The Great Destroyer

Abstract

Interestingly, this sample Band of Hope blackboard address from Workers’ Own, 1917 does not explicitly mention the current war, but its moral lessons could obviously be made relevant.

THE WORKERS’ OWN.

OUTLINES OF ADDRESSES
No. 1. – For the Blackboard.

The Great Destroyer.

Strong Time
Drink Money
Consumes} Health
Character

THERE are three kinds of work : --
1. – Work that is useful, making or doing something that will benefit yourself and others. 2. – Work that is useless, say like digging a hole and filling it up again – that does no good and no harm. 3. – Work that is harmful – time spent in doing something that does mischief and injury. (Let children give instances in each case). The Liquor Traffic comes under the latter head. The making of strong drink costs time and money, and in the end does positive harm.

STRONG DRINK CONSUMES TIME.-
Take care the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves. Few of us think of this. Many put off until to-morrow what ought to be done to-day. But the minutes are gone forever. We may replace lost wealth by industry, lost by knowledge by study, lost health even by rest, temperance or medicine, but lost time can never be replaced. An indolent country gentleman had a farm, but finding it did not pay, he let half of it to an industrious farmer who in a few years’ time wanted to buy it. “Will you buy it?” asked the owner, surprised. “Certainly, if we can agree to the price.” “That is strange,” said the owner. “You can afford to pay me £200 a year rent and make a living on half of my farm, and I could not make a living out of the whole of it. How do you manage it?” “The reason is plain,” was the reply. “You sat still and said ‘Go’ ; I got up and said ‘Come.’ You laid in bed and let others do the work ; I got up in the morning and minded my business.”

It was said of a nobleman : “His Grace loses an hour in the morning and spends the whole day looking for it.” That’s how time is lost. But drinking makes men listless, indifferent, idle, lazy, and in the end unfits them for honest toil. The value of time is lost, their own and others.

A man was fined in the North because, while he was drinking, 20 others depending upon his work, had to be idle also.

Enforce the importance of using the odd moments, the value of time and the enormous amount of time wasted in the manufacture and sale of Alcoholic Drinks. Every brewer, publican, cooper, bottler, driver, etc., is not only wasting his time for the destruction of his fellows and robbing the nation not only of his own work but that of others. Especially at this time every one ought to use his efforts for the benefit of the country.

STRONG DRINK CONSUMES MONEY. –
Time is money. The proper use of time brings with it wealth. The waste of time means loss of wealth.
Put these examples on the blackboard.

3d. a day means £4 11s. 9d. a year. Spend it in beer – it is gone and nothing of value received for it. Put it in the bank at 4 per cent. and in 20 years it amounts to £135 17s. 3 ½, or if saved or put in an insurance society will give a person £2 a month as long as he lives after reaching the age of 65 years.

A printer, when his fellows went out to drink, put by the money that he would have spent had he gone with them. In five years he had £107. On the other hand three of his mates became drunkards and were discharged as worthless.

Take the lesson of the tiny insect. It is not the amount that each insect does but the multitude of tiny workers added together that builds the great coral reefs and islands in the Pacific Ocean. Adding coin to coin tells and amounts in the end to a respectable sum that is very useful in time of sickness or trouble, or when there is any special need, and always gives added comfort and independence.

Drinking never makes a man richer.
STRONG DRINK CONSUMES HEALTH. – “Health is always injured by alcohol.” “A man cannot be fit on alcohol.” Drinking makes him less fit and healthy and as a consequence he is often on the sick list when he ought to be in work.