‘Of course,’ I answered; ‘but the rich have different ideas from theirs, especially if the poor are from south Europe. So the rich busy themselves to change the character of the poor. When they are doing that they call themselves by a high-sounding title, and say they are Practical Idealists.’ ‘I understand,’ said Lysis, ‘for the rich are the manufacturers, or share the outlook of manufacturers, and when they are considering the character of the poor, they will identify being a good man with being a good worker, and will give no praise at all to such a one as you yourself, Socrates, forever sitting about in the public places and busying yourself with subjects with which manufacturers have nothing to do.’ ‘You have understood perfectly, O excellent Lysis,’ I exclaimed, ‘and you well describe what happens in America to-day, and among other things why the manufacturers have abolished, as far as they could, the drinking of the poor. For it is perhaps better for a workman to be a teetotaller if you consider him merely in his function as a workman, and as a machine to be treated in a certain way, but it is quite a different story if you consider him as a man. For teetotalism makes a worker more a worker but a man less a man. And drunkenness makes him also less a man, but instead of becoming more of a workman he ceases to be a workman at all.’ ‘But teetotalism,’ said Agathon, ‘is the more dangerous extreme. For only a very exceptional man can keep really drunk for long periods whereas many teetotallers stay teetotallers for months together.’ ‘Many months,’ I agreed. ‘And even years in some cases, Socrates,’ he went on, ‘if what I hear is true.’ ‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid we cannot deny it: there are men in Kansas who have repressed their thirst for upwards of forty years.’ ‘Surely,’ said Lysis, ‘we would pay more to see them exhibited here than the Americans would pay to see the Parthenon? Let us give the Parthenon to that American who approached you this morning, Agathon, and let us have some Kansans.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘such a group of voluntary Tantaluses would be a spectacle of much interest to the young, who are commonly insensible to the griefs of others, and who would not think it base to let their eyes have their fill of the dreadful sight. But I confess my heart was touched, for the state of these Kansans is like that of the ponies that are kept in coal pits, who by long habituation to the dark become blind. And to their children these people show imaginary pictures of the inside of the human body and the effects of alcohol, for so they love to call all fermented beverages, so that these children shall believe they are being saved from a most terrible dragon. Nor is it till they visit Europe that they learn that the poison of alcohol is not always fatal.’ ‘It is a good thing for the Americans that so many of them visit Europe,’ said Lysis gravely.