ABSTRACT
The cocaine habit began among the negro roustabouts of New Orleans, who found that the drug enabled them to perform more easily the extraordinarily severe work of loading and unloading steamboats at which, perhaps for seventy hours at a stretch, they have to work, without sleep or rest, in rain, in cold and in heat. The pay is high, $150 a month, but the work is impossible without a stimulant. Whisky, while protecting the negro against the rain and cold, did not give him the endurance against fatigue that was needed. The negroes found that the drug enabled them to work longer and make more money, and so they took to it. Its use has grown steadily. A crusade against the use of the drug has begun in most of the towns, but as yet no effort has been made to prevent its sale in the country districts.
