WASTE OF THE LIQUOR CURSE.
At the late anniversary of the National Temperance Society in New York, Dr. O. H. Tiffany delivered an address in which he presented statistics showing the waste of the liquor curse in this country, as follows:— The waste of material was shown in the fact that the 27,000,000 bushels of grain used in the manufacture of strong drink in America during one year would supply 5,500,000 barrels of flour. Were these loaded on wagons, ten barrels to a load, and started in procession to Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Omaha, westward, the procession of wagons would extend from New York to Salt Lake City, and 150 miles beyond. The money spent in one year for alcoholic drinks, say $596,000,000, would pay the taxes of all kinds throughout the land, care for all the paupers, give education to all who could neither read nor write, pay the entire wages in the building, iron moulding, clothing manufacturing, and agricultural implement industries, and then leave something over. Other figures and facts illustrated the waste of time, of muscular energy, and of animal vitality. On a visit to the penitentiary, the speaker learned, with surprise at first, that the higher grades of criminals were abstainers. Their work needed skill, and, as when wine is in wit is out, they let alcohol alone. The lower class of crimes were the fruits of strong drink. The ancients wisely crowned their wine-god, Bacchus, with ivy; for “Ivy crowns the crumbling wall to decorate decay,
And throws its dark, deceitful pall o’er that which wastes away;”— and the waste of drink brings want and woe in its train.—Sel.