"HOW DRUNKARDS ARE MADE."
The New York Herald recently published an article with the above title, in which it revealed the following sad picture. It is a conversation between a beer-seller and the Herald reporter:— '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 nearly a quart,' said the bartender of a down-town saloon the other day, referring to two little girls of six and eight, thinly clad, who came for a pint of beer. The reporter did watch the little ones. They had scarcely got outside 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've lots of such customers,' said the bartender, when the reporter returned to the saloon. '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 parents send them 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 them 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.' No, they do not keep a temperance shop, but a drunkard manufactory. Would to God that this simple truth might be realized on the part of those who grant license, those who work at the trade of drunkard maker, and those who compose the material out of which they are made. There would soon be no more saloons.