448 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ists are wont to appall us. But they are from tlie official sources, and, 

 unlike the awful figures which show a larger mortality from the use 

 of liquor alone than the mortality from all known causes (liquor 

 included), can be verified by taking the trouble to consult the files 

 of the (New York) City Record. As for the part which drinking 

 wine has to do with this oificial summary, I may mention the difficulty 

 of approximating to the sales of what may be properly called " light 

 wines." But I have been able to ascertain (as some indication of 

 it, perhaps) that in the fifty-two weeks of this same year (1893) there 

 were consumed in the same city 265,414 cases of champagne! So it 

 would appear that even champagne is a mitigant, rather than an 

 aggravator, of at least the public horrors of drunkenness. 



I am not unconscious of the fluent answer to these figures. It 

 will be of course urged by the prohibitionist that they only show 

 deaths the " direct " cause of dram-drinking. But such answer is 

 con'espondingly unsafe. For, since death, albeit normal to us all 

 comes from some cause (notably from old age, for example), a better 

 formula would be that, since many deaths are caused by old age, 

 and as old age is caused by living too long, we should be careful 

 not to live too long. Hence, as life is prolonged by eating, as well 

 as shortened by drinking (granting that contention), to abstain from 

 the use of food is the only course of wisdom ! 



This encouragement to the drinking of light wines has, so far, 

 only positively found its way into the statute-books of the one essen- 

 tially wine-growing State, California, though in other States it has 

 made its limited appearance. Nor does there seem to be any reason 

 why every State should not include in its laws such a provision, for 

 example, as that of Oregon (certainly not known as per se a " wine- 

 growing State " at present), which provides that " owners of vine- 

 yards may sell their products without license "; or of Utah, which, 

 however, adds to a similar provision that the sale must be in quan- 

 tities not less than five gallons. Even Kansas provides that wine or 

 cider, grown by the maker for his own use or to be sold for com- 

 munion purposes, is not within the prohibitions. However, as in 

 most of the States, the price of a license to sell only wines, or mnes 

 and beers, is less than the price of a license to sell ardent spirits, it 

 may fairly be said that an encouragement to drinking wines in pref- 

 erence to distilled liquors has become parcel of the public policy in 

 most communities. In Georgia the sellers of wines who are also 

 manufacturers thereof are exempted from paying any license. The" 

 State of Michigan is justly proud of its Dairy and Food Commission, 

 wliich provides for the examination and secures the purity not only 

 of fruits, butter, milk, cheese, but of buckwheat flour, jellies, canned 

 goods, lard, vinegar, coffee, sirups and molasses, chocolate, cocoanuts, 



