p. 11 | A Terrible Admission

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jul 2, 1914

A Terrible Admission

A TERRIBLE admission is that made by the Kentucky Distilling Distributing Company in a letter recently sent to one of the Keeley Institutes. According to the Word and Way of June 18, 1914, the letter was as follows:—

GENTLEMEN: Our customers are your prospective patients.

We can put on your desk a mailing list of 50,000 individual consumers of liquor. This list is the result of thousands of dollars of advertising.

Each individual on the list is a regular user of liquor. The list of names is now live and active. We know, because we have circularized it regularly. We will furnish this list in quantities at the prices listed, remittance to accompany order: 40,000 to 50,000, $400; 20,000, $300; 10,000, $200. We will not furnish the list in less than lots of 10,000.

Discontinuance of business January 1 is the occasion of selling our mailing list.

A similar letter was sent to the Neal Institute of Chicago, containing the same shameless confession:—

We know that you can make our list exceptionally productive to you. Each man on it has been a regular buyer of liquor by mail and a constant user of it, and there is not a single one who would not like to quit the habit. Each man is keenly alive to the injury of his practice, and he is only awaiting some way of stopping. If you can convince him of the permanent efficacy of your treatment, he is your patient; and you know how to convince him.

What a terrible business it is which has for its objective the degradation of mankind. Of course, back of this is the motive of money making, which prompts the sale of strong drink. Terrible is the woe which the Bible pronounces against the one who induces his neighbor to fall into the deadly snare of intoxicating drink.