Important Statistics

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 28, 1874

Important Statistics.

INQUIRIES are frequently sent to us respecting the statistics of the liquor traffic in this country. A correspondent of the New York Evening Post furnishes the following figures on this subject, claiming to have taken them from official documents.

Statistics showing the amount of money spent in the United States for intoxicating liquors during the year 1870, as taken from official records:

Imported and domestic distilled and spirituous liquors — $1,344,000,000 Brewed and fermented liquors — $123,000,000 Imported wines — $15,000,000 Domestic wines — $5,000,000 Total — $1,487,000,000

Add to this, $90,000,000, the cost of litigations, crimes, prisons, etc., caused in part by intemperance, and we have for a single year the enormous sum of $1,573,491,865.

The cost of flour and meat was — $530,000,000 The cost of cotton goods — $115,000,000 The cost of boots and shoes — $90,000,000 The cost of clothing — $70,000,000 The cost of woolen goods — $60,000,000 The cost of newspaper and job printing — $40,000,000 Total — $905,600,000

The quantity of distilled, fermented, and brewed liquors drunk was sufficient to fill a canal four feet deep, fourteen feet wide, and eighty miles long; if all the drinkers could be placed in procession, five abreast, they would make an army 130 miles long; and if those killed by the intemperate use of spirituous liquors were there also, we would see a suicide at every five miles, and 550 funerals per day; and if all the places where intoxicating liquors are sold were placed in rows, in direct lines, they would make a street 100 miles long.

There were 400,000 more persons engaged in the liquor business in the United States than in preaching the gospel and school-teaching; and from the effects of intoxicating drinks, 100,000 are annually sent to prisons, 150,000 to drunkards' graves, and 200,000 children are reduced to want. The total number of persons engaged in the business is 560,000 of which 56,663 are employed in making and selling annually 5,685,633 barrels of beer.

It is estimated that the clergy of the United States costs annually $12,000,000; the lawyers, criminals, prisons, etc., $90,000,000; and intoxicating liquors, as before said, $1,487,000,000.