The Liquor Traffic in New York.
By Cuyler
THERE are about eight thousand places—lofty or lowly—in the city of New York, where alcoholic drinks are sold. In Brooklyn, the “City of Churches,” there are full two thousand drinking-shops, or about ten times as many as there are houses of worship! The two cities contain ten thousand open haunts in which rich men are made poor, sober men are made drunk, and happy families are made wretched. Two-thirds of all the rioting, harlotry, theft, and pauperism of these twin cities issue directly from these dram-shops. During the war, many of them were nests of disloyalty. In the decisive political campaign of 1864, we never saw the name of ABRAHAM LINCOLN posted in a single “groggery;” while in nearly every one the names of McClellan and Seymour were placarded against the rum-barrels as the favorite candidates of the patrons of the establishment. It is notorious that where the grog-shops most abound, the resistance to the draft and the hatred of the negro were most violent; the largest liquor-consuming districts gave the largest majorities against sustaining the loyal administration of Lincoln. There has always been a natural alliance between rum and slavery, as there is between rum and rioting, ignorance, degradation, and crime. In each one of these places—where death is dealt out by measure—there is an average daily expenditure of ten dollars for strong drink. This gives a total expenditure of $100,000 a day, of $700,000 a week, and of thirty-five million of dollars each year! This statement is so frightful that it seems incredible. Yet it is rather below than above the actual facts. One of the Metropolitan Police Commissioners informs me that ten dollars a day is a moderate estimate of the average sales of each dram-shop in the police district. Here, then, is more money expended in purchasing liquid poison than is employed in sustaining all the churches, all the public schools, and all the charitable institutions of our twin cities! The profits of the liquor traffic are enormous. Fifty per cent. is the profit, per glass, of some varieties of popular drink! Adulterations are practiced to an enormous extent. The frauds upon the government, too, are notoriously extensive. The dealers in alcoholic drink are banded together to protect their interests, and it is rumored that the “Association” have a quarter of a million “in bank” to carry on electioneering and legislative campaigns. A secret circular (which we have seen) was lately distributed among the “trade,” calling on them to sustain the N. Y. Daily News as a journal ever true to their interests. The same paper which abetted slavery, treason, and resistance to the draft, is now the chosen champion of the men who deal out death and destruction by the dram.—Cuyler.