Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. TUESDAY APEIL 5, 1910. COST OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 45209, 5 April 1910, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

TUESDAY APEIL 5, 1910. COST OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS

Ihh above all—to thine own self be true , And it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

la is very depressing to think of the deplorable waste of money spsufc in intoxicating liquors. After reasonably allowing a liberal amount for liquors used as medicine and as food at ordinary meal times, and even for beverages, there is such a tremendous waste as must -inevitably lead to an appalling amount of woeful want. The tabulated amount of money spent in Britain, Germany, and New Zealand totals no less a sum than £315,614,337. In the language of Kruger : “It staggers humanity.” The mind cannot grasp meaning of over three hundred and fifteen and a half - million pounds ’sterling spent in strong drinks. Perhaps it would be a liberal allowance to say that the fifteen million odd would more than reasonably have sufficed to satisfy the requirements of medical necessity, healthy diet, and fair and moral conviviality. Some persons may think this latter estimate too high but, even allowing for such a large sum, that leaves three hundred million pounds sterling perhaps literally or worse than wasted. We say worse than wasted because of the sickness, cruelty, crime, and laziness iuduced by intoxicating liquors.

The New Zealand Drink Bill in the year 1909 was no less than £3,628,137. It may appear to be a small sum compared to Great Britain’s £167,016,200 in 1907-8 and Germany’s £145,000,000 in 1909-10, but it is an enormous and extravagant amount to be spent by a small population like that in this Dominion. It has been estimated by Rev. E. Walker at about £3 11s per head of our population. According to Dr. Dawson Burns, an expert writer to the Times annually upon this question, it appears that “ In 1908 the average expenditure per head was £3 12s 3|d, and per family of five persons £lB is 6fd, compared with £3 15s 9d per head and £lB 18s 9d per family in 1907. Taking increase of population into account, the decreased expenditure was equal to £7,529,913. As Ihe decrease in the drink expenditure of 1908, compared with that of 1907, was greater than that between any two other adjacent years during a considerable period, the inquiry may naturally arise as to 'the cause or causes of this latest decline. The depression in trade wjll be assigned as the principal cause, but it may be hoped that it was not the only one ; and, in any case, the fact remains that the national expenditure ..on alcoholic liquors was nearly £6,000,000 less in 1906 than in the previous year. In other words, there was a saving of this amount from the use of intoxicating drink, and a prevention of the injurious results which might have followed such an application.”

In New Zealand there was last year a reduction of £123,831, or a saving of 4s ,5d per head of the population in money spent in intoxicating drinks, but no reasonable person will allow that that is all that could have been saved. Rev. E, Walker says : —“ The total estimated expenditure on alcoholic liquors in this country -from the foundation of the colony of New Zealand, at per gallon rates, has now reached the enormous sum of £124,333,413. The pen of a Dante would be needed to but faintly describe what the expenditure has been responsible for. Recent experiences have had a tendency to harden up the reform party, and make it more determined than ever “to demand from Legislature the expression in law of the full right of the people by majority 5 vote taking immediate effect, and by both local and Dominion option to rid themselves of the stupendous evil,” Can any man or woman look upon those figures and think of the awful facts relating to drunkenness without a shudder ? Of course those who regard thetnselvers only as mere animals who are here on earth to eat and drink and then die like, dogs, will not shudder; but those who believe themselves to be spiritual beings destined to an everlasting existence in bliss or woe, wi’l shudder and well they may. They cannot help thinking of and deploring the number of men and women ruined in body and soul and plunged into eternity more degraded than the beast of the field. They cannot bat think of the pinched and pleading faces of starved children, the emaciated and scantily clothed forms of ' poor ill-used wives and jnotbeis ; they j think of desolate homes and the misery ' concentrated in prisons, hospitals, and lunatic asylums. Some peoplo who arc fattening on the waste and misery of their fellow creatures may affect to won-,

fe • at the zeal of temperance reformers ; but the wonder is that society can endure the awful facts disclosed by the curse of intoxicants,