The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1900-11-20

tenths of the divorces are traceable to
the saloon on one side or the other.
Then the preacher came to the meat
and bread question. He said:
l make no apology for dealing in the
economics of this question tonight. When
| my Saviour, touched by the needs of the
| people, wrought miracles to alleviate the
| pain and the suffering, and multiplied
| the loaves and fishes to feed the hungry,
| make no apology for discussing the
bread question. l believe in a practical
| Christianity that carries a Bible in one
hand and bread basket in the other.
| What is the matter with our count
ry?" he asked.
One politician says it's silver, another
/ says it's gold, while third yells nation
/ al banks. It's none of these, but ques-
| ton that combines them all. Take every
national bank in the United States, not
| leaving out one, and pile them down in
| one pile, every dollar of national bank
| stock in the United States, and the whole
business will not pay our liquor bill for
one year. All the national banks in the
United States do not aggregate twelve
hundred millions of dollars. When a few
| banks break in New York and a few in
| Chicago and a few in New Orleans, the
| whole country becomes alarmed; yet we
| can throw our arms around every nation
| al bank in the United States, and chug
| them into the whiskey hole, and still the
| country lives. How can we live? Moth
| ing but the almost infinite resources of
| America could have kept us from starva-
| ton during the past. But at last drink
| has blocked up the channels through
which our resources flow, and our wheat
| and flour rot in the warehouses for want
of market, and the women crying for
bread
But, says a man, money is money, and
business is business, and when you spend
money for liquor you are conducting a
great business of our country, carrying
on an important traffic, and the money
| is not burned up.
Now l am going to show you that it is
burned up. Keep up with me. 1 do
not ask that you have a frst-class mind
20 see it. I can show it to a fellow with
half sense. will show you where the
whiskey money goes. Do you know how
much it costs to make gallon of liquor?
Some of you ought to, you drunk enough
If it. You certainly know what it costs to
get it. 1t costs about twenty cents gal
ION to manufacture it,
Do you know what it sells for over the
saloon counter at ten cents a drink? 1t
sells for about four dollars a gallon, not
taking into account the licorice and to-
bacco and other devilment put in it.
Now let us see where this four dollars
somes, from, and where it goes. If you
would see where it comes from, stand at
the door of saloon and watch the men
come and go. They are the laboring men,
the mechanics, the wage earners, whose
families need every cent OF their wages.
Now let us see where it goes. Twenty
cents of the 81 goes for apples and corn
and rye and other materials out of which
the stuff is made and to pay the few men
used IN the manufacture of the stuff.
This goes back into the legitimate chan
nels of trade. Five cents in the dollar
then, you see, goes back into legitimate
trade. Where does the rest of it go?
One large bulk of it goes to the United
States Government to pay the great army
of officers to look after this business and
pay the other expenses of running this
murderous and expensive traffic. / be-
lieve the United States government ought
to be supported from the Injuries of
the rich and not by the bread and meat
and clothing of the families of the poor.
Another bulk of it goes into our big
city corporations to pay extra policemen
to take care of DRINKS and brawls and
fights and to quell the mobs created by
this traffic, and to lay the streets in
front of the palaces of the rich. The
poor rascal out there who can not build
front gate to the cottage of his home
is planking down his money upon the
counter of the salon to pave the streets
of the great cities. Another bulk of it
goes into the hands of the brewers and
distillers of this country to make up the
millions of dollars which are used
by the great liquor organizations
If this country to buy our pol
iticians and lawmaking bodies,
to subsidize the American ballot, and to
Zig down the very pillars Of American
liberty. The meat and bread and COM
forts of the poor drunkards cottage turn
ed into the corrupting fund of our count
ry. Another bulk of it goes into the hands
Of diamond studded gamblers, who. with
velvet hands and elegantly clothed bodies
have their rooms in the saloon buildings
of this country. who do not work. but
gather up the money of the saloon crowd
and buy their Clothes their diamonds and
their fine horses, with the bread and meat
If the poor. No wonder the middle classes
of this country are in such a distressed
condition today. Take a family of three
boys let three of them be hard working
boys, and one an idler and a gambler;
and if the gambler come in touch with
the money of the other three, he will
wreck the whole family. The poor, hard
| working fellows who frequent the saloons,
| are supporting these idle gamblers. You
see this money is going out of the hands
Of the common people; they are the ma
terial out of which the prosperity of this
country is built. The world is like pie.
The upper crust is short and brittle
| and the under crust is soft and
smutty, but the goody is in the middle.
believe in the middle classes of our
country, and it is from this class that
the saloon is drawing it's money.
Then the preacher traced the histo-
ry of dollar in a drinkard's hands,
showed how he spent it for whiskey
that ruined him in body, mind and
CASTORIA ForInfants and Children