required. One test had to do with a man's quickness in adding up columns of figures for half an hour a day during six days. Those who were being tested without alcohol added their figures as rapidly and correctly as they could. Then the alcohol period began, and now for thirteen days these same students used the alcohol and continued to spend the half hour a day at their addition tables. The work went more and more slowly during this alcohol period until the nineteenth day. Alcohol was then dropped. The men continued to add, and there was immediate and marked improvement in the work they did. This continued until the twenty-sixth day, when they returned to alcohol, and once again there was change for the worse.

Thus the seesaw between alcohol and no alcohol went on until no doubt remained. It was clear to all that the men always did poorer work during the alcohol period and better work when they had no alcohol.

There was also the test with the typesetters in Heidelberg. Dr. Aschaffenburg carried on this set of experiments. Four skilled men were chosen. Three were in the habit of using alcohol in small amounts, the fourth acknowledged that he took too much once in a while, but all were ready to go without it now or to take it, as the tests demanded. All four men were indeed anxious to know whether they themselves could use their fingers more swiftly and accurately with or without the alcohol

The amount which Dr. Aschaffenburg gave them on the days when they took alcohol was one ounce and a quarter; that is, the wine which they drank had about two and a half tablespoonfuls of alcohol in it.

The men drank it fifteen minutes before they began their typesetting. For fifteen minutes each day they worked hard and fast. Each did what he could to set up as much type as possible; and yet, as shown in the illustration on the next page, in every case but one alcohol hindered and did not help them.

But- and here we meet a curious fact-in every case the men themselves thought they were doing better and swifter work when they used alcohol than when they did not use it. It appears, also, that this is the usual belief of those who use alcohol. In spite of this, however, many careful experiments which have been made prove that the opposite is true.

Sweden has turned special attention to her soldiers. She wishes to know whether a glass of wine or beer taken before the shooting begins will strengthen or weaken a soldier who tries to hit the enemy.

Lieutenant Rengt Boy carried on the experiments. The soldiers selected were picked men, all fine marksmen. Their targets were two hundred yards away, and guns and rifles were used. On different days the men, in groups of six, were tested with alcohol and without it. The amount of alcohol given was about three

NON-ALCOHOL DAY

BRALCOHOL DAY.

Each group of four columns shows the work of the same man for four successive days. Black columns show how many letters they set up on non-alcohol days. Dotted columns show how many letters they set up on alcohol days

tablespoonfuls. This was taken in the shape of wine or beer, sometimes the night before, sometimes within an hour of the target practice; and the result of it all was the discovery that in every instance each man in each group did his quickest firing and his best hitting when he had had no alcohol whatever for two or three days beforehand, and that he did his poorest work when he had used alcohol at any time within twenty-four hours... As staff surgeon Mernetsch reports:

When under alcohol the result was thirty per cent less hits in quick fire; and the men always thought they were shooting faster, whilst actually they shot much more slowly. When slow aiming was allowed the difference even went to fifty per cent.

With these facts in mind we are not surprised at the present great anti-alcohol movement among railroad companies. By their own experience they know that alcohol reduces a man's chance to do his best and quickest work either with muscles or brain. Consequently, all over the country railroad companies have become what might be called huge temperance societies. They are determined to protect their men from alcohol, for the sake of protecting passengers from disaster, cars from being wrecked, and money from being wasted.

In 1908 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company issued the following notice:

Officers and employees will take notice that there will not be employed, nor permitted to remain in service in the capacity of trainmaster,

dispatcher, operator, engineer, fireman or trainman, yardman, block or other signalman, watchman, or in other positions where in any way charged with the direction or operation of trains, persons who use intoxicants, either while on duty or off duty. Under no circumstances will exceptions be made.

A number of railroads forbid their men to use alcohol while on duty and say that "their habitual use, or the frequenting of places where they are sold, is sufficient cause for dismissal."

Indeed, this movement against alcohol has gone so far that the Anti-saloon League Year Book for 1909 quotes the case of what is called "the largest temperance movement any one business concern has ever known." This was in connection with the Northwestern Railroad, when twenty-five thousand railroad employees signed a monster temperance pledge. It seems that not long before the railroad had been reducing its working force for the winter. When this was done the employees noticed that every one who was cut off was a drinking man, and that all those who never drank alcohol in any shape were retained. The railroad officers even went so far as to declare that in future their plan would be never to turn off a man who was a total abstainer. This, then, was what stirred the men to action. They all wished to keep on earning money, they wished to run no risk of being dismissed from work because of alcohol, and for this reason it was that twenty-five thousand of them signed the temperance pledge.