IS IT ALCOHOL OR ADULTERATION?
ABOUT the only argument advanced or allowed by wine drinkers, and, in fact, by liquor men generally, especially distillers, against liquor drinking, is that of adulteration. If we could get the pure wines and liquors, say they, it would not work these evil results. It is the adulterations which poison. But this argument has no foundation in fact. The worst poison of all is alcohol. To ascertain the truth of this, the Christian Union employed an eminent chemist, Dr. Ledoux, who "has no superior in the country," to make some chemical examinations of different wines and liquors as sold in the second and third-class saloons of New York City. In his report of this examination he says:— "It is a favorite argument of distillers that the evils of intemperance are largely due to impure liquors, and that pure articles do not produce injurious effects. And it is a favorite argument with temperance advocates to recite the adulterations of liquors and read the recipes for sophisticating them. But it is a fact that the flavors and colors used at the present day are either harmless or employed in such small quantity as to be fairly left out of consideration. They serve to increase temptation by making the liquor more attractive to eye and palate, but liquors manufactured and sold at the present time and in this city, so far as my tests go, are not injuriously adulterated by poisonous substances. Still, when the mechanic on the Bowery or the sailor on Water Street is crazed by drink, it matters little whether he bought a pint of pure forty per cent. alcohol brandy at ninety cents, or a quart of twenty-five per cent., flavored and diluted, at fifty cents: it is the alcohol he craved, and that which produces the effect." Commenting on this report the Christian Union truly remarks:— "The temperance reformer will find in it new evidence that it is not by drugs put into alcoholic liquors that the American people is being poisoned, but by the alcohol itself, and his efforts to rid the table of that poison will be intensified. With the temperance reformer's conclusion we entirely agree. It is alcohol, not foreign substances put into alcohol, that breeds crime, pauperism and death. It is alcohol, not the foreign substances put into alcohol, which is the Ishmael of our society, whose hand is against every man, and who should be banished by law from the public street, and by public opinion and an enlightened conscience from the private table and the social circle."