The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-04-27
THE COST OF LIQUOR.
How the People Are Burdened BY Int
Derance.


How the People Are Burdened BY Intern
perance.
The direct burden laid every year
upon the people of the United States by
the liquor traffic is about five times as
great as the total amount of revenue
raised by the tariff; it is increasing
every year, at the rate of nearly hum
dred million dollars, while the revenue
from the tariff is not But, enormous
as is this sec million dollars per year,
it is only the direct cost of liquor to
men who drink it. The indirect bur
den is also enormous 1t is the cost of
all the crime which is caused by drink;
the cost of extra police force needed be-
cause of the saloon and its concomi-
tants; the increased expense of main
tanning criminal courts, prisons, work.
houses and penitentiaries; the added
expense of the vast amount of pauper-
ism caused by the drink habit; and
last, yet most important in its socio-
logical bearings, the cost of the vast
number of insane patients, as well as
of idiots and epileptics, caused by in
temperance For it is a fact, admitted
by the highest authorities among alien
lists, that intemperance is the cause of
insanity, idiocy and epilepsy in the Sec
ond or third generation. Every one
knows that the proportion of persons
afflicted with these maladies is increaS-
ing rapidly. The percentage of these
classes increases much faster than the
percentage of population, and will go
on increasing and adding to the burden
of their maintenance, SO long as the
use of liquor increases.
There is yet one item of cost besides
these. 1t is the loss of productive in
dustry to drunkenness. A drinking
man, confirmed in the habit loses
considerable number of working days
each year, in which he is either indulg
ing in debauch or recovering from its
effects. Multiply the amount of wages
thus lost by the two or three millions
who must be confirmed drinkers
though we know of no trustworthy
estimate of their numbers-and you
have an enormous total To this add
the productive value of the 100, 900 lives
which are lost every year through
drunkenness, and the total is an alarm
ing one.
The question is asked the American
people, Does it pay?'
Does it pay for the nation to allow
individuals to lose this enormous aggre-
gate, to degrade and debauch them
selves, to faint their descendants to the
second or third generation with the
seeds OF inherited intemperance, insan-
ity or epilepsy; to waste their sub
stancce, and add enormously to the
pauperism of the land?
We doubt if any thinking man will
uphold for an instant the proposition
that it does pay. Then why not move
to stop this extremely costly and I'M
profitable tax?
Fortunately, intemperance is the one
vice which can be checked and eradi-
Gated. The means is simply to put it
beyond the power of drinking men to
obtain liquor 1t is possible to prevent
not only the sale, but also the manu-
facture of liquor. There are only two
formidable obstacles in the way. The
first is the lack of popular knowledge
of the evils of intemperance; the sec
ond is the opposition of those men
who make money out of the traffic The
first is removable by education; the
second must be dealt with by law,
as inimical to the welfare of the peo-
pie. There is no way to success except
we pulverize the rum power Toledo
Rlade