24 



SCIUN'CE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 206 



apportioned fco them, the plan has been adopted 

 of allotting the stock to them, they enjoying the 

 benefits of it less interest. To this plan, as to any 

 other scheme of profit-sharing, the objection is 

 raised that in bad times it passes into loss-sharing, 

 and this is not what the employees want or will 

 submit to. In view of this, Mr. Crane believes 

 that a sm-plus fund should be established, from 

 which dividends are to be paid during years of 

 depression, when there is no profit from which to 

 pay them. 



Mr. Nelson bears similar testimony to the 

 working of profit-sharing in his company. In 

 March last, the company issued a circular estab- 

 lishing profit-sharing. After allowing seven per 

 cent interest on actual capital invested, the 

 remainder is to be divided equally upon the 

 total amount of wages paid and capital em- 

 ployed. The employees will this year receive 

 about two-fifths of the net profits. The books 

 have not yet been closed for the year, nor the 

 dividend declared, but there is ample evidence of 

 the success of the experiment. At the conclusion 

 of the firm's present fiscal year, the scheme is to 

 be elaborated somewhat. Ten per cent of the 

 profits is to be set aside as a provident fund for 

 sick and disabled members and the families of 

 deceased ones, ten per cent as a surplus fund to 

 cover losing years, should such occur, and two 

 per cent as a library fund, the company paying 

 interest on any unused portions of such funds. 

 The allotments are also to be so apportioned that 

 a premium is offered for continuous service and 

 the saving of dividends. Evidence such as this 

 from the sphere of practical business should be 

 of great help to economists in developing their 

 theories. 



The items appropriated by the house for the 

 support of the U. S. coast survey during the next 

 fiscal year are the same as those at first recom- 

 mended by the house last year, and far under the 

 estimates. If the senate should agree to the 

 penurious policy of the house, a large reduction 

 in the personnel of the service must ensue, and 

 its utility would be sadly impaired. We cannot 

 believe the senate will agree to the recommenda- 

 tions of the house in this important matter. The 

 coast survey is doing good work, which should be 

 encouraged by congress, and liberal appropriations 

 should be made for its proper support. 



IS BEER-DRINKING INJURIOUS 9 

 We have before us a direct and unqualified 

 challenge to the prohibitionists in the form of a 

 pamphlet on ' The effects of beer upon those who 

 make and drink it,' by G. Thomann (New York, 

 U. 8. brewers' assoc, 1886). The writer boldly 

 presents the following propositions. 1. Brewers 

 drink more beer, and drink it more constantly, 

 than any other class of people. 2. The rate of 

 deaths among brewers is lower by forty per cent 

 than the average death-rate among the urban 

 population of the groups of ages corresponding 

 with those to which brewery- woi'kmen belong. 

 3. The health of brewers is unusually good : dis- 

 eases of the kidneys and liver occur rarely among 

 them. 4. On an average, brewers live longer, 

 and preserve their physical energies better, than 

 the average workmen of the United States. The 

 writer claims that beer is a perfectly wholesome 

 drink, and, in support of this claim, refers to in- 

 vestigations made in Belgium, France, Holland, 

 and Switzerland. He quotes also from the report 

 made by a sanitary commission appointed by Presi- 

 dent Lincoln to examine the camps of the Union 

 army and their sanitary condition. In examining 

 the condition of regiments in which malt-liquors 

 were freely used, the commission found not only 

 that beer is a healthy beverage, but that it pos- 

 sesses hygienic qualities which recommend its use 

 for the prevention of certain diseases. Mr. Tho- 

 mann states, that, wherever the effects of the use 

 of beer upon the human body have been examined 

 methodically by competent physicians, it was 

 found, to use the words of Dr, Jules Rochard of 

 the Academic de medecine of Paris, " that beer is 

 a very healthy beverage, which helps digestion, 

 quenches thirst, and furnishes an amount of as- 

 similable substances much greater than that con- 

 tained in any other beverage." 



The charge is often made that American beer is 

 composed of so many poisonous ingredients that it 

 is thereby rendered unfit for consumption ; that, 

 while pure beer may be harmless, such beer as is 

 supplied by brewers at the present time in this 

 country is positively injurious. This is met with 

 a reference to the report of the New York state 

 board of health, in which it is stated that an analy- 

 sis of four hundred and seventy-six samples of 

 malt-liquors had been made, and that they were 

 all found perfectly pure and wholesome, and to 

 contain neither hop-substitutes nor any deleteri- 

 ous substances whatever. 



The most interesting portion of Mr. Thomann's 

 pamphlet is that which deals with the statistics of 

 the physicians under whose professional care the 

 men employed in the breweries are placed. About 

 five years ago the brewers of New York, Brook- 



