Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 40.

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Health and Temperance.

One View of the Matter.

I WAS lecturing out in Kansas last spring, where they have prohibition. An intemperate man came to me and said:—

"Yes, Mr. Perkins, this prohibition will bring ruin to the State."

"It will, will it?"

"Yes; it will impoverish us and destroy our business houses."

"Now let's see about this, my friend," I said. "Let's examine this a little."

"If a Kansas farmer brings a thousand bushels of corn into Topeka, he gets how much for it?"

"Four hundred dollars," answered my friend. "Now, if they take this thousand bushels of corn over to Peoria, how much whisky will it make?"

"Four thousand gallons."

"And this whisky is worth—how much?"

"O, after they have paid $4,000 revenue tax on it to the other 36 States, it will be worth about $4,600."

"And if this whisky should come back to Kansas you would have to pay about $4,600 for it?"

"Yes, more too. We'd have to pay about $5,000 for it."

"Would it be worth anything to your citizens?"

"No; I suppose it would cause a good deal of idleness and crime. It would hurt us. I never did think whisky a positive benefit. I—"

"Well, how much would it hurt you?" I asked.

"O, I can't tell. I—"

"Well, I'll tell you," I said. "It will hurt you directly about $5,000 worth. You would sell the corn from which this whisky is made for $400, and then buy back the whisky for $5,000. You would be directly out of pocket just $4,600. And, indirectly, it would cost Kansas, in idleness and crime—caused by the 4,000 gallons of whisky—about $20,000. It would take 16,000 men a day apiece to drink it up, if they drank a quart a day each. The loss of 16,000 days' labor to Kansas would be $20,000, wouldn't it?"

"I declare!" exclaimed my friend, "I never heard it put in that way. I see it all plainly now. I'll never say anything about prohibition damaging Kansas again."

"Yes," I said, "if Kansas can save $25,000 on every thousand bushels of corn by letting it go over to Peoria, the more she is damaged that way the richer she will become, till finally Illinois, utterly impoverished, will have to call on Kansas to lend her money to build poor-houses. But there is one thing in Kansas," I said, "that will be ruined by prohibition."

"What is that?" asked my friend.

"Why, her poor-houses. Your poor-houses and jails will become empty. Think of a poor-house with not a soul in it but the poor master! Think of a jail without a convict—poor bankrupt-jail and poor-house!"—Christian Standard.