The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1890-01-29
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
RUM AND POVERTY.

Il
Review, which is devoted to the whole
sale trade in rum. 1t therefore can not
be accused of hostility to the saloon in
terest; yet in recent issue, speaking OF
the habit of beer-drinking among the
poor Of the great city, it says:
ut makes sots of the women Of the lower
grade of life. The beer pitcher is kept going
from morning until night, and the result is an
alarming increase of intemperance No one
knows this better than our saloon-keepers, and
it is especially gratifying and hopeful sign OF
in the retail trade that there are
men among our saloon keepers who have the
courage to acknowledge this openly"
The New York Tribune reproduces
the above and in commenting on the
closing sentence says: but if there is
a saloon-keeper who refuses to sell beer
to women and children, we have not
heard his name" 1t might have we'll
added, for the information of readers
not familiar with New York City, that
in the sections inhabited by the poorer
classes the corner saloons invariably
have, on the side street, door with the
sign Family Entrance" which is used
exclusively for this class of customers
women and children with pitchers or
tin buckets for beer, or bottles for
whisky. The side-door custom is
large portion of their patronage; and
corner rooms bring very high rents, as
they are the only ones, as rule, that
are available for this purpose.
This state of things exists in every
large city, especially those with large
foreignborn population. The men drink
at night, as they can not do so while at
their daily toll; the women drink, and
the children are brought up to drink.
What manner of men and women will
they become, brought up from the cradle
to drink whenever there is money
enough to compass the price of a pitcher
of beer.
1t is an undeniable fact that the
poorer classes of our cities are infected
with socialistic, communistic or anarch-
istic ideas. They look upon the ''rich"
as their enemies-and with them this
word is applied not only to those OF
wealth, but to every well-to-do man,
who has accumulated any property, no
matter if nothing but his residence.
They assume that he who has any thing
laid by for rainy day has robbed the
'poor"-and by this they mean them
selves-of what is rightfully theirs.
There is close connection between
these two things-the steady drinking
and the socialist propaganda. The fact
has not escaped the reader who followed
attentively the newspaper accounts OF
the Haymarket riots in Chicago that
the anarchist meetings were invariably
in halls over beer salons, and that the
leaders were always to be found in the
saloons themselves. The same is true
of the loud-mouthed agitators in New
York and other cities. The beer saloon
is the hot-bed of socialism. There, over
their ,potations of beer, these socialists
preach the doctrine that the only way
to remedy poverty is to rob every one
who possesses property and distribute il
among the poor. Did any one ever heal
of total abstainer being disciple Of
anarchism?
The plain fact Of the matter is thai
the real cause of the poverty among the
working classes of our citizens is-rum
How can a man save any thing when hi
spends all the money he can spare fol
beer or whisky-when his wife drinks
beer all day long, when his children arr
taught to drink, when he spends hi
evenings in some foul saloon, drinking
also? There is only one other factor o
Importance in keeping men in abjec
poverty, and it is idleness. And lazi
ness and beer-guzzling go together
The lazy man is generally drinking
man, and the drinking man, as he de
grades himself, very generally become
lazy man. In fact, 1t can hardly b.
doubted that much Of the laziness i
nearly always to be laid at the door o
rum-which makes the latter the sol
important factor in producing poverty
There is a homely old proverb whicl
says that Zone can not eat his cake an,
have it too," yet that is exactly wha
these shriekers over the poverty of tn
poor and the expressions of the rich asl
to have done. No man can lay by com
petence for his old age unless he prac
tees the virtue of frugality; these me,
want to spend every cent, and yet hav
the earnings of their sober brethren d
vided among themselves. Take Ne,
York or Chicago, and suppose it possibl
to have the full money value of all tn
property within their limits-both rea
estate and personal property of ever
kind-divided equally among the il
habitants; how long would this equalit
of wealth last? Not day. With
twenty-four hours the saloons and tn
resorts of infamy would have the bull
of the dividend of this thriftless, in
provident class, whose members liv
only to crafty their selfish appetite
and passions 1t would take but
marvelously short time until the il
equality as to possessions would be g
marked as it is now. The condition {
the drinking class would be every VIII
as bad as it is now. What next? Al
other division, we suppose-with tn
same result, of course.
The men who are the leaders in thes
wild movements against industr,
against sobriety, against accumulation
against wealth, know that the
theories are moonshine, impossible I
realization; and they know full we'll,
they know any thing, that the povert
of the masses is self-inflicted and a
tributable directly to rum. If the'
men would not drink. but would wor
steadily and live economically - fl
though their lives now are wretche
they are wildly extravagant in spen