Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1874-05-23
THE FINANCIAL ASPECT OF THE
WHISKY QUESTION.

The following article, from the Gin
cinnati Trade list and Commercial Bul-
letin, presents the whisky traffic from a
commercial point of view. The impor-
tance of the revenue derived from dis
titled spirits to the Government, just at
this time, is beyond CARL. The article
will place the subject in new light
before. many of our readers:
The extreme violence of the tempe
rance crusade is most decidedly pass
ing away and upon all it's questions it
is high time for the sober sense of the
people to reasselt itself, and examine,
free from all passion and prejudice, the
magnitude Of the issues involved. These
may, of course, be divided primarily
into two classes, the moral and the
economic, under which latter head
must be included all that pertains to
financial and commercial relations, and
to the industrial classes of society that
depend more or less directly or Indirect
ly upon the manufacture and consump-
ton of the article against which the
women have issued their interdict.
The moral question it most certainly
appears to us has not been even Crap
pied with by the daily papers which
have chronicled the movement. Some
have been content with a half-veiled
sneer, and others with little better than
Il mere repetition of the pulpit. The
real merits of tho question, all impor-
tant as liberty itself-infnitely more so
than the old dognas of free will and
predestination-have never yet been
touched. Nor do we propose to dis
turb the placid serenity in which our
contemporaries shrink difficult points.
1t is their field not ours, and we will
not disturb our neighbours landmark.
The economic aspect of the crusade
has been also, and i'll an equal degree,
neglected, and rs this aspect of the
question is within our purview, we pro-
pose briefly to allude to q few topics
which most certainly deserve the very
deepest consideration of thinking men.
The women, then, and their advocates
are, we Judge, ignorant of the vast ex-
tent of the revolution they are attempt
ing.
If they succeed, even temporarily,
they will throw out of running gear not
merely one or two single manufactures,
but also the vast and complicated in
terests dependent upon them; they will
throw out of employment thousands
upon thousands of hands; they will force
tens of millions of capital from its chan
mel and compel it to he idle; and more
than this even they will disturb the whole
system upon which the necessary taxa
ton of the Union is based, and by the
abstraction of one of the greatest of all
the present sources of revenue, cripple
all other industries, all other branches
of trade and commerce, by the addition
al burdens that must in its own absence,
be inevitably imposed upon all or nearly
all others.
This last is most important consid-
Grafton, extending over far wider rami-
fcations than would appear at the first
superficial glance. In the county of
Hamilton alone, for the year ending
July 81, 1878, no less than $5,0G9,0 ,034
SO has been paid to the collector of in
ternal revenue for the production of
distilled spirits, and at the same period
more than 344, 900 gallons, upon which
the tax of seventy cents gallon was
due, but then unpaid, remained in the
several warehouses. 1t is perfectly true
that Cincinnati is the largest whisky
market in the world, but still this is an
enormous sum for u single county to
contribute towards the expense of the
government, and if we add all other
counties where the import upon the
same articles is collected, it will be ut
once apparent that if the taxation from
distilled liquors were withdrawn an i'm
mense hiatus would be created which
it would be difficult to fill without
something akin to the oppression that
deadens trade and spirit and enter
prise, or the reputation which dis
honors q nation. A vast body of our
national creditors reside in Europe.
Their very purchases of United States
bonds at the time of our deepest de-
preston proves their far-sightedness,
and their acumen, but these very quail
ties, and the proverbial coyness of capi-
tai would induce the same men to get
rid of our bonds upon the occurrence
of the very first suspicion that the
revenue was to be so grievously injured
by so conspicuous falling off. Bonds
would fall, values would shrink, conf
dence being lost property would actual
ly be less, and a panic would be the re-
sult-a panic from which there would
be no such exit as that, the full resour-
ces of our country achieved for us after
the alarm of last fall. Every one recol-
lects too wildly the misery and alarm
it created, and can easily imagine the
terror wider fall, in which the credit
of the country itself suffered, would
create.
81 Instead of saying "It's long
time between drinks, Western men now
remark, "It's long time since signed
my, loct ,,la1pp "