Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-08-06
ENGLAND,s DRINK BILL.

Rum in One Yeor.
Once o year the London Times makes
room for y detailed statement of England's
drink bill. That statement has just ap-
! peared. It shows a reduction from 1884,
for last year, but not a reduction Of q char
| acter to encourage the friends of temper
ance. For many years the statement has
been made by Mr.. William Hoyle, F. S. S.,
but this time another member of the Sta
t%istical Society, Mr.. Dawson Burns. ID,
signs his name to the report. The British
! expenditure upon drink in 1885 was $685.
343, 500; a decrease of about Sl5,O0o,O 600
from the preceding year. But Mr.. Burns
says: ain regard to the causes of diminu-
! ton we must, I fear, look to the continued
and in some quarters mcreasing-de-
preston of trade, rather than to the growth
! of thrift and temperance in the country.
| With the removal of this depression We
| should most probably find the drink bill
become heavier, and its social sequences
become darker" This is a. reasonable in
ference from the statistics of preceding
years. The state of trade in England al
ways reflects itself in the drink bill. Mr..
Burns gives the footings from 186Oto 1885,
inclusive, and they show this very plainly.
In that quarter Of a century the drink
bill has mounted from S425, 900, 900 to
$e16, 900, 600. Mr.. Burns says: "The years
Of commercial prosperity have brought with
them a vastly augmented expenditure On
stroug drink, and even when that prosper
ity began to decline, the special impetus
that had been given to drinking habits per-
sisted for a time, and yielded but slowly to
! the stress Of diminishing resources" That
is to say that people began by economizing
in other directions, and only cut down the
drink expenditure when they were COM
PEELED to do SO, even then continuing to
! consume largely. OF course the increase
between 1860 and 1885 is partly accounted
for by the growth Of population, but Mr..
Burns holds that, allowing for this increase
the drink bill shows a decline rather than
progress in Temperance. "It is clear" he
says, that the amount Of the national drink
bill is enormous, being equal to the ma
cheese; is not far short of the rents paid
for farms md houses in the United King
dom; is three times the amount spent for
tea, sugar, coffee, and cocoa; and is six
times the amount of our expenditure on
linen and cotton goods" Taking the fam
lilies of the United Kingdom at six millions,
the gross expenditure for drink in 1885
gives an average expenditure per family of
$1O2. so; or, reckoning five persons to q
family, 1905 per head. OF course if
those who do not drink at all are subtracted
the average is very much greater, rising, in
fact, to $40 per family of five persons.
This is an enormous expenditure upon
drink; N waste of capital, to put
the fact plainly, for the money spent upon
drink is as a rule not only thrown away,
being expended in the creation of a swarm
of evils which would not otherwise have
existed. 1t may we'll be asked what effect
upon the general we'll being of Great Brit
ain would be produced by the expenditure
of this six hundred millions of dollars upon
productive industry, upon the necessaries
of life, upon land and houses, upon edu-
cation, books, pictures, all that ministers to
and develops the higher life of Il nation.
: There can be no doubt at oil that a large
percentage of the poverty, restitution, ig-
n%orance, which now perplexes society,
would disappear if the constant leak Of the
drink bill could be stopped. But though
there is much movement in thinking circles
at this time; though social problems have
never been studied more seriously, the de-
yelopment of luxury and gross material
enjoyments proceeds even more rapidly
than the evolution Of patriotic solicitude
and intelligence, and the example set by the
rich is in no way such as to incite the poor
to elf-restraint. England's drink bill is a
document which has for Americans a deep
interest, for our own expenditure in the
same direction is a duplicate of that of our
cousins across the ocean, and every consid-
Grafton or argument springing from and
relating TO the one case has equal signifi-
canoe for the other. How to get rid of this
annual record of gross indulgence and sui
cidal vice is the most pressing question il
both branches Of the great Anglo Saxor
family.-NeW York Tribune.