The Nevada County picayune., 1921-10-20

shipping wine became stronger cashs md ships were fashioned, and 1t be-
 anne an article of commerce, but the mass of mankind seldom tasted 1t.
 Ii cost too much.
 In an age of intensive slave labor supplemented by some horse and cat tie power, it was only the r.ch, the landlords or the conqueors, who could buy it.
 In the northern lands, from whence came the ancestors of most Americans, wine was unknown. There was llt- tie fermented honey, but the supply was limited.
 Even such noted drunkards as He liogobalus and Alexander had only Il per cent wine for their strongest Up ple. They drank themselves to death and helped the race by so doing, but the mass of mankind remained sound and imprisoned.
 Came the middle ages and the dis. covery of distilling, but whoever stumbled on this secret had sense enough not to make 1t generally known. Whether it was some Abrabian savant or some cloistered monk, or an alchemist. matters not. They knew that the stuff they made was not good for the people.
 II was not until well along in the sixteenth century that distilled lIqaor became q beverage of any importance The general manufacture of distilled spirits-rum and gin, usually-eelh- cided with the great maritime dlscoY- cries and the opening of ocean trade. The commerce.. in spirits was born about the same time aS the slave trade. and the two curses grew up te- eether. Many Bostoncse fortune to- day reaches back 10 the triangular transactions by which New England cod went to the West Indies to be eX- changed for rum, which was eN- changed for negroes on the Guinea coast and bacg again. There were no .eross frcights" in that tratlic-eyery mile sailed earned profits.
 But still the traffic in distilled spirits did not greatly affect the mass of the white race. In Europe the peasant could not raise enough grain to pay his rack rents, to keep up the landlords and the arm 'es and have any left for dstlling Here and there he got little sour wine along the mediterranean. or make q little ale in northern Europe-but natures eneXor- able II per cent limit on Fermentation kept him from the worst form of alec holic degeneracy.
 II was in America that the common man-the backbone of the race-tirst came in contact with plenty of land and crops which sprang up in such abundance that food was no longer serious question. And it was here first that men. armed with the knowledge of distillation. had plenty of grain to distll.
 The result was that in America drunkenness first reached the propor- tions of menace that threatened ra- cial degeneration and death. Thomas Jefferson and other states men recognized it over century ago
 By 1881 the temperance movement was started About this period sugar came into general use and displaced any dietary uses that alcohol may have ever had.
 From that time on the prohibition movement in America followed Il logical course-o occasionally losing ground, but on the whole advancing to meet the growing scourge.
 For d time the distilled liquor men ace was alleviated by the invention of artificial refr geration in the tiftieS This made large scale brewing q pos SihilitX, and the development ot the brewing industry was one of the mir acles of the nineteenth century, but il brought with it train of evils scarcely less formidable than dis titled IquorS-and after brief pc riod the consumption of distilled liquors resumed it's terrifying increase despite the growth of the beer trade
 Beer as a check to alcoholism proved a failure as early as 1895. The inter