The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1910-06-16
THE WARFARE AGAINST DRINK
TEMPERANCE BATTLE GATHERS
STRENGTH EVERY DAY.
Labor and the Saloons.


function of "the poor mans club" is
an economic necessity in large centres
of population, especially manufacture
ing cities, is getting hard jolts nova
days. A few days ago at a mass
meeting In Toronto addresses de-
nouncing the saloon and the liquor
business In general were made by
such influential and clear-thinking
labor leaders as John Mitchell and
John B. Lennon, respectively vice.
president and treasurer of the Amer
ican Federation of Labor, and by
President Lewis, OF the United Mine
Workers. Mr.. Lennon said that the
liquor business lowers the efficiency
of the working man and prophesled
that the time would come when labor
as unit would be arrayed against
the saloon. Mr.. Lewis declared that
the United Mine Workers have al
ready prohibited the sale of liquor
by their members, even at picnics,
and Mr.. Mitchell expressed similar
views.
Even more significant is the de-
clsion recently made by the United
States Steel Corporation to control
as far as possible the liquor business
in Fayette County, Pennsylvania,
where 1t has $4,000 employees. 1t Is
declared that the Steel Corporation
estimates that at least three per cent.
better returns can be made on the
millions 1t has invested there by regu-
lating the drinking of the coke work.
ers-that is, permitting them to
drink, but stipulating where and
when they shall drink.
For more than year." says the
dispatch, figures have been gathered
on drinking among coke workers, and
1t found that for seventy-two hours
after each payday the coke ovens run
at only two-thirds of their capacity,
and on nearly every payday hundreds
of tons of coke are ruined by inability
to get sober men to care for 1t in the
ovens" Nine breweries are now run
ming in the county and the Steel Cor
poration intends to buy them out.
Everybody who has followed the
progress of the present temperance
movement must have noted an i'm
portant difference between the meth
DDS adopted by its promoters and
those used in such movements in the
past. There is less appeal to senti-
ment and sympathy and more to the
pocketbook. The prohibition work.
ers are trying-and with astonishing
success--to show the country that the
liquor traffic produces an economic
loss which 1t simply cannot afford to
stand. The man who drinks thereby
lowers his efficiency, reduces his pro-
ductive capacity, impairs his value to
his employer and to himself, and
eventually lowers his earning capac-
dty. This means that the Industrial
world Is deprived of the services of
man who otherwise would have had
definite value as producer of
wealth, and when the case is carried
to an extreme it means that the drink
er becomes an actual source of ex-
pense to the State by reason of crime
or destitution.
In matters OF business the direc-
tors Of the United States Steel Cor
poration cannot be accused of senti-
ment. When they indulge in philan-
thropy they do so as individuals. but
in the conduct OF their business every
proposition that comes before them
must stand the acid test of will 1t
pay?" They probably do not care
two straws whether their thousands
OF employees use liquor or not, so long
as the question of efficiency does not
enter into the case. But when they
End their coke ovens running on two
thirds time for three days after every
payday and part of their product
ruined, all because the employees are
off on big drunk, 1t becomes a mat
ter of dollars and cents, and the an
swer is easy.
Every employer in the land, big
and little, is coming more and more
TO take this view Of the liquor ques-
tion.