army or navy of another country. The politician who tells his American audiences that in our school system, in our morals, in our physique, in our general well-being, we are leading the world, is verily a Benedict Arnold betraying our country into an ignorant satisfaction with mediocrity. He pleases them that they may be pleased with him. No spy, no traitor, ever did a country the harm that is done by the flatterers of ignorance. We have no such average of physical well-being among our population as exists here in Norway and Sweden. So poor were they in Norway not many years ago that even leprosy existed among them, and consumption, as it is everywhere, is the dangerous foe to health. They have nearly stamped out leprosy, and consumption is decreasing. Drunkenness was the curse of both Norway and Sweden twenty-five years ago, but to-day they have the most effective system of regulating the drink traffic anywhere in the world. Drunkenness and disease will never be wiped out altogether anywhere; but the people can emancipate themselves from the tyranny of them, and that they have done.

In the first article the facts as to longevity were given. It can do us no harm to call attention to them again. The average life is in

In 1911 the mortality, or deaths per 1,000 inhabitants, were in Stockholm 12.9; in Christiania 13.3; in London, 15.0; in Berlin, 15.6; in Paris, 17.2; in New York, 16.4; in Saint Petersburg, 20.9; in Rome, 18.5.

The superiority of the Swedes and Norwegians in this matter of general health is due, not perhaps altogether (for their system of gymnastic training for the young counts for much) but to a large extent, to their sensible and effective legislation in the matter of the sale of spirits.

The Göteburg licensing system takes its name from the city of Göteburg, founded by Gustavus Adolphus, the second largest in Sweden; although modified forms of the same system were in existence in several small towns of Sweden, notably Falun, as early as 1850. In Sweden the word Bolag and in Norway, Samlag, meaning "company," are generally used rather than "Göteburg" to describe the system.

Although there are many variations, some of them important, of the system, the fundamental rules apply to all. Drunkenness has been the curse of both Norway and Sweden. To lessen the evil it was proposed as early as 1865 in Göteburg to put the sale of spirits into the hands of a disinterested company legally incorporated, which should be allowed a profit of not more than five per cent on capital, surplus profits to go to the town or rural community for benevolent purposes, and the company was to be responsible for the cleanliness, ventilation, and orderliness of the places where spirits were sold; to see to it that no minor and no disorderly person should be served, and that only cash payments were made, and that such liquor as was served was of the best. origin of the system was due to a committee appointed to investigate the causes of pauperism, which committee reported that drunkenness was the chief cause.

The

The system is also partly regulated by plebiscite; that is, the voters in cities and towns and smaller electoral districts may decide, by a vote of all men and women over twenty-five years of age, whether the Samlag, or Bolag, system shall be adopted, or whether the sale of spirits may be entirely forbidden. In the majority of the small towns and in the country, with few exceptions, the retail sale of spirits is forbidden; this is true also of Finland and Sweden. In other countries, England and America for example, the system has been warmly praised, but not adopted. In Germany a similar system has been adopted in a few places, notably in Westphalia.

The heart of the system is that the sale of spirituous liquors shall be restricted by taking away from the sellers any chance of exorbitant profit, and that even this profit of five per cent shall be in the hands

of a company held responsible by the licensing power in town or country for the decent conduct of the business. In some places the sale of beer and cider is also handed over to the company; in Sweden particularly the companies sell milk, tea, coffee, and eatables, and are allowed to supplement their earnings by making their places of business as attractive as possible. In the majority of cases all sales of liquor are prohibited on Sundays, holidays, and days when by reason of a fair or an election crowds assemble, and in Göteburg the sale is forbidden after seven o'clock in summer, after six o'clock in winter.

In Stockholm the number of sales-places has decreased from 193 to 30; from 1 in 764 of the inhabitants to 1 in 10,816. In the year 1870 in Norway, which was the year before the law became effective, there were 501 places for the retail selling of spirits, or 1 to every 591 inhabitants; in 1890 the number had been reduced to 227 sales-places, or 1 to 1,413 inhabitants. In Bergen alone the reduction from 1877 to 1898 was from 1 in 3,400 to 1 in 8,200 inhabitants.

The total consumption of spirits in Sweden has decreased from 11.8 litres* per capita in 1871-1875 to 7.6 litres per capita in 1901-1905. In Stockholm the decrease has been from 26.56 litres in 187778 to 14.70 in 1905-06. In Norway the consumption has fallen from 5 litres per capita in 1870 to 2.6 litres in 1898, which is the smallest per head of the population of any country in Europe.

