was a young and pretty waitress, and she was laying
down to another waitress her preeminent respecta
bility and discretion. Mrs. Grundy drew the line
at spirits, but allowed that it was quite proper for
a clean young girl to drink beer and to go into a
public house to drink it.

Not only is this beer unfit for the people to drink
it, but too often the men and women are unfit
to drink it. On the other hand, it is their very
unfitness that drives them to drink it. Ill-fed,
suffering from innutrition and the evil effects of
overcrowding and squalor, their constitutions de
velop a morbid craving for the drink, just as the
sickly stomach of the over-strung Manchester fac
tory operative hankers after excessive quantities of
pickles and similar weird foods. Unhealthy work
ing and living engenders unhealthy appetites and
desires. Man cannot be worked worse than a horse
is worked, and be housed and fed as a pig is housed
and fed, and at the same time have clean and
wholesome ideals and aspirations.

As home-life vanishes, the public house appears.
Not only do men and women abnormally crave
drink, who are overworked, exhausted, suffering
from deranged stomachs and bad sanitation, and
deadened by the ugliness and monotony of existence;
but the gregarious men and women who have no
home-life flee to the bright and clattering public

[[302]]

p301 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p302w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p303

v?