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Temperance

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 1, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 17.

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Temperance.

Our Nation's Curse.

According to the statistics of the last census, and the recent internal revenue reports, the evil results of intoxicating liquors may be summed up as follows. The figures and facts are carefully made out, and the aggregate, in whatever light it is viewed, is frightful. Here are the statistics:—
There are in the United States 140,000 saloons as against 128,000 schools and 54,000 churches.
Manufacturers and sellers of strong drinks number 560,000,—twelve times the number of clergymen, four times that of teachers, nearly double all the lawyers, physicians, teachers, and ministers in this country combined.
The liquor business converts millions of bushels of grain, which God designed to preserve life, into a vile stuff that destroys it.
Intemperance is the cause, direct or indirect, of nearly all the loss of life by disasters, both on land and on sea.
It is reducing 200,000 children annually to beggary and want.
It is making 130,000 confirmed drunkards annually.
It furnishes three-fourths of the cases tried in our courts, and consequently causes three-fourths of the expenditures for maintaining them. It furnishes employment for the keepers of our county jails, city and State prisons, the cost of maintaining which must be met by the people.
It furnishes, directly or indirectly, two-thirds of the inmates of our asylums for the insane—another cause of expenditure by the people.
It necessitates in the cities and villages a police force many times as large as would otherwise be needed.
It is the cause of nearly all riots and public disturbances.
It is sending 150,000 annually to the drunkard's grave,—a mortality equal to the destruction of our standing army six times every year,—a greater destruction of life than was witnessed during any year of our civil war.
Kansas expended annually $3,000,000 previous to prohibition. This was three times its State debt.
New York City expended for beer $35,000,000 in 1877. Yet when the State expends $4,000,000 for a State-house, the people are struck with astonishment.
Intemperance is costing this nation annually over $1,500,000,000,—money enough to nearly pay our national debt.
Enough to purchase 200,000,000 barrels of flour, or four barrels for every person in the United States.
Enough to buy a suit of clothes worth $30 for every citizen of the United States.
Enough to clothe, furnish books, and educate 10,000,000 young men or women annually, or graduate 2,000,000 with a five years' course of study.
Enough to build 1,500,000 houses at $1,000 each.
Enough to purchase forty-acre homes for 1,000,000 persons, at $40 per acre.
Enough to build 300,000 school buildings worth $5,000, or a similar number of churches worth the same.
Enough to construct 75,000 miles of railroad at $20,000 per mile, or enough to go three times around the globe.
Enough to send a Bible to every person on the earth.
Enough to enable philanthropic societies to transform the hells of the earth into Edens.
Enough to furnish the means by which the world would become not only more intelligent but more cultured.
In a sentence, if intoxicating liquors were abolished entirely from our land, crimes, poverty, and misery of all kinds would largely cease.
The Boston fire destroyed $70,000,000 of property, thus attracting the attention of the civilized world. But New York's annual destruction of one-half as much by the foolish habit of beer-drinking, is passed by with only a few comments from the "fanatics."
The Chicago fire consumed about $200,000,000 of property. And every business almost throughout the civilized world stood still for two or three days because of the horror which justly took possession of each person's heart. By that fire few persons lost their lives; but 100,000 persons were rendered homeless. All Christendom responded to the cry until $7,500,000 was sent to their relief. But when seven such fires, reducing 200,000 children to a worse condition than the 100,000, and destroying the lives of 150,000, comes in one nation every year, nobody but "fanatics" pay attention to it.
It would naturally seem to any one who thinks, that all sane persons would take radical grounds against a business that annually costs the nation one-half as much as our national debt was at the close of the war.