Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1885 — Why Times are Hard. [ARTICLE]

Why Times are Hard.

If the working people of this country ! want to know why they have hard j times every few years we can tell them. It is not overproduction nor underconsumption, as those phrases are com- ! monly employed. II they had kept J the SilOO.OfiiO.OuO they spent for strong ] drink in their pocke’s for the past five years of good times, the present tehip- , orary lull in manufacturing and business activity, would find many of them able to bear it, Without being pinched for the necessaries of life. It is overconsumption of wKSkey that makes the underconsumption of food and clothing in this land of liberty and liquor. The annual bill for bread, meat, cotton and woollen goods of this great American people.foots up* a total ai about $ 1,250,000.000-. But its annual bill for whiskey, beer and the taxes thereon is $1,400,000,000. In other words it unnecessarily drltks £159.000 000 worth mt,re than it necessarily eats, and wears. And the people who commit this fol’y every yeaV are am awed that once in a few years they ar*: hard up. and some of them want t<» hoist the communistic rwl "Sag and destroy everybody, else s property be- ! cause they have wasted their own | share of die national substance in rye [ juice -and otWr ‘riotous r.