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Natural Enemies

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 18, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 36.

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Natural Enemies.

THERE is just so much money in any community to spend for all purposes. There is just so much and no more to buy with, and pay for. The workingmen, in whose pockets are found the bulk of the money in circulation, get but so much a day, or week, or month, and they can only spend what they get—no more. As a rule they can only buy what they have money to pay for. Each and every one of these workingmen will bear strong testimony that he is not getting wages enough to maintain himself and family in the comfort he and they desire.
Consequently every dollar spent for beer and whisky is a dollar taken out of the tills of the dealers in the necessaries of life. In place of the retailers of this or any other city having interests in common with the beer-sellers, as the latter impudently claim, in their attempts to bulldoze others into acting with them, the reverse is true. The interests of the two classes are hostile—implacably so.
The more money spent in the saloons the less there will be spent in the dry goods stores, the groceries, the shoe stores, and the real estate offices. If a million dollars are paid out for beer and whisky, the business of the sellers of the comforts and necessaries of life is decreased by that amount.
The other branches of retailing are not hostile to each other. A man and his family can only eat up so many barrels of flour per annum, and can only wear so many pairs of shoes. What money is left over and above after buying these is expended in other stores. But a man's capacity for consuming beer is infinite, and constantly increasing. He may begin by expending only one-hundredth of his wages in beer; it is not unlikely that he will end by pouring all of them down his throat.
Therefore, instead of the retailers of all kinds uniting in support of the saloons, they should do just the contrary, and bend all their energies to help pulverize the rum power.—Toledo Blade.