The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-06-02
Alarming Facts.

To every well-wisher of his race,
whether an ardent worker in the Tenn
perance cause, or in the Church, or only
a genteel looker-on, the facts which sur
round us are alarming. Is the Temper
ance work, therefore, foolishness? To
very many it appears to be, but we re-
member that at one stage of Christianity
the preaching of the cross was called
foolshness, yet it proved to be power
even in the hands of the unlearned and
untitled. Is there any such crown for
the cause of Temperance?
Whether the Temperance work is
| fooliShness or not, something has
aroused this Nation, and other nations
no less, to certain class of facts that can
not be pooh-poohed out of sight How far
the arrogance of the traffic is imme-
diately responsible for this awakening
we need not consider, we only mention
the fact. 1t is certainly not the Tenn
perance workers so-called that are
most prominent at this time in
weighing the liquor traffic in the
balances of public opinion. No man
in America is further from being
Temperance fanatic than Rev. DIR.
Crosby, of New York. 1t is only a few
years since he was the target of Tenn
perance orators and Temperance edit
ors because he refused TO pronounce
their shibboleth. He thought there was
a better way than total abstinence or
prohibition, but he assumed duties in
the line marked out by himself that has
led him to write as bitter things of the
traffic as Neal Dow ever did. A few
weeks ago he addressed meeting in
Steinway Hall, New York. 1t was not
Temperance meeting, but in discuss
ing the glory and the shame of the
great metropolis he unearthed class
of facts that has set the people of that
city, and of the Nation as well, to such
sober thinking as has not been often
known. Speaking of the citys debt of
500, 900, he says that the debt is
owing to the scoundrelism of the Off
GERS, and that men are elected to the
municipal offices, not because of merit,
but because they keep liquor saloons
which are useful to the party. He says:
''The men whose business it is to
ruin the bodies and souls of others, to
rob them" of their hard-earned wages
and drive their wives to beggary and
| SulClue, are CuOScu W uldkc our CITY
ordinances They are men who
attend prize-fghts; dirty, vulgar men,
whom you would no sooner allow to en-
ter your house than you would the
smallpox. Crime and poverty te
great extent start from the saloon, of
which there are 10000 in the city, tax
ing out the women and children, one
for every thirty-five men. Allowing
three-sevenths of these not to drink at
all, there is one saloon for every twenty
drinkers. The keepers all get rich. 1t
is easy to see where the pauperism and
misery come from" Having stated
these facts, the doctor startled his audi
ence, many of whom were foreign
born, by saying that the saloons are
mostly in the hands of foreigners, and
he appealed to them as men who have
at heart the good of their adopted coun-
try to aid in the removal of this shame.
| The New York Tribune, in recent
carefully compiled article, estimates the
annual sales of liquor at $600,000,000.
Who can comprehend sum of
such magnitude? 1t means twelve
child in America. The annual corn
product is 5000, 100000. The Tribune
estimates the cost of liquor as equal to
our whole corn product. The annual
expenses of the Government, interest
and all, is less than S400,000,O00. The
Tribune estimates the money spent for
| liquor as one and a half times the cost
of running the Government, without
allowing for crime and its concomitant
miseries. All this may be Temperance
foolishness, but people who have never
been classed with Temperance men are
thinking and talking about it.-India'a-
dpoliS Journal.