"How much richer?"
"Oh, a great deal. Somebody was saying, only yesterday, that he
couldn't be worth less than thirty thousand dollars."
"Indeed? So much."
"Yes."
"How has he managed to accumulate so rapidly?"
"His bar has a large run of custom. And, you know, that pays
wonderfully."
"He must have sold a great deal of liquor in six years."
"And he has. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that in the six years
which have gone by since the 'Sickle and Sheaf' was opened, more liquor
has been drank than in the previous twenty years."
"Say forty," remarked a man who had been a listener to what we said.
"Let it be forty then," was the according answer.
"How comes this?" I inquired. "You had a tavern here before the 'Sickle
and Sheaf' was opened."
"I know we had, and several places besides, where liquor was sold. But,
everybody far and near knew Simon Slade the miller, and everybody liked
him. He was a good miller, and a cheerful, social, chatty sort of man
putting everybody in a good humor who came near him. So it became the
talk everywhere, when he built this house, which he fitted up nicer
than anything that had been seen in these parts. Judge Hammond, Judge
Lyman, Lawyer Wilson, and all the big bugs of the place at once
patronized the new tavern, and of course, everybody else did the same.
So, you can easily see how he got such a run."
"It was thought, in the beginning," said I, "that the new tavern was
going to do wonders for Cedarville."
"Yes," answered the man laughing, "and so it has."
"In what respect?"
"Oh, in many. It has made some men richer, and some poorer."
"Who has it made poorer?"
"Dozens of people. You may always take it for granted, when you see a
tavern-keeper who has a good run at his bar, getting rich, that a great
many people are getting poor."
"How so?" I wished to hear in what way the man who was himself, as was
plain to see, a good customer at somebody's bar, reasoned on the
subject.
"He does not add to the general wealth. He produces nothing. He takes
money from his customers, but gives them no article of value in
return--nothing that can be called property, personal or real. He is
just so much richer and they just so much poorer for the exchange. Is
it not so?"