Labour and the Liquor Traffic.

The House of Representatives has by resolution declared that the two millions spent annually on Think "contributes largely to the existing depression, adds materially to crime and poverty, and reduces the capital available for reproductive industries."

The Liquor Trade reduces the demand for labour, and, in proportion, reduces the rate of wages.

The workman who squanders his money on Drink becomes destitute, and then is obliged to sell his labour for anything he can get, and so brings down wages.

The Drink money saved would soon make many workmen employers of labour, and so increase the demand for labour.

All the labour employed by the money invested in the Liquor Trade is but a small fraction of the labour that the same money will have to employ in some other way if the people vote the Liquor Trade out of existence.

The work of those who are employed by the Liquor Trade—brewers, maltsters, barmen, barmaids, extra police, gaolers, magistrates, judges, clerks, carriers, and others—does nothing to produce either good morals, healthy pleasures, enlarged intelligence, or materials for profitable consumption, and is therefore a national waste and loss.

While the Liquor Trade is unproductive of anything that either improves or enriches the People, it is the greatest producer of demoralisation, disease, pauperism, and crime.

These bad and costly products of the Liquor Trade increase the burden of the People's taxes, and everybody is under obligation to vote to suppress a trade which injured everybody.