Restoration Review: Leroy Garrett, Editor

Some Startling Facts About . . .

THE CUP OF FURY
By Upton Sinclair

The liquor industry spends approximately $250,000,000 a year to advertise and promote its products, and additional millions of dollars on “educational” work. The liquor lobby is in every state capitol and in our national capitol; it has card files of executives and legislators. The lobby knows who its friends are, and it seeks to hold them. It knows who its enemies are, and it seeks to convert or defeat them.

The lobbies have several purposes. Always, of course, to fight against Prohibition movements and to campaign for lower taxes on liquors. They insist that they are four-square against drunkenness. Moderation is what they preach. Alcoholism is a “disease” they deplore.

Alcoholism is a disease, of course. But it scarcely seems to me that this excuses or clears the distillers of responsibility. Cancer does not advertise itself as a symbol of “thoughtful hospitality”; heart disease does not spend a quarter of a billion dollars annually to announce that it is an “aid to gracious living.” Neither polio nor tuberculosis describe themselves in handsome posters and colorful magazine-spreads as a means to healthful relaxation and enjoyment. The Brewers Digest once discussed the sales condition of the beer industry, and reached the conclusion that it “had not yet found a satisfactory answer to the problem of introducing beer to a high percentage of the younger generation.” Other diseases are not sold, advertised, pressured, promoted, lobbied and press-agented in this way. Other diseases are fought with drastic surgery or skilled preventive medicine.

I have come to a point in this book, I believe, where I must for a time depart from my stories about my friends and fellows in the world of writing. With you I want to look at facts and statistics about liquor; the chemistry of its effects, the extent of its damage and the cost of its depredations. With you I want to look at the record of youthful drinking in our nation today. These were the facts which impelled me to write this book; they frighten me, and they rouse in me a desire to fight with the weapon I know best—truthful words.

There are more than four and a half million alcoholics in this nation today, and almost three-quarters of a million of them are women. This is the figure given us by the Yale University Center of Alcoholic Studies. It is a figure for the year 1953, arrived at in the last month of 1955; but there is no reason to believe that the number of alcoholics decreased during the long months while statistics were gathered.

Indeed, every indication presented in the study is that the number today must be far higher. The percentage of alcoholics per 100,000 Americans increased only slightly between 1952 and 1953; but between 1940 and 1952, it increased by forty-five percent among males and fifty-two percent among females.

Notice that these figures are based on population—so that when one reads that there are 7,800 alcoholics in Washington, DC, for every 100,000 people, it means that there are 7,800 alcoholics in a group of people which includes newborn babies, grade-school children, young teenagers, adults who abstain completely, and finally the adults who drink. The figure of concern to me is how many of these adults who are “social drinkers” and “moderate drinkers” become alcoholics—because that’s the way my father and his brothers began, and that’s what Jack London and George Sterling thought they were, and what Hart Crane and Dylan Thomas hoped to be: “social drinkers.”

The answer to my question comes from Dr. Andrew Ivy, professor of the Department of Physiology of the University of Illinois. Reporting the results of investigations made by the Institute of Scientific Studies for the Prevention of Alcoholism, Dr. Ivy declared that one out of every sixteen casual, social, moderate drinkers becomes an alcoholic; one out of nine becomes what he calls a “problem drinker.” He went on to express the fear that should the present rate of increase in alcohol consumption and alcoholism continue, the ratio of the “problem drinker” to the “social drinker” will similarly increase within ten or fifteen years from one in nine to one in five.

Alcoholism is now the nation’s fourth most serious health problem. Science has begun to find ways to treat it with a variety of weapons, vitamins and hormones to restore the body balance, drugs to decrease the pressure of psychological difficulties, other drugs to keep the alcoholic from going back to the bottle by making him violently ill if he “falls off the wagon,” and psychotherapy to get at the emotional reasons for his urge to destroy himself with whiskey. Each day there are new studies of why liquor “gets at” some people more than others: it is a chemical imbalance, one school says. It is an allergy, says the next faction.

It is even made plain that in truth no one who drinks escapes ill effects. The December, 1953, issue of Scientific American magazine featured an article by Leon A. Greenberg, associate professor and director of the Department of Applied Physiology at Yale University. He is one of the founders of the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, and the inventor of the Alcometer, the device by which the police tell whether you are High, Tight, or Drunk. There could be no better authority.

Dr. Greenberg tells us that alcohol is not digested, but passes directly into the bloodstream. When it reaches the brain, this is what happens:

A blood concentration of about .05 per cent of alcohol, which in a person of average size results from drinking two or more ounces of whiskey, depresses the uppermost level of the brain—the center of inhibitions, restraint and judgment. At this stage the drinker feels that he is sitting on top of the world; he is “a free human being”; many of his normal inhibitions vanish; he takes personal and social liberties as the impulse prompts; he is long-winded and can lick anybody in the country. Such a man has undergone an obvious blunting of self-criticism.

