cigar, pointing out that long before an increase in prices was agitated certain large retail concerns saw the advantage of featuring six-, seven- and eleven-cent cigars.

Another journal, neither drug nor tobacco, says that the situation is somewhat analogous to that produced by Schedule B of the war tax. The extra cost ought to be passed along to the consumer, but it's so small it can't be!

CARRIED TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION.

What shall be the druggists' attitude toward liquor sales? That is a pertinent question these days, with more than half of the United States "dry" territory.

The State of Washington is much disturbed in this particular; we have had occasion to refer to conditions out there quite frequently during the last few months. Washington went "dry" January 1, 1916, and since then there has been more or less trouble. Blind-pig drug stores have sprung up, thereby blotching the good name of the drug business in general. President Johnson of the State Association recommended that legislation be sought which would withhold from druggists the right to sell liquor under any circumstances. He took the ground that the average store could not legitimately sell enough liquor to get back in profits what it cost the druggist in the way of annual taxes-$25 to the Federal government and $25 to the State; $50 in all.

Dr. Johnson's recommendation caused a heated discussion, and the association voted it down. However, the motion prevailed that a referendum of all resident registered druggists in the State be taken, and a committee consisting of H. G. Duerfeldt and E. L. Jones, of Spokane, and E. L. Smalley, of Walla Walla, was appointed to conduct the vote. This question was asked: "Do you favor a law which will remove from the drug store all alcoholic liquor except alcohol (this to be used for manufacturing only), and also a repeal of the $25 State tax?"

Four hundred and ninety-eight druggists voted, the outcome being nearly two to one in favor of elimination: 324 for, 174 against.

is located, do not want to conduct a liquor business; in fact, they know that it is next to impossible to do so and at the same time keep within the limits of moral obligation.

In Washington the matter has been put in the hands of the association's legislative committee, and it is predicted that the legislature when it meets this winter will enact a measure which will render it unlawful for druggists to sell liquor in any form or under any circumstances, even on physicians' prescriptions.

Our own State of Michigan went “dry” last month, as did Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, although the lid is not to be closed down at once, time being given the liquor interests to get out from under. Virginia became "dry" a month or two ago. And whenever a State becomes "dry" it has been the common experience that the thirsty ones turn to the drug stores. Great pressure is brought to bear, temptation which the druggist is not always able to withstand.

It is a matter that demands the best thought in the profession. Newspaper notoriety connecting the drug business with the illicit selling of whisky cannot fail to prove detrimental. If measures serving as checks are not fostered inside the calling, harsh and uncompromising enactments must be expected to spring from sources outside of it. The Washington association is doing good work.

TESTING THE ILLINOIS NARCOTIC LAW.

The narcotic law in Illinois permits a physician to dispense habit-forming drugs to habitual users, when such treatment is based on good faith; but the State Board of Pharmacy contends that good faith has not been shown when it can be proved that a doctor has supplied a patient with heroin on 184 days out of a total of 412 and sometimes in quantities exceeding a hundred tablets. The Board has filed suit against Dr. N. L. Johnson, and the patient, a woman, is being held as a witness.

According to information supplied by F. C. Dodds, secretary of the Board, Dr. Johnson's narcotic records do not balance very well. He can show where he purchased 8850 heroin tablets, and his files show that he has disposed of more than 14,000 to this one patient alone. Secretary Dodds and a special inspector spent weeks in collecting evidence, and it is stated that their findings are extremely damaging.

Three charges have also been filed against a

being held at the Elks' Club, Brooklyn, November 21.

Few men are better known in pharmacy than Dr. Anderson. He is chairman of the New York Pharmaceutical Conference, is an expresident of the N. A. R. D., and has been president of the New York State Pharmaceutical Association. He is an expert parliamentarian with a special aptitude for debate: following these bents he has had a great deal to do with shaping legislation, local, State, and national. With all of this he is a teacher of the first rank. He was with the Brooklyn College when it opened its doors twenty-five years ago, and in 1902 he was asked to assume the

duties of dean, a position he has creditably held ever since.

Representative men from different parts of the country were present to assist prominent New Yorkers in doing the honors, and the scene was one of much gaiety and enthusiasm.

THE WM. R. WARNER CO. GOES TO

We are living in a "big" age. About the middle of NEW YORK. last month the treasurer of the Ford Motor Company was on the witness stand. Questioned about the signing of a $24,000,000 contract he replied, "Oh, that's a mere matter of routine!"

So when we learn that the Wm. R. Warner Company, of Philadelphia and St. Louis, "abandoned a new $500,000 building now under construction" in Philadelphia to go to New York and buy the $1,000,000 structure once occupied by the B. Altman Department Store, we are inclined to accept the information as a matter of course.

