The transportation of this “lumber” to the West Indies—the principal market for it—was a very great industry; it was called the “West India Trade.” Great numbers of vessels were engaged in it, running from all our principal ports which had direct communication with the vast system of saw mills on all our streams. The returns for this lumber were mostly West India rum and molasses, to be converted into New England rum, at our numerous distilleries. All along our sea coast great numbers of our people were engaged in the mackerel and cod fisheries; there were a great many vessels employed in that industry, the products of which were mostly sent to the West Indies in the lumber ships, the returns for which were also “rum and molasses!” I have heard men say who were owners of timber lands and of saw mills—“operators” on a large scale, and owners of West India traders—that Maine was never a dollar the richer for all these great industries. The returns were mostly in rum, and in molasses converted into rum, so that our boundless forests of invaluable timber were literally poured down the throats of our people in the form of rum. The result of all this was that Maine was the poorest state in the Union, consuming the entire value of all its property of every kind in rum, in every period of less than twenty years. I have run hastily over this account of the condition of Maine in the old rum time to show that our people, according to the general opinion on this subject, were most unlikely to adopt a policy of prohibition to the liquor traffic, which was spread everywhere all over the state, and was intimately interwoven into all the habits and customs of the time. All over the state there was a general appearance of neglect and dilapidation in houses, barns, school houses, farms, churches. By their habits of drinking a great many of our people were disinclined to work, and many of them were unfitted for it. It used to be said that three-fourths of the farms were mortgaged to the town, village and country traders, all of whom kept in stock liquors of all sorts as the most important and most profitable part of their supplies.