Alcoholic beverage industry

“ In France an ingenious method of influencing the sale of alcohol has lately been adopted, in the interests of public health, which has proved completely successful. The French national drink is light wine, which may be procured in abundance, of excellent and wholesome quality and very cheaply, provided it is not heavily taxed. But of recent years there has been a tendency in France to consume in large quantity the heavy alcoholic spirits, often of a specially deleterious kind. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Probably nothing is more rarely found pure and honest than beer or whisky; whisky begins to be blended and doctored before it leaves the distillery. And we allow the production and distribution of this drug of alcoholic drink to be from first to last a source of private profit. We so contrive it that we put money prizes upon the propaganda of drink. Is it any wonder that drink is not only made by adulteration far more evil than it naturally is, but that it is forced upon the public in every possible way? ”

“ The experimental evidence of the damaging effect of alcohol on physical and mental efficiency is confirmed by the practical experience of railroads, steamship companies, shops, manufacturing establishments, contractors, surveying and exploring parties, athletic teams, etc. An increasingly large number of railroads forbid the use of alcoholic liquors to their employees, in some cases even when off duty, while in shops and in mercantile establishments of all kinds statistics show a significant increase of accidents and decrease of efficiency immediately following Sundays and holidays. ”

“ If there was never another ounce of alcohol manufactured, the world would be none the loser either medicinally or commercially. My reason for making this statement is that prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages has been largely defeated because there have not been the proper safeguards thrown about the manufacture and sale of drug-store concoctions that can be had in any quantity as substitutes for alcoholic stimulants ”

“ Are we to knock the heads out of all our wine-casks, join the temperance society, and denounce all men who do not follow our example? Taking together all that science and observation teach and indicate, we have one certainty: That, to a person in good health and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always in some degree hurtful. This truth becomes so clear, after a few weeks' investigation, that I advise every person who means to keep on drinking such liquors not to look into the facts ”

“ The sale of Intoxicants should be regulated by the Company, and these should be limited to a little spirits: wine and beer and all alcoholic liquors habitually used as beverages should be rigorously forbidden to the labouring classes, and should only be supplied in bona fide clubs with a certain minimum yearly subscription. ”

“ De-natured Alcohol and De-naturing Formulæ
The uses of alcohol are very numerous and varied, the principal being, of course, for the production of all alcoholic liquors such as brandy, gin, rum, whiskey, liquors, etc.; that distilled from grain is almost entirely consumed in the manufacture of whiskey, gin, and British brandy. In the arts, strong alcohol is employed by the perfumers and makers of essences for dissolving essential oils, soaps, etc., and for extracting the odor of flowers and plants ”

“ The anti-alcohol movement in France does exist. As the maintenance of war legislation against absinthe and kindred spirits proves, it has public opinion behind it. But the connotation of alcoholic is limited in France. The Gallic sense of proportion prevents the French from extremes in anything. Since they do not drink to excess, they have no reason for regarding beer and wines as alcohol. Often your French friends tell you that they never touch alcohol. ”

“ Alcoholic beverages are to be avoided, and more especially those which are rich in extractives as well as in alcohol. For this latter reason, beer and champagne are harmful, whilst spirits and liqueurs are to be condemned on account of the high percentage of alcohol they contain. ”

“ May the plaintiff show as a basis for relief that the beer manufactured by it with alcoholic content not greater than 2.75 per centum in weight and 3.4 per centum in volume is not in fact intoxicating? The government insists that the fact alleged is immaterial since the passage of the Volstead Act by which the prohibition of the manufacture and sale is extended to all beer and other malt liquor containing as much as one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume. ”

“ It has been ascertained that in 1860 more than half the annual production was consumed in the arts. As alcohol it was used for ether, spirit-lamps, camphene, and burning-fluid; by apothecaries for tinctures and medicinal preparations; by hair-dressers for lotions; and it was also consumed in many manufactures. The duty has carried alcohol to five dollars per gallon, and nearly stopped its use in the arts, while it has not stopped the use of spirits as a beverage. It has drawn a revenue from the pockets of the people, and transferred it from the government to the illicit trader. ”

“ The most common form in which alcohol is employed in this country is that of beer. Beer is distinguished from other alcoholic beverages by the addition of hops, which are the female catkins of a plant extensively grown in this country. Case 35 contains the materials from which porter is brewed, and illustrates the changes which malt undergoes during its conversion into beer. The analysis of stout, porter, pale ale, mild ale, and strong ale are exhibited in Case 35, and the quantities of water, alcohol, sugar, and acetic acid are shown in an imperial pint of each. ”

“ The argument to the effect that alcohol must be useless, because chemists have as yet been unable to trace the exact form and manner in which it acts upon the human economy, would seem to be fallacious in the face of the experience, which shows that it does act, and act {432} beneficially, when taken in a suitable form and in suitable quantity. Experience shows, and instances by the hundred could be given, from the works of medical men, that life can be sustained for long periods of time solely upon alcoholic drinks. ”

“ The southern nations of Europe using wine daily and knowing well the process of distillation to help them to make stronger drink for many hundreds of years, now exhibit much less tendency to over-indulgence in strong drink than the northern nations whose ancestors have only in comparatively recent times been subjected to the temptation of craving for strong alcoholic liquors. The attitude of any nation toward alcohol is a function of the length of time that nation has had a chance to procure strong drink easily. ”

