The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1884-05-09

Boots and shoes .......... lg6t OlO0l
Sugar and moiasses. ............. . 155c01,000
Educational purposes. ............. So, 0J.0O0
OF the entire list of expenditures for
living the liquor account amounts to
nearly twice as much as any other item.
1t amounts to nearly twice as much as
bread, three times as much as meat,
and ten times as much as education. tt
is more than the combined cost of bread
and meat, and as much as the combined
items of bread and iron, steel, wooden
and cotton goods.
These figures are something so enor-
nous as to invite doubt as to their
correctness. But if any difference,
they are far below what they should be.
One hundred millions more could prop
erly be put on the top of them and they
would still fall below reality.
The internal revenue on distilled
spirits in 1883 was $7S, 81, IT'S; the rate
is so cents gallon; and the quantity
of liquor taxed is, therefore, S2,631, 972
gallons. Some of this, very small
percentage, was used for scientific and
mechanical purposes, but the most of it
was drank in the murder factories.
Sold by the glass it would cost the con-
sumner about Sc a gallon. The whole
amount, at this rate, would aggregate
1896, 791, 1892. The same year the tax
on fermented liquors amounted to $16,-
900, 615, which at $1.00 per barrel, rep
resents an equal number of barrels con-
tanning, at 81 gallons per barrel, $685.
919,065 gallons. At five cents a glass,
and II glasses to the gallon, this costs
the consumer 1914, 351, 439. The inn,
ported liquors, estimated on similar
basis, cost the consumer at least $780,
100000, which brings the total cost up
to more than 5000, 900, 900.
In this estimate no account is taken
of native wines, nor of liquor, crooked
whisky" and other which escapes tax
alton; nor the dishonest watering of
liquors, all of which the ragged con-
sumner pays for as whisky. But let this
90 to Offset that used in the arts and
sciences.
These estimates are all too low. There
are in a gallon of whisky, as they aver
age, 100 drinks instead of 60, and 20
glasses of beer to the gallon instead of
Il, and the prices average long way
above 10 cents. The price of alcoholic
drinks is never below 10 cents, and it
runs up all the way to 40. At the bars
in all the so-called respectable saloons
the price for common varieties of
whisky is Is cents, and extra qualities
20 to %.
The fact that it is all drawn out of
the same barrel makes no difference. 1t
is the label on the bottle that fixes the
price.
It is perfectly safe to add another
800, 200, 900 to the estimate, and to put
the actual expenditure of the people of
the United States for alcoholic stimu-
lants at one thousand millions Of dollars!
In this there is no account taken of
the direct cost resulting from the use of
liquors.
Add to it the loss to the country in
the impaired capacity for labor of rum
and beer drinkers.
Add to it the cost of ninety per cent.
of the courts and police
Add to it the cost of overcoming
riots, like that in Cincinnati, which
would be impossible without rum.
Add to it the cost of very large per
asylums, poor-houses, penitentiaries,
houses of correction and reformatories
of all kinds.
Add to it the cost of the trials or MUIR
derers and of executions, ninety per
cent. of which is to be carried to this
already enormous account.
Add to it the cost to the country of
the rotten political rings, all of which
are based upon rum and topped out
by it.
Add to it the cost of maintaining the
hordes of gamblers, thieves, outcasts
and in fact the entire criminal class
who are first brought to vice and GRIM
inality by rum, and who afterward de-
pend upon it as their chief stay.
These additions make an array of
figures entirely beyond human under
standing, and this is only part of the
money account. Vast as is this there
are other effects that are far beyond it.
Add to this money loss the blighting,
yearly. of the lives of thousands upon
thousands of the best men and women
OF the country.
Add to it the cold hearth stones, the
shoeless women, the rags, squalor and
misery that are inseparable from rum
and beer
Add to it the desolate homes, the
heart broken women, the children
reared in ignorance and vice to swell
the account of pauperism in this gen.
GRAFTON, and criminality in the next
Add to it everything that is miserable
in life, everything that is destructive of
all that is good in man. and some idea
may be formed of the relation rum bears
to the country. The loss in wealth,
enormous as it is, is the least item in the
account. Toledo Blade.