Benjamin Franklin had seen so much trouble and even despair caused by drinking that he advised against it. His childhood friend borrowed some money from Ben, then disappeared to Barbados. Ben never saw him again.

Hugh Meredith was Ben’s partner in the printing business in Philadelphia. He was seldom sober. Franklin and Meredith soon dissolved their partnership.

Ben was assigned to negotiate a treaty with the American Indians around Pennsylvania. Ben was at the time a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Then Native Americans demanded liquor in order to listen to the terms of a treaty. They drank all the liquor given them and then demanded more.

“If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it not improbable that rum may be the appointed means,” Ben stated sadly. “It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the sea-coast.”

Ben’s rule became: “He that spills the rum, loses that only; He that drinks it, often loses both that and himself.”