Making Men Very Cheap by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 29, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 18.

Making Men Very Cheap

By T.

THERE is a strong wave of prohibition sweeping over the country. Numerous states have declared for prohibition, and in many other states county after county has voted the liquor traffic out by means of the Local Option laws. Men who make a business of manufacturing and dispensing liquors are greatly alarmed and are doing all they can to keep their business from being overthrown. An instance of their frantic efforts is the following, that is being displayed as a large poster in many of the saloon windows and elsewhere thruout the states where the agitation is on:

FARMERS AND WORKINGMEN, ATTENTION! THE FOLLOWING FIGURES WILL INTEREST YOU Do you know that the brewers, maltsters, and distillers of the United States used in their products during the last year farm produce to the value of upward of ONE HUNDRED AND TEN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! including corn, barley, rye, oats, hay, and other grains of various kinds?

If the market for the barley fields of California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Missouri, is destroyed, those states will offer greater competition to the farmers who raise wheat and oats. If the farmers of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and the other rye and corn producing states can't find buyers for corn, it will mean additional competition for you.

Farmers and workingmen! Can you afford to allow the prohibition fanatic to destroy the market for your grain and labor?

Brewers and distillers furnish a livelihood for upward of two and one-half millions of people, and they buy annually in lumber, cooperage, building supplies, engines, boilers, glass, and other manufactured goods, averaging a value of $150,000,000, and they pay in license, revenue, and other state, county, and city taxes, one-third of all taxes paid in the United States.

Farmers! Can you longer afford to allow stump speakers, who pay no taxes, and who are employed by city organizations who pay no taxes, to add to your burdens by compelling you to maintain public institutions that are now supported by the business concerns that these interlopers are trying to kill?

An attempt is being made thruout the country to build up a political party power at the expense of the farmer and workingman.

Farmers! Do you intend to permit these crafty fanatics to rob you of the market for your grain and load you up with additional taxes which you can not afford to pay?

Every farmer, every workingman, and every man in the United States should now assert his right and use every effort to suppress this growing evil of prohibition and hypocritical humbug, which if allowed to prevail will create a financial crisis such as the world has never seen.

The foregoing arguments are the old stock "reasons" that have been offered by the liquor traffic all the years. Let it be granted that one hundred and ten million dollars' worth of grains are bought by the brewers and distillers each year. But what is the use they make of it after buying it?—They manufacture from it a commodity which has been the worst curse of all the ages. They manufacture from it a commodity that robs innocent children and helpless women of the necessary food and clothing in order that the husbands and fathers may wreck their manhood in the debaucheries of drunkenness. They manufacture from these grains that are one of the best material gifts of Heaven, a commodity that builds up and inflames the worst brute passions and instincts. They manufacture from these grains a commodity that puts men and women under worse chains of slavery, suffering, and degradation, than was ever the lot of the worst slave who was ever driven under the lash of the most cruel taskmaster. They manufacture from these grains a commodity that fills jails, penitentiaries, and insane asylums with unhappy and distressed wretches of humanity, who should provoke the pity of all mankind. They manufacture from these grains a commodity that sends a vast army of over a hundred thousand souls into drunkards' graves every year. But why continue the list? The curse that has been brought into the world thru strong drink presents an array of items that is too long to enumerate.

Children of Israel under Taskmasters in Egypt. But Those Who Are Slaves to the Demon Alcohol Are under Worse Bondage than Egypt Ever Knew.

The actual cost to every state and community where the dispensing of liquors is freely allowed almost invariably far exceeds the revenue that is derived from it. And in this estimate of mere dollars and cents no account is taken of the valuable human lives that are wrecked and ruined year by year. The farmer can well afford to lose the market that the brewers and distillers offer for his grain. All this grain is needed to feed the half-starving wives and children of those who are now being ground beneath the curse of rum. This liquor market for the farmer's grains is purchased at too great a price in human lives, and at too great a cost of the bitterest of human suffering.

It is suggested that if this "growing evil of prohibition" is not suppressed it will precipitate a "financial crisis such as the world has never seen." The danger of such a thing is imaginary rather than real. If the manufacture and sale of liquor were entirely swept out of the country, it would give many people who are now in the clutches of poverty a chance to save money, and when people are saving money, the chances are the very best to have money panics avoided altogether.

But why should money considerations come into questions of this kind? Are men to be debauched and debased, and homes ruined in order that a certain class of citizens may have a market for their products, and so that another class may be able to dispose of what they manufacture from these products? Are not men to be considered? Are not the suffering and indescribable miseries occasioned by strong drink to be taken into account?

The decree of the Almighty is, "Wo unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!" Hab. 2: 15. This language from the Lord's Book is plain and unequivocal. And every one who dispenses liquors will have to repent of his evil or he will meet this statement in the eternal judgment. No one can afford to jeopardize the eternal salvation of those to whom he sells the liquor, neither can he afford to load himself with guilt that will consign him to ruin in the judgment day. And in this time, when all the prophecies show that the end of all things is at hand and that every individual is about to be called before the great tribunal of the universe, men should tremble to be found in the occupation of dispensing the death-dealing curse of strong drink.

In times of great calamity when men feel that they are powerless and that eternity is staring them in the face, they do not find money of any value. The only thing that can stand then is character. And so it will be in the great judgment hour when every one will be required to give an account of the deeds of this life. Men, while bent on money-getting, will often make light of the thought of being brought before the bar of the Eternal. But the grand, glorious, and awful day is just before us, and we should build our foundations of character now if we would stand in that time. T.