p. 15 | THINK OF IT!

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 28, 1906

THINK OF IT!

THE liquor traffic, to-day a thoroughly-organized business, represented in 1,741 breweries, 2,267 distilleries, and over 240,000 retail liquor saloons throughout the country, now contributes to the support of the national government about $185,000,000 annually, and, according to the most conservative and unbiased estimate by eminent authorities, receives from the people over $1,200,000,000 annually. That one-half of this is paid by the wage-earners in shop and mine and country is not at all unreasonable. This money is taken directly out of the channels of legitimate trade—that is, turned aside from the market for bread and meat and fuel and clothing and other necessities and helpful luxuries, essential to create and maintain in the consumer wealth-producing power. A dollar spent in the corner saloon is lost to the grocer and the merchant, and gives the consumer nothing in return, save an increased appetite for liquor, and a decreased capacity for effective labor. And $1,200,000,000 spent in the saloons of the whole country means not only the same results multiplied a billion times, a consequence beyond the farthest reach of any mind to conceive, but in addition, the added perils to the entire citizenship which invariably breed in the contagious masses of such undisturbed social vice and degeneration.—Selected.