AS COMMISSIONER AT PARIS-1878 519 



at all, the worse for it. If he ever takes any distilled 

 liquor, he sips a very small glass of it after his dinner, 

 to aid digestion. 



It is my earnest conviction, based upon wide observa- 

 tion in my own country as well as in many others during 

 about half a century, that the American theory and prac- 

 tice as regards the drink question are generally more 

 pernicious than those of any other civilized nation. I 

 am not now speaking of total abstinence of that, more, 

 presently. But the best temperance workers among us 

 that I know are the men who brew light, pure beer, and 

 the vine-growers in California who raise and sell at a very 

 low price wines pleasant and salutary, if any wines can 

 be so. 



As to those who have no self-restraint, beer and wine, 

 like many other things, promote the " survival of the fit- 

 test," and are, like many other things, " fool-killers, ' ' aid- 

 ing to free the next generation from men of vicious pro- 

 pensities and weak will. 



I repeat it, the curse of American social life, among a 

 very considerable class of our people, is " perpendicular 

 drinking" that is, the pouring down of glass after glass 

 of distilled spirits, mostly adulterated, at all sorts of in- 

 opportune times, and largely under the system of "treat- 

 ing." 



The best cure for this, in my judgment, would be for 

 States to authorize and local authorities to adopt the 

 "Swedish system," which I found doing excellent ser- 

 vice at Gothenburg in Sweden a few years since, and 

 which I am sorry to see the fanatics there have recently 

 wrecked. Under this plan the various towns allowed a 

 company to open a certain number of clean, tidy drink- 

 ing-places ; obliged them to purchase pure liquors ; forbade 

 them, under penalties, to sell to any man who had already 

 taken too much ; made it also obligatory to sell something 

 to eat at the same time with something to drink ; and, best 

 of all, restricted the profits of these establishments to a 

 moderate percentage, seven or eight per cent., if I re- 



