Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1888-12-15
The Cost of Rum to the People of the
Country.


Country.
Toledo Blade
1t is too often the case that the
cause of Prohibition is argued from
the standpoint of the moralist alone,
and that the economic and all other
phases of the question are ignored.
This is unWise. OF course the
moral aspect of the Rum traffic needs
eXemplitication, but il by no means
follows that all other aspects of the
matter shall be neglected. We
believe that there should be more
attention given it from the side of
political economy. Startling as the
proposition may be, we think the
facts will hear Us out in the state
ment that there is expended every
year in the United States more than
enough labor to produce an album
dance Offood, clothing, and Of every
necessary and even luxury of
ordinary life, for every human being
within the nations limits. The
trouble is, the money representing
the labor necessary to produce this
is spent in wrong channels; and the
chief of these is the expenditures for
Rum in all its forms.
Several years ago a newspaper in a
live, rapidly-growing Western city,
in mining district, took the pains
to collect the data upon which it
calculated the relative total eXpendi-
lures for Rum, tobacco and the
necessaries of life. 1t found that in
the one year the total amount re-
Ceived in that city for the sale of
clothing, boots and shoes, coal, and
the products of the bakeries, was
Sl,S75,0O0. The amount spent for
Rum was 81, 900, 600; that for meats,
game, live stock, hay, carpets, crock
cry and glassware, and books and
stationery, was 5000, 900. Add this
and the $l,S75,OO0 above, and the
necessaries of life cost that city SO, $780,
900. Tabacco and cigars were sold to
the amount of $2,225, 600. Add the
sales of Rum, and we have s., 225, 000
Subtract the total spent for the
neceSsaries of life, and the sales of
Rum and tobacco were in excess by
$275,000.
Suppose that the sums spent for
Rum had been added to those spent
for the necessaries of life, increasing
the total from So, 100000; does it not
seem probable that every inhabitant
of that city would have been well
clothed, well fed and warmed, and
well housed? Yet all that was
needed to produce that result was
that the money each individual spent
for Rum had been spent for the
things that were needed to make him
and his comfortable and physically
happy. But you may say that a
Western mining town is exceptional
in the number of people who use
Rum, and that it will not do to
Judge the nation by that one place.
There is some truth in this; yet it
was calculated a few years ago,
taking the figures of the United
States census of 1880 as a basis, that
the annual expenditures of the entire
United States, in round numbers,
were as follows for these items:
Liquors of all kinds. $500, OOO, 900
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, 600 100000
Bread. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. sos, 100000
Meats of all kinds...."..". 303 100000
Wooden goods............... 100000
Cotton oodS........... =. 100000, 900
Boots and shoes.............. l96, 100000
1t is no eXaggeration to say, in the
light of this estimate, that for every
dollar that is spent for proper food,
clothing, and the other necessities
and comforts of life, something like
fifty cents is spent for Rum. That is,
one-third the money that should be