America’s Drink Bill by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 1, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 34.

America’s Drink Bill

By Editor

The population of the United States in 1912 was, in round numbers, 95,000,000 — ninety-five million men, women, and children. We want to tell you what they consumed in intoxicating liquors that year. We have reckoned the retail price from actual figures given us by reliable druggists, from prices displayed in the windows of cut-rate drug stores, and from price-lists of large grocery firms. The full retail value of that which is sold over the bar is not given. For instance, a liquor circular before us declares that there are ninety drinks in a gallon of whisky. A gallon of four dollar whisky, selling at twenty-five cents a drink, would retail over the bar for $22.50; at fifteen cents, $13.50 a gallon; at ten cents, $9.00 a gallon. Ten cents a drink represents the cheapest whisky at the lowest price. That is what the drinker at the bar pays for his gallon. We have aimed to give the average gallon price. Beer can be bought for forty cents a gallon; but over the bar, men pay eighty cents a gallon, at five cents a glass. Wine of a sort may be bought for fifty cents a gallon, perhaps less; but sparkling wines and champagne sell as high as from six to ten dollars a gallon, or $1.50 to $2.50 a bottle. The well-informed will not consider our estimates exaggerated.

Below is a table in which the quantities of liquors consumed are taken from "The World Almanac and Encyclopedia" for 1914, certainly an unprejudiced authority. The average price per gallon is estimated on the figures given above. The aggregate gallons consumed, the average price per gallon, the cost in the aggregate, the quantity per capita, and the cost per capita are all given.

Kind of Liquor	Gallons Consumed	Price per Gallon	Aggregate Cost to Consumers	Gallons per Capita	Cost per Capita
Domestic distilled spirits ...	135,951,410	$6.00	$ 815,708,460	1.43	$ 8.58
Imported distilled spirits ..	3,544,921	8.00	28,359,368	.03	.24
Domestic wines .............	50,619,880	2.00	101,239,760	.53	1.07
Imported wines .............	5,804,831	4.00	23,219,324	.03	.24
Domestic malt liquors .....	1,925,361,507	.60	1,185,216,904	20.00	12.47
Imported malt liquors .....	7,169,677	1.00	7,169,677	.07	.07
Totals ......................	2,128,452,226		$2,160,913,493	22.12	$22.67

Study this table, friend. For your own sake, your family’s sake, your neighbor’s sake, your country’s sake, you ought to study it.

The people of the United States drink more than two billion gallons of intoxicants every year.

But not all drink. About forty-five million live in "dry" territory. There are many in "wet" territory who do not drink. Most of the children do not drink. Safely it may be said that less than half of the people of the United States consume more than two billions of gallons of intoxicants, an annual

average of forty-five gallons each, at an average annual cost of forty dollars each to the drinkers.

Counting five as the average family, it costs each family in the United States more than $100 a year — that is, $100 a year paid for a deceptive curse. But half of the families do not drink. The rest of the families in the United States pay on the average $200 a year.

That sum would buy ten loaves of bread for each family, for every day in the year, with a fruit loaf thrown in now and then.

It would buy five quarts of milk each day for a year, for each of these families.

It would buy ten suits of clothes, at twenty dollars a suit.

It would buy fifty pairs of shoes, at four dollars a pair.

The average family drink bill for the drinkers of the United States, counting them at one half the population, could buy with the two hundred dollars spent for liquor: Four loaves of bread daily for a year, $73.00; 5 pairs of shoes, at $3.00 a pair, $15.00; 5 hats, at $2.00 each, $10.00; 5 suits of clothing, at $15.00 each, $75.00; and have a balance for other necessities of life of $27.00.

Why will not those who drink, many of whose families are in want and misery, stop the fearful drain, by putting the temptation out of the way forever, and spend their money for needed things? How the buying of more shoes, and clothes, and hats, and furniture, etc., would stimulate trade, and relieve business depression!

The preeminently overwhelming cause of hard times is the drink traffic.

All are interested in it, for it touches all somewhere.

It increases crime. It increases disease. It increases public expenses. It corrupts politics. It promotes inefficiency. It increases your taxation.

It demands more hospitals, and institutions for the insane, the inebriates, the defective, the diseased — the victims strewed in the path of alcohol.

It demands more jails, more police, more constables, more courts. And you have to help foot the bills.

It is destroying the young manhood and womanhood of America.

Directly or indirectly, or both, with all its voluminous and multitudinous and colossal curses, it touches you. But if not for your own sake, for the sake of the other man, for the sake of conscience and country, aye, for the sake of the liquor dealer himself, demand the prohibition of the liquor traffic.

Every principle of political economy, justice to the drunkard's wife, and to his more than orphaned children, demand the abolition of the liquor traffic.

Justice to the taxpayers of nation, state, county, and city demands the abolition of the liquor traffic.

Safety of the country politically demands the abolition of the liquor traffic, which has debauched politics, degraded statesmen, and put a thousand stains on the national escutcheon.

Regard for suffering humanity, some portion of which can only cry, in their rum-engendered suffering, demands that the traffic in curse-breeding alcoholic drink should be abolished, root and branch.

For the sake of humanity, help us to dethrone the monster.