The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1873-12-11
[BY REQUEST
The LIQUOR Interest.

udicHluS now many OF them Cl8ty
thousand Sixty full regiments, every
maa of which will before twelve months
shall have completed their 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 array ready to take its
place. 1t is to be recruited from our
children and our ehildren's children
Tramp, tramp, tramp,-the earth shares
with the tread OF the host now passing;
tramp, tramp, tramp, comes to Us from
the camp of the recruits. \ great tide
of life flows resistlessly to its death
What in Gods name are they fighting
for? The privilege of pleasing an ap
petite, Of conforming to a social usage, OF
filing sixty thousand homes with shame
and sorrow, Of loading the public with
the burden of pauperism, of crowding our
prison houses with feIons. of detracting
from the productive industries Of the
country, Of running fortunes and breakins
hopes, Of breeding disease aud wretched
ness, OF destroying both body and soul
in hell before their time.
The prosperity Of the liquor interest,
covering evey department Of il depends
entirely on the maintenance OF this army.
1t cannot live without it. 1t never did
live without it. So long as the liquor
Interest maintains its present prosperous
condition, it will cost America the sacrifice
of sixty thousand men every year. The
effect is nseparable from the cause. The
cost to the country Of the liquor traEe is
SUM SO stupenduOus that any figure
which we should dare to give wogld con
Wet Us of triRing The amount Of life
absolutely destroyed, the amount of bread
transformed into poison, the shame, the
unavailiug sorrow, the crime, the poverty,
the pauperism. the brutality, the wild
waste Of vital aud financial resources,
make an aggregate so vast, that the only
wonder is that American people 90 not
rise as one man and declare that this
great curse shall exist no longer. Diettau
te conventions are held on the subjeet of
peace, by men and women who find it
necessary to fiddle to keep themselves
awake. a hue and cry is raised about
woman suffrage, as if any wrong which
may be involved in woBan's lack Of suf
rage could be compared to the wrongs
attached to the liquor interest
Does any sane woman doubt that wo.
men are suffering thousand times more
from rum than any political disability?
The truth is that there is no question
before the American people to day that
begins to match in importance the TEN
perance question. The question Of
A -, J. hut
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, divided upon it. The organiza-
tion of the liquor interest, the vast funds
at its command, the universal feeling
among those whose business pitted against
the national 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 political questions that lie in the
immediate future are apprehended. The
liquor interest knows there is to be a great
struggle, and is preparing to meet it.
People both 10 this country and in Great
Britain are beginning to see the enormity
of this busness-are beginning to realize
that Christian civilization is actually
poisoned at its fountain, and that there
can be no publication of it until the
source of the poison is dried up
The country is sincerely to be congratu
lated on the fact that the wine interest of
the United States does not promise much
Little native, wines after all our painstak
ing, finds its way to a gentIeman'S table.
The California wines, are disappont-
ment and a failure, and the Western
wines are the same Neither the dry nor
the sparkling Catawba takes the place of
anything mported. They are not popular
wines. and we congratulate tbs country
that they never can be. The lager beer
interest is endeavoring, in convention, to
separate itself from the whisky interest,
claiming be holier aud more respectable
than that They are to be all Jumped
together. They are all opposed to sobriety,
and in the end, we shall fnd them all
fighting side by side for existence against
the determined Indignation of long suf-
feriug people.
A respectable English magazine re-
ports, as a fact of encouraging moment,
that of the fifty thousand clergymen OF
the church of Englund as many as four
thousand actually abstain from the use of
spirits So eleven tweiths of the clergy
men of the English church consent to be
dumb dogs on the temperance question !!
How large the proportion of wine drink
ing clergymen may be in this country we
do not know. but we do know that wine
glass stops the mouth on the subject of
temperance whoever may hold it. A wine
drinking clergyman is soldier disarmed
! He is not only not worth straw 10 the
6sht; he is part of the jnlPedimeata OF
the temperance army. We have good
many such to carry, who ought to be
ashamed of themselves and who very soon
will be. Temperance laws are being
passed by the various Legislatures, which
| they must sustain, or 90 over, soul and
( A 4 II a.