Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 1, 1881

Temperance.

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

THE traffic in strong drink is a fruitful source of expense and loss. We know who makes the money out of it: the distiller and rumseller, and they alone. But a question which more intimately concerns us is this: Who pays the bills? The question is not whether the rumseller shall grow rich and the rumdrinker shall grow poor. It is not whether the rumdrinker shall keep his money, or the rumseller shall win it from him; but there is a vast amount of loss and expense in which neither of them directly participate.

We may be silent while the rumdrinker wastes and spends that which belongs to him, which is but little, and which daily grows less and less; but an avalanche of wreck and ruin results from this traffic which neither the rumseller nor the rumdrinker endures, and yet the bills must be paid; these expenses met. Who pays the bills?

Who pays for the fires kindled by drunken men? Who pays for the ships wrecked by tipsy pilots, or lost through drunken captains or drunken crews? Who defends the city from riots incited by men who are maddened by alcohol? Who pays for the feasting and junketing of wine-bibbing public officials? Who feeds the drunkard's hungry children? Who provides for the drunkard's broken-hearted wife? Who supports the beggarly tramps who, having wasted their money in drink, wander about the country? Who repairs the losses caused by the failure of intemperate merchants and reckless and half-intoxicated business men? Who makes good the damage done by the blunders of drunken workmen, and the hindrances of business caused by the sprees of intemperate employees? Who pays for the railroad wrecks caused by drunken conductors and engineers? Who repays the money which the drunkards borrow that they may obtain strong drink? Who builds the asylums where crazy drunkards are kept? Who supports the idiot children of drunken men? Who pays the bills of officers for watching drunken rowdies? Who pays constables and sheriffs for catching drunken murderers? Who pays the attorneys and juries and judges who try drunken criminals? Whose money supports jailors, turnkeys, and prison keepers to take care of men convicted of crimes committed when drunk? Who pays the expenses of trials and commitments and executions occasioned by the crimes of intoxicated men? Who pays for the property destroyed and burned by drunken mobs? Who builds and supports almshouses which but for drink might remain unoccupied? Who endures the sufferings and losses and brutalities which are due to the recklessness and insanity of drunken husbands and fathers? Who pays for the inquests held on drunkards found dead by the wayside? Who pays for a pauper's coffin, and for digging a drunkard's grave in the potter's field, when the last glass has been drunk?

Who pays the bills? The drunkard cannot pay them, for he has wasted his substance in his cups. Will the rumseller pay them? He has neither the disposition nor ability to do it. Who ever would attempt to hold a rumseller responsible for the ruin he has wrought, would "sue a beggar and catch a louse."

The fact is you and I, and the sober, industrious, toiling portion of the community must meet all these bills. The drunken rowdy whose head is punched in the street fight, is cured in the city hospital at our expense; the drunken beggar is fed from our table; his hungry children come to our doors for bread; and we cannot refuse assistance to his broken-hearted wife; and when at last, having wasted in riotous living, he comes to the almshouse, the asylum, the hospital, or the prison, honest, sober, temperate men pay the bills for supporting him there. There is no escaping it. We may protest and object; we may grow at taxes and find fault with beggars, but ultimately and inevitably we must foot the bills. We cannot have the privilege of spending our own money, nor can we have even the comfort of saying how it will be spent.

Probably one dollar in every ten of the hard earnings of honest, toiling laborers throughout the nation, is in some way devoured by this rum devil which haunts the land, and howls about our homes to waste and ravage and destroy. For every ten dollars which the laboring man earns, he may count on being robbed of from a dollar to a dollar and a half, to meet the expenses of this infernal traffic. So, gentlemen, taxpayers, business men, farmers, capitalists, stockholders and gentlemen of leisure, walk up and draw your pocket-books and pay your rum bills; the one cent out of every dime, one dime out of every dollar, one dollar out of every ten, ten dollars out of every hundred, one hundred dollars out of every thousand that you earn or gain. You say that you do not use the article. That makes no difference; it is used, the nation permits it, the Government licenses it, and you pay for it. So walk up and settle.—Sel.