The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-04-18
THE COST OF 1T.
Some Suggestive Facts Concerning the
Liquor Traffic.

The Chicago Journal has the following:
When we look at the statistics on file in the
National Census Bureau and see what an i'm
mense amount of money is annually spent by
the people of the United States for malt and
spirituous liquors, we cease to wonder that
there should be an organized effort on the
part of well-disposed citizens to Danish the
the land. The Census Bureau in Washington
shows, from liquor-dealer's sales, that the
peoples drink bill is, in round numbers,
$3.50, 900, 900 yearly. These figures are enor-
NOUS they would also be incredible, evsn
if their reality could be disputed, and the
prodigious aggregate can only be compre-
hended by comparison with other things
more easily measured by the mind Most of
the Journals readers can recall the great
Chicago fire, when miles of buildings went up
in fame and smoke, and hundreds of fami-
lies were rendered homeless in few hours.
Such an awful calamity had never fallen
upon city before on the American CONT
nent; it hushed and paralyzed the whole CIV
ilized world for day, and then came offers
of aid from every civilized nation under the
suns circuit In short time there was money
enough received to care for all, and million
and half of surplus over, with which Chicago
was enabled to carry on her public charities.
Now the money that is spent for drink in the
United States would rebuild Chicago three
times every year, better and more magnif-
Gently than she stands to-day. Any reason
able man will say that our whiskey and beer
bills are altogether too large, and that the
liquor traffic does not pay, notwithstanding
the immense revenue which the government
annually derives from it.
But the cost of liquor drinking is not alto
gether in money; it costs immensely in other
directions and entails injuries and heartaches
that are quite beyond the figures of the
arithmetic accurately to compute. Four-ffths
of all the inmates of our jails, prisons, peni-
tentiaries and reformatories are brought there
directly or indirectly, by strong drink.
There are 500, 900 of these whiskey criminals
in the United States to-day; every institution
that is open for their reception is full of them,
and the number is rapidly increasing. Then
there are 100000 insane persons idiots, help
less inebriates, and poorhouses and charitable
institutions of the country, costing the tax
payers $1,000 900 per annum.
But this is not ALL Much of the criminal
ity, especially street brawls and murders,
which costs the public SO much money, is di-
rectly traceable to this one parent vice of
drinking too much. 1t is safe to say that all
the revenue derived from taxes and license
on the liquor traffic in Cook county, large as
it is, does not begin to pay the pecuniary
damage which it inficts.
Nor is this all. No pen but the recording
angels is able truthfully to portray the sor-
row that is inflicted upon loving hearts by
this Internal habit of drinking stimulants
No class is SO high in the social scale that it
is not dragged down by it, and no class is SO
poor and degraded that it is not made more
inhuman and miserable by it. A drunken
parent bestows a curse upon his offspring
even to the third and fourth generations
Science shows how vice of any kind vitiates
the blood, and, although it may skip one gen.
Grafton, it is certain to crop out farther down
the stream. dead drunkard often reaches
out his hand from the grave, and with his
skeleton finger, palsies the brain of his de-
scendants, and sends them, like SO many iab-
bering idiots, to the insane asylum to be sup
ported by charity.
No. The liquor traffic must be character
lied as an unmixed curse, viewed from any
standpoint whatever, and as such it does not
pay.