In the eighteen years from 1878-96 the Swedish companies contributed from their profits 74,000,000, or if the duties be added 110,000,000, kroner† to various benevolent objects. The net profits in Sweden from 1872-97 were over 20,000,000 kroner; from 1881-1907, 51,500,000; and in the year 1907, over 3,500,000 kroner. Up to 1894 the companies distributed their profits to such objects as they wished, and various sums were turned over to temperance societies; to churches, labor societies, orphan asylums, reading-rooms, libraries; to provide parks and to aid museums; to schools, particularly schools for cooking, sewing, and housekeeping, and even for street

building and street lighting in various parts of the country.

It must not be supposed that this system has escaped criticism. Total abstainers claim that the state has taken over the sale of spirits; others claim that the lower classes are thus compelled to pay a tax for the benefit of institutions for the welfare of the well-to-do, the assumption being, of course, that they drink more; it is claimed, too, that because the whole business of liquor-selling is now under the supervision of the more prominent and more eminent men of the community the business itself derives a certain moral status therefrom; again, it is claimed that the receipts of the companies and their profits are so large that they are tempted into uneconomical ventures, charitable and otherwise; and lastly, that where the companies, as in Sweden, are allowed to sell eatables and other things, and to provide games and newspapers, the working man is tempted to make a club of such places and to lose all sense of shame in frequenting them.

These criticisms are practically all from the standpoint of those who favor laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol. As Professor Morgenstierne writes: "The Götenburger system has never pretended to be a method of total prohibition, but an attempt to lessen the misuse of spirits and a weapon against the demoralizing influences of such misuse." No legislation can put a stop to drinking, gambling, and prostitution, though legislation, if wise and not too drastic, can, and has here and there, mitigated all three evils. Audacity and courage are the good side of gambling. The Viking's Code proclaims:

"Let your goods be divided by lot or by dice,

how it falls you may never complain; But the Sea-king himself takes no part in the lots -he considers the honor his gain."

Thousands of years of the use of the milder forms of alcohol, by civilizations that have not only mastered the world, but furnished it with its most cherished ornaments, show that total abstinence is a forlorn solution of the liquor question; as the Viking's Code reads: "Wine is all-father's drink, and the cup is allowed if you only can use it with sense"; and productivity and the fundamental law of the persistence of the

human race upon the earth is the other side of the shield of the last and most repulsive evil. To attempt to stamp out these evils under a legislative iron heel of total prohibition is always everywhere doomed to failure, and to something even worse than failure, should such exaggerated legislation produce an artificial curiosity, as it often does. The men who, in a seventy-foot vessel, took the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic Ocean in their stride, and who are still to-day the bravest sailors and fishermen in the world, are not so foolish as to turn to slavery to find freedom. The clanking chains of legislation are heavy these days elsewhere in the world, but not here. With a common sense born of mountain and sea and storm and solitude, they have attacked not the temptation but the tempter and put him in harness for the state. It is a philosophy of legislation that we all may study with profit.

We could if we would-if the politicians dared, would be more accurate-in every great city in America do away with the liquor tempter, the gambling tempter, and the procuress male and female; but we prefer to fumble with the evil, which has no votes, rather than to attack those who live upon the exploitation of the evil, who have votes, money, and influence. We lose no votes by adopting the grape-juice code of morals; on the contrary, it intrenches us smugly in the citadel of hypocrisy; but it needs the viking temper to come out boldly and proclaim that the state must make it its business to see that no individual and no body of individuals shall make an exorbitant profit out of temptation. Life would soon become extinct were all forms of temptation to disappear, but there need be no fear of that, the devil is prolific enough. What we can do is to see to it that he should not be artificially stimulated to overproduction by being paid lavishly for his exertions.

It is not easy to give in figures the exact status of sobriety in any country, for the reason that so many diseases, so much ill health and unfitness, due to excessive drinking, are not put under that heading. In the years from 1856-60 in Norway the number of deaths assigned to drunkenness was put at 33 per 1,000; during the last

years of the century the numbers had fallen to 10.5 per 1,000, while crime, which is in its way an index, has steadily decreased. The average number of persons sentenced for transgression of the ordinary penal laws of the country twentyfive years ago was about 3,000, and despite the increase of population of some 400,000 the number of sentences since then has ranged below that figure, with a total of 2,967 convictions in 1909.

In 1894 an act of the legislature gave the towns the choice between prohibition of a retail trade in spirits or Samlag management. Every six years, if one-twentieth part of the electors demand a poll, a vote is taken on this issue. A majority of all electors, not merely of those voting, is required to effect a change. Those not voting are counted as being in favor of the status quo. Only one town of over 20,000 inhabitants has voted for prohibition, Stavanger; two towns of between 10,000 and 20,000; two between 5,000 and 10,000, but twenty-two of under 5,000 inhabitants. With few exceptions one may say that in Norway prohibition prevails in the country districts, and Samlag management in the larger towns.

