Contrasts | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 10, 1882

Contrasts.

Every rag stuck into a window to keep out the cold from a drunkard's home denotes a contribution towards buying new suits for the rumseller and his family. The more elegance and ease in the rumseller's family, the more poverty, degradation, and despair in the families of those who patronize him. The corner grog-shop, with large plate-glass windows and marble floors, is paid for by the tenants of other landlords who refuse to let their buildings for such purposes. The more plate-glass and marble slabs there are in the rum-shop, the more soiled garments must be stuck in the windows of their patrons to keep out the cold air, the more silk flounces upon the dress of the rumseller's wife, the cheaper the calico upon the wife and children of his patrons.

The more spacious the parlor, and brighter the fire of the rumsellers, the more scantily furnished and colder the abodes of those who patronize him. While the rumseller drives his $1,000 span, his customers cannot even afford a five-cent horse-car. From the bung-hole of every barrel of liquid damnation that is sold by the dramsellers there flows a constant stream of drunkards, criminals, paupers, tramps, lunatics, and imbeciles, to fill poor-houses, houses of correction, jails, and prisons. What blasted hopes, ruined homes, and paupers' graves are the relics of the trade! Every dollar that the owner of the rum-shop, and his rum-selling tenant put into their pockets, comes out of the pockets of the poor men, and is a dead loss, so far as the public good is concerned. Worse than that, the more rum sold, the more burdens there are imposed upon the honest citizens and tax-payers. The richer the landlord and his rum-selling tenants grow, the poorer becomes the landlord who lets his buildings for tenements and legitimate business. It is an undisputed fact that the laboring man who has a family cannot indulge in liquor-drinking, and pay his landlord and grocer.—Ex.