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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

Labour's Work Enemy

Labour's Work Enemy.

On the economic side of the question a very few words must [unclear: s] We spend, after deducting what goes to revenue, about £1,500,000 and annual.

page 5

[unclear: df] drink; and probably another £1,000,000 to remedy the already described effects of this expenditure. Far a country financially embarrassed such eextravagance is doubly shocking. Putting moral considerations altogether side, the traffic in strong drink in, economically speaking, the most waste-[unclear: lof] of all industries and the moat damaging to the poorer classes. Of £1 [unclear: Lou] clothes, the workmen employed get 16s.; if it is spent on shoes, they [unclear: pt]; if spent on liquor, they get 6d. In addition to this the industry runs to waste grain that might otherwise have gone to fill the mouths of the angry; £130,000 worth of grain was wasted in New Zealand last year in this [unclear: my] on brewing alone—our whisky we fortunately do not manufacture. Father Mathew realised the truth in Ireland in famine time, and hence he said The man or woman who drinks, drinks the food of the starving. Is not [unclear: at] man or woman a monster who drinks the food of the starving ? " professor Mayor, the distinguished Cambridge classic, realised it too, and [unclear: Led] teetotaller for no other reason.* The traffic is thus a triple curse to [unclear: it] poor:—It puts temptations in their way which they are less able to persist than those in more comfortable surroundings; it absorbs capital which would otherwise give them twenty times as much in wages; it [unclear: rbs] material which would otherwise give them food.

* "[unclear: Khauas], the great Chief of the Bamangwato, whom there in no objection to our calling a [unclear: ge] as long as it does not blind us to the fact that in all the Christian essentials of [unclear: ship] he is immeasurably above the great majority of the rulers and voter of [unclear: sed]christendom expresses the double waste involved very forcibly:—" You take the corn [unclear: ff] given us in answer to prayer and destroy it. You not only destroy it, but you [unclear: staff] with it that causes mischief among you"-See Review of Reviews November, 1895, [unclear: 429]