TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 26, 30 July 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[Tho matter for this column is supplied by a representative of the local Temperance bodies, who alone is responsible for tho opinions expressed in it.] A STRIKING CONTRAST. MAINB V. ILLINOIS. The population of Maine is 661,000. That of Illinois is nearly six times as great, being 3,826,000. Maine has a rigorous climate and rugged surface. Her mineral products are few, and in agriculture she does not excel. Illinois has an equable climate, and a soil which, in agricultural possibilities, is scarcely excelled upon the f ttce of the earth . Her doposits of bituminous coal are the finest in the world, and every mineral resource lies close beside her door. Maine is outside the sweep of the great commercial tides. Illinois is exactly in the centre of that sweep. As a railroad centre, Chicago outstrips the world, while the State, in commerce and manufactures, is eoarcely exceeded anywhere on earth. but : The common people of Maine are said to be the richest of any in the United States. The common people of Illinois are among the poorest upon the continent. The common people of Maine have 53,397,000 dollars deposited in savings banks. The. common people of Illinois, though six times an numerous, have less than half as much in savings banks as those of Maine —only 23,498,000 dollars in the case of Illinois. Iv other words, the common people of Maine are thirteen times as wealthy as those of Illinois. WHY THIS 18 SO, For forty years no saloons have been fostered in Illinois. From the beginning saloons have been fostered in Maine. In Chicago alone £45,000,000 per year is expended at the saloons, and her common people spend it nearly all. No wonder crime and poverty abound in Illinois and are very scarce in Maine. In savings bank deposits Maine is exceeded by only seven States.

The drink expenditure in Switzerland for 1896 amounted to 7,200,000 for a population of 3,039,835. Since the State has had a monopoly of spirits, spirit drinking has decreased 30 per cent ; but there has been an inci-ease. iv the consumption of beer, wine, and cider. A law in Denmark provides that all drunken persons shall be taken to their homes in carriages ut the expense of the publican who supplied them with liquor. In the Argentine Republic, instead of fining a druukard, they sentence him to sweep the streets for eight days, and a similar punishment exists in St. Petersburg. It is estimated that there are now fully 10,000,000 total abbtaiuers of all ages iv the United Kingdom, or about onequarter of the total population. Every drunkard's ragged little boy should be an unanswerable argument for prohibition. What a glad day it will he for many a miserable home when saloons are abolished ! — Temperance R«cord.