32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



at all. In Massachusetts, for instance, the most enlightened State 

 of North America, where the question has been discussed pro and 

 con, and the friends of alcohol have been worsted, the condition of 

 the working class proves my statement. On a visit there I went 

 through one of the cloth factories and was surprised when the 

 foreman told me a cea'tain workman wished to talk with me be- 

 cause he had learned I knew about microscopes. He wished to 

 know what microscope was most in favor in Germany. I de- 

 scribed a good one of moderate price, twenty dollars ; but he said 

 he had one of that sort and wished now a better one. On ques- 

 tioning him I found he really had knowledge about bacteria, for 

 the study of which he wished his instrument ; that he was presi- 

 dent of a club of workmen who spent their leisure hours in this 

 study. When I then looked at the homes of these workmen, with 

 their pretty, well-tended gardens and blooming, well-dressed chil- 

 'dren, I felt clearly the different atmosphere where the father 

 spends his spare time and money not for alcohol, but for the beau- 

 tifying of his home. And can this life be less enjoyable than 

 ours ? 



In Mr. Bryce's American Commonwealth he has devoted one 

 chapter to the consideration of the pleasant character of Ameri- 

 can life, in which he calls attention to the general air of hopeful- 

 ness which prevails among American people and extends also to 

 all foreigners who visit them, through which, moreover, difficulties 

 are lightly overcome, losses and injuries good-naturedly endured. 

 One misses this characteristic painfully among us when one has 

 once experienced it ; it is like a new melody in the great concert 

 of life. . . . And what says this melody ? I understood it first as 

 I saw this hopeful spirit, and I said to myself. Must mankind 

 then be always miserable ? Must they be always helpless against 

 Nature's forces ? Can they not conquer these forces, make them 

 subservient, if they use intelligence to understand them instead 

 of stupefying themselves ? Must they pine away for lack of 

 pleasure in a world which is so beautiful that it charms us if we 

 lift but the corner of the veil which hides its secrets ? This it is 

 which makes me consider life without alcohol more beautiful 

 than the other, and that is the transformation in the feeling of 

 mankind which I await with their development. 



Nothing retards this development except that we are bound 

 by the customs of the middle ages. The conditions of the mid- 

 dle ages have vanished, but the habit of stupor still remains, 

 as if, in place of the serfs and lords of old, a new man had not 

 come who can use his manly powers. See what this inheritance 

 of inactivity costs us. Statistics of last year show that in Switz- 

 erland every tenth man who died, died directly or indirectly from 

 drink ; that of men between forty and fifty-nine years old every 



