter hours, trade unionism-every
health and efficiency movement but alco.
hol.
1t is an anomaly, especially when cam
paigns Of such power are in progress in
Europe, led not by mediocre mind but
by Europe s wisest heads, doctors, scien-
lists, trade unionists,--by the Kaiser
himself
Possibly one reason for our silence con-
cerning "alcohol hygiene' is that the
problem, from its very magnitude, start
ed in the seventies, in the days when the
approach was evangelical. And though
the temperance leaders have long
since changed from the moral to the
scientific, yet there certainly hangs about
alcohol the twang of that haranguing
day, a day when hell-fire and hyperbole
did really nerve men to action.
Again, alcohol is not, like the mini
mum wage or the child labor movement,
cause. Alcohol is a war. Touch it.,
and there starts to life all the passion
and hysteria of battle, of enemies. That
is what makes the subject so difficult for
editors to handle. Wishing to help, they
find themselves immersed in torrents of
diatribe and discourtesy.
But, granted all this, the question still
cial service, and so on, continue to neg
ia lservice, and so on, continue to neg
lect the alcohol problem and yet produce
an effective, all-round piece of social up
building?
Continental Europe has answered this
question in the negative. Germany, led
by science, says no, and the writer be-
lieves that the German campaign Of cal
cohol hygiene e''-purely educational
must shortly land on American shores;
and that schools for social science should
be the ones to further this educational
campaign,-a campaign for thinkers
quite as much as for drinkers.
Let us analyze our social service aims,
let us ask ourselves what we are trying
to do.
Our fight at bottom is for " elfpres-
ervation,' an attempt to preserve the
health and efficiency of the race. We
fight poverty, crime, immortality because
they tend not to preserve, but to destroy,
the health and efficiency of the race.
Now, after much thinking, much work
ing at our industrial conditions, I have
come to believe, what many doctors and
scientists across the water believe, that |
there is no tangible thing than can help |
the health and efficiency of this nation
more than the gradual passing of alcohol
have come to believe that every man
that you can educate beyond the alcohol
habit is gift to your nation of health |
and efficiency, thoroughly good business
investment.
Sobriety is superb internal revenue,
yielding just the sort of interest that we
hope to get from better wages, shorter
hours. And in making these remarks, my
mind is not on heavy drinking. 1t is on
constant, moderate drinking.
Continental Europe is inclined to be-
lieve that constant moderate drinking is
one Of the 'great efficiency leaks" of
nations. This conclusion is drawn from
a host of experiments, the bulk of which
tend to show that alcohol even in small
ample, Aschaffenberg experimental with
typesetters, all very moderate drinkers.
On the days that they took about the
equivalent Of a quart of 4 per cent beer,
they averaged loss in working capacity
Of 9 per cent. Other experiments show
moderate amounts of alcohol diminishing
muscular strength, precision, power to {
add, power to shoot straight, power to {
nemorize. {
Experiments must not be taken too
but they tend to show the I
general effect of alcohol on the human {
,ody, and help us to feel the amount of
that nation must be losing S
hat is spending for liquor about $1,000,
100000 a year. 1 refer to ourselves, the I
,eople of the United States. 6
And not only are we losing efficiency c
through constant moderate drinking, we
ire losing health. Alcohol is not, as men {
'ormerly believed, life-giver. 1t is a
It's use as a medicine is $
declining because, by lowering vitality, {
t tends to open the door to disease.
Visulaize the health that might be
freed and the money that might be saved
people who are spending $1,S00,000,