THE SUMMER MEETING. 31 



only do they urge it as au industrial, economical benefit, but strongly recom- 

 mend it as likely to help on the temperance reform, so much desired and 

 needed at the present day among our people. With these writers I take issue, 

 and am fully persuaded the very worst thing for us as Americans, in an indus- 

 trial as well as moral view, will be any increase in the wine making interest. 

 If made and used as generally as these writers recommend, it would be one of 

 the worst evils possible to the American people. I have no doubt it might be 

 very profitable to a few individuals, — as whiskey making is to-day. 



In support of my position I beg to offer some facts learned by a two years' 

 business residence among the wine and beer drinking people of Europe. I 

 claim that in main effect wine and bear drinking are so similar as to be proper 

 to treat them as one, in an industrial and economic sense. The first impres- 

 sions of a traveler who goes through any of the large European cities, where 

 wine and beer are commonly used by all classes, are that he has found at 

 last a temperate people, a people who can reasonably enjoy without abuse the 

 tempting beverages containing a little alcohol. He sees none of the horrible 

 faces of the whisky sot ; he hears of none of the brutal street fights so common 

 in and about the saloons of our cities. The people seem quiet, orderly, happy, 

 and the almost universal decision of the mere traveler is, that intemperance or 

 any of the usual baneful effects of drinking alcoholic drinks are not found 

 among this people. But let the traveler, as did the writer, locate for a busi- 

 ness life of a year or two in one of these quiet cities, and become acquainted 

 with the actual home-life of these people, and see the economic effects of 

 this drink habit on all classes — the laborers and the trades people as well as 

 upper classes, and the facts will be found to be like this : The habitual use of 

 wine or beer does not produce the terrible rapid effects of whisky or stronger 

 alcoholic drinks on its users, but the powerful controlling effect of the poison 

 as an ever growing power over the will of the individual is no less strong, and 

 the drink habit becomes as dominant and imperative, and the earnings are 

 squandered for its gratification instead of being used for better food, better 

 clothes, better homes, and better educational advantages for the children. 

 These are denied and the result of industry goes for the drink which neither 

 gives strength for labor nor clearness of the head for thought, study, or inven- 

 tion. The boy, the apprentice, the journeyman, the tradesman, or the head of 

 a family are kept down by this constantly increasing drain upon their savings 

 to supply the increasing appetite which is the universal effect of alcohol. 



I became personally acquainted with a number of cases of tradesmen in 

 Germany where there had been for years a great desire to come to America in 

 the hopes of bettering the prospects for the children of the family, but 

 it had been impossible to save enough for the expenses of the journey. Yet 

 these families were spending enough every year or two for wine and beer to 

 have paid their fare to this country. Among the young business men who had 

 to make their own way, the drain upon their earnings for the half bottle of 

 wine for dinner and the social drinks was a burden wliich kept thousands from 

 getting on as they should have done, and I know of no classes where the habit 

 Avas not a growing one and was often in old age a very grievous burden to bear. 

 I saw enough among the laboring classes in the manufacturing cities of Eng- 

 land to know that the worst curse which falls to the hard lot of these poorly 

 paid working men of England was the self-imposed burden of drinking beer, 

 which saps their earnings and keps them in a perpetual life of abject poverty 

 and suffering, deprived on this account of proper food, and in thousands of 



