San Francisco's Pipes

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 23, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 49.

San Francisco's Pipes.

SAN FRANCISCO spends a deal of money for pipes—pipes of liquor and tobacco pipes, to say nothing of cigars. In round numbers she has 990 dram-shops, not counting restaurants and billiard halls, of which there are 980, thus making 1,970 places where liquor is sold by the glass. Some estimates made, put the amount gathered in by these places at $21,571,500 for drinks in a year, yielding a profit of $15,256,904. Tobacco is retailed in 165 cigar stores, and the number of smokers in the city is probably 60,000, their aggregate expenditure being about $5,475,000. If these estimates are anywhere near correct, San Francisco loses about $27,000,000 annually by sinking it in spirits and sending it up in smoke.

Let San Francisco stop these wastes, and hard times will stop.—Sel.