Double that amount, and the drinker begins to stagger. Professor Greenberg tells us:

Contrary to old and popular belief, alcohol does not stimulate the nervous system. The illusion of stimulation results from the removal of inhibitions and restraints. The effects may be compared to a releasing of the brakes, not a stepping on the accelerator. Even with a few drinks, digital dexterity is reduced; auditory and visual discrimination fall away; tactile perception is lowered; the speed of motor response drops. Despite these measurable losses, the drinker often asserts that his reaction, perception and discrimination are better.

This is the false effect, then, which has led so many writers to believe that their work is more fluent and inspired after a round of drinks. Like “peace gestures” from a warring nation, whiskey’s first false glow succeeds in making even shrewd and trained observers let down their guard. They recognize the eventual danger, yet want to believe the present propaganda. Here, for example, is the way Stanley Walker expressed his thoughts on drinking in his book, City Editor:

In the popular mind, a newspaper man is one who drinks a great deal. It is true that most newspaper men drink; it is also true that booze takes many of them to a pathetic ending. But the majority of newspaper men today are careful about their liquor; they have to be . . . the stories of reporters who write just as well on twelve highballs as when cold sober are utter bunk. A man may stagger horribly through writing a column while groggy and get by with it, but he would have done much better if he had had nothing to drink.

All the industry is now awakening to the fact that people indeed do “much better” when sober. Professor Greenberg and his colleagues at Yale report that the alcoholic worker is absent from his job an average of twenty-five days a year; that while on the job, his accident rate is double that of the normal employee. Current estimates are that alcoholic workers and employees with “hangovers” cost industry one billion dollars a year in money and 400,000,000 man-hours of time. Every day of the week, some 175,000 men and women are absent from work because of what they drank the night before.

And do you want the picture of other costs of drunkenness? Here in my state, it was announced that the cost of liquor-caused traffic casualties was over $36,500,000 in Los Angeles alone. In Massachusetts, they studied the relationship between the amount of money received as revenue income from the sale of liquor, and money paid out because of alcoholism; and they found that for everyone dollar of liquor revenue coming to the state treasury, the taxpayer paid out $4.82 to take care of known liquor-caused cases, jail costs, hospitalization, emergency care on highways, and welfare work.

One final set of figures: in 1953, when—according to Yale University—there were 4,589,000 alcoholics in this nation, our national consumption of liquor was reckoned at 18.95 gallons per person reaching the staggering total of 3,002,000,000 gallons.

I reflect on all these figures, and in truth I would expect to find a nation united against the glamorizing of drinking. Instead I read in one of our smart magazines an account of two days spent with one of our most eminent novelists. I learned in the reading of it that the gentleman desires either bourbon or champagne every hour or two, and certainly devotes a good part of his conversation to the flavors and qualities of these liquors. In another publication, one of our most widely-circulated weekly magazines, there was an account of a second respected and eminent novelist. I quote a part of one sentence, with the permission of the magazine writer: “He escapes periodically and sometimes for periods of weeks into alcoholism, until his drinking has become legendary in his town and in his profession, and hospitalization and injections have on occasion been necessary to save his life.”

I read these reports, and I wonder what the reaction of our youth will be as they peruse them. Will they feel, as did the Lamb hero, that one must burn the house to its foundation in order to roast a pig? Will they feel that the pathway to genius is through gin?

Just what is the pathway our youth is following?

Look with me, if you will, into a book which gives many of the answers. It is titled Drinking in College, and was written by Robert Straus and Selden D. Bacon, who based their report on research conducted at Yale University.

The subtitle of the work is “A Survey of the Customs and Attitudes Toward Alcohol of Men and Women in Twenty-seven American Colleges.” The flaps of the book’s jacket express its contents clearly:

This is the long-awaited report of the survey conducted by the Yale Center of Alcoholic Studies on the drinking customs and attitudes of college students in the United States. From 1949 through 1951, seventeen thousand men and women students in twenty-seven colleges provided information about their social background and personal habits and attitudes toward liquor . . . Here at last is an organized body of factual knowledge to replace speculation, to provide a basis for a realistic explanation of behavior, and to suggest more reasonable and realistic action by persons. . . who are called upon to make important decisions and provide guidance for young people.

College students are a group of particular significance for the study of drinking. They are at the age when drinking starts for many persons, initial experiences are fresh in their minds, and they easily identify the pressures and purposes associated with early drinking. This study shows who drinks and who does not, when and where those who drink first started drinking, why and how much they drink, the influence of parents and the significance of income, religious affiliation, and ethnic background.

