RUM ON THE CONGO.
Bishop Newman has presented to Congress a memorial from the World’s W. C. T. U. praying that immediate and decisive steps be
taken to suppress the liquor traffic in the Congo Free State and the basin of the Niger. The memorial shows that during 1885 more than 10,000,000 gallons of the cheapest and vilest spirits ever manufactured were sent from the United States, Germany, Holland, England, France, and Portugal to the natives of Africa. The quantities contributed by the different nations were:
United States, 737,650 gallons; Germany, 7,823,000 gallons; the Netherlands, 1,099,146 gallons; France (“pure alcohol”), 406,000 gallons; England, 311,400 gallons; Portugal, 91,524 gallons.
The memorial, continuing, says that abundant evidence proves that this deadly rum has developed in the natives an alcoholic passion almost without parallel, and has sunk them into a state of degradation lower than they occupied before they had contact with our commerce and civilization. The march of commerce will soon place the rum traders in communication with over 50,000,000 of savages, and unless the traffic is totally suppressed, the result will be most disastrous to the cause of humanity, a reproach to the Christian nations who supply it, and an outrage second only to the slave trade itself.
The purposes of the memorial and of the arguments made by Bishop Newman and Mr. Hornady are to bring about such a revision of the General Act of the Berlin Conference as shall completely suppress the liquor traffic in the territory in question; to obtain a law from Congress prohibiting the exportation of liquor from this country to any part of Africa, and to persuade the United States Government to use its influence to induce other governments to co-operate.