Arguments for temperance
The main reasons people supported the temperance movement were for the social issues rooted in alcohol abuse. Statistics convinced peopled that it led to an increased crime rate and put families in troublesome situations. People supported temperance because they believed it is destructive toward health and worker productivity. Supporters found legislation to be necessary because people could not restrict their behaviors, so drinking should be eliminated. Pro-temperance advocates believed dry states and elimination of alcohol was the only way to fix the problems created by alcohol abuse.
Destructive to healthAlcohol consumption destroyed people's health, argued temperance supporters. According to a pro-temperance doctor by the nae of Benjamin Rush, consumption of alcohol destroyed the liver and could cause strokes. James Appleton, also a pro-temperance advocate, declared, "A
license to disseminate the Small Pox would be thought to be no less proper and reasonable than a license to sell ardent spirits." By this, Appleton is suggesting that a license to spread Small Pox, which would be an ubsurd thing because it is similar to issuing a license to kill, is just as reasonable as issuing a license to sell alcohol because essentially it is the same thing. |
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Work place productivityDuring Colonial Times, workers productivity demands were not as high, so they coud have gotten away with drinking on the job. However, in the industiral world demands were much higher. Drinking on the job would lead to slacking off and less productiivity. Lesser production in workplaces drove many business leaders to join the temperance movement. Advocates for temperance thought that a slowed productive pace would cost men their jobs. In a temperance tract published in 1877, Timothy Shay
Arthur insisted: "The consequent waste of bodily vigor, and the idleness that is ever the sure accompaniment of drinking, rob this class of at least as much more. Total abstinence societies, building associations, and the use of banks for savings, instead of the dram-sellers' banks for losings, would do more for the well-being of our working classes than all the trades-unions or labor combinations, that ever have or ever will exist." In his work, Arthur stated that drunkness in the work place takes away from the success that businesses could have if temperence was enforced. |