SELLING DRINK TO CHILDREN.

Press, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5704, 31 December 1883, Page 3

SELLING DRINK TO CHILDREN.

TO THH BBHOB OF TKB FKEBB.

Sm,—WUl not some one of the organisa- ■ tions benevolent or temperance make,an effort to get a stop put to the Bale of drink; by publicans to children ? lam the father of eight children, aU living, the eldest being eleven years old. Four of them should be sent to the public school regularly, but, despite my utmost efforts, one of them by turns is kept at home to run for that abomination—drink. By the hardest of labor, extending over fifteen hours every day, I manage to keep them fairly clothed, but it is a hard struggle. The loss of the schooling is bad enough, but it is nothing when compared with the ruin, disgrace, and unhappiness that stares mc in the face, by day, and haunts mc at night. I- feel utterly at my wits* ends to find a remedy; but my firm conviction is that if it would cost the beerseUer his license to flerve chUdren— aye, almost infants—with the drink half the battle would be won. And why shouldn't he be stopped?' Mine is not'a solitary esse, God knows; nor is it half as bad as some! Why, a few Sundays, ago—Sundays mind, the shut-up day according to a weUknown fiction—l made it my morning's work to inform myself of the extent to which this family-destroying traffic was carried on. • The grog shop (hotels they like to caU them) near which I stationed myself opened its side door a . few minutes after six o'clock, and between that time and dinner-time I counted fifteen chUdren—l did not count the thirsty fuUgrown souls, but I counted fifteen children go and come with bottles, or kite, or both. Five of these pitiable little creatures, the poverty-worn and neglected appearance of whom made my heart bleed, went to and from that beer-shop no fewer than /four times during the few hours I was oh the look-out. How the traffic went on in. the afternoon, and then away up to ten or eleven at night, I don't know. How many more sad journeys these very Uttie waifs made that day I don't know. But surely some effort can be put forth to for ever put it but of the power of the grasping girogg seller to send into our fan—lies the infernal stuff by the hand, at least, of helpless chUdren. . That it will be soon is the earnest prayer of Yours, Ac., m Laboub—B.