TEE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 249 



IN QUEST OF THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 



By Professoe G. T. W. PATRICK 



STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 



ONE of the problems which has been definitely set for psychologists 

 to solve during the twentieth century is the cause of the almost 

 universal desire for alcohol. It is a curious fact that in the thousands 

 and hundreds of thousands of books, articles and writings of every 

 description relating to the many phases of the alcohol problem, this 

 simple and fundamental question — "Why do men desire alcohol? — has 

 until recently never been carefully considered at all and even now has 

 not been answered. The belief that the desire for alcohol is due to 

 total depravity or original sin seems to be about as far as we have got 

 in answering this question. One author wrote a serious article not long 

 ago to show that the cause of drinking is to be attributed to bad cook- 

 ing in the home ! He evidently did not appreciate the fact that the 

 desire for alcohol, as well as its use, is at least as old as the lake- 

 dwellers of the neolithic age. Few if any savage tribes known to 

 anthropologists, whether in ancient or in modern times, except certain 

 tribes of Eskimos who have no fruit or grain from which alcohol can 

 be prepared, have been without this drug or some other having similar 

 properties. The discovery and use of alcohol have not spread from 

 tribe to tribe, but have been autochthonic, arising independently in 

 all parts of the world. So keen has been the desire for alcohol and 

 so eager the quest for it, that always and everywhere some means have 

 been discovered by which this water of life could be expressed from 

 fruit, or grain, or vegetable. 



And yet we do not even know why it is desired. 



The whole vast machinery of the temperance movement, employing 

 thousands of skilled and zealous workers, controlling large sums of 

 money, and making use of wise educational, social and legislative 

 methods, seems to have accomplished little or nothing in reducing the 

 consumption of alcohol. At the very time that legislative and social 

 control of the manufacture, sale and use of alcoholic liquors is extended 

 over larger and larger portions of our country, the relentless figures of 

 the TJ. S. Commissioner of Internal Eevenue show that year by year 

 with almost fateful regularity the per capita consumption of these 

 liquors is increasing instead of decreasing. 



The following table shows the per capita consumption of all liquors 

 in the United States from the year 1850 to the year 1911, inclusive: 



