The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-05-23

might be if we could only turn the vast cost
of intemperance into useful channels
In 1870, the total cost of pauperism in the
United States was only $4,000, 900. Sup
posing our estimate of four-fifths of pauper-
ism to be the result of intemperance we
spent in 1870 $500 900 600 to pay paupcr-
ism which costs $12 900, 900 annually to sup
port. We may say emphatically that was a
bad bargain, but we are making it over again,
and faithfully executing it every year that we
allow intemperance to exist.
In 1874, Pennsylvania spent S15, 600, 600
on her paupers. Her expenditures for liquor,
made by the very men who beget paupers is
probably $50, 600 900 annually. The value
of liquors annually imported into the coun-
try is from $75, 600, 900 to 800, 600, 900, at
least five times as great as the amount re-
quired to keep life in all the paupers of the
United States in 1870. We do not forget
that the people of wealth consume largely of
this importation yet one-half the amount
spent by the poor for liquor would comfort
ably support and educate all the paupers in
the land.
/ Here let us say that it should also be re-
membered how many poor men, mechanics
and laborers. are moderate drinkers. I will
! pass over at this time the imminent danger
/ which every moderate drinker is in. with the
remark that he is in the broad, pleasant. insid-
ious way of self-indulgenee, guided by prin-
! ciple which leads to self-destruction. The
cost of moderate indulgence would educate
one family in our common wealth What a
profitable exchange it would be to give mod
crate indulgence for education 10 family of
children; to give slovenliness for tidiness ;
loose moral notions for stern integrity; dis
position to barely escape penury for high
moral purpose to be independent! Self-in-
/ Il I -. III
itual relaxation means disintegration.
1t is both need and duty to concentrate our
energies to gather up ourselves in life Mod
crate drinking is the direct road to failure in
this duty, and failure means poverty and pau
perism in the individual and his progeny
The hereditary vagrant refuses to work.
| Now no man or woman of moral principles
will refuse to work. If [ wished to make
paupers of the honest poor | would begin by
undermining their moral principles, and my
instrument would be moderate drinking. The
devil would see to it that it did not fail me.
Metropolitan police returns throw some light
on the moral principle of drinking men. They
show that drunkenness increases with prosper
ity; and the maximum of drunkenness occurs
ON pay-days of the week. and gradually de-
creases until it reaches minimum six days
afterward. No clearer proof that men keep
|
by drinking could be adduced.
| This shows that it is not lack of employ
ment or misfortune that makes most of our
pauperism, but that indulgence in alcohol is
the vile parent of most pecuniary ills, indi-
vidual and social Suppress the need and
you repress the mendlcancy.
We can form some idea of the relation be-
tween intemperance and pauperism by the
statistics of crime, for crime and pauperism
are too often found hand in hand | do not
mean to say that poor people are criminals.
God forbid But do mean to say that, gen
orally speaking, most criminal people are
poor.
By the sixth annual report of Mayor Stoke
ly, it appeared that for thirteen months end
| in November, 1878, there were S. 443 persons
committed to the house of correction; of
these 4, 941 were intemperate 1879 occa-
sionally 80; sos were moderate drinkers, and
only l., 527 were thought abstemious.
1t has been estimated that so to 80 per
cent of crimes are due to intemperance, and
that 95 per cent of all juvenile criminals are
children of ignorant. vicious and drunken
parents Drunken" includes Ignorant "
and vicious" for drunkenness inevitably
leads to ignorance and vice.
We could collect interesting facts without
end on this subject but there is not time and
perhaps enough has been said. Only few
others will cite. Paupersm increases among
us by immigration, and it decreases in Europe
by emigration. Pauperism is increasing IN
New York, and decreasing in Ireland These
facts explain each other Sober Irishmen
with their brawny arms have built our great
railroads, and done labor upon those internal
improvements which make up so much of our
wealth and glory. Drunken Irishmen have
filled our prisons, and given us large part of
our paupers and criminals. / mean no re-
Election on the Irish as people; | do reflect
on their well-known habits of intemperance.
The sober Irishman is as law abiding as any
other citizen. and so regarded.
There is little native pauperism with us.
Now honest European poor can come to our
wide and fertile fields and help themselves
and u.s. but this is on condition that intern
perance is suppressed among the emigrants.
In 1870 in the United States there was an
average of one pauper to every $50 lnhabl-
tants In Europe the average is all the way
from one to ten in some of the least favored
lands, to one in forty in others more favored.
In the 10th century heavy penalties We're an
nexed in England to vagrancy, public whip
ping being one of them. But it was found
that these did not even check the evil 1t Is
also now known that education and prohibi-
ton are the antidotes to the vicious instincts
of the past not merely the education of the
head. but that of the heart by the means OF
those external circumstances which affect IN
dividual character
But intemperance, and with most men mere
moderate drinking is deadly in its effects