DECREASE IN DRINK.

NZ Truth, Issue 328, 7 October 1911, Page 4

DECREASE IN DRINK.

Rise m Poverty, Crime, Lunacy

and Accidents.

United Kingdom Statistics.

For many years — for generations, | indeed — to the banging of the Pro- j hibition drum, as accompaniment, we j have been told tha.t the great enemy i of mankind is drink : If only men j would drink less they would think [ more : If only we could lessen tho , consumption of drink, more money j would be spent on food and cloth- | ing, trade would improve, employ- | ment would expand, wages would j rise ; pauperism, crime, and lunacy ! would decrease, if not vanish alto- * gether, and the social millennium j would set m. This is the doctrine j constantly dinned into our ears by • the water Wowsers, and the intern- j perate cranks who pose as the White ! Knights of Temperance. What follows is specially commended to the New Zealand Alliance. Let us = see what axe the facts. The English WATER WOWSER WHITTAKER or rather, Sir T. P. Whittaker, m 'one of the big magazines, supplied, among others, the following grog statistics : — Alcoholic Beverages — Consumption per Head (United Kingdom). Beer. Spirits. Wine. Gallons. Gallons. Gallons. 1900 ... 31.56 1.12 0.38 1910 ... 25.99 0.65 0.28 These figures show per capita decreases of '5.57 gallons of beer, 0.47 gallons of spirits and 0.10 gallons ,of wine, and the chief water Wowser of the "Empiah" calculates that £46,500,000 less was "spent m booze than would have been spent if the drinking had been m the same ratio of ten years earlier. If current water Wowser theories, as formulated by the Rev. Dawson, as chief New Zealand spruiker, these last ten years should have brought substantial progress — industrially, socially, economically, and morally. Let us see ! Turning first to wages, as furnished by the dry matter of fact Board of Trade statistics, that since 1900 there was a rise m three years', and a distinct fall m seven. Just as Whittaker is the chief prophet of the water Wowsers, so Mr L. G. Chioz--7.0. Money, M.P., is recognised as an authority on , finance and economics generally, and he shows by facts and figures that are unassailable "that by putting the increased cost of living against wages, a very real decrement has been suffered by all classes of wage earners." And he is dealing with the ten years during which they have been partially knooking off the booze. TURNING TO EMPLOYMENT, we find, that m 1909 an average of 2.5 per cent, of Unionists were out of work, and m 1910 the average had risen to 4.7, an increase of nearly 1.00 per cent. It was really more than that, because this increase m unemployment came about despite the great increase of emigration. In 1900, the net number ,of British emigrants was 71,000, but m 1910, conditions, under partial temperance, and the saving of that £46,500,000, had become so bad, that 200,000 British people were glad to get away from the country of less i beer. i Turning now to business matters, ! statistics show that m 1899, 4045 x j traders "filed their shovels" through I drink, the Wowsers would say, while • the number m 1909 had gone up to 4517, that is to say, 472 more went up the spout of the teapot. In the first year mentioned, under drink 7867 debtors were committed to j prison, and on the last, under paritial sobriety, 9157, an increase of ! 1290, to be debited to the teapot- ! Taking next the statistics m paujperisin from January 1, 1900, to • January 1, 1910, the same startling ; increase is to be noted. Indoor i paupers rose from 199,000 to '270,000 ; outdoor paupers from i 503,000 to 5»9,000 ; casuals from 9800 to 17,400 ; and worst of all, pauper lunatics from 72,000 to 93,000, the total number relieved , having increased from 807,000 to 1942,000. But that is not all. Between 1900 and laio, the number of ! TOILERS INJURED BY ACCII DENTS !in shops and factories climbed up j from 79,000 to 117,000, and the i number of miners killed from 1012 jto 1812. Th'e water wowser nearlyI always attributes these things to j drink ; lot him be honest, and put j these facts against the saving of j £46, 5-00, 000 as the result of on c I year's partial abstention from "the j curse" But there is worse to follow, jfor on top of all this, m the ten .years under review, the number of [persons tried for indictable offences rose from 50,000 to within a tick lof 70,000 ; so it comes to this, that |m sipite of all the bombast of the i cold-tea apostles and water-drinking wowsers, a decline m consumption of alcoholic beverages has been accompanied by a startling rise m poverty, crime, lunacy, and accidents. To apply to these figures the fallacious reasoning of the wowsers it could be shown that, with the total prohibition of drink, poverty would become universal, vice take the place of virtue, crime a common heritage, lunacy the lot of all, and accidents and sudden death the • (rule. At all events, above are facts and figures that are unassailable, and Isitt, ■ Dawson and Co. should "read, mark, learn and inwardly 'digest."