THE startling statement copied below from the New York Herald is deserving of attention: “Now, you watch those children. They’ll drink half that beer before they get home, and their mother will scold me for not giving a good pint, and I’ve given nearer a quart,” said the bartender of a down-town saloon yesterday, referring to two little girls of six and eight, thinly clad, who had come in for a pint of beer. The reporter did watch the young ones. They had scarcely got outside of the saloon door when the one that carried the tin pail lifted it to her lips and took a draught. Then her companion enjoyed a few swallows. A little further on they entered a tenement house hallway, and both again took a sip. “I have lots of such customers,” said the bartender, when the reporter returned to the saloon to light his cigar. “Girls and boys and women form half our trade. We call it family trade. It pays our expenses. Our profits come from the drinkers at the bar. But I tell you what—half the children who come here drink. That’s how drunkards are made. Their mothers and fathers send ‘em for beer. They see the old folks tipple and begin to taste the beer themselves. “Few of the children who come in here for beer or ale carry a full pint home. Sometimes two or three come in together, and if you’ll watch ‘em, you’ll hear one begging the one who carries the pail for a sip. We must sell it, however, when their parents send for it. We are bound to do so. Business is business. We don’t keep a temperance shop.”—Sel.