drug; "let no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his
brother's way." The influence of every man who is amenable to
altruistic motives is needed against liquor, to counteract its lure;
we must create a strong public sentiment and make it unfashionable
and disreputable to drink. Happily the tide of liquor-drinking, which
has been rising rapidly in the last half- century, owing to the increase
in prosperity, the great influx of immigrants from liquor-drinking
countries, and the stimulation of the trade by the highly organized
liquor industry, has at last, by the earnest efforts of enlightened
workers, been turned. Men of influence are standing out publicly
against it. Grape-juice has been substituted for wine in the White
House; Kaiser Wilhelm has become an abstainer, with a declaration that
in the present era of fierce competition the nations that triumph will
be those that have least to do with liquor. So conservative and
cautious a thinker as ex-President Eliot of Harvard has recently become
an abstainer, saying, "The recent progress of science has satisfied
me that the moderate use of alcohol is objectionable." The yearly per
capita consumption of alcoholic liquors, which rose from 8.79 gallons
in 1880 to 17.76 in 1900 and 22.79 in 1911, fell in 1912 to 21.98.
It is to be devoutly hoped that the tide will ebb as rapidly as it
rose. What should be our attitude toward the use of alcoholic liquors
by others? The consideration of this question falls properly under
the head of "Public Morality." But it will be more convenient to treat
it here, following the presentation of the facts concerning alcohol.
The right of the community to interfere with the conduct of its members
will be discussed in chapter xxviii, and we must assume here the result
therein reached, that whatever is deemed necessary for the greatest
welfare of the community as a whole may legitimately be required of
its individual members, however it may cross their desires or however
they may consider the matter their private concern. The argument against