NO BENEFIT TO THE FARMER.
Liquor Manufacture Robs Him of His Markets Instead of Increasing Them.
“THE farmer who consults his own interests, wants no teetotalism. The manufacture of liquor is the main factor in giving him a grain market.”—Beer Organ. The amount of corn used in the United States in the manufacture of whisky in 1889 was 15,319,862 bushels. One county in a corn state like Illinois would grow it all. The entire amount of grain used, corn, barley, rye, oats, and wheat, was 81,472,911 bushels, which, at its market value in Cincinnati at quoted prices for April 23, would amount to $35,835,592, 2½ per cent of the entire crop. Now what is spent for beer can not be spent for anything else. It won’t buy both beer and bread. The man who takes his living from a jug has so much less to put into the necessaries of life for himself and family, and as for the comfort and luxuries of this life he knows little or nothing of them. While the farmer gets the thirty-five millions of dollars for his farm products, he must take into calculation in balancing accounts the whole of the business transaction, which shows as follows on the summing up: The year 1889 showed manufactured liquor from this $35,535,592 worth of grain, 91,135,550 gallons of distilled and 866,848,993 gallons of fermented product. A gallon of whisky contains about sixty-four ten-cent drinks, which amounts to $6.40. A glass of beer is about one-half pint, and retails at five cents, amounting to 80 cents per gallon. Summing up, we have $583,257,720, the retail price of the whisky product of 1889, and $695,819,194 for the beer; total, $1,597,133,914. Here is the liquor traffic, destroying the purchasing power of the people for other products to this extent. The money would go into other channels of trade, would buy bread, boots, houses, farms—everything that would conduce to happiness and comfort for mankind. As it is, it is worse than utterly wasted. It entails an equal expenditure of money, according to estimates of statisticians, for the prosecution and care of criminals and paupers, insane and idiots; but the direct loss is thirty-seven dollars for every single dollar received by the farmer for grain sold.—Selected.