But one of the points of significance is that the immense Warner business was started in a retail drug store. Moreover, the business is now in the hands of Henry and G. A. Pfeiffer and G. D. Merner, all of whom began their business careers in retail drug stores-the Pfeiffers in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Mr. Merner in Allison, the same State.

Not very long ago the announcement was made that Wm. R. Warner & Co. had bought a controlling interest in the Richard Hudnut perfumery business. The Hudnut business is to be operated separately, as heretofore, but it will occupy a floor in the recently-acquired New York building, it is stated.

ROBBERIES ARE PARTLY RESPONSIBLE.

The jobbers in New York City are indignant over the charge recently made by Justice Cornelius F. Collins, of the court of special sessions, that "some wholesalers" are responsible for the traffic in narcotic drugs which has grown up in the "underworld" since the regular sources of supply were cut off by the enactment of the Harrison law. It is possible that an occasional jobber is not as particular as he might be in safeguarding the sale of narcotics, but we are convinced that the great majority of both jobbers and manufacturers would gladly dispense with the sale of narcotics entirely if physicians did not insist

upon their use and did not find them absolutely necessary in the practice of medicine.

Isn't it just possible that the narcotics more or less freely sold in the "underworld" come from the systematic thefts committed all over the country? It is more or less common knowledge, for instance, that one manufacturing house alone has suffered ten thieveries in its different branches during the last few months, while another has suffered eight. Usually anywhere from one to five thousand dollars' worth of narcotics are stolen at a time, and when these supplies are sold at extortionate prices to consumers, the profits are enor

mous.

If these losses have been suffered by two houses only, what must the thefts have been all over the country when we recall that there are about four hundred jobbing houses engaged in the drug business in the United States, not to mention nearly fifty thousand retailers?

DR. TAKAMINE TO ASSIST JAPAN,

Since Japan took its place among those nations which seek for the best there is in the way of knowledge and enlightenment, few opportunities have been overlooked. They are wide-awake in Japan, eager to embrace every opportunity tending to place them as a nation on a higher industrial and commercial plane. It is not a source of surprise, therefore, that a big dye industry is to be established: the government is to assist private interests in building up a business of this character.

Before making the start, however, Switzerland, France, England, and the United States were canvassed for suitable talent to collaborate with the government in putting the enterprise on its feet. Dr. Jokichi Takamine and Dr. Alcan Hirsch, both of the United States, were chosen.

Dr. Takamine, it will be readily recalled, in his capacity as consulting chemist to Parke, Davis & Co. gave medicine the two products, Taka-Diastase and Adrenalin. He ranks high as a chemist and as an original investigator. Dr. Hirsch, though not so well known, is a scientist of note.

Drs. Takamine and Hirsch, who will sail for Japan November 30, were guests at a farewell dinner at the Waldorf, New York, about twenty of the leading chemists of the country being present.

Where does the druggist come in, and how are his interests affected?

There are no figures available since 1914, but during that year so-called patent medicines represented 53 per cent of a jobber's sales. Perhaps it may be said that not since 1890 have a jobber's sales in this class of goods amounted to less than 50 per cent of his volume of business.

There is no way of knowing how much of the retail druggist's volume of business is represented by patent medicine sales. It probably does not reach 50 per cent, however, for a druggist's activities are more wide-spread than are those of his jobber. Perhaps 33 1/3 per cent would be about right.

It follows, then, that possibly one-third of the druggist's business is involved in the controversy. What is being done to safeguard the druggist's interests?

Well, in 1913 a committee was appointed by the American Pharmaceutical Association which is known as the "Commission on Proprietary Medicines." It was contended at that time that the proprietary medicine issue could no longer be evaded; at least a thorough investigation of underlying principles and conditions must be made. That committee, consisting of James H. Beal, Martin I. Wilbert, John C. Wallace, Charles Caspari, Jr., and Thomas F. Main, with Dr. Beal as chairman, is still in existence and still working. Its first report was made in 1915; its second at the Atlantic City meeting of the A. Ph. A. in September of this

year.

The commission felt that the first thing to do was to take some action towards separating the sheep from the goats. Perhaps, indeed, this was all that it would be necessary to do. If the evils in the industry could be remedied, the problem would be solved. To that end

the Commission drafted what is known as the Ten Declarations, these ten tenets "specifying the requirements to which proprietary package medicines should conform in order to render them suitable for direct sale to the general public."

These ten declarations were approved by the A. Ph. A. at its annual meeting in San Francisco last year, and a little later nine of the ten were approved by the National Wholesale Druggists' Association; but the longest step forward, perhaps, was taken when what virtually amounted to the entire ten provisions were incorporated by amendment in the bylaws of the Proprietary Association of America, the patent medicine men themselves thereby agreeing to live up to the standards outlined by the A. Ph. A. Commission.

