WHAT LIQUOR COSTS THE MAN WHO DOESN'T DRINK IT.
By The Voice
THE average wages earned in this country are about four hundred and fifty dollars a year. The cost of the liquor traffic is over one hundred dollars a year to each and every family. Think of it,—this nation wastes every year a sum equal to two per cent of its entire wealth. The drink bill is over one billion dollars a year, and it costs over three hundred millions to take care of the crimes caused by it, and the sickness, the insanity, the paupers, and the industrial disorders. Thirteen hundred millions divided among thirteen million families is one hundred dollars for every family. It hits the sober man as well as the hard drinker. Don't fool yourself by thinking you don't pay any of that money, because you don't drink. Who pays the taxes? The drunkards don't. Who loses when business is bad and times are hard? Not the drunkard. Are you a grocer? How much more would you sell if there were no saloons in the neighborhood? Are you a butcher? How much more meat would your customers buy if the saloons didn't take their cash? Are you a shoemaker? How many more shoes would be sold if the saloons were shut? Are you a baker? How many more loaves would you sell if liquor wasn't sold? Are you a merchant? How much better would your business be if the money spent for liquor were spent hereafter for furniture, for carpets, for clothing, for houses, for flour, for provisions, for coal, for books, for hats, for shoes, etc., etc. Are you a wage earner? Then listen to this, for it is the frozen truth: If the saloons were shut up to-morrow, there would be within one month a call for two million workmen more than are employed to-day. The call would come from all lines of industry. Take a single case. Here's a family that10spend ten dollars a year on shoes. They don't spend more, because the head of the family is trying to support a saloon as well as his home. Shut up the saloons and that family will buy twenty-five dollars' worth of shoes every year. That means fifteen dollars more than now for shoes for one family. Multiply that by three millions (the number of drunkards in the land) and it would make forty-five million dollars' worth more of shoes to be sold. The retail shoe merchants would have to increase their orders on the wholesale houses. The wholesaler would have to increase his orders on the manufacturer of shoes. The manufacturer would have to increase his orders on the leather dealers. The leather dealer would have to order more cow skins and calf skins from the farmers. The railroads would have to put on more cars to carry the goods. And all along the line there would be calls for more men to do the work. The same sort of thing would happen along other lines of business, and two million men now out of employment would find it, and wages would go up, because there would be more calls for men than there are men to respond. It is as plain as A, B, C. Where one man now employed in the liquor business would be thrown out of employment by closing the saloons, five men would be called for in other lines, because of the boom in all other forms of business.—The Voice.