Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-10-02
The Liquor Interest.

In an article in tScr5bner's Monthly for
August, Dr. J. G. Holland becomes enthu-
siastic on the Temperance question and
expresses his opinions regarding the
Liquor interest =" in the following en-
phatic terms:
TRAMP, tramp, tramp, the boys are
marching: how many of them? Sixty
thousand! Sixty full regiments, every
man of which will, before twelve months
shall have completed tie course, lie down
in the grave of drunkard. Every year
during the past decade has witnessed the
same sacrifice; and sixty regiments stand
behind this army ready to take its place.
1t is to be recruited from our children
and our children's children. Tramp,
tramp, tramp - the sounds come
to US in the echoes Of the footsteps of the
army just expired; tramp, tramp, tramp
the earth shakes with the tread Of the
host now passing: tramp, tramp, tramp,
comes to us from the camp of the re-
cruits A great tide of life flows resist
lessly to death. What in Gods name are
they fighting for? The privilege of pleas
ing an appetite, of conforming to a social
usage, of filling sixty thousand homes
with shame and sorrow, of loading the
public with the burden Of pauperism, of
crowding our prison-hOuses with telons,
of detracting from the productive indus
tries of the country, of running fortunes
and breaking hopes, Of breeding disease
and wretchedness, Ofdestroying both body
and soul in hell before their time.
"The prosperity of the liquor interest,
covering every department of it, depends
entirely on the maintenance Of this army.
II IL II
live without it. SO long as the liquor IN
terest maintains its present prosperous
condition, it will cost America the sacri-
flee of sixty thousand men every year
The effect is inseparable from the cause.
The cost to the country of the liquor
traffic is a sum so stupendous that any
figures which we should dare to give
would convict us of trifiing. The amount
of life absolutely destroyed, the amount
of industry sacrificed, the amount of
bread transformed into poison, the
shame, the unavailing sorrow, the
crime, the poverty, the pauper-
ism, the brutality, the wild waste of
vital and financial resources, make an ag-
gregate so vast-so intellectually vast, that
the only wonder is that the American
people do not rise up as one man and de-
clare that this great curse shall exist no
longer Dilettante conventions are held
on the subject Of peace, by men and wo
men who find it necessary to fiddle to
keep themselves awake. A Aue-and-cry
is raised about woman suffrage, as If any
wrong which may be involved in womans
lack of the suffrage could be compared to
the wrongs attached to the liquor INTEREST,"
"Does any sane woman doubt that wo-
men are suffering a thousand times more
from rum than from any political disa-
bility?
"The truth is that there is no question
before the American people to-day that
begins to match in importance the tenn
perance question. The question of Ameri-
can slavery was never anything but baby
by the side Of this: and we prophesy that
within ten years, if not within five, the
whole country will be awake to it, and
divided upon it. The organizations Of the
LIQUOR interest, the vast funds at its COM
mand, the universal feeling among those
whose business is pitted against the ma
tional prosperity and the public morals
these are enough to show that, upon one
side of this matter, at least, the present
condition OF things and the social and po-
litical questions that lie in the immediate
future are apprehended. The liquor in
JefCSt KNOWS tUtlt 10 W NC q SItdl SlIugpIt,
and is preparing to meet it. People both
in this country and in Great Britain are
beginning to see the enormity of this bu-
siness-are beginning to realize that Chris
tian civilization is actually poisoned at its
foundation, and that there can be no pu-
rifcation Of it until the source of the
poison is dried up.
The country is to be sincerely con-
graduated on the fact that the wine inter
est Of the United States does not promise
much. Little native wine, after all our
painstaking, finds its way to gentleman s
table. The California wines are dlsap-
pointment and failure, and the western
wines are the same Neither the airy nor
the sparkling Catawba takes the place OF
! anything imported. They are not popular