The Fountain of Crime and Suffering.
By James Brand
JUDGE PITMAN, of Massachusetts, tells us that in 1871 about $600,000,000 was the amount paid for liquor in this country. The total expenditure for all schools, public and private, for the same year was less than one-sixth of that sum. "All the libraries of the country, public and private," says the same authority, "are said to contain 45,528,938 volumes, which, valued at $2 a volume would give $91,057,876. So we drink up all our books in less than two months!" This, be it remembered, is only the direct cost. The indirect, though it cannot be estimated, it is safe to say, will probably equal the direct. The malt liquor traffic rose from 2,000,000 barrels in 1863 to 13,000,000 in 1880. In the State of Ohio, of which I wish to speak in particular, according to Governor Foster's last message to the Legislature, there are about 16,000 saloons—one to every 225 of the population; one to every 45 voters; one to every 30 families, even in Cleveland—one of the most moral cities in the State. "The entire traffic in the State," he adds, "will probably exceed $70,000,000 annually." "The Cincinnati annual grog bill," says the Gazette of that city, "is $9,036,000, or $30.12 for each man, woman, and child in the city." The Ohio statistics for 1881 give the amount received for distilled liquors in Cincinnati as a little less than $30,000,000, while the aggregate value of the receipts for the coffee, sugar, molasses, and rice of the city was only about $12,500,000. The Hon. Mills Gardner says that, within the past thirty years, the "manufacture and consumption of malt liquors have risen from an almost nominal amount to more than 2,000,000 barrels annually in Ohio alone." These figures may serve to give some approximate idea of the "innumerable trap-doors" upon which the people are being pushed, and through which they are falling into the "great tide of eternity."—Rev. James Brand.