MEMOIR ON PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 23 



was less, namely, about is. a week, and that this difference 

 did not seem to us to mark a widely inferior physique or 

 intelligence in the drinking section, but to connote the 

 employer's dislike for the inconveniences of inebriety. 

 That view was supported because we knew that when 

 employed in irregular work or casual and seasonal trades 

 the drinker got rather higher wages than the sober. Our 

 point was not, and never has been, that a heavy drinker 

 does not weaken his physique or mentality,^ but that our 

 drinking individuals were not initially and apart from 

 their alcohol of inferior physique and mentality. I believe 

 that Sir Victor Horsley and Mr. Keynes are labouring this 

 point of wages, because they have accepted, without full 

 knowledge of modern theories of heredity, the view that 

 somatic variations produced by habit or environment are 

 at once influential in changing the character of the germ- 

 plasm. 



I now turn to the tables which Sir Victor Horsley and 

 Dr. Sturge have extracted from the Edinburgh records, and 

 contrasted with what they assert are our results. First 

 let us take Teetotalers. Our critics give a table of nineteen 

 teetotallers and their wives, and proceed to suggest that 

 these nineteen persons have been used by us without any 

 consideration at all. The exact number of teetotalers used 

 by us is fourteen fathers and thirteen mothers. This is 

 given in the Memoir^ but Sir Victor and Dr. Sturge at once 

 attribute to us five teetotal fathers whom we have not 

 called teetotal but alcoholic ! Further, the Edinburgh 

 records are very full as to the past history of drink when- 

 ever there has been one, and absence of this history may 

 be taken as a sign that the family has been a steady and 

 sober one. Further, when no statement as to drink is 



1 We have made no investigation of this point. 



