TEMPERANCE.

Southern Cross, Volume 5, Issue 37, 18 December 1897, Page 3

TEMPERANCE.

By J. C. Eernald

(Published by arrangement with the W.0.T.U.) TELL ThTpEOPLE I

The prosperity of every man, woman and child in the nation is touched disastrously by the drink traffic. The temperance battle of the near future must be fought on the commercial and economic ground. Our strongest thinkers, our ablest writers, must force the fighting on this issue, till we make the people see that it is worth while to push every other commercial question into the background long enough to stop this intolerable drain upon the national prosperity. Everybody who has anything to sell should realise that there is a glorious advance in store for his business the moment we can stop the outlay on intoxicating drinks. Tell the woodmen how many thousands of drinking farmers will enlarge their houses and barns, or build new' ones, as soon as they cease drinking, and how many thousands of houses will be built in all our suburbs for the working men when none of them drink away the money that might pay the rent or buy the cottage. Show the shoe manufacturer what it means to take all the hare feet of drunkards’ children off the ground. Let the iron workers know that new firegrates will be needed in a hundred thousand new homes when the drinkseller ceases to get the money. Tell the miners that they will have work all the winter through, getting coal to fill those firegrates. Tell the cotton weavers that there will be about a million new cotton dresses and aprons bought as soon as the tipplers cease to tipple, and go home with some spare change. Tell the shepherds that every body is going to be wrapped in woollen and sleep under blankets in winter weather, and men .no longer burn themselves with liquid fire in order to exterminate their families with atmospheric cold. Tell the grocer he can sell for cash and say ‘ good-bye ’ to bad debts when the dimes no longer go into the j publican’s till. Tell the farmer there is going to be an unheard-of demand for flour, and butter, and cheese, and eggs, as soon as the brewers and distillers no longer get the money of working men, who will then begin filling out the hollow cheeks of wives and children with wholesome food. Show statesmen how much cheaper it is to abolish the drink-produced crime and pauperism than to share the profits of the pauper-making publican. Tell our colleges that the young man’s temptation will henceforth be education instead of intoxication. Tell the author, editor and publisher that good books and papers are going to be owned and read in a hundred homes, where now a single greasy copy of the Police Gazette is thumbed in one public-house. And tell the church that tens of thousands will crowd to her doors as soon as they can come clad so as not to be stared at ; and as in deliverance from hunger and cold, blows and curses, from the desolate days and nights of fearful watching which the legalised dramshops inflicts on the innocent, they shall be lifted out from dispair and grasp some tangible evidence that a beneficent Providence indeed rules in the affairs of men, and that for them the Son of God is manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. There’s not an honest industry nor a good cause in all our broad domain but will find immediate advance and prosperity in the wiping out of the liquor traffic. —Pr ze Rtcitei.