A Striking and Sad Cartoon.
The New York Journal has a cartoon by Davenport in which a drunken man with leering eyes and disheveled hair bestrides a giant hogshead, holding in his hand a foaming glass of beer. On the head of the big barrel are the figures of America’s consumption of intoxicants. Here they are: Spirits, 97,000,000 gallons; wine, 30,000,000 gallons; malt liquors, 1,220,000,000 gallons. A total of 1,347 million gallons of misery, crime, body-and-soul destruction poured down the throats of humanity in this country every year; think of it. That is about the average of 17 gallons to each man, woman, and child in this broad land. Thank God, many do not drink; but think of those who do, of their worse than wasted money, their blighted homes, blasted reputations, and ruined characters. The maudlin figure astride the cask is represented as saying, “And they think I ought to stop one day in seven.” Say, friend, whisky-drinker or other, would it not be an unmitigated blessing if the cursed thing should stop all the time?