p. 20 | Ruination

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 17, 1914

Ruination

A TEMPERANCE speaker recently asserted (and any one who will take the pains to examine and study his figures will find that he is correct) that fifty days’ drink bill of this nation would pay all the tremendous bill of making the Panama Canal. More than this, he says that seven months’ drink bill would pay off all the national debt; build the Panama Canal; build the canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio River; place in the Ohio River all the locks and dams necessary to give it a level of nine feet the year round from Pittsburgh, Pa., to Cairo, Ill.; build a canal from the Mississippi River to the Rio Grande, draining the swamp lands of Arkansas, stopping the loss of life and property by the lower Mississippi floods, and bringing the waters of the upper lakes to the arid plains of Texas for irrigation; and, after all this, leave about fifty million dollars for operating expenses. And yet people stand aghast at such enterprises as are for untold benefit to the nation, and then calmly go on drinking down in a few months enough to pay for it all, while they poison their bodies into the grave, and sink their souls into hell.— Selected.