LEGISLATION AGAINST THE DRINK EVIL. 445 



to save a morsel of the weekly wages from tlie dram shop, should be 

 forced to accept the alternative of no wages at all. The suggestion 

 presents, again, a maze of presimiption from which, once entered 

 into, no practical exit would present itself. Supposing that no skilled 

 laborer, no finisher, no engineer, no oiler, no fireman, etc., could 

 be found who was a total abstainer for any one factory or railway 

 service, let alone a hundred or a hundred thousand cases? Clearly 

 this discussion could only be pursued as a curiosity (or, say, a fascinat- 

 ing speculation as to the effects of an industrial chaos). The first 

 item in the recipe for making hare stew was to catch your hare. 

 To run our commerce with totally abstaining employees we must find 

 our totally abstaining employees. To pause to create them would 

 bring commerce, and with it society, including the churches, the 

 schools, and the Temperance Unions themselves, to a standstill like 

 that of Joshua's moon in Ajalon! In connection with this employ- 

 ment question, however, a practical suggestion has been made. It 

 is suggested that, as Saturday night is the workman's " night off " 

 and the ensuing Sunday is his holiday, it might work well to make 

 the weekly pay-day of a Monday instead of a Saturday. The ex- 

 periment is worth a trial. The change could be made abruptly, and 

 the bad half an hour to the workman would occur but once. Let 

 him be handed his wages some Monday morning when the Saturday 

 night's spree and the long Sunday's headache had been novel and 

 conspicuous omissions. The necessity of good shape for Tuesday's 

 stint would prevent a Monday night at the bar room, and the proba- 

 bility is that the wife and family might realize a substantial instead 

 of a marginal proportion of the weekly wage. At any rate, com- 

 pared with some of the suggestions made for remedying the drink 

 evil, this is superbly sensible. Indeed, one who has not had occa- 

 sion to examine these matters can have little idea of the absurdity 

 to which otherwise perfectly sane persons will go in combating an 

 evil with which they are very properly impressed, but to the conse- 

 quences of an abrupt removal of which it has not occurred to them to 

 pay any attention whatever; for example, the seriously proposed 

 law against " treating " — that is, against inviting a friend to " take 

 a drink " with him. Granted that the tippling habit is encouraged 

 by the social instinct, and that the gTcat peril of drunkenness comes 

 (as an old ISTew England farmer expressed it) " not from drinkin', 

 but from drinkin' agin," a law to prevent treating, like a law for- 

 bidding a man from inviting his neighbor home to dinner, or his 

 wife inviting the other man's wife over to luncheon, would be obliged 

 to first find its lawgiver. But gentlemen who solve the liquor ques- 

 tion are not apt to be particular to find a jurisdiction and a source 

 for the laws they propose. It is interesting to note that in one State 



