Inebriety is such a dominating fact, and so fruitful of ruin to thousands in our community, that the study of its inception and the means of its amelioration are forced upon every humanitarian. Prominent, if not the first of its causes, is the financial one, and though philosophers have given us many theories concerning the progress of poverty, it still remains with us and is likely to continue until, in some future time, when society shall deal with it in the broad, generous spirit of co-operation. A few years ago, an extensive investigation was made in England, under the auspices of Lady Somerset, to ascertain the causes of intemperance, and the conclusion arrived at was that eighty-six per cent. of the whole number were directly traceable to poverty, or financial causes, and the great cause of this eighty-six per cent. was summed up in one word, Competition. In this country, the investigation of Prof. J. J. McCook, showed that the large increase of vagabondage, including tramps, in the years 1874 and 1894, was directly traceable

*Read at the Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Ameri can Association for the Study and Care of Inebriety, at Boston, Mass., December 8, 1897.

to the panics of 1873 and 1893. Prof. F. S. Nitti, in Economic Journal, says: "The working classes, swayed by instinct, rush eagerly to stimulants, and the workman is inclined toward their use in proportion to the poverty of his food budget."

Intemperance, as a cause of poverty, has been greatly overworked, both by temperance reformers and by optimistic economists. It is a great cause, but it is not at all certain that it is the chief cause. A late Medical Journal says: "When medical men begin to study the cause and cure of poverty and its dreadful effects upon God's creatures, the sick and weary at heart may hope for a millennium. Poverty is a disease of present social conditions, and needs our thought as much as the oncoming of a plague of cholera."

Another cause of the prevalence of inebriety arises from the popular confidence in alcoholic drinks and other narcotics, and this confidence is largely bolstered up by physicians who freely use narcotics. With good reason may the layman say that if alcohol is valuable as a medicine, it necessarily must have some virtue as a beverage. The testi