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The Wine Interest

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Oct 25, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 40.

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The Wine Interest.

By Editor

A TRACT written by Capt. A. D. Wood, editor of the Rescue of San Francisco, is on our table. Its title in full is as follows: "The Truth and the Wine Interest. Prosperity or Pauperism? Will Wine-making Pay? A Question of Finance."
We are an easy convert to the Captain's view that wine-making is not profitable to any country. The wine-maker may amass money faster than his neighbor who raises grain, but that is not evidence that he is doing the most good, or benefiting the country most largely. The tobacco-raiser may make more money than his neighbor who raises corn, but his prosperity is society's curse. It is generally supposed that there is more money to be made in making wine than in raising grapes and converting them into raisins. But good business men in the grape industry dispute that. However that may be, there is no dispute that he who produces raisins more substantially benefits the country than he who produces wine. The Bible says, and we believe it, that "wine is a mocker." And it is simply a mockery to say that a country is greatly benefited by turning the products of its acres into wine. Wine is not a necessity; it is not life-sustaining; it has turned untold thousands into the way of drunkenness and ruin. How, then, can it benefit a country?