On alcoholism in the industrial era

For the middle classes, psychoanalysis offered itself as a possibility to cure them of their mental afflictions. However, the proletarians, the servants, the small tradesmen, and office clerks were provided with cheap drugs - commodities which were consumed on a massive scale and, naturally, also made handsome profits. Alcohol played the most important role by far. Its devastating effects on the drinkers and their families is frequently depicted in the early short films and this theme was also extremely extensively dealt with audiovisually, e.g., in didactic series of slides for the magic lantern. Friedrich Engels considered it 'a moral and physical necessity', that 'a very great number of workers succumb to alcoholism' because of the catastrophic conditions of their lives. In the 1870's, there were 133,840 breweries in England and Wales, and a pub for every 182 inhabitants. Up to the early years of the First World War, alcohol was the most important opiate of the people, which according to Lloyd George, 'caused more destruction than the German U-boats put together'.

- op. cit. pg. 84-85