Temperance.

Southern Cross, Volume 7, Issue 26, 8 October 1898, Page 3

Temperance.

(Published by arrangement with the W.C.T.U.) AN ECONOMIC^ - ASPECT CF THE DRINK QUESTION.

(By John Howson, Barnard Castle.) The poverty and distress —not to say crime—which forms a constant and ever-present factor in our social and national life, is an evil, the solution of which, if it could be found, would open up to our bewildered gaze a picture of halcyon glory, the magnificence of which it would be impossible to outline. In fact, with our experiences of things as they are, we cannot but have the faintest conception of the glory that would be revealed. At any rate the economic aspect of this great question is one we cannot afford to ignore. It is an old adage, and very true—‘ Yon cannot eat your cake and have it.’ It is computed that we spend as a nation, upon intoxicating drinks, twice as much as we spend on bread, which is regarded as the staff of life : nearly four times as much as on butter and cheese, and four-and-a-half times as much as on tea, coffee, and cocoa. Our annual ‘ drink bill ’ exceeds the annual rent roll of all the lands and all. the bouses in the United Kingdom. The cost of drink is twice as much as we spend on woollen, cotton, and linen goods put together. Well may so many of the neople be destitute of decent clothing, and only rags to cover their nakedness.

Besides, we have to pay police and poor rates, and the cost of insanity, crime, vagrancy, accidents, disease, etc., amounting at the lowest estimate to one hundred millions, giving a total loss to the nation of at least two hundred millions annually. The money thus spent, when we think of the results produced in the case of the individual, the misery in the family, the squalor in the home, and the premature ending of life’s tragedy, the impression left on the mind of a common sense man or woman, let alone a Christian, must be that the money is very badly spent, that it is literally worse than wasted. Could we by any possibility turn the amount of the national drink bill, or a considerable portion of it, into more legitimate and useful channels P If, instead of going into the coffers of Bacchus, it was allowed to go to the baker, the butcher, the draper, the grocer, the builder, thus providing food for the hungry, clothing for the naked, furniture aud homes for the destitute, what a marvellous change would come over the face of our country. How trade and commerce would revive, and go forward by leaps and in such a manner as we have never known it And in course ot time other things would be required. The fine arts would come in for a share, books, pictures, and a host of decorative articles for personal adornment and use. Every branch of trade would be prosperous, workmen would be required in every industry, and every person, able and willing, would be sure to find employment, and only think of the prospect opened up to the wage-earn-ing community P The advantage to the wage-earner, from money spent in any of the foregoing industries, as, compared with the money spent in drink, is simply astounding. The following figures on wages and production, from the Blue Book, c. 6, 535, 1891, show the immense advantage to the working man if he would only spend his earnings in some wage-producing industry : Mining, 55 0 per cent, of wages to receipts; shipbuilding, 37'0 ; railways, 30 - 0; agriculture, 29 - 0 ; cotton manufacturers, 29'2; iron and steel, 23 3; textile industries, 22 6 ; glass manufacturers, 20.0 ; brewing, 7 - 5. Let all, therefore, who want the lot of the toilers improved, the trade and commerce benefitted, abstain from the use of alcoholic liquors, and forward the cause of Prohibition. — Temperance Witness.