BRITAIN'S LIQUOR TRADE.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 12, 13 July 1918, Page 10

BRITAIN'S LIQUOR TRADE.

WILL THE STATE TAKE

CONTROL?

WHAT £400,000,000 WOULD B*rY

(WOU OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 17th May.

The figure estimated as necessary to buy out private interests in the liquor traffic in the British Isles is now something over £400,000,000. All these noughts would have been quite sufficient before the war to kill the whole idea.^ It was, for example, a couple of year's revenue of the whole State. But the war has been a great time of training in the use.of large-scale maps, and today 400 millions, to use a common denominator, is merely a couple of months' war expenditure. Therefore the price is worth considering.

_ It was in June, 1917, that a commission was appointed to' look into the matter, on the ground that "it might be shortly necessary as an urgent war measure to assume control of the manufactured supply of intoxicating liquors during the -war and the period of demobilisation, and such control would involve the purchase after the war of the interests concerned." Commissions were appointed for England, for Scotland, and for Ireland; and they agreed beforehand on certain principles—(l) To include the export trade; (2) to exclude all Allied trades and the non-liquor part of mixed businesses; (3) to assess values on the simple capitalisation of net pre-war profits, excluding the effects, whether favourable or the reverse, of war conditions. All the reports provide for the purchase of brewing and distilling concerns. The pre-war value of the interests to be acquired in England and Wales is set down at not less than £350,000,000. Before the war the production of beer in England and Wales was about 31£ million barrels a year, and the licensed premises for retail numbered 100,000, of which from 90 to 95 per cent, were tied. The cost,of acquisition in Scotland is put at £61,000,000 in the main report, but at only £24,000,000 in a minority report by Mr. C. Ker and Mr. J. M. , MacLeod, M.P. As three other members disagree with important parts of this report, it looks as if the figure is a variable one. The suggested purchase prices vary somewhat : England, breweries, 15 years' purchase; Scotland, breweries, 8 years; distillers, 7; rectifiers, 1 13. The English Commission provides for pensions to holders of on-licenses for whom tKe State does not find paid posts. A SUPPORTING DOCUMENT. It is, of course, a tremendous problem to consider, and it is only the national courage that the war has discovered that brings it into the arena of practicability. The very form of the report is an expression of the more practical temper in which wo are approaching these great social questions nowadays. ■ It ,only runs to a few pages altogether, and it discusses nothing irrevelant. Nevertheless, • the, real question is whether the Government and Parliament will consider the price justified. Mr. Lloyd George is apparently as strong a temperance reformer as ever. He is apparently as willing as ever that the State should step in and take the place of the private capitalist in public utilities. . Nobody now believes it possible, for instance, that the railways and •canals will ever go back to their owners. Nevertheless, if he could not prove his case lie could not carry such a vast programme. , " ' The onus of proof is on the former. But here again the inexorable army of war officials have done what thousands of enthusiasts and doctrinaires could not do before. It is three years eince the liquor Control Board was set up, and to-day nineteen-twentieths of the population of Great Britain live in areas controlled by it. That the regulation of the traffic—particularly the shortening of hours, the ban on treating, and the reduced' potency of the liquors—has greatly diminished drunkenness is generally recognised. In 1917-18 the quantity of beer and spirits available was 50 per cent, lees than in the preceding year. Here are a few figures showing the convictions for drunkenness: —

' Some of the excessive drinking during the last year is actually traceable to the shortage, for queues and "rush" drinking tend to alternate with periods of famine.. But ifc is hoped now to make the supply, though small, as regular as. possible. Though drunkenness has been reduced' to 1 about one-fourth, of its pre-war dimen- ! sions, there are not -yet any signs of a reaction. The board is careful to point out that the continuance of this improved condition is largely dependent on future legislation and administration, but from its now considerable experience it suggests that "there is no such inherent difficulty in the problem as to render impossible the permanent maintenance of the present level of sobriety." In actually operating public-houses, as it has done in 6everal pla.ces, the board has found its' return on hotel capital commitments about 15 per cent. The absence of so many hundreds of thousands of men oversea necessarily vitiates the statistics, especially, as they are numerical and not proportional, but the following tables, relating to women only, are very striking :— /

To show how, closely the welfare of infants is associated with the sobriety of mothers, lieTe are the figures for the suffocation of children under one year old (usually from overlying): 1913, 1226 ; 1916, 744; 1917, 704. This report is only one added, to a historic dossier of documents which must eventually bo studied as part and parcel of the reformation in England. "Some of us have always maintained," says the Bishop of Willesden, "tho,t yon can make a country sober by Act of Parliament. This is shown in the report of the Central Control Board; but it is only a beginning, and the figures as they now stand aro a gross scandal to England, where £260,000,000 was spent last year in strong drink manufactured from cereals and sugar, which aro sadly needed .by the people."

Greater London 65,488 29,453 16,667 Eng. and Welsh boroughs 52,779 23,330 13,549 Total •. 118,267 52,783 30,216

Convictions for i drunkenness ... 35,765 21,245 12,307 Attempted suicide 958 436 452 Deaths from alcoholism 7J9 333 222