ALCOHOL AND SOCIETY 141 



170. The social attitude toward alcohol. Where in former 

 years it was considered very elegant to have wines and other 

 liquors at dinners and banquets, more and more people are 

 learning that we can be quite as elegant without trying to see 

 how much we can drink before showing the effects. In former 

 years it was considered almost indispensable to have liquors in 

 which to drink the health of kings and presidents and brides 

 and so on. Nowadays, when more and more people are coming 

 to know that these drinks add to the unhealth of the drinkers 

 (whatever the effects may be upon the person toasted), we are 

 becoming content to abandon the custom of drinking a health 

 with alcohol. 



171. The economic side. The movement against alcohol is 

 still more marked in industry. Many railroad companies have 

 gradually made it impossible for drinkers to get employment 

 with them. At first they prohibited the drinking of alcoholic 

 liquors by employees while on duty. Then they made it a 

 cause of instant dismissal for an employee to be found drunk 

 at a.iy time. Then they made it a cause for dismissal for an 

 employee to go into a drinking place with his uniform on. Now 

 they refuse to take on ivorkers who drink at all. The same 

 is true of large manufacturers, who have found that even 

 moderate drinkers are less reliable, on the average, than 

 total abstainers. And the insurance companies are coming 

 either to reject the applications of people who drink or to 

 charge them a higher rate on their insurance. 



These social and economic forces are doing more to dis- 

 courage drinking customs than was accomplished in all the 

 years of preaching against the evils of drink. The reason 

 for this we can see when we consider why people take to 

 drink, in the first place, and why they do not stop when they 

 have been told of the evils. 



The experience of Russia in the Great War will do much 

 toward eliminating the drink evil from modern life. Shortly 

 after the outbreak of the war the manufacture and sale of 



