even
though the fact may be quite generally known that the substance does harm.
In the first place, those who have formed the habit suffer inconvenience
and distress when deprived of its use. In the second place, a number of
people will have become interested in the production and sale of the
substance, and these will lose financially if it is discontinued. In the
third place, those of the rising generation will, from imitation or
persuasion, be constantly acquiring the habit before they are sufficiently
mature to decide what is best for them. Thus may the use of a substance
most harmful, such as the opium of the Chinese, be indefinitely
continued--a species of slavery from which the individual finds it hard to
escape.

Such is human nature and such are the forces and influences of human
society, that the freeing of a people from the bondage of some
habit-forming drug cannot be accomplished without strenuous and persistent
effort. Education, persuasion, the good example of abstainers, and legal
restrictions must be pitted against the forces that make for its
continuance. Such a struggle is now in progress in all civilized countries
relative to the use of alcoholic beverages.(135)

*How the Use of Alcohol became a Social Custom.*--The general use of
alcohol as a beverage may be accounted for by three facts. Alcohol is a
habit-forming drug; it has a stimulating effect which many have found
agreeable; and being a product of the fermentation of fruit juices and
other liquids containing sugar, it is easily obtained. Through the
operation of these causes the human family became habituated very early to
the use of alcohol. The "wine" of primitive man, however, did little harm
as compared with the alcoholic liquors of modern times. It was a weak
solution and on account of the crude methods of manufacture and storage
could only be produced in limited quantities. Perhaps the worst effect of
its early use was the establishment of a general belief in its power to
benefit, since this laid the foundation for excess in its use when the
developments of a later period made it possible.

During the eleventh century the method of making alcoholic drinks from
starch-producing substances, such as wheat, barley, and potatoes, became
quite generally known, and also the method of concentrating them by
distillation. This knowledge made possible the manufacture of alcoholic
drinks in large quantities and in considerable variety. Alcoholic
ind