Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X DRINK, BETTING, AND GAMBLING As long as the public-houses are practically the centres of the social life of the workmen, as long as they are the most accessible places in which he can spend his leisure, it is difficult to see how drinking is likely to be lessened to any great extent. It is consoling, however, to learn that the amount of drinking in public-houses has appreciably diminished since the legislation which made the publican as well as the drinker responsible for the drunkenness in his establishment. But the most pernicious drinking is not, we are told, that which takes place in the publichouse, but that which goes on constantly in the home. It is not easy to give absolute statistics as to the proportion of men at the works who drink more or less, but it is probably accurate to say that more than half of them do it enough to affect their health and their circumstances. That a man should drink occasionally does not prevent him from being a capable workman, and he is not permanently discharged because he has been seen intoxicated at the works; but it would be too great a risk to keep him there in that condition, and he is fined and sent home till he is sober. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon or to describe the effect of drink on the households, unhappily too numerous, in which it prevails; such descriptions in these days are multiplied everywhere, and are familiar to those who have not the opportunity of witnessing for themselves the terrible results of this tendency. Time after time one finds a household ruined, children growing up half-fed, the wife worn to a shadow, because the husband is drinking away half his money and his family are struggling to live on the rest. I have seen a woman absolutely wasting away...
