OUR antagonism to strong drink is not a mere sentiment or theory; it is based on dark, dreadful, undeniable facts. What are the facts? The lowest estimate of the actual cost of rum and its companion drinks in the United States is seven hundred million dollars annually. This is two million a day. This is the cost of this deadly drink of infatuated human beings. What is the result of this incredible expenditure of hard earnings? As follows:—
If all the victims were gathered before our eyes we should see a thousand funerals a week from their ranks. Placed in a procession five abreast, the drunkards of America would form an army one hundred miles long, with a suicide occurring in every mile. Every hour of the night the heavens are lighted with the incendiary torch of the drunkard. Every hour of the day the earth is stained with the blood of the drunken assassins. See the great army of inebriates five hundred thousand strong marching on to sure and swift destruction, filing off rapidly into poor-houses, prisons, up to the scaffold and down to hell! The sixty thousand who go down to the grave every year represent a quarter of a million wives and children overwhelmed with shame, sorrow and poverty.—Presbyterian Banner.