The basic mass figure is: seventy-four percent of all the 17,000 students “reported having used alcoholic beverages to some extent.” The chapters of the book report on various aspects of the problem, and I quote a few of the figures:

Chapter Four: Seventy-nine percent of the men who drink and sixty-five percent of the women who drink report that their drinking started before entering college.

Chapter Six: “Drinking Parents.” Two-thirds of the fathers drink, and so do forty-eight percent of the mothers.

Chapter Seven: What do Students Drink?” As first preference, the answer is: for men, forty-seven percent beer, eleven percent wine, forty-two percent spirits. For women the choices are: seventeen percent beer, twenty-five percent wine, and fifty-eight percent spirits.

Chapter Eight: “How Much and How Often?” Frequency during the past year, one to five times: for men, nineteen percent; for women, twenty-seven percent.

Twice a month to once a week: for men, thirty-six percent; for women, thirty-seven percent. Four or more days a week: for men, three percent; for women, one percent.

Chapter Nine: “When, Where, with Whom?” We learn that of students who drink, eleven percent of the men and nine percent of the women began drinking between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Thirty-six percent of the men and forty-seven percent of the woman began in their sixteenth or seventeenth years. Fifty-three percent of the men and forty-four percent of the women began at eighteen or older.

Chapter Ten: “High, Tight, and Drunk.” “Tight” is defined as “Unsteadiness in ordinary physical activities, or noticeable aggressiveness, or over-solicitousness, or loss of control over social amenities or of verbal accuracy, or slight nausea.” Twenty percent of the men and fifty-one percent of the women report that they have never been tight. Twenty-five percent of the men and thirty two percent of the women report that they have been tight from one to five times. Eighteen percent of the men and nine percent of the girls report being tight from six to fifteen times; seventeen percent of the men and four percent of the girls, from sixteen to fifty times. For from fifty-one to one hundred times, the percentage of women is negligible and that of men is five percent. Finally, four percent of the men report being “tight” a hundred times or more; and eleven percent of the men and four percent of the women report having been tight “at times,” but do not state the frequency.

And then come the table reporting on those who have been drunk, which is defined as “an overstepping of social expectancies (short of completely passing out), loss of control in ordinary physical activities, and inability to respond to reactions of others.” Thirty-eight percent of the men and eighty-two percent of the women report that this has occurred once; and eight percent of the men and one percent of the women report that it occurred from six to ten times. Beyond that the percentage of women is again negligible, but five percent of the men report having been drunk from eleven to twenty times, and four percent of the men and one percent of the women report that on occasion they “have been drunk,” but do not state the frequency.

And then the most advanced stage, Passing Out. The number of those who report this as having happened “once” is sixteen percent for men, seven percent for women. “Twice” is eight percent for men, one percent for women. More than twice, one percent of women drinkers and nine percent of the men.

The book reveals that seventy-nine percent of the men and sixty-five percent of the women had their first drink before entering college. With regard to parents drinking, ninety-two percent of the men report that both of their parents used alcohol; eighty-three percent of the women report the same.

I invite all parents to examine the statement which follows: “When both parents drink, eighty-three percent of the female students are drinkers, compared with a mere twenty-three percent with both parents abstain. These data suggest that parental example is a factor of major significance in drinking by young people.”

Remember, then, that seventy-four percent of our college youth are now “social” and “moderate” drinkers. Imagine that one of every sixteen of them will be an alcoholic. Remind yourself that one out of every five or nine will be a “problem drinker.” You will go with these facts to the young people you know, and you will warn them and plead with them.

And I can tell you now what many will say: “But drinking is a custom. Everybody in my fraternity (sorority, class) does it. If you don’t you’re a freak!”

Fortunately, the authors of Drinking in College delved into this problem as well. And Table 95 in their book, headed “Attitude Toward Abstainers,” tells quite clearly what happens to one socially if he does not drink in college.

If the student abstains, and makes no special point about it, fifty-four percent of his fellow-students will have feelings of admiration, approval and respect for him. Forty percent will be indifferent to his position. Four percent will feel resentment, scorn, disapproval or derogation. Two percent will feel pity.

Thus, among every ten of his classmates, there will be nine who either do not care or feel real admiration for the student who does not drink. Just one will feel scorn or pity.

And what about the girls who abstains from liquor? In this case, thirty-two percent of her fellow-students will not care at all. Sixty-two percent will admire, approve and respect her. And again, four percent will feel hostility; and two percent, pity. Almost two-thirds of the women will think the better of the girl who does not drink!

These are the figures which the brewers and the distillers fear! These are the figures which make them spend a quarter of a billion dollars a year to show that liquor is essential to salesmen, their advertising experts and their publicists, their copywriters and their artists deem it important to introduce their product “to a high percentage of the younger generation.”

They know that more than half the country admires the men and the women who do not fall for the lies of their advertisements nor the lies of their product.

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