The 1916 report of the Commission, presented at the recent meeting at Atlantic City, takes up a point that was not covered in its other report, that being the right of the pharmacist to deal in proprietary medicines. The Commission finds that there is a legitimate tended for the domestic treatment of common field for ready-made or package remedies inailments, provided they are appropriate for use in the particular affections for which they are recommended, and are not deceptively labeled or advertised or otherwise improperly exploited. Says the Commission: "It is the right of the pharmacist, sanctioned by custom and tradition, to keep such remedies in stock, whether manufactured by himself or by others, and to supply them to the general public on demand." A word of caution is interjected, however.

The pharmacist "should refrain from usurping the proper functions of the physician, especially in regard to diagnosis."

We have, then, the right of the druggist to handle proprietary remedies justified by the Commission, and we have the assurance that reform measures are being initiated within the ranks of the proprietary manufacturers themselves. In the latter connection much that was objectionable, not only to doctors, but to druggists, is gradually being eliminated. The drug trade is being put in a position to offer a front without fear of being flanked, and a groundwork is being prepared for perhaps a number of defensive movements.

What will they be? Time alone can tell. Meanwhile it is but the part of wisdom for every man engaged in the retail drug business

to give the matter many moments of serious consideration; nor should he at the same time fail to appreciate to the fullest degree what has been done for him in a really constructive way by those leaders in pharmaceutical thought comprising the A. Ph. A. Commission.

IS THE DRUGGIST TO REMAIN?

You perhaps remember that we had an editorial in the BULLETIN last month devoted to the attempt being made by the American Association of Labor Legislation to force upon this country a wide-spread scheme of compulsory health insurance. More light now comes on the proposition from other quarters.

We find Dr. Richard Cabot and Dr. Alexander Lambert, men conspicuously prominent in the medical world, voicing the prediction that the physician as we know him will cease to be. That is to say, the independent physician, charging individual fees to his patients, master and controller of his own destiny, will give way to the salaried physician under the control of State or corporate regulation. The machinery that will produce this radical change will lie inherent in social insurance.

If the physician is to pass away as an independent man, so likewise will the druggist. Does the druggist relish the prospect?

The proposed laws, you will remember, are to provide protection against illness and accidents for all workers earning less than $1200 a year. They will make provision for free drugs, free medical and surgical attention, free nursing, free hospital service, and the like. The drugs are to be furnished by dispensaries operated under the supervision of the social insurance commission in each State. Inasmuch as the scheme covers three-fourths or more of all the workers in the country, this means that three-fourths of all the business in drugs, prescriptions, and medical and surgical supplies will be taken away from drug stores as they exist to-day and will be deflected to these insurance dispensaries.

This also means, doesn't it, that large numbers of druggists will no longer be independent business men, but will revert to the status of clerks and will either be managers or employees in these dispensaries? Either that, or else the drug stores of the land will cease to be drug stores in fact and will in effect be

come general stores competing with other merchandising shops of which there are already far too many. The prospect is scarcely a wel

come one.

The druggists of America will not, we assume, give up their independence without a fight. As a matter of fact, economic independence, as the business of the world is now conducted, is a rare flower. The farmer is independent. The retail merchant is independent. Some classes of professional men are independent. Pretty nearly everybody else nowadays works for somebody at a salary and has to take orders. The druggist should realize his great good fortune. With a relatively small capital, and with a reasonable degree of ability, he may conduct his business as pleases himself, with complete freedom and liberty.

Does he want to give it up?

We assume that he does not, and we assume also that when these compulsory health bills appear this winter in various State legislatures he will be found resisting an inexcusable onslaught upon his independence. The State has no more right to sell drugs than it has to sell shoes-than it has to sell stoves-than it has to sell groceries. We don't want European paternalism in the United States. We can't have it, indeed, unless we run the serious risk of pauperizing and weakening the national character.

It is a significant thing that the American Federation of Labor is itself against this scheme of paternalistic legislation. Mr. Gom

pers and his associates don't want it. They realize that on the one hand it would weaken the character of the laboring man, and that on the other it would be impossible for the State to provide health insurance and medical attendance as cheaply and efficiently as they can be provided by private means.

A WIDENING BREACH.

Even a careless observer of drug affairs cannot fail to be impressed with a condition that is sure to result disastrously if permitted to go on unchecked. We refer to a spirit of unrest among drug clerks, on the one hand, and a certain critical attitude on the part of proprietors, on the other.

Employers complain of a shortage of competent clerks and of the high wages they are compelled to pay. They point out that profits are being reduced by reason of keen competi