Problem rozpijania polskich i ruskich chłopów przez szlachtę i Żydów był już podnoszony na łamach "Racjonalisty", głównie w wątku "Jankielowy narkobiznes ("http://www.racjonalista.pl/forum.php/s,719020). Warto jednakże do niego wrócić na moment, bo w mediach o proweniencji żydowskiej pokazał się niedawno tekst, który stanowi uzupełnienie, dopełnienie i potwierdzenie tez postawionych w wątku jak wyżej, traktując generalnie o znaczeniu pierwiastka żydowskiego w rozwoju branży alkoholowej.
Mowa o artykule na portalu Jewish Telegraphic Agency pt. "The forgotten History of Jews in the alcohol industry", do którego podrzucam link, zamieszczając najistotniejszy fragment tekstu.


This may be surprising, but Jews have a long and very influential history in the alcohol industry spanning Europe, Israel and North America.For most of the 1800s, Eastern European Jews held a virtual monopoly on the business in their regions. They produced much of the beer and hard alcohol, and ran nearly all the taverns where it was sold. Jews had been in the trade for centuries, but when Polish landowners saw they could make 50% greater profits by turning grain into alcohol than by selling it for food, Jews seized the chance to play an integral role.
At the time, Polish Jews could neither become nobility nor work the land as peasants. While many Jews turned to trading and peddling, the lords saw a different opportunity. Jews were considered good with business, they reasoned well, and would be unlikely to drink up the product. So, under a leasing system known in Polish as “propinacja,” Jews were granted exclusive rights to run the alcohol industries.By the middle of the 19th century, approximately 85% of all Polish taverns had Jewish management. Jews similarly dominated the industry in the Pale of Settlement (in today’s Ukraine and Belarus), though on a slightly lesser scale.
Jewish participation in the alcohol business was so prevalent that according to Glenn Dynner, author of “Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor, & Life in the Kingdom of Poland,” 30-40% of Poland’s Jews (including women and children) worked in the industry. That’s an impressive statistic by itself, but considering that approximately three-quarters of world Jewry lived in Eastern Europe at the time, that amounts to about 25% of all Jews in the world!
The quirk of the outsize Jewish population in the region is not all that accounts for the high percentage. That one-in-four figure is without even considering Jews in other parts of the world. But the 19th century seems to have been a peak time for Jewish involvement in alcohol worldwide."

Procenty zapodane w przytoczony fragmencie szokują - i nie są to bynajmniej procenty wskazujące na moc....alkoholu!

www.jta.or(*)f-jews-in-the-alcohol-industry