444 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



applied to Sunday, the day when, in large cities especially, and in 

 the heated season, the inconvenience of hermetically closed ale and 

 beer houses is most exasperating to the wayfarer, and intolerable 

 and even (from a sanitary standpoint) dangerous to the wage-earn- 

 ing and poorer classes, packed in torrid and fetid tenements on the 

 figment of a danger of " disturbing a public worship " (I say " fig- 

 ment " because no instance of a disturbance of public worship by the 

 sale of liquor can be found in the history of this planet). Why in 

 torrid weather the worthy poor man and his family who can not 

 afford ice-boxes can not quench a natural and normal thirst, and so 

 avoid contracting disease by drinking stale and impure water in 

 the superheated apartments of city tenement houses where an aver- 

 age of three families to a window pane has been said to be the rule, 

 I for one have never been able to comprehend. A good Sunday 

 law, as in London, not allowing but compelling the opening of beer 

 houses on certain hours on Sundays, would be a most desirable thing, 

 especially in our great cities. The fact, too, that at present the 

 streets of our American cities are woefully lacking in other sanitary 

 conveniences, which are only supplied meagerly by an occasional 

 drinking place, would appear an additional reason why a Sunday- 

 opening law would be quite as convenient and quite as welcome as a 

 Sunday-closing law. Such a law would have the effect of at least 

 meeting public convenience, and might well be substituted for the 

 present ridiculous closing laws. Into what legislative intellect it 

 ever first entered to conceive that the cause of temperance would 

 be assisted by closing liquor saloons seven hours out of the twenty- 

 four (and those seven the hours when all l^ature, drunk or sober, is 

 asleep) it passes imagination to conjecture. Most Legislatures have 

 followed the first one, however, and enacted such provisions. 



VI. Refusal of Employment to Peksons known to be Ha- 

 bitual Users of Liquor. — In two States — viz., New York and Ohio 

 — clauses have been introduced forbidding the employment by rail- 

 ways and other common carriers of passengers, of persons known 

 to be addicted to the use of intoxicants. In the latter State the 

 common carrier must be notified that such person has been known 

 to be intoxicated while in said carrier's " active " employment, 

 in order to bind the carrier with knowledge. Such a provision 

 as this may be criticised as the Czar of Russia's proposition for a 

 universal disarmamejit is likely to be criticised — as admirable and 

 millennial, but of no value if gradually adopted, and impossible of 

 instant adoption. No public industry, not even the liquor industry, 

 could cease and disappear in a day without throwing tens of thou- 

 sands of wage-earners out of employment, and it would be hardship 

 indeed if the family of the drinking man, the toiling wife, scheming 



