MEMOIR ON PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 19 



we had used them as a measure of the wages of either 

 sober or drinker. They were solely the current wages of 

 the trade by which the trade itself was roughly graduated 

 as a ' high ' or ' low-grade job '} 



Now consider the following paragraph penned by Sir 

 Victor Horsley and Dr. Sturge : 



*It will be seen from the comments we have extracted 

 from the Edinburgh schedules that Professor Pearson has 

 bestowed a wage of 25.$'. 6d, per week on fourteen indi- 

 viduals concerning whose real wages either nothing is 

 known, or that, whatever they may earn when they were 

 at work, those industrious occasions were so rare (and 

 sometimes rendered so impossible by the man being in 

 prison) that no average weekly wage could be accurately 

 ascertained. Nevertheless the exigencies of Professor 

 Pearson's argument are great and he accords to each of 

 these individuals 25^. 6d. per week ' {B. M. J.^ p. 79). 



Or, again, speaking of a father in an asylum, Sir Victor 

 Horsley says that he is 



* represented by Professor Pearson in his table to be 

 earning i^s, 6d. a week ' {B, M. y., p. 74). 



Illustrations of this sort of argument abound in Sir Victor 

 Horsley and Dr. Sturge's paper. They are wholly and 

 entirely false charges. The average trade wages were used 

 to graduate trades, the average wages obtained by drinking 

 and sober parents were ascertained directly from the whole 

 hulk of wages given in the Report, and not as Sir Victor 

 and Dr. Sturge insinuate from the average trade wages. 

 Now let us see exactly what our Memoir states as to 

 wages (p. 4) : 



' Parents were divided into three classes : (i) both parents 

 drink, (2) one parent drinks and (3) neither drink. The 



^ Had we classified trades as 'high' or 'low' according to their general 

 mortality rates, we should probably have been told that we had asserted that 

 all individuals, temperate or intemperate, died at these rates ! 



B 2 



