Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1914-02-27
A COMMUNICATIONS.

A COMMUNICATIONS.
Editor Middlebury Register:
Please give the following a place in
your columns:
Alcohol.
In recent years the moderate users of
alcohol have been driven from several
positions that hitherto had seemed easily
tenable. Their habit and its consequent
ces to them have been subject to care
full laboratory investigation by scien-
fists, experts in psychology and physi-
ology-men who were not sentimen-
talists, who started with no assumption
of the wickedness or the harmfulness Of
indulgence in intoxicants. And they all
made the same report-that alcohol in
any quantity decreases intellectual and
industrial efficiency-that never, under
its influence, do we either think or
work as well as without it-that its
first effect, seeming stimulation of the
faculties, is merely an inhibition of those
later acquired mental powers that differ
entiate the civilized man from the saw
age, the man of normal intellectual de-
velopment from the imbecile.
The scientists have not proved alcohol
wholly useless, but even as medicine
they have reduced its index of efficiency
far below that credited to it by old
school doctors, and they deny that it
enlvens the mind or warns the body.
They admit practically all the crimes
that have been charged against it. In
vain the liquor dealer pleads the legality
of his trade as claim to respect for him
or it. Even those of US who patronize
him dislike him, and most of US know
that the revenue he gives the State does
not pay half or quarter or tenth of
the costs he imposes upon us in the
maintenance of prisons, hospitals and
asylums. New York Tribune.
The above clipping shows the change
in opinion regarding the use of alcoholic
drinks that has come about in recent
years. 1t used to b. thought that a
man could take a drink of whiskey and
accomplish more in a given time than
he could without the stimulant. 1t is
now known that such is not the case.
The Germans have been trying large
number of experiments to ascertain the
effect on men and animals of various
amounts of alcohol taken under various
conditions. These results are embodied
in extended reports, which space does
not permit US to reproduce.
The work done by men was counting,
writing figures and letters and doing
other work of more distinctively mus
cular character Dogs were required
to do various tricks which had been
taught them. In all cases, whether the
mind was called upon to think quickly
or the muscles to act quickly, the eff
cheney of the individual, whether man
or dog, was impaired. Calling a man s
work under normal conditions 100 per
cent, his efficiency to do the same work,
after having taken various amounts of
alcohol, was impaired from three or
four per cent to fifty per cent or more.
The stimulant may be taken in any form,
beer, hard cider, whiskey, the effects or
similar depending only upon the amount
of alcohol taken into the system.
These are the facts ascertained by
science. Many railroad and other cor
porations, that employ large numbers
of men, are acting in accordance with
the findings of science and gradually
discarding the drinkers of intoxicants
among their men. They think it poor
business policy to employ chemists at
high salary to prevent the loss of two
or three per cent in some byI roduct
and employ workmen at standard wages
who are able to do from rs to IS per
cent of an average days work.
Farmers are beginning to realize that
if it is to the advantage of those who
employ large numbers of men to look
after the habits of their employees, it is
also to the advantage of those who en-
ploy one or two "hired men" to exer-
else the same precaution.
We think the readers of the Register
will see the application. Next Tuesday