The Wine Trust and the "Producer"
By Editor
SOME of the big San Francisco dailies that ought to know better are giving extended space to statements concerning the great proportions of the wine industries of the state of California. One of these reports tells us that the vineyards of California during this season "will bring to the producers more than twenty-six million dollars," and that "all of this money will go through San Francisco, contributing to its commerce and its banking resources." A mistake is made in saying that the California vineyards will give twenty-six millions to "the producers." Were it not for the forces of temperance, California might possibly, during this year, give twenty-six millions to the big wine trust. Not only the people of this state, but the people of all the states, should learn to discriminate between the "producers" and the whisky and wine trust. The "producers" get but very little from this organization. The whisky and wine trust is one of the most grasping and greedy of all the trusts that have ever been organized. And being in a business that is not conducive to morality, it is naturally making a great uproar over the immense money loss that will be incurred if prohibition should carry. But the question is not one of money. It is one of morality and decency. The question is not, Shall California permit the wine trust to gather in this twenty-six million dollars? but it is whether we will permit this same trust to continue to debauch our boys and our girls, to fill our penitentiaries with criminals, and our asylums with imbeciles. Let the issue be fairly drawn. Let every one understand that the money side of this problem is of no consequence whatever when placed in the balance over against the immorality, the suffering, and the criminality of this awful business that is trying to have us place a few dollars so close to our eyes that we can not behold its criminality and degenerating works.