In this single view, the question of intemperance assumes a most appalling aspect.  The

POVERTY AND DESTITUTION

found in so large a portion of our laboring classes, and their consequent restlessness and discontent, come almost entirely from the waste of substance, idleness and physical incapacity for work, which attend the free use of alcoholic beverages.  Of the six or seven hundred millions of dollars paid annually for these beverages, not less than two-thirds are taken out of the earnings of our artisans and laborers, and those who, like them, work for wages.

LOSS TO LABOR.

But the loss does not, of course, stop here.  The consequent waste of bodily vigor, and the idleness that is ever the sure accompaniment of drinking, rob this class of at least as much more.  Total abstinence societies, building associations, and the use of banks for savings, instead of the dram-sellers’ banks for losings, would do more for the well-being of our working classes than all the trades-unions or labor combinations, that ever have or ever will exist.  The laboring man’s protective union lies in his own good common sense, united with temperance, self-denial and economy.  There are very many in our land who know this way; and their condition, as compared with those who know it not, or knowing, will not walk therein, is found to be in striking contrast.

TAXATION.

Besides the wasting drain for drink, and the loss in national wealth, growing out of the idleness and diminished power for work, that invariably follows the use of alcohol in any of its forms, the people are heavily taxed for the repression and punishment of crimes, and the support of paupers and destitute children.  A fact or two will give the reader some idea of what this enormous cost must be.  In “The Twentieth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the Prison Association of New York,” is this sentence:  “There can be no doubt that, of all the proximate sources of crime, the use of intoxicating liquors is the most prolific and the most deadly.  Of other causes it may be said that they slay their thousands; of this it may be acknowledged that it slays its tens of thousands.  The committee asked for the opinion of the jail officers in nearly every county in the State as to the proportion of commitments due, either directly or indirectly, to strong drink.”

The whole number of commitments is given in these words:  “Not less than 60,000 to 70,000 [or the sixtieth portion of the inhabitants of the State of New York] human beings—­men, women and children—­either guilty, or arrested on suspicion of being guilty of crime, pass every year through these institutions.”  The answers made to the committee by the jail officers, varied from two-thirds as the lowest, to nine-tenths as the highest; and, on taking the average of their figures, it gave seven-eighths as the proportion of commitments for crime directly ascribed to the use of intoxicating drinks!