The drink bill of the United Kingdom, with a population smaller than ours, is more than this by many millions.
This valuation--seven hundred millions of dollars--is the price, by the quantity, taken from the figures as they come into the public office, while the cost to the consumers is vastly greater.

Now, this sum with annual compound interest for ten years, amounts to the enormous figure of eight billions nine hundred and forty-four millions one hundred and forty-one thousands of dollars--almost nine thousand millions of dollars! For twenty years the amount is twenty-five billions two hundred and forty-five millions six hundred and eighty-one thousands of dollars.

Twenty-five thousand two hundred and forty-five millions of dollars and more; actually as much, within a fraction, as the entire value of the personal and landed property of the United States! My friend of Raymond may well be credited in the statement made to his fellow-townsmen.
Now, as the result of the Maine Law, in Maine, the wealth and prosperity of the people have greatly increased.

This can be seen in every part of the State, and is obvious to the most casual observer who knew what Maine was before the law of prohibition and knows what it has been since and down to the present time.
Evidences of industry, enterprise and thrift everywhere, instead of the general poverty, unthrift and shabbiness of the old rum-time.
The share of Maine of the National drink-bill would be about thirteen millions of dollars, and but for the Maine Law, we should be consuming our full proportion; but now I feel myself fully warranted in saying that we do not expend in that way one-tenth of that sum.

A mayor of the city of Portland, in a message to the City Council, said: "The quantity of liquor now sold is not one-fiftieth part as much as it was before the enactment of the law." The difference, whatever it may be, between the sum we should waste in strong drink, but for the law, and that which we actually squander in that way, we have in our pockets, in our savings banks and in our business, so that Maine has suffered far less, financially, during this crisis than any other part of the country.
I have said the drink-bill of Maine, but for prohibition, would be about thirteen millions of dollars annually, in proportion to that of the whole country.