News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-05-28
THE ECONOMY OF PROHIBITION.
What Adjustment of Liquor Selling
Would Do fnr the Country.

what Adjustment of Liquor Selling
Would Do for the Country.
A tremendous stimulus and boom in
every branch of trade and in every de-
partment of industry to startle the world
with Its extraordinary advantages would
certainly follow prohibition of the liquor
traffic.
Besides this marvellous increase in the
business of the country great reduction
OF taxes would inevitably follow the
moral and social revolution.
The immense expanse of our courts,
our police and their accompaniment,
prisons, lunatic asylums, poorhouses, re-
formatorles and many other depart
ments of charities and corrections, is due
in very large proportion to the raw
ages on society caused by the liquor
traffic.
Probably not less than one-half of the
present taxes both in city and country
are required to protect society from the
depradatlons of this destructive business
of liquor selling.
The unsuitable appetite for alcoholic
beverages has become a juggernaut OF
passion leading to a holocaust of waste
and destruction, SO that the business and
material aspects of this question of pro-
hibition is astounding, in fact is over
whelming.
The great question of the economy of
prohibition therefore has very wide,
significant and formidable compass, COW
ering every department of business, and
In fact includes our whole civilization,
whether applied to the beautiful in art,
the utilities of industry, the benefit of
education or the necessaries of life.
The large proportion of the peoples
earnings carried by this insidious mael-
strom of temptation, to be swallowed up
into Its vortex of destruction, is simply
an awful waste, a colossal, wanton
waste. War, pestilence and famine of
the past centuries have not equaled this
waste of the peoples energies.
In an intelligent and careful considera-
ton of this destruction of the peoples
earnings how the mind is staggered
with the magnitude of the cost of the
liquor traffic! How awful is the effect
of this blighting curse on the wage earn
ers of the people! How surely has every
man, woman and child to share and en-
dure the burden of this terrible jugger-
naut of passion, crime and misery!
A careful estimate of the cost of alco-
holic beverages has put this amount at
eleven hundred millions of dollars an
nually i'll the United States, and then
certainly another eleven hundred mill
ion is required to take care of the inevi-
table consequences of this terrible war on
the lives and health of the people, be-
sides the appalling, stapendous waste of
the peoples earnings. Twenty-Five hun
dred millions of dollars of the peoples
hard earned money-all gone to satisfy
the terrible cravings of vicious appe-
tite, to burn, corrode and consume the
bodies and destroy the minds and morals
of the people.
If through prohibition these thousands
of millions could be put into the regular
channels of trade, if we could have this
vast amount of money spent for the Or
binary necessaries and luxuries of life,
what a tremendous boon and impetus
the country would have in every de-
partment of our industries!-W. Jen-
nings Demorest in Woman's Temperance
Work