Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1913-01-01

' while the people OF tfle COUNTY Soi-
| tributed out of their slender pocket
| books and bank accounts about Sl,645, :
| O0O. 600 to the drink makers and sellers,
1 in that time.
| But this $1,645000,000 was not ALL
| il was merely that part of our drink
bill last year which went for beer and
| whisky made in the United States.
| Nearly if not quite 5000, 100000 more
was paid for imported beers and whis-
kies, and for the nations wine bill.
both imported and home made. The
exact totals for these items will soon
be available.
Just to illustrate what this tremend-
Gus sum might do it may be mentioned
that with it four great canals inVolV-
ing all the expense and engineering
difficulties of the Panama channel
could be constructed. or that the entire
wealth production OF tie farms IN the
United States estimated by Secretary
Wilson last week to be 5000, 600 900,
could be swallowed and wasted in five
years time by the greedy NAV of the
LIQUOR octopus, or that the value of the
most gigantic crop this year (Which is
at the same time the most valuable
crop in all Americas history, that OF
corn. 1859 00G, 600, falls short by al
most 100000 OO0, of the cash IL wages
and savings extorted from the people
by this same twentieth century despot.
These tremendous totals which show
the legalized protected robbery of the
people by the poison makers. in them
selves comprise but one item of the
cost and devastation for which the
n ,e;l C
no reference here to the indirect losses,
which in reality are not indirect at all,
but the most certain and inevitable re-
suits. The loss by premature death,
the loss by preNentabIe disease, the
loss by productive inca paclty, the loss
occasioned by crime and graft and the
ineffieieney of millions in the grip OF
alcohol, these are the big items which
total into other billions, and mean re-
duced to it's lowest terms a cost of not
less than $50 year to every man, Wo-
man and child in America, which is
maid through many channels, by man
ufacturers as a steady tax upon their
daily output, by consumers in exorbi =
tant prices for food and clothes. and
by both in higher taxation and in low
cred moral tone of social and political
environment, ."f.'
But as We face these huge totals how
foolish and ridiculous it must seem for
any man however optimistic to attempt
to read any measure of encouragement
in comparison with previous years. The
mere fluctuations caused by the eXl-
gencies of trade which may seem to
show an occasional decrease in produc-
ton or consumption once or twice IN
a decade, fade in significance to the
vanishing point. when the relentless,
steadily rising flood of liquor output
for the past ten, 25 and so years is rec
ognzed and understood.
This undeniable, unacceptable fact
that liquors volume is eleven times
greater than half a century ago, that
the per capita sale IS more than three
times as great, that il has risen from
IA to "a gallons in . years and more
than five gallons in the past ten,
proves the utter futility of halfway
measures and the need of National
Prohibition of the making as we'll as
the selling with a party in power to
achieve it,