THE DRINK CURSE by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 9, 1881

THE DRINK CURSE.

By Editor

WE are glad to see the question of intemperance receiving such general attention from those in influential positions. The following from the Christian at Work will be of interest to temperance workers:—

Of the various publications issued by Congress, a volume entitled “The State of Labor in Europe,” is one of the most interesting and valuable. The document is a compilation of consular reports in answer to a circular letter sent out by the State department asking information upon various subjects, such as rates of wages, cost of living to the laborer, business habits and systems, habits and modes of living of working men and women, and many other points touching the present condition of labor and trade. The answers have evidently been carefully prepared, and necessarily contain a variety of important information. With one point only, however, we are concerned just now, and that is the revelation made of the relation which strong drink bears to the welfare of working men and women as incidentally exhibited in these answers. We have here the most direct testimony, and that, too, in an official shape, showing that intemperance is the great destroyer of the happiness and prosperity of the working men and women, and their families, and what is no less important, we have a clear refutation of the specious argument, so often advanced in our midst, that we have only to imitate the universal beer and light-wine drinking of European countries, to do away almost entirely with the evils of intemperance in this country—an argument utterly unfounded in fact, since such has not been the effect of their use in the countries set forward as an example. Let us see what kind of testimony we get from Germany, France, and England, especially.

The Hon. Edgar Stanton, United States Consul at Bremen, writes: “A fruitful cause of want and ruin among the laboring classes is the enormous increase of the drinking saloons and dancing-halls and the complaints are universal as to the disposition of the laborers to indulge in excessive drink. Whatever be the character of the laborer in other parts of Germany, in this and the neighboring districts he is, as a rule, improvidant and quarrelsome. The towns are in consequence heavily burdened by poor rates.”

Consul Mason writes from Dresden: “the cost of living, to the laboring classes, almost invariably goes pari passu with their wages. They seem to be generally improvidant and regardless of the future, and spend in beer-drinking, dancing, and idleness all they earn. Sunday is always remarkable for the crowds of people moving in all directions in pursuit of pleasure, such as beer-drinking, dancing, concert music, excursions by boat and rail.”

Consul Gerrish writes from Bordeaux: “Although wages have increased somewhat, the savings of this class have diminished. The principal cause of this comes from the pernicious habit of spending their time in cafes. The number of these drinking-places in Bordeaux and its environs is upward of two thousand. . . . The hard-earned money as well as the time uselessly lost in these resorts of idleness and bad manners it is impossible to calculate.”

Consul Webster writes from Sheffield, England: “Many a man who can easily earn his fourteen and nineteen dollars a week will be satisfied with earning half that sum, or just enough to provide wife but a mere pittance of his wages for herself and children. . . . Any one walking our streets will see where the earnings of the working men go, and in many cases those of the working women also. . . . The amount spent in drink in Great Britain in 1877, according to the excise returns, was more than seven hundred million dollars. Sheffield’s share of this expenditure would amount to more than five million dollars. A considerable part of this would not come from the earnings of what are termed the laboring classes, but, if saved, a sufficient amount would come from that source to place a great proportion of them above want.’”

Consul Cooper, of Glasgow, writes: “Whisky (which is considered a positive necessity by the great mass of laborers here, and costs about three hundred per cent more than in the United States) with beer (which latter is comparatively cheap,) absorbs the larger portion of the laborer’s earnings here.”

Columns might be added to the same effect, all going to prove that the ushering in of the temperance millennium is not imminent. The item of waste alone through the use of strong drink by our laboring classes is enormous, but this is a minor consideration compared with the physical and mental unfitness and disinclination for work which it produces. The prosperity and welfare of every country must always depend upon the worth and virtue of its laboring classes. Whatever elevates or depresses them, proportionately elevates or depresses in the scale of prosperity the nation itself. The government deserves the thanks of the whole people for gathering and publishing the important testimony contained in this volume. Its lessons involve the welfare and prosperity of the nation at large, and especially the happiness and welfare of the laboring poor, who have disabilities enough to contend with without adding to them that heaviest of all burdens—‘The Drink Curse.’”