Intemperance and Hard Times.
Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania, in a pamphlet discussing the causes of financial panic, stated that in the three years, 1871, 1872, and 1873, nearly 20,000 miles of railroad were built, and argued that the sudden stoppage of railway building led to financial distress. He also found that in these three years, $98,000,000 worth of silk was imported, which he estimated was sold at retail for $200,000,000. But his "eyes were holden" so that he could not see that in 1872 there were consumed in the United States 33,828,806 gallons of distilled liquors, costing $735,728,048. So while he was poking about the ladies' wardrobes to hunt up $200,000,000 worth of silks, the dram drinkers, in the same three years, had spent for liquor $1,800,000,000, enough to build seven lines of railroad across the continent, each 3,000 miles long, at $20,000 a mile, put on $180,000,000 worth of rolling stock, build another railroad around the world, and put on rolling stock worth $100,000,000, and still have $600,000,000 to invest in silks for the ladies. This is a specimen of the "political economy" of which we hear so much at the present time. Says the Decatur Sun: "Each inhabitant of the United States pays $2.02 for the support of the public schools, and over $40 per year to support the liquor traffic. The $2.02 a year tax, although spent for a good purpose, causes a great deal of grumbling and complaint; but when we say a word against the $40 tax, we are fools, fanatics, and agitators, and have no right to show it up and ask people who have to pay to vote against it." Virginia drinks up her entire wheat crop annually, and it is stated that the liquor drank in Louisiana costs $47,000,000, or 2,000,000 more than its combined cotton, sugar, and rice crops. Who wonders that men complain of hard times? Whisky will make famine and hard times in Ireland or anywhere else. Hundreds of poor savages in the frozen north have lately starved to death, because of the liquor sold there by traders from "Christian" lands, which caused them to spend their time in idleness instead of providing themselves food for winter.—Golden Censer.