The Economic Effect of Alcoholic Poisoning.--In the struggle for existence, it is evident that the man whose intellect is the quickest and keenest, whose judgment is most sound, is the man who is most likely to succeed. The paralyzing effect of alcohol upon the nerve centers must place the drinker at a disadvantage. In a hundred ways, the drinker sooner or later feels the handicap that the habit of drink has imposed upon him. Many corporations, notably several of our greatest railroads (the Pennsylvania and the New York Central Railroad among them), refuse to employ any but abstainers in positions of trust. Few persons know the number of railway accidents due to the uncertain eye of some engineer who mistook his signal, or the hazy inactivity of the brain of some train dispatcher who, because of drink, forgot to send the telegram that was to hold the train from wreck. In business and in the professions, the story is the same. The abstainer wins out over the drinking man. Effect of Alcohol on Ability to do Work.--In _Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem_, Professor Hodge, formerly of Clark University, describes many of his own experiments showing the effect of alcohol on animals. He trained four selected puppies to recover a ball thrown across a gymnasium. To two of the dogs he gave food mixed with doses of alcohol, while the others were fed normally. The ball was thrown 100 feet as rapidly as recovered. This was repeated 100 times each day for fourteen successive days. Out of 1400 times the dogs to which alcohol had been given brought back the ball only 478 times, while the others secured it 922 times. Dr. Parkes experimented with two gangs of men, selected to be as nearly similar as possible, in mowing. He found that with one gang abstaining from alcoholic drinks and the other not, the abstaining gang could accomplish more. On transposing the gangs, the same results were repeatedly obtained. Similar results were obtained by Professor Aschaffenburg of Heidelberg University, who found experimentally that men "were able to do 15 per cent less work after taking alcohol." Recently many experiments along the same lines have been made. In typewriting, in typesetting, in bricklaying, or in the highest type of mental work the result is the same. The quality and quantity of work done on days when alcohol is taken is less than on days when no alcohol is taken. The Relation of Alcohol to Efficiency.--We have already seen that work is neither so well done nor is as much accomplished by drinkers as by non-drinkers.