Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — DRINKING HERE AND ABROAD. [ARTICLE]

DRINKING HERE AND ABROAD.

Figures Show the United States to Be the Most Sober of Nations. In spite of the widespread Impression that the United States is a nation of drunkards, its people are in reality the soberest and most temperate in the world, according to the Troy Times. Whatever drunkenness we have to endure comes chiefly from abroad, brought here by people who retain their old-world habits, or transmitted by them in the nature of appetite to their children born here. Except for this constant accession to the drunkard list by importation not more than one man in 10,000 among us would be a drunkard. Our best and most temperate foreign population comes from the United Kingdom. But in that country the drink bill for 1891 is placed by Dr. Rawsjn Burns, ot the United Kingdom Alliance, at 8706,000,000. In the United States, in 1890, according to Wilbur F. Copelaud, of the Voice, tha drink bill was $1,131,000,000, or about 60 per cent, larger than in the United Kingdom, though the population is 80 per cent, larger, the wealth a quarter larger, and the average drink twice as high in price. Taking into consideration all these facts, our liquor consumption is not more than one-half that of the next soberest country in the world. The accommodations for getting drunk are also greater in the “mother country” than here. In England and Wales, with less than half the population ot the United States, crowded into an area about equal to New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, there are 128,000 public houses or drinking places, while in this country there are only 141.000, or 10 per cent. more. The compact population of England and Wales has a public house for every 202 persons, while t|ie United States has one for every 450. The average English city has a public house to every 173 persons; in this country the average proportion is considerably less. Even in New York, the essentially foreign city, there is only one licensed saloon for every 200 inhabitants, while in Philadelphia the proportion is about one per thousand. In most of the cities of the country the saloons are closed by law on Sunday; in all of the United Kingdom the law permits them to remain open. The difference in the habits of the people of the two nations is due mainly to the agitation of the question that has been going on here for seventy years and the legislation which has been the fruit thereof. In England there has never been any such temperance agitation or any restrictive act passed by Parliament.