The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-07-21
Temperance.
Temperance and WOrkingmen.

The rum business is pouring its Wit
riolic and damnable liquids down the
Threats of hundreds of thousands of la
borers, and while the ordinary strikes
are ruinous both to employers and en-
ployes, | proclaim a strike universal
against strong drink, which, if kept up,
will be the relief of the working classes
and the salvation of the nation. / will
undertake to say that there is not
healthy laborer in the United States
who, within the next ten years, if he will
refuse all intoxicating beverage and be
saving, may not become capitalist on
small scale Our country in year
spends one billion five hundred million
and fifty thousand dollars for rum. OF
course the working classes do great
deal of this expenditure. Careful sta
tistics show that the wage-earning
classes of Great Britain expend in
liquors one hundred million pounds, or
five hundred million dollars, year. Sit
down and calculate, o workingman,
how much you have expended in these
directions. Add it all up. Add up what
| your neighbors have expended and re-
alize that instead of answering the beck
of other people you might have been
your own capitalist When you de-
plete workingman's physical energy
you deplete his capital. The stimulated
workman gives out before the unstimu-
lated workman. My father said: "I
became temperance man in early life
because | noticed in the harvest-field
that, though was physically weaker
than other workmen, l could hold
out longer than they. They took stimu-
lants; l took none" A brick-maker in
England gives his experience in regard
to this matter among men in his en-
ploy. He says, after investigation:
" The beer-drinker who made the few
est bricks made six hundred fifty
nine thousand; the abstainer who made
the fewest bricks, seven hun bred forty
six thousand. The difference in be-
half of the abstainer over the indulger,
eighty-seven thousand" There came
a very exhausting time in the British
parliament. The session was pro-
longed until nearly all the members got
sick or worn out. Out of six hundred
fifty-two members only two went
through undamaged; they were teeto-
talers. When an army goes out to the
battle the soldier who has water or
coffee in his canteen marches easier
and fights better than the soldier who
has whiskey in his canteen. Rum helps
a man to fight when he has only one
contestant, and that at the street corner.
But when he goes forth to maintain
some great battle for God and his coun-
try he wants no rum about him. When
the Russian goes to war a corporal
passes along the line and smells the
breath of every soldier. If there be in
his breath a faint of Intoxicating liquor
the man is sent back to the barracks.
Why? He cannot endure fatigue. All
our young men know this. When they
are preparing for regatta, or for ball
club, or for an athletic wrestling, they
abstain. Our working-people will be
wiser after awhile, and the money they
fling away on hurtful indulgences the V
will put into cooperative associations,
!, and so become capitalists. If the work
ingman puts down his wages and then
, takes his expenses and spreads them out
, so they will just equal, he is not wise
!. l know workingmen who are in per.
feet fidget until they get rid of theil
last dollar. If by some generous fiat OF
the capitalists of this country, or by a
new law of the government of the United
States, twenty-five per cent, or fifty per
cent, or one hundred per cent were
added to the wages of the working
classes of America, it would be no adj.
vantage to hundreds of thousands OF
,, them, unless they stopped strong drink
Aye, until they quit that evil habit, the
more money, the more ruin; the more
wages, the more holes in the bag. DR.
Idlmdqe.