The capital required by these Samlag companies is not large. The total capital of all the Samlags in Norway has never exceeded $145,000, and the average capital required in any given town is seldom more than $5,000.

Although no system will ever do away entirely with the evil effects of the misuse of alcohol, the preventive methods in Norway, which fifty years ago was one of the most drunken countries in the world, have worked marvels. During the period 18511905 the population increased by 60 per cent; the imports per inhabitant by 300 per cent, and the exports by 200 per cent, while the consumption of alcohol per inhabitant decreased by 45 per cent. During the period 1871-1905, when the Samlag was effective, the population increased over 30 per cent; imports per inhabitant by 130 per cent; exports by 100 per cent, and the consumption of alcohol per inhabitant decreased by about 40 per cent, a truly marvellous showing.

In comparison with other nations the figures are equally interesting. The aver

tries in the world, but if the consumption of beer and spirits be regarded as an infallible gauge of prosperity they should not be. Perhaps all that can be said fairly is that Norway is no longer a conspicuously and notoriously drunken nation, and that the Samlag system has the high merit of eliminating private profit and securing the monopoly value for the public; of insuring the highest quality of liquors sold; of reducing the number of licenses; of an easy enforcement of the law; of the destruction of the power of the spirit trade; of the furtherance of measures of reform; of prohibiting the sale to minors; of restricting the sale to those who pay cash; and, above all and best of all, of not becoming a tyranny by depriving the individual of all freedom of choice.

In Sweden, both in Göteburg and Stockholm, from January 1, 1913, new legislation prescribes that no individual shall be permitted to buy spirits either by bottle to take away, or to drink on the premises, without a permit countersigned by the police, thus effectually debarring the habit

I am far from being a fanatic on the subject of liquor legislation. If you will read "The Prelude" carefully, you will find that even Wordsworth admits having been drunk once, and that Doctor Beattie, who wrote the famous "Essay on Truth" about the time of our Revolution, soon afterward took to drink. But when I hear that we are in the hands of the money trust, I add together the $1,322,581,512 spent for alcoholic beverages, the $250,o00,000 wasted by the farmers, the $525,000,000 spent for tobacco, not to mention scores of other extravagances, and I wonder who would own our railroad securities were this $2,097,581,512 invested in our domestic concerns. Has any man a right to cry tyranny, who is a member of this $2,097,581,512 trust! In 1912 we drank 143,000,000 gallons of whiskey and brandy and 64,500,000 barrels of beer; we smoked 7,000,000 cigars, 14,000,000 cigarettes, 403,000,000 pounds of tobacco, and took 33,000,000 pounds of snuff. We received in revenue from the taxation of these luxuries $302,500,000.

the ends of the earth to view."

-Soldier and Sailor Too.

A-JIM, Pa-Jim!"

"PA

I can remember the very inflection of my mother's rich, fullthroated sarcasm, as she used to utter that Old Harbor taunt. Many a winter's evening of my boyhood that comforting admonition not to be a coward followed me out along the slope of our home dune, on my gloomy expeditions to the chickenhouse. It stretched out to me like a hand from the door of the kitchen, where my mother washed the supper things in a secure glow of light.

"Pa-Jim, Pa-Jim." An inland boy would have said "scared cat."

I had never seen Pa-Jim. He went away long before my generation came into the world, driven from Old Harbor by the sore scorn of a fishing people for a fishing captain who has betrayed his men. He was a Yankee with a crew of Yankees-in those days my own Portuguese had not yet come from the Islands to do the Cape's fishing. His schooner sailed away one day with twenty-three men. Three days later she came back with two-Pa-Jim VOL. LVI.-64

a shifting weather, and then while the dories were out a black gale came down over them, turning the Channel grounds to the hell they can be with the wind in the northeast. Pa-Jim turned tail and ran for the cover of the cape. Not one of those twenty dorymen was ever heard from again. Of the three left on board, the "spare hand" was washed from the bowsprit, still cursing the coward at the wheel, and the cook came ashore in Old Harbor on a stretcher, half out of his mind, but raving at Pa-Jim with the other half. Pa-Jim went away, no one knew or cared where, before the week was out. But "Pa-Jim" stayed in Old Harbor.

It is curious to remember how completely that name had grown into the Old Harbor tongue. Even the very little children had it with their meagre first levies of words. So I would say to my brother, who was scarce more than a baby at the time of which I write, "Aw, Pa-Jim, Man'el, Pa-Jim-he won't hurt you,' when he bolted at sight of a yellow turtle in the back-country. And he in turn would scorn me with "Pa-Jim, y'self,' when I drew back at the spectacle of his

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