PRINCE BISMARCK ON THE POOR MAN’S DRINKS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 810, 9 September 1887, Page 6

PRINCE BISMARCK ON THE POOR MAN’S DRINKS.

Now that the German Reichstag is engaged on the Spirit Taxation Bill it will not be uninteresting to/refer to Prince Bismarck’s estimate of the respective virtues of beer, wine, and spirit. Speaking in the Reichstag on 28th March, 1881, the Chancellor said : ‘ Beer is, comparatively speaking, the beverage of a well-to-do class ; but spirit is the drink of the famous * poor man,’and spirit is thus a drink which the laborer cannot always dispense with. Beer makes one lazy (‘Biermucht trage,’ and not ‘Bier macht; dnmm ’ —stupid—as Bismarck’s remark is sometimes quoted) instead of exciting the nerves. It has, moreover, a drawback from the economic standpo’nt : it is a time-killer. With us Germans perhaps nothing kills time so much as beer-drinking. Spirit has in no way this effect, and if you ler the working man choose between wine, beer, and spirit he will reject wine. I have never found that the laborer when he found his work hard refreshed himself with Bavarian beer. The poor man needs spirit—certainly to a moderate extent, but still a small quantitydaily for nourishment, for his means do not allow of his having Bavarian beer and wine.* —Pall Mall Gazette. ‘My husband is a very absent-minded man,’ said Mrs Slowboy. ‘He very often takes one thing for another.’ *1 know it,’ said Mrs Badman, ‘ I saw him take hot toddy last night, and he said he took it for a cold.” The Temperance Hospital in Chicago has had a year’s trial, and, its experience has been very encouraging. Several hundred cases, including all kinds of disease, except contagious ones, have been successfully treated without alcohol, and not one case his had) a fatal termination.