p. 270 | Facts and Figures

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 7, 1868

Facts and Figures.

In answer to direct personal application to the Methodist Mission Rooms in New York for statistical information to help on missionary occasions, the following, among other items, were furnished:

WHAT FOR WAR?—A French paper published the other day a statistical statement, which professes to give the aggregate of the armies placed on foot by the European powers in time of peace. These collective forces reach, it appears, the appalling number of seven and a half millions of men under arms. Supposing each soldier to cost, on an average, one thousand francs a year, the whole expense is equal to very nearly twenty millions a day, or six hundred millions a month, or more than seven thousand millions a year, ($1,312,500,000!!). Our rents and taxes in America tell us, or make us feel what we are doing.

WHAT FOR THE PRINCE OF PEACE?—The income of the missionary societies of England, America, Germany, France, etc., for 1866, was $4,425,000, or less than five mills to each of the 965,000,000 souls of the earth's population, who are accounted (so far as Christ is concerned) heathen; they are either Jews, Mohammedans, or Pagans! Not to make the case darker for us than it is, let us add to the missionary money what is given in the Bible and tract cause, (not a moiety of which is sent to the heathen world,) this was, in 1866, $2,405,380. If the whole of this too were given to the heathen world, we could not make it appear that the Protestant Christian world gives more than seven mills to each of those she believes to be sitting in darkness. “to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God!”

NOW WHAT FOR?—We will not say what, nor will we speak at all of others, but of Christian America called to be the Lord's ministers. What are we doing? Read on. Taxes as follows: On cigars, $3,661,984.89; on smoking and chewing tobacco $15,245,477.81; total, on tobacco, $18,907,462.70. Again, on fermented liquors, $5,819,345.19; on distilled liquors, $29,641,409.34; total on liquors, $34,983,754.53;—making a grand total of taxes paid on tobacco and liquors of $53,891,216.83. If the tax alone amounts to this enormous sum, what figure will show the cost of these articles to the consumers?

WHAT FOR AMUSEMENTS?—Let us see about two cities only: A semi-official statement, giving the receipts of the various places of amusement in New York and Brooklyn for the last year, shows a total exceeding $3,150,000.