It seems obvious that penalization, probationary influences, or colonization must be utterly useless in removing from a man's physical system the craving for alcohol. Therefore it is equally obvious that their only successful mission must be to remove the victim of drink from contact with society for the length of time during which his sentence is operative. The man who is in all probability incurable is not put permanently out of harm's way by these means, or placed where he can do no harm; the man who has good stuff in him but who has through chance used drugs to excess upon one or more occasion is offered by these methods nothing in the nature of a fair show toward regaining his usefulness. I see the possibility of many serious results in New York's board of inebriety plan. These, I think, have their beginning principally in the fact that nothing along the line of classification has been devised or, as far as I know, has been even suggested. If its work were made efficient by means of the adoption of a plan of classification, this board really might become a great boon to society. Suppose that instead of penalizing the man who has been taken before it for inebriety, the board, after intelligent and detailed investigation has shown that the man is probably curable, should provide for him the necessary definite medical treatment to relieve his system from the ill effects of alcohol, and then should bring him into contact with psychological and analytical minds capable of enforcing upon him a realization of the terrible meaning of alcoholism. Without having affected the man's pride it would send him back to his family and his task with a cool brain and a new point of view. Would not this be a vastly better way of dealing with him than those which are at present followed? There is no reason why some small charge should not be enforced against such beneficiaries of an enlightened public intelligence who might be found able to meet it. This would accomplish two things: it would reduce the public expense of the system and it would add very greatly to the mental impression left upon the mind of the person for whose benefits the State was working. Furthermore, if a magistrate had once formed the habit of feeling personal interest in individual cases probably his first act after a man had appeared before him would be to send for the accused's employer and make the truth of the situation clear to him. The mere fact that a man has once been intoxicated should not justify his discharge from employment in which at normal times he is useful and efficient. Both for his sake and for his employer's, efforts should be made toward reform; for it is not infrequently the case that the man who has lost control through drink is in normal conditions the best man in the office, factory, or workshop. That is one of the chief tragedies of the problem of alcohol.