i88 THOMAS D. CROTHERS 



Laws should be passed authorizing the arrest of any one 

 known to be drinking spirits continuously or at intervals. 

 There should be no waiting until the victim is intoxicated or 

 commits some overt offense. He should come under legal 

 control as soon as evidence of his habitual use of spirits can 

 be obtained. Thus all classes, from the poor pauper to the 

 rich man or his son, who are in the early stages of inebriety, 

 should be forced into conditions of sober, rational living, and 

 continued under legal restraint, either in an asylum or out on 

 parole, until their mental and physical health is restored and 

 evidence of temperate living can be established. 



If such asylums were in operation and such laws in force, 

 supported by public sentiment, this army of inebriates would 

 disappear from our streets, and with- it the crime, losses, and 

 suffering so apparent. The saloons and distilleries would 

 pass away in obedience to a higher law than legal prohibition. 



This is the voice of science: to quarantine the inebriate 

 in a hospital, as if suffering from a contagion ; to stop the dis- 

 ease at the fountain, to remove the victim from all causes 

 and conditions favoring inebriety. If the inebriate is curable, 

 he can be restored to health and society again; if not, he should 

 remain a ward of the state, and be kept under conditions most 

 favorable for health and the public good. 



Industrial hospitals for this army of inebriates can be 

 built and supported by a tax on liquor dealers, and thus re- 

 lieve the producer and taxpayer. To a large extent, after 

 they are established they can be made self supporting. The 

 general principles and many of the details of these industrial 

 hospitals are already practically worked out in most of the 

 asylums, prisons, and reformatories of the country. The 

 Elmira reformatory and many of the present inebriate asy- 

 lums are literal demonstrations of this fact. 



In a wider sense, this solution of the drink problem prom- 

 ises not only to house and check the present evils, but to place 

 these victims in the best possible conditions for scientific 

 study. Here the great underlying causes — physiological, 

 psychological, and sociological — which have developed and 

 set apart this vast army of what has been aptly termed border- 

 line maniacs can be discovered and understood. There is no 



