I50 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



per thousand of the inhabitants in Portland ; in 

 New York thirteen per thousand ; in Chicago 

 twenty-three per thousand ; in Boston forty-five 

 per thousand.^ The sale of drink is permitted in 

 Boston, but not in the surrounding areas. Forty-four 

 per cent, of those convicted in Boston were absentees 

 — people who had come to Boston from surrounding 

 Prohibition districts to procure drink. ^ On the face 

 of it, therefore, Portland is much more drunken 

 than larger towns where drink-selling is not pro- 

 hibited. It must be noted that the police of 

 Portland are not exceptionally active in appre- 

 hending drunken persons, as may be seen from 

 the following statement by the Rev. Wilbur F. 

 Bury, Secretary to the Maine Christian Civic 

 League, writing in January 1898 : 



" Drunkenness is increasing in the State. The imprisonments 

 for drunkenness in Cumberland County in 1892 were 212; the 

 number steadily increased to 988 in 1896. The Portland Press 

 of 1 6th September 1887 published a list of twenty-one drunks 

 who were before the Municipal Court the day before, and the 

 average number of arrests for drunkenness per week is about forty. 

 But the number arrested for drunkenness in no way indicates the 

 number of persons drunk on the streets, for, though the law 

 requires the arrest of all persons seen intoxicated on the streets, 

 only disorderly, quarrelsome, drunken persons are arrested as a 

 rule ; and not all arrested are brought into court, as not a few are 



1 "The Temperance Problem and Social Reform," p. 158. 

 5 Op. cit, p. 318. 



