The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1933-11-01
AN ECONOMIC FALLACY

One of the greatest fallacieS tnat has
been used in this country to dupe the PEG
pie into following a wrong course is the
economic fallacy that the manufacture,
sale and consumption of alcoholic bever-
ages makes business good and makes the
country prosperous There is not a sent
blance of truth in the theory. Thousands
of times in the history of this country that
theory has been proven false. We do not
have space here to quote any of the evil
dence, but volumes of evidence is avail
able. The greatest prosperity this country
has ever known came after the enactment
of national prohibition, after the destruc-
ton of the legalized liquor traffic, after
the consumption of beverage alcohol had
been reduced two-thirds from the high
point reached before prohibition. No in
telligent prohibitionist claims that all the
credit for this era of prosperity is due to
prohibition, but any intelligent student OF
national conditions knows that much of it
did result from the transfer of around two
billion dollars a year from the channels Of
the liquor traffic to the channels of legiti-
mate business. If the American people had
continued to spend that immense sum for
liquor it would have been lost to industry
and trade in other lines.
The most foolish course any manufac-
turer or business man outside the liquor
trade can take is to support the liquor
traffic on the theory that it makes general
business good and the country prosperous.
The dollar spent for liquor cannot be
spent for food, clothing or any of the com-
forts and convenences of life. 1t is thrown
away by the spender as surely as if flung
into a river. According to official estimates
before prohibition, two and a half billion
dollars was the amount of the country
alcoholic beverage bill. That was half Of
the country's available money supply. The
liquor trade handled annually sum equal
to one-half the money in the United States.
By far the greater part of that huge sum
was removed from the channels Of legitl-
mate business and trade. 1t did not pass
over the counters of merchants or into the
hands of manufacturers or farmers; it was
not spent to promote any legitimate bust
ness of the country 1t was thrown away
by the drinkers of alcoholic beverages !;
and the consequences of that waste were
poverty and dire suffering for thousands
of women and children, immortality and
crime among the drinkers, and bill for
law enforcement and court costs, for jails
and asylums and liquor cure institutions
and other costs of the traffic that was GER
tainly as large, or larger, than the bill for
the liquor.
What did the American people get for
this five billions or more invested in the
liquor traffic? In addition to the chance
to ruin men and women by the thousands,
physically, mentally and morally, their
government got the chance to collect less
than ten per cent. of this estimated total
cost of the traffic in revenue taxes.
Now we have come back to a time when
one of the chief arguments made for the
liquor traffic is that it will produce reve
nue. Postmaster General Farley estimates
that as much as nine hundred million dol
lars ayear can be collected by the fedora