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TEMPERANCE AND POVERTY

(From Bolton Hall's "Thrift")

The well-meaning, if somewhat fanatical, people who claim that alcoholic drinks are a gigantic waste, and advocate laws forbidding the sale, or manufacture for sale, of all intoxicating liquors, assert that liquor drinking is the chief cause of poverty, and that prohibition would bring general prosperity. They point to the large amounts expended for liquors annually, and give complicated figures intended to show that by stopping drinking the condition of the people in general would be greatly improved. And their parrot note, "Liquor is the cause of poverty," has created a widespread belief on the part of the general public that their claims are wellfounded. "If ye tell me anythin' often enough," says Mr. Dooley, "I'll belave it."

The prohibition argument runs like this: "The people of the United States spend every year for liquor the enormous sum of two thousand five hundred million dollars ($2,500,000,000). (See statement of Congressman Hobson.) If they were forced to stop drinking this money would all be saved, and would be used to buy food, clothing, soda water, land, furniture, cigars, etc., thus greatly promoting industry, and raising the standard of living." Poverty, low wages, long hours, child labor, and all other evils directly attributable to poverty, would be abolished-all by the simple process of "Be it enacted."

Let us look at the alleged facts on which these statements are based. The estimate of the amount spent for liquor is grossly exaggerated (figures can't fib, but fanatics can figure), but the total is undoubtedly immense, and if it could be saved would mean a considerable addition to the income of the people who pay the bill. It by no means follows, however, that the amount paid by the consumers of liquor is a total loss. First off, the amount is not the cost of the liquors, plus the manufacturers' and dealers' profits; it

is mostly taxes. The Federal Government's internal revenue taxes on the manufacture and sale of both distilled and fermented liquors amounted last year to two hundred and forty-seven millions ($247,000,000). The average annual customs duties on imported liquors are about $17,000,000, while the various state and municipal liquor taxes bring the total up to about $370,000,000. This is not all the taxes paid by the liquor trade. There are in the United States about 220,000 wholesale and retail liquor dealers, occupying premises that pay their share of municipal and state taxes. In the case of leased properties of course the taxes paid by the landlord are shifted to the tenant, so that the total sum of taxes paid by this large number of dealers is very great. An estimate of five hundred million ($500,000,000) taxes paid directly and indirectly by the liquor traffic would be moderate.

Of course this five hundred million of taxes would not be saved by prohibition of liquor. The taxes would have to be raised in some other way, with this difference, that while now the man or woman who does not drink escapes these taxes, under almost all our other present methods of taxation abstainers would be taxed as heavily as drinkers. Instead of voluntary taxes, paid by the users of liquors, we would have compulsory taxes on trade, industry, wealth-production and thrift, the result being to make the "good" grape juice people pay far more taxes than they do now.

The question of saving by stopping the sale of liquor has other, and more important, sides than that of the actual amount spent for drink. There is no proof that if men stopped drinking they would save what they now spend on liquor. Men drink, as the New York Tribune says, "because they like to drink." They get pleasure, gratification, or relaxation in the use of alcoholic beverages, just as others find pleasure or relaxation at the theater, the concert, or moving pictures. As the Scripture says: "Give wine unto him that is heavy of heart and strong drink unto him that is sorrowful. Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more." The "Committee of Fifty to Investigate the Liquor Problem," composed of eminent scientists and publicists, reported after a careful study extending over several years that eighty per cent of all adult men use liquor, and that less than five

per cent drink to excess. If it were possible by law to prevent this temperate ninety-five per cent from drinking, they would simply spend the money that now goes for liquor for something else; some for harmful drugs or other things no better than liquors.

It is true that in one sense the labor and capital devoted to the manufacture and sale of liquors is unproductive. But this is also true of the manufacture and sale of jewelry, ornaments, women's hats, stiff collars, and thousands of other things that we could maybe better do without. Sculpture, pianos, paintings, or pillow shams are not necessities. Many men have lived without them. But such men were very low in civilization, and not even Prohibitionists would want to go back to the Stone Age, or to abandon the enjoyments that have come through new tastes and desires. So that proposing to force men on to the water wagon is seeking to deprive mankind of what experience has shown is in most cases a pretty harmless pleasure. The same reasoning would lead back to the old Puritanism, with its prohibition of dancing, cards, theater going, kissing, and other pleasures, and the reduction of life to a mere animal existence of working, eating, and sleeping.

Of all the expenditures that make up the total outlay of the people, a very large portion is in the same class as liquors, that is, they are not necessities but luxuries. Properly speaking, there are no luxuries, for whatever things men need are necessities, and men need amusements, relaxation, stimulation, and indulgence. If it were merely a question of actual necessities, men could live in caves, wear animal skins and subsist on clams, or on nuts and berries. The fact that modern man wants thousands of things that his ancestors did not even dream of, doesn't mean that these new things are any more luxuries than was cooked food to the man who formerly ate raw flesh.

Anything is a necessity that is so customary or has been so long enjoyed as to have lost its power for giving positive pleasureas to be no longer felt as an item of good fortune, but rather as something that it would be a privation to be without. As the lady said, "Husbands are bric-a-brac; but Easter hats are a necessity."

When we come to the claim that liquor is the chief cause of poverty, we find it merely an unfounded assertion. The notion

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