The alcoholic content of beer has been about four per cent. The alcoholic content of the quality of whiskey generally sold over the bar is about forty per cent--and frequently much less. It can therefore be readily seen that the quantity of alcohol contained in a large glass of beer, even with the recent slightly reduced alcoholic content, is equivalent to about that contained in an ordinary drink of whiskey, which is sufficient to intoxicate any person not accustomed to its use. It is nothing unusual, even in the case of confirmed drinkers, to feel at times the intoxicating effect of a single glass of beer, especially when taken upon an empty stomach or when the system may not just be in proper condition. Brewers are recommending beer to expectant and nursing mothers and as a fit drink for the home. But, on the other hand, they prefer to employ men who have not acquired the beer drinking habit. The most valuable men advocating the "wet" cause fight shy of beer. They know what it is made of. Many saloonkeepers never touch it, nor will they employ bartenders unless they are total abstainers. "_If the saloons and other public drinking places were ousted, but the breweries permitted to operate, drunkenness, crime and vice would invade the home_" CHAPTER VII. BEER IS NOT A TEMPERANCE DRINK It can not be denied that people drink beer for its alcoholic effect--and that most of the intoxication is caused by beer. Brewers claim that beer is a "true temperance drink," but they are careful to add--if taken in moderate quantities. If beer were ever consumed in moderate quantities it would result in a fifty per cent reduction of the beer output of the country. It would force most of the brewers out of business--and I doubt if any saloon could earn enough money to pay the rent of the place. For that reason brewers can not afford to encourage the enactment of laws abolishing "treating," despite their public statements that they are in favor of its suppression. In discussing the question with an acquaintance whom I know to be a very moderate drinker of beer only, he advanced the much heard argument that a glass of beer will harm no one. He said that he occasionally dropped into a saloon to take a glass of beer. When I asked him if, when he had gone into a saloon he had ever run across some friends and, to be a good fellow, he had been obliged to take a number of glasses, he replied "yes"--and that they had made him drunk. "_Brewers can not afford to abolish 'treating'_" CHAPTER VIII. THE DECREASED ALCOHOLIC CONTENT OF BEER WILL INCREASE DRUNKENNESS