The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1897-10-08
The Liquor Trade as Factor in Polit-
iCal Economy.

AkQuOL ldNC GS q dNlOl HI OiAI-
ical Economy.
The New York Voice exhausts its in
genuity i'll trying to make it appear that
the liquor trade influences general prices
Showing the amount of money spent for
liquor, amounting to upwards of a thous-
and million dollars year, is a favorite
method. But it cannot be shown ifthe
liquor business we're taken out entirely,
that penny would be added to the price
of more usefnl things. 1t would be
great gain to the morals and health of
society and add to the comfort of the
poorer class whose bread is sacrificed to
drink to serious extent, but there is no
direct influence observable that general
prices would be affected.
The Uoice'S last effort in this direction
is an abstsact from the census reports of
1890 Showing how farmers and wage
earners are robbed" The census show
the per cent which goes for farm products
divided among six leading articles of con-
sumption, as follows: Bread, shoes, cloth
ing, carpets, furniture and liquors.
Thirty-five per cent is set aside for bread,
20 for shoes and boots, % for clothing, rs
for carpets, II for furniture and 10 for
liquor. Wages for each are pretty nearly
the same except for furniture which is 81
per cent and in the liquor column only a
per cent goes for wages in its manufac-
tuFe. Profits, expenses, taxes, etc, are
pretty nearly the same as the portion set
aside for wages and raw material each,
until the item of liquor is reached. Here
the disparity is wonderful, Sc per cent
being absorbed in profits expenses, taxes,
etc., to 10 per cent for raw material and
a per cent for labor.
Computations based upon the report of
the collector of internal revenue show for
the year ending June 1898 $I,oSo, ee9, 900
was spent in this country for liquors. And
then the Voice states its conclusions, if
this SUM had been divided prorata be-
tween the farmer and wage Garner in all
the industries abolishing that of liquor
the farmer would have received for his
share in that one year $3.50, 500, 900, and
the wage earners would have received
1884, 500, 900.
A moments reflection will suffice to
show that this is sophistical reasoning
The price of farm products, wheat espec-
tally, is fixed in Liverpool, by causes we
need not stop to explain but entirely dis
tinct from the liquor trade, which could
not possibly affect them in any way. If
the comparatively small amount of grain
used in the manufacture of liquor were
added to the quantity taken for bread, il
it could have any influence whatever,
which it could not, would by increasing
the supply, lower the price. The wage
market could not be affected for the
products of all the articles mentioned are
in over-abundance on the market, and
labor always competing against itself for
a chance to work at declining wages.
The V0ice'S theory and conclusions will
not bear examination at all. The great
enemy to the farmer and all other pro-
ducers of useful articles as we'll as the
wage earners is the gold money monop-
oily, and the liquor trade is one of its
strongest levers used to debauch and en-
slave producer and wage Garner. While
the V0ice and the prohibition movement
upholds the money power they will never
succeed in making any impression on the
liquor power, their sophistry and specious
reasoning Notwithstanding. The money
power caused the split i'll the prohibition
party in 1896, the moment an attempt
was made to lift hand against it.
Enforced iileness and poverty are the
greatest meters to drink and crime among
the laboring and very poor class, of any
other known causes, and the gold monop-
oily with its contraction aud scarcity of
money policy, in order to increase the
value of debt and decrease the value or
price of property, is the chief architect of
involuntary idleness and poverty and
their long catalogue of crimes, drink and
misery. Make it possible for the masses
to enjoy fairer share of this worlds
comforts and the drink evil can be re-
duced to the minimum, and not otherwise
There is more good in human nature than
bad-vastly more. All it wants is a fair
chance to develop the former
Such men as Woolley are on the border
land of insane OH the subject and their
Judgment is dethroned by their violent
passion against their liquor antagonist
1t is personal fight with Woolley and it
would not be matter of surprise if his
enemy should overcome him some day,
as it did John B. Cough and others of that
class. The root of the liquor evil cannot
be reached by the present policy Of the
I0ice prohibition party.