Lamoille newsdealer. [volume] (Hyde Park, Vt.) 1860-1877, 1873-07-30
The LlquOr Interest.


shall have completed their course. lie down
10 the grave of drunkard Every year
during the ras, decade has witnessed tie
same sacrifice; and sixty regiments stand
behind this army ready to take its place
II is to bc recruited BY our children aud
our children's children. Tramp, tramp,
tramp"-the sounds come TO. US in the
ertoes 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 10
us from the camp Of The recruits. A
great tide Of life flows rcsistless TO its
death. What in Gods name are they
fighting for? Tee privilege of pleasing
an appetite, Of conforming 10 social us
age, Of filling sixty thousand homes with
shame and sorrow, Of loading the public
with the,burden of pnuperism, of crowd
ing the prison-houses with felons, of de-
tracting from the productive interests of
the country, of running fortunes and break
ing hopes, of breeding disease and wretch
cdnsss, Of destroying 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.
1t cannot live without 1t. 1t never did
live without it. So long as the liquor in
terest maintains its present prosperous
condition, it will cost America sixty thou.
sand men every year. The effect is in
seperablo from the cause. The cost to
the country Of the liquer traffic is a sum
so stupendous that any figures which we
should dare to give would convict us Of
trihing The amount of life absolutely
destroyed, the amount of industry sacri-
feed, the amount Of bread transformed
into poison, the shame, the unavailing
sorrow, the crime, the poverty, the pau
perism, the brutality, the wild waste Of
vital and financial resources, mrke an ag-
gregatc so vast--so incalculably vast, that
The only wonder is that the American
people do not rise as one man and declare
that this great cause shall exist no longer.
Dilettante conventions are held on the
subject of peace, by men and wcmen who
find it necessary to fiddle to keep them
selves awake. A hue-and-cry is raised
about woman-sufferage, as if any wrong
which may be involved in woman's 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 thousand times more
from rum than from poltrical disability ?
The truth is that there is no question
before the American people to-day tha
begins to match in Importance the temper
ance question. The question of Ameri
can slavery was mover any thing buta ba
by BY the side of this; and VIC prophesy
that within ten years, if not within Eve
the whole country will be awake toit, aut
divide upsn it. The organizations of th'
liquor interest. the vast funds at its com
mand, the universal feeling among thos'
whose business is pitted against the ma
tional prosperity and tho public morals
these are enough to show that, upon on'
side of this matter, at least, the presen
condition Of things and the social and po
litical questions that lie in the immediate
future are apprehcnded. The liquor in
tefest knows there is to be great strug
gle, and is preparing to meet it. Peopl
in this country and Great Britain are be
ginning to see the cnormity of this bust
ness--are beginning to rcallizc that Christ
ian civilization is actua lily poisoned at it
fountain. and that there can be no purifi
cation of it until the source Of the poisol
is dried up.
The country is to be sincerely congratu
lated on the fact that the wine interest OF
the United States does not promise much
Little native wine, after all our pains-tak
ing, finds ;;..s ;..s way to gentleman's table
The California wines, are a disaproint
ment and failure. and the Western
wines are the same. Neither the dry no
the sparkling Catawba takes the place 0
anything important. They are not popu
lar wines, and wo congratulate the coun
try that they never can be. The lagel
beer interest is endeavoring, in convention
to separate itself from the whiskey inteo
est, claiming to be holicr and more re
spectacle than that. They are all to b
! Jumped together, They are all oppose'
to sobriety, and, in the end, we shall iin'
them all lighting side by side for exis
tancc against the determined indignation
Of long-suffering people.
A respectable English magazine re
ports, as fact of encouraging moment
that Of the fifty thousand clergymen Q
phe Church of England, as many as fou