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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

The Economic Waste of the Liquor Traffic

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The Economic Waste of the Liquor Traffic.

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In addition to the money spent in intoxicating liquor, there are enormous losses, which indirectly result from our habits of drinking; these cannot be measured, but the following which are the more important heads upon which the losses arise, may be mentioned :—
1st.Loss of workmen's time and labour.
2nd.Loss through deterioration in capacity and skill.
3rd.Loss through deterioration in physical power and damage to health.
4th.Loss through premature deaths.
5th.Loss owing to destruction of property both by sea and land.
6th.Taxes and burdens resulting from pauperism, crime, lunacy, &c.
7th.Loss of productive labour of paupers, criminals, &c.
8th.Loss arising from the unproductive employment of judges, magistrates, lawyers, jurors, gaolers, policemen, &c.
9th.Losses arising from the general demoralisation brought upon the country by drinking, which makes progress more difficult and largely increases the cost of all political, religious, social, and educational reform and progress.

Viewing these indirect losses from a purely economic standpoint, they cannot be much less than the money directly spent, so that the actual financial cost and loss to the country, caused by our habits of drinking, will be about double the direct expenditure, and taking last year's expenditure of £2,099,552, this gives a total of £4,199,104. Against this, however, may be set the income which goes from drink to the revenue, and such good as the country may receive from the medicinal or other use of intoxicated liquors, the latter being a very doubtful quantity, whilst the saving in charitable aid and the increase of wealth which would lead to an augmentation of the assessed and other taxes, would largely make up for the falling off in revenue from drink; but, if from the £4,199,104 we deduct one-fifth of the sum, it will more than cover all, and still leave a balance of loss, direct and indirect, to the Colony of £3,359,284 yearly.

In this Colony the direct and indirect cost of drink consumed by the people is considerably in excess of the cost of sustaining all the Civil departments of Government, omitting the railways. This is an outlay for which we receive no return except in the shape of increased poverty, misery, wretchedness, and crime. Still we continue paying it as if it were the most important and remunerative of all our outlay.

Dr. W. Hargreaves, author of " Our Wasted Reserves," makes the following startling remarks :—" If in every eleventh year a fire should be kindled in the United States on the first of January, and continue burning to the last moment in December, and if every particle of our agricultural and manufactured products, as fast as they are produced, should be cast into the flames, and burned up till only the ashes remain, it would not inflict as much injury upon our people as is produced every eleven years by the use and sale of intoxicating drinks . . . . If the products to the value of the money spent for drinks only were destroyed by fire or flood, it would not deprive our industrious classes of the mental and physical power to replace, as do the things for which their hard-earned millions are expended. What nation or people, however favoured, can long exist and prosper, who expend or waste the value of so much labour for poisonous drinks. Can we wonder that we have money-panics, hard times, and stagnation of trade ?"

J. C. Fernald, in " Economics of Prohibition," illustrates the question of loss of time in these words:—"Behind every idle drinker awaits a procession of men, every one of whom has to stop because the man's work is not done. The drunken shipmaster does not make the port in time. The drunken drayman does not haul up the goods promptly. The drunken porter is not on hand in time to get them in, and every clerk in the establishment is hindered accordingly. The mill starts late because the engineer was on the spree last night. The slaters cannot go upon the roof because the drunken carpenter did not get the woodwork done. All over the land there are sober workmen waiting with idle hands on drunken tradesmen to bring up their work ahead of them. All these, it must be remembered, are shortened in their wages in proportion to the loss of time.

Issued by the Grand Lodge of New Zealand, I.O.G.T. Price, 2s 6d per 1000 copies; or, including postage, 3s 6d per 1000 copies.