especially one forced upon an unsympathetic majority. For it must be remembered that national prohibition under our form of government could never become a fact as the result of a popular vote of the country at large. That would mean an overwhelming majority against it. It can only come through the compulsion which may now be directed by sparsely inhabited rural States against the far more populous and wealthy urban States. In other words, a species of tyranny must be exercised by a minority relatively unimportant in numbers, wealth and influence-a tyranny which seems utterly incompatible with liberal institutions, and therefore its machinations, whatever harm they may work (and this may be incalculable), can never transform the population into a race of abstainers. Temperance is a necessary end for which to work, and there are other and infinitely more promising means of obtaining it. Never before have brewers, maltsters, distillers and wine makers made so large a contribution to the agricultural prosperity of the country as during the fiscal year 1913. In the course of that yearthe latest for which reliable statistics are available-grain and other farm products to the value of $113,513,971 were used in the manufacture of liquors, and this amount does not represent the value of the products so used as reported in the markets of Chicago, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Philadelphia and other commercial centers, but the actual sum received by the growers, based upon the carefully compiled reports on farm prices issued from time to time by the United States Department of Agriculture. The full significance of this amount, which represents, it may be stated, a return of 5 per cent. on an investment of $2,270,279,420, can best be appreciated if we compare it with the reports of the last United States Census on the total values of the crops of certain typical states, which show that it exceeded the total combined crop values in the census year of Vermont, Maryland and West Virginia ; of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Florida; of Louisiana (with its great cotton and sugar interests), New Hampshire and Utah, or of Maine, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. The figures for these states, as given in the Reports of the Thirteenth United States Census (1910), volume V, page 545, are as follows: Table 1—Total values of all farm crops in seventeen typical States, according to the United States Census of 1910: The $113,513,791 worth of farm products used in the production of distilled spirits and fermented liquors consisted of barley to the value of $55,236,641, corn $30,924,335, wheat $869,938, rice $7,288,786, hops $11,155,215, rye $4,604,476, molasses $2,056, 626, fruit $751,835 and other agricultural products, primary and secondary, not included under the head of corn, $626,119. The total farm value of the products used in the production of fermented liquors was $87,520,287 or 77.1 per cent. of the total amount used for the production of alcoholic beverages of all kinds, and that of the products used in the production of distilled spirits $25,993,684, or 22.9 per cent. The farm values of the quantities used in each state are shown for fermented liquors in Table II and for distilled spirits in Table III, the totals of the two tables being combined in Table IV. These tables are based on the annual reports of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue for 1913 and previous years, the Year Books of the Department of Agriculture for corresponding periods, and the reports of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Censuses. By dividing the totals of the various columns in Table II by 65,324,876, the number of barrels of fermented liquors produced during the year, it is found that the average barrel of beer yielded the farmer $133.98, being 79.58 cents for barley, 23.97 cents for corn, 1.33 cents for wheat, 11.16 cents for rice, 17.08 cents for hops and 0.86 cents for other products. These amounts do not include transportation, commission, insurance or, in the case of barley, the cost of malting, but, as already stated, are the net prices received by the growers. COST OF FARM LABOR The reports of the last United States Census (see volume V, Pp. 560-564) show the amount expended for farm labor to have averaged 11.88 per cent. of the total value of the crops produced. Applying this ratio to the $113,513,971 worth of farm products used by brewers and distillers in 1913, it will be seen that their production involved a total payment for farm labor amounting to $13,485,460, a sum sufficient for the employment of 74,919 persons for six months at an average wage of $30 per month. THE MARKET AND THE FUTURE It will be seen from Table IV that there are three states (New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois) in each of which between ten and twenty millions dollars' worth of farm products were used in the production of distilled spirits and fermented liquors in 1913; five states (Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Missouri) in whic! the quantity so used represented a farm value of between five million and ten million dollars, and nine (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Louisiana, Washington and California) in which it ranged from one million to five million dollars. While these States led all their sister States in the use of grain and other farm products in the production of alcoholic liquors, not any of them were fully equal to supplying their own requirements. All of them, without exception, were dependent on other States for one or another of the materials usedin many cases for malt or malting barley, in others for rye, in nearly all for hops and rice. There is, in fact, no state that does not share in the immense benefit accruing to the agricultural industry from the large annual consumption of farm products by brewers and distillers. A State may even have few or no breweries or distilleries within its own borders, and yet the annual value of its farm products is increased by reason of the never-failing requirements of the liquor industry as inevitably and unmistakably as it would be by the opening of a new market for one hundred and thirteen million dollars' worth of similar products. What, then, it may well be asked, would be the effect upon the agricultural industry of the closing of this great and ever-growing market, a market that can always be relied upon for stability and uniformity. (The per capita consumption of both tea and coffee varies more widely from year to year than does that of spirits or fermented liquors. See Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1913, pp. 512, 516.) While the farm products used in the production of spirits and fermented liquors are of so diversified a character that, as already pointed out, the entire country shares in the benefit that comes from there being a constant market for between one hundred and ten and one hundred and twenty million dollars' worth annually, their production is at the same time so localized that its extinction would fall upon certain sections of the country with all the weight of a calamity. If one crop could be readily substituted for another, even in that case the economic disturbance that would result would be more or less serious. But it is only within comparatively narrow limits that such substitution can be made. Peculiarities of soil and still more of climate determine where barley and hops and rice and sugar shall be grown, and not cotton or wheat or something else. The American farmer is not wanting in resourcefulness, but it would not be without grave embarrassment and heavy financial loss that he would find himself deprived of a market for products that within the next two or three years will be worth, at the present rate of increase, $125,000,000 per annum. TABLE No. 11.--Farm Values of Agricultural Products Used in the Production of Fermented Liquors in the United States During Rice Hops Oth Total 598 78 271 5,180 337 362 6,438 5 205 the Fiscal Year 1913. STATES AND TERRITORIES Barley i Corn Wheat Alabama. Dollars 4,688 16,242 309,930 21,655 286 213,944 12,271 Dollars 4,892 93,356 6,523 86 64,444 3,696 Dollars Dollars 5,016 658 3,029 40 1,721 Dollars 7,677 3,486 66,522 4,648 82,683 62 2,634 Dollars 387 51 176 218 234 3 133 Dollars 60,217 7,893 27,345 521,803 195,466 36,431 648,567 482 360,200 20,660 |
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