446 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



(Nevada) an anti-treating law was once actually passed, but repealed, 

 " having proved impracticable " (at least, that is the official record 

 of the reason for its repeal, no particulars being given). 



VII. The Personal Damage Law — that is, the holding of a 

 seller of liquor to a person known to be dangerous when in drink re- 

 sponsible for damage caused by his intoxication. This principle has 

 now become ingrafted in the laws of seventeen of the United States, 

 sometimes coupled with high license and local option and sometimes 

 not. It is really only an application of the principle of the com- 

 mon law that a man must so use his own as not to injure his neighbor; 

 that communities had the same right to hold a supplier of intoxicants 

 to a violent drinker as a criminal as it had to punish the keeper of 

 a dangerous beast (of a biting dog, for example, knowing it to be 

 such — i. e., if the animal has once bitten a human being or killed a 

 domestic animal kept for revenue, as a cow or a sheep). This civil 

 damage law has been made statutory in many ways. In Ohio the 

 seller is held indefinitely for the " expenses of any one who takes 

 charge of the intoxicated person " after notice to the seller not to 

 sell to that person. In Michigan the damages may be exemplary. 

 In Vermont, if the drunkard is imprisoned the seller must pay two 

 dollars per day to his wife or minor children in addition to suffering 

 an imprisonment. In iSTew Hampshire and jSTebraska, and in sev- 

 eral other States, a person arrested for drunkenness is given his 

 liberty if he will disclose the name of the person who sold him the 

 liquor on which he became intoxicated. In most of the other States 

 (as in New York) the damages are not limited except by the facts 

 of such case. In New York, too, the preliminary notice is insisted 

 on. In other States (as Idaho) the seller's damage is the loss of his 

 license, if notice not to sell has been properly served upon him. In 

 Arkansas the liquor seller as a condition of his license must give a 

 bond to pay all damages awarded. In Nebraska the seller must 

 give a bond to support all widows and orphans, and pay all legal 

 expenses of prosecution as well as all damage resulting from any 

 intoxication induced by or traceable to his sales. 



VIII. Encourage the Use of Light Wines and Beers. — The 

 suggestion has often been made that this would undoubtedly solve 

 at one swoop a respectable proportion of the problem. The prac- 

 tical difficulty would be to institute the reform in any but the cities 

 and larger towns. Everybody has remarked that, to see the true and 

 distinguished squalor of drunkenness, one must seek the villages, 

 sparsely settled communities, the rural districts whence come the 

 " come-ons," the willing victims of the green-goods men, anxious to 

 cheat their Govcriinicnt (and so, one might say, at least a shade less 

 estimable than the sharper who only proposes to cheat a fellow- 



