There are faults within I wish the laboring world
would see and correct. I travel the country over and note the men who
file in and out the saloons. Are they bankers or leading business men?
No, they are laborers from factories, furnaces, fields and work-shops,
spending their money for what is worse than nothing and giving it to a
business that pays labor less and robs more than any other
capitalization in the world.
The New York Sun says: "Every successful man in Wall Street is a total
abstainer. He knows he must keep his brain free from alcohol when he
enters the Stock Exchange, where his mind goes like a driving wheel
from which the belt has slipped." The laboring man needs brain as
clear and nerves as steady as the capitalist if he expects to win in
this age of sharp competition.
What the laboring classes in this country spend for liquor in twelve
months would purchase five hundred of the average manufactories of the
land; what they spend in ten years would purchase five thousand, and
what they spend in twenty years would control the entire manufacturing
interests of the country.
A few years ago a strike occurred with the Pullman Palace Car Company.
What the laboring classes spend for intoxicating liquors in three
months would purchase the Pullman Palace Car Company and all its
rolling stock. Instead of a strike, in which laboring men are out of
work and families suffering for the necessaries of life, why not stop
drinking beer and whiskey for ninety days, buy the whole business and
let the Pullman Company do something else.
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