Health and Temperance by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 12.

Health and Temperance.

By Editor

CALIFORNIA WINES.

It seems that the wine growers of this State are in a rather despondent mood because their wines do not find a ready market at good prices. In fact, there has been an overproduction of wine in California, and at a recent meeting held in San Francisco in the interest of viticulture it was plainly stated that if the business was to live and thrive on this coast "the people must be educated to drink wine"! Commenting on this the California Prohibitionist says:—

The first fact that is patent from the proceedings is that there is an oversupply of wine. "There is wine in abundance, but there is no outlet for it," says Mr. McIntyre. And how is it proposed to remedy this state of affairs? Ordinarily, a surplus of any commodity is rectified by curtailing the production. But such political economy as this is not to the taste of the wine producers. "A market must be developed." How? By transforming the vine into some more useful and desirable commodity? Not at all; such methods may do for ordinary economists, but the master mind of Hon. Charles Wetmore, Viticultural Commissioner, rises above such mediocre plans of thought and action, and proposes a plan which shall be both heroic and effective. "The people will have to be educated to drink wine." The sunny slopes and the verdant valleys of our fair State are to be prostituted by unscrupulous or unthinking men to the base use of producing an article which degrades and debases all who use it, and then when the people of the State and the country refuse to respond to the wiles of the wine maker, they must forsooth be compelled to do so, under the guise of being "educated."

And how are the people to be thus educated? Do the wine makers propose to themselves bear the expense of providing missionaries and preachers of their "grape gospel"? By no means. They cannot afford it, poor fellows, in the face of an oversupplied market. But what they are not willing to do for themselves they want the people of California, through their representatives, to do for them. "Mr. McIntyre laid particular stress upon the necessity for legislative aid to the wine men." Mr. Portal also "called attention to the need of legislative assistance by the wine men." Mr. Wetmore also spoke of "the need of legislative assistance." And for what? To remunerate them for destroying their vineyards? No; to sustain a State saloon, where people may be "educated to appreciate wine," and to pay Miss Kate Field, "who is doing so much good on the lecture platform in the East." And for this purpose at least $30,000 a year is required.

The English language fails to supply words of sufficient force to fitly characterize the brazen and unblushing impudence and effrontery of men who could be capable of making such requests on such grounds. They have gone into a business, hoping to profit from the debased appetites of their fellow-men. But in their greed for gain they have produced more than the demand justified; and now, instead of bearing the results of their own grasping policy, they whine and cry for legislative assistance. And what does that mean? Why, that every man, woman, and child in our State, no matter if they are not addicted to the use of wine themselves, no matter if they have pledged themselves before God to touch not, taste not, handle not, must help to make a market for the crime-causing products of a class of grasping pets of the commonwealth. Out upon such men, and such legislation! Let the sober, clear-thinking citizens of our State protest so loudly and longly and emphatically, at home, through the press, and at the polls, against such an abominable iniquity as State aid to the wine makers that the Viticultural Commission will be abolished, the State saloon closed, and Kate Field and her ilk, who are willing for hire to debase the appetites of a nation under the mask of temperance, will be relegated to the obscurity where they belong.

[To all of which the SIGNS says, Amen!]