Library Collections: Document: Full Text


American Charities

Creator: Amos G. Warner (author)
Date: 1908
Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York
Source: Straight Ahead Pictures Collection

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In this paragraph Professor Devine was writing, not of confirmed inebriety, but of the effect of intemperance upon those who, being on the poverty line, came intermittently to the Charity Organization Societies for relief. The effects of drink are most plainly traced in the classes not yet pauperized. It is among artisans and those capable of earning good wages that the most money is spent for beer and whiskey, and the most vitality burnt out by it. Rowntree and Sherwell estimate that among the English working-classes, six shillings per week represents the average expenditure for drink, of families whose income ranges between twenty-one and thirty shillings. (62) The American negroes, though relatively temperate laborers, are kept poor, or at least poorer than they would otherwise be, by occasional extravagance in this direction. A colored man of very large experience estimates that poor "renters" in the South, corresponding to laborers in the North, spend an average of fifty cents a week (buying ten drinks) or about $25 a year for whiskey, that is, "One bale of five-cent cotton, raised by very hard labor on three acres of land, goes to whiskey. Ten bales of cotton being an average yield from a one-mule farm of thirty acres in Lowndes County, the renter tithes his income to the liquor seller." (63)


(62) The Temperance Problem," p. 20.

(63) Koren, "Economic Aspects," etc., p. 163; see also More, "Wage-earners Budgets," p. 140.

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In enumerating the effects of intemperance it must not be overlooked that it is at once an effect and a cause, a symptom and a source of degeneration. In a majority of cases where the drinking habit has become uncontrollable, it is a symptom of deeper disorganization. Dr. Brantwaite, His Majesty's Inspector under the Inebriates Act, in charge of all inebriates under legal detention in England, states his conviction in the following paragraph: --

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"The more I see of habitual drunkards, the more I am convinced that the real condition we have to study, the trouble we have to fight and the source of all the mischief, is inherent defect in mental mechanism, generally congenital, sometimes acquired. Alcohol, far from being the chief cause of habitual inebriety, is merely the medium which brings into prominence certain defects which might otherwise have remained hidden, but for its exposing or developing influence. In the abstinence of alcohol the same persons, instead of meriting the term inebriate, would have proved unreliable in other ways. They would have been called ne'er-do-wells, profligates, persons of lax morality, excitability, or abnormally passionate individuals, persons of melancholic tendencies or eccentric. I do not believe that any drunkard of all the 8000 or more I have known has voluntarily and of intention made himself so; on the contrary, I am convinced that all who possess a sufficiently developed mental equilibrium to appreciate the seriousness of their condition have urgently and honestly desired to live a sober life, and have fought to this end and failed in a struggle against weakness, the strength of which a normal man is quite incapable of realizing." (64)


(64) Journal of Inebriety, Winter, 1907, p. 254.

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In corroboration of this opinion, Dr. Brantwaite presents the accompanying table of 2277 inebriates committed to special care, previous to 1907: --

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TABLE XVI.
INEBRIATES UNDER LEGAL DETENTION: ADMITTED TO REFORMATORIES.
Classification according to Mental State. (65)


(65) Ibid., p. 256.

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Number. Per Cent.
1. Insane -- certified and sent to asylums 51 16.1
2. Very Defective -- imbeciles, degenerates, epileptics 315 62.6
3. Defective -- as above, but less marked, eccentric, silly, dull, senile, or subject to periodical paroxysms of ungovernable temper 1060 46.5
4. Of Average Mental Capacity -- on admission or after six months' detention 581 37.4
Total Admissions 2277 100.0

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He concludes that in at least 62 per cent of these cases mental defect or disease was the cause of their inebriety; that a majority of insane inebriates became alcoholic as a result of their tendency to insanity, not insane as a result of alcoholism; that in the case of defective inebriates, there is commonly present the same physical abnormalities as are found among the feeble-minded, only in a less degree, and that their drunkenness is the direct result of mental defect for which they are not virtually -- though legally -- responsible. In these cases, Dr. Brantwaite enumerates three characteristic mental symptoms: an impaired moral sense, imperfect control over impulse, and defective power of judgment -- the first being the one most likely to have existed previous to drunken habits. He continues: --

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"The early history of all cases where this symptom is marked has justified a probability of congenital origin. Odd and peculiar from birth, these persons have always seemed incapable of acting like other people. There is often a history during childhood of fits, chorea, or other neuroses; as children they have proved uneducable, and as adults unemployable from incapacity to learn the details of a wage-earning occupation. They appear to be unable to tell the truth and cannot be made to see any reason why they should do so. They are filthy in habits, and require supervision, even force to insure a moderate amount of cleanliness when under detention. They do not care in the least for the opinion of others in matters relating to conduct, nor can they be induced to see any reason why dictation from others should be obeyed." (66)


(66) Similar descriptions are given by Palmer, "Inebriety," pp. 24, 27; Wilson, "Drunkenness," p. 53.

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