RUSSIAN LIQUOR LEGISLATION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 9940, 11 December 1900, Page 4

RUSSIAN LIQUOR LEGISLATION.

Foil many years past the attention of the Russian Government• has been directed to thedisastrous consequences of intemperance on the rural population. One Minister of Finance described the publii'housos as " the most powerful agents of ruin and disorganisation in the economic life of the Russian people " and said that they " threatened the impoverishment ot the whole rural population." Various steps were t>iken from time to time to restrict the sale of liquor, such as eonlining if- to places where food was also sold, requiring food to be supplied with each order for liquor, prohibiting the sale on credit, or for future labor or produce, establishing Government shops for the sale of spirits, in corlced bottles, not to be consumed on the premises, increasing enormously the cost of licenses, and soon. In 1885 it was iirst proposed that the Government should assume the control of the whole trade, but this affected a public revenue of 27 r> million roubles a year, and it was believed that a Government monopoly would materially reduce this. Hence the scheme was delayed, but the famine of 18!H hastened its adoption, and now thtnew system is in force in half the Empire, including thirty-five provinces, with an area greater than the I'liitcd Kingdom. Franco. Gerran-n-,

and the Netherlands, and a population of sixty-one millions. Under this system the authorities fix the quantity and quality of th< spirits produced, and allow the sale ol the remainder, under proper regulations, for industrial purposes, and thus furnish the consumer with pun spirits, " mitigating and preventing such abuses as are directly attributable to the excessive use of bad liquor, anc improving the morality and prosperitj of the masses." The Minister o: Finance has repeatedly declared thai Government control was not intendec to produce any direct increase of re venue. The last official report on the subject gives the amount of capital employed in the industry as about thirty millions sterling, the gross receipts as about twenty-four millions, the expenses about seven and a-half, the excise duty thirteen, and the profit to the Government three and a-half millions sterling. Where the sale is under Government control temperance societies have been organised under Prince Oldenburg, a distinguished philanthropist of St. Petersburg, as president, and these establish temperance restaurants, reading rooms, and the like, the whole movement being aided by the Government. By the end of 1902, it is anticipated, every province of Russia, including Siberia, will be brought within the sphere of these societies. So far, the effects of the Government's control of the traffic are doubtful, and even friends of the scheme admit that the evideuce is conflicting.