Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 May 1885 — Whisky and Democracy. [ARTICLE]

Whisky and Democracy.

The vast majority of the consumers of whisky in this country are Democrats. Out of every ten persons who die from whisky nine are Democrats. Republicans, as a rule, if they drink at all, drink wine and beer, containing but little alcohol. It is the 40 per cent, of alcohol in whisky, added to the poisons with which whisky is adulterated, which sweeps off the Democrats in such frightful numbers. Measuring the 7,000,000 voters in the North by the figures which the statisticians give us of the number of deaths from whisky every year, it is within bounds to say that three-fourths of 1 per cent. , or 57,000, perish annually, of whom 52,000 at least are Democrats, leaving a gross Democratic deficit or party loss of votes every year of 47,000; or at every Presidential election a loss of 188,(KN) sent to their graves by whisky. This of itself will suffice in large part to explain the mystery why the Democrats, who gain so largely on the Republicans from European emigrants, still make no headway on them in the aggregate results of the elections in the North.— Chicayo Tribune.