The result was an immediate and considerable increase in the number of cabarets in nearly every canton. From 1870 to 1880 the total of these establishments was raised by 22 per cent., and in Geneva there was a wine shop for every 70 people, the average for the whole country being one drink shop for every 130 inhabitants. The effects of this on the condition of the people were immediately apparent. The French have a saying "to smoke and to drink like a Swiss, and to get tipsy like a Pole"; but now the Swiss, never the most temperate nation, showed signs of rapid deterioration through intemperance. At the recruitment of 1880 the Medical Commission reported that the number of young men found fit for military service was from 5 to 25 per cent. less than in 1873, and in some parts the number of men fit for service was as low as 21.2 per cent. The Principal Medical Officer declared that the physical degeneration of the candidates was due to the evil effects of spirit drinking and drunkenness. The director of the Central Bureau of Charity stated that 80 per cent. of the applications of mothers and children for relief were brought about by the tippling of the father of the family. Sociologists pointed out that the nation was rapidly being destroyed by this one curse; and in order to obtain fuller details the Federal Assembly requested the Federal Council to make an inquiry into the matter. The report of the latter body, when issued, more than bore out the gloomy prognostications of the alarmists. From 1877 to 1881, 3285 patients were admitted to the public lunatic asylums, and of these 923 were brought there by alcoholism. There were 254 deaths annually directly caused by excessive drinking. Out of 2560 prisoners in cantonal penitentiaries, 1030 were found to be drunkards; and in eight reformatories 50 per cent. of the boys and 45 per cent. of the girls were found to be the children of parents one or both of whom were given to intoxication. In Switzerland there are a larger proportion of suicides than in any other civilised country, and the Commission found that this was caused mainly by alcoholism. The Federal Council attributed the state of affairs to two reasons: (1) to the change in the economic condition of Switzerland owing to the introduction of railways; (2) partly to the fact that wine had become costly and inaccessible to the workmen, while at the same time spirits had become cheaper. Brandy was not only imported in great quantities from Germany, but was also manufactured on a large scale in industrial and domestic distilleries in Switzerland. The product of these small distilleries was specially dangerous, not only because of the alcohol it contained, but because of the crude and imperfect state of most of it. There was said to be between five and ten thousand domestic distilleries in the canton of Berne alone. To these causes, rather than to the increase of the shops for the sale of liquor,