“ Those who view the subject practically maintain, for example, that much benefit to the community would result if the weaker liquors could be generally substituted for the stronger, as wine and beer for distilled spirits; but this notion has been sternly resisted by the great mass of ardent temperance reformers as sacrificing first principles. All alcoholic liquors, they maintain, are poisonous, baneful, and to be equally condemned, unless, indeed, the weakest are not the most dangerous. ”

“ The seizure and destruction cannot be sustained on the ground that the act in question destroyed the value of the liquor. The question of compensation is not involved. That alcoholic liquors are capable of valuable uses is recognized by the whole mass of state and national regulatory and prohibitory laws, as well as by the state legislation in question. ”

“ In other words, it clearly appears that a liquor law, to be capable of effective enforcement must, in the opinion of the Legislatures and courts of the several states, be made to apply either to all liquors of the species enumerated, like beer, ale or wine, regardless of the presence or degree of alcoholic content; or if a more general description is used, such as distilled, rectified, spirituous, fermented, malt, or brewed liquors, to all liquors within that general description regardless of alcoholic content;b or to such of these liquors as contain a named percentage of alcohol ”

“ It is also certain that hundreds make use of alcoholic liquors who have no necessity for them, and who would be better without them. Those who require them most are men who lead a studious sedentary life; and it is such men, also, who suffer most from excess in the use of alcoholic liquors. ”

“ WHATEVER may be our individual views or prejudices in relation to the use and abuse of alcoholic liquors, the process of their manufacture is a very interesting chemical operation. Proof-spirit is defined by the United States internal revenue laws to be that mixture of alcohol and water which contains one half of its volume of absolute alcohol and 53·71 parts of. ”

“ The process is continued until the alcoholic content of the distilled liquor has considerably diminished, when the remaining weak spirit that distils over, called ‘faints,’ is caught separately, and mixed with the low wines preparatory to another distillation. The strongest spirit passes over first, and the condensed liquor gradually becomes weaker, until it ceases to contain alcohol. By receiving in separate vessels any given portion of the product, spirit of any required strength, within certain limits, may be obtained. ”

“ A distiller who, ten years ago, sold many thousand gallons of choice whiskies, almost exclusively to medical men, has lost his trade altogether, and gone out of business. Wine men, too, recognize this change, and are making every effort to have wine used in the place of spirits in the sick-room. Proprietary medicine dealers are putting all sorts of compounds of wine with iron, bark, etc., on the market with the same idea. It is doubtful if any of these will be able to secure any permanent place in therapeutics. ”

“ Alcoholic liquors are most generally used for the preservation of animal substances, if they are more costly, they are liable to fewer objections. Brandy, rum, tafea, are coloured by a resinous substance, which clouds their transparency, and which is liable to be deposited. The alcohol of cherries, of grain, of cider, or of wine, is preferred at present, which can be procured well rectified and transparent, and which may be afterwards weakened with distilled water, so as to obtain alcohol very limpid, marking from 22° to 30° of Baumè’s areometer. ”

“ Aside from all considerations of physical, mental, and moral injury wrought by the use of alcoholic drinks, every young man may well take into account the damaging effect of such a dangerous habit upon his business prospects. Careful business men are becoming more and more unwilling to take into their employ any person addicted to liquor drinking. ”

“ I think none but the old people of today can have the correct "view-point" of the difference in which the use of alcoholic beverages was considered fifty years ago and now. At that time it was not considered harmful, but rather commendable, if not taken to excess, as a means of promoting social intercourse, and except at Fort Sill it was to be had at all the post trader's stores at the military [Pg 125] posts on the frontier, and at most of them it was on the sideboard or on the mantle over the fire-place, in the officers' billiard room free to those who cared to use it. ”

“ The decrease in the consumption of alcoholic drinks in the United States within recent years is doubtless due in part to increasing popular knowledge concerning the dangers of alcoholic excess and to the growth of a more wholesome public sentiment. ”

“ Wines are also made from other fruits and vegetables, such as oranges, currants, tomatoes, and rhubarb, but the alcohol which they contain is of the same nature in all cases, whether the fermented liquor has been manufactured in great quantities, by large presses, or by a simple domestic process for home consumption. It is important to remember this fact, as many people do not associate alcohol with such beverages as domestic wines and home-brewed ales, whereas it is always present with the same treacherous qualities which attach to it everywhere. ”

“ There exist, sad to relate, persons who, with the notion of promoting temperance, would rob us of our beer. Many of these individuals may act with good motives, but they are weak, misguided bodies who, if they but devoted their energies to promoting ale-drinking as opposed to spirit-drinking, would be doing useful service to the State, for malt liquors are the true temperance drinks of the working classes. ”

“ But even the publicans there have a conscience that preserves them innocent of the crime of hastening their customers' deaths beyond the speed at which simple alcohol is capable of carrying them. The gin of Kent-street is of fair average quality, registering thirty and a half - water, sugar, and "aromatic seasoning" being called in as substitutes for the amount of alcohol of which the original liquor has been plundered. ”

“ In still another way the prohibitive liquor laws have worked, and are still working, hardship to our people. The liquor-drinking habit in large and metropolitan cities is palpably on the decline. Here the ever-increasing complexity of affairs, the immense demand of competition, the necessity of care and vigilance lest one be outrun in the race for success, and the strain of business methods, render it injudicious to drink much wine or liquor; large corporations exact a rigid temperance, often total abstinence, from their officials and employees. ”