PAY MORE FOR BEER

Hokitika Guardian, 23 January 1932, Page 6

PAY MORE FOR BEER

OR DRINK IT WEAKER.

ENGLISHMAN’S SAD DILEMMA

LONDON, Nov. 25

It has been said by the unfeeling that the hardest of all partings would he the separation of ah Englishman from his beer. Nevertheless, that separation is now being faced, although with groanings and leluct.ince, by the wage-earners of Britain.

Reports from brewery centres agree that beer drinking has fallen off considerably during tJie last six months, and that the fall has been accentuated hy the increase of excise and Customs duties upon beer which Philip Snowden as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Imposed in September to balance the Budget for the year ending next March. England has been paying £>'o,ooo,000 a year to the Exchequer tor the privilege of drinking beer. T; at is roughly the amount taken yearly by the Exchequer from the brewe: ieg I is difficult to estimate the whole amount of beer production end sale cos s the country, but it can safely be put at about double that sum.

The result, taking the population of Great- Britain and Northern Ireland at 45 millions, represents an expenditure ■of about £3 12s per capita on the national.beverage, which, even considering that -at least half of the population does not drink it, cannot lie culled excessive. Air Snowden’s latest beer tax may prove a mistake. His aim is to produce £20,000,000 additional revenue by a tax which amounts to a penny a pint, to the consumer who buys his beer in a bar, or a correspondi.g amount if he buys it from a brewer in a cask or from a shopkeeper in bottles.

the high Tide mark. The British government, which docs not aim at prohibition, Inis restricted drinking by making it progressively more expensive, with the intent of getting more revenue from drinkers. It has now reached high tide mark as far as revenue from beer fs concerned, and therefore receipts are falling. The brewers, wise in their generation, have sifted their customers and distributed the extra charge among them, bearing themselves as small a share as possible. Before Flemish' brewers brought bops into English malting 300 years ago and with this innovation the word beer into the language, English ale was a home-brewed product made without hops. There is no longer distinction between beer and ale in England as far as the ingredients are concerned. Law and authority have come down heavily upon the making of malt liquors, and there is now no homebrewed in England. Nowadays the standard lixrd by kiwis the alcoholic strength of the brew. The stronger the beer over the standaid 10.57 fixed by law as the specific gravity of the mixture, the lower the charge. Consequently, in all bars whose customers have to think seriously of the coppers in their Dockets, a drink called mild ale is sold at a penny a pint less than the bitter beer in the ndpojning saloon bar. It differs from the bitter beer in the fact that its alcoholic strength is less. \ The beer sellers are adjusting things as between their categories of customers. The social classes are nicely graduated in an English | üb. There is the saloon bar to which the betteroff' type of drinker resorts. There is the private bar for manual workers etc.

AND WHAT COMES NEXT. Tbe mail in the saLon bar who is either too well situated with regard -o this world’s goods to tare whether lie pays a halfpenny more for bis glass, or feels that it is beneath bis dignity to resent the extra charge, pays the additional penny a pint. The, workman, quite capable of verbal remonstrance beginning with “Ere, guvnor, wot’s all this,” gets his ale at the same price as before, but lie gets, or will very shortly be getting a weaker drink. What he will say when he realises this, remains to he seen. As things st nd, he is still paying what he lias been accustomed to pay, sevenperce in London and sixpence in the country uul most proviini 'l towns. His neighbour in the saloon bar pays tenpence a pint. Saturation pomt from the point of view of taxation seems to have been reached will the last impost of £1 8s on the indard barrel of 18 gallons.

Possibly John Hull will accept the position and reduce his demau-.s to the near boor standard, bo'h high .rid low drinking the workingman's ; io. The brewers, however, have another weapon in bottled beers, won-h <rgt twice as niueh as draught beers. They are for some reason .ailed ales officially unless they happen to he stouts, are rlcoliolically 'tron/.u' than ordinary draught beer, and .p> neral.ly •ire understood to be much more b (‘pilling to a well-dressed man as a Ji:n.-li-eon beverage. The brewers are trying to iv.'ii • ; le (he sal-on bar eiisi oner lo limber nricos bv selling him bottled \y, ev s ;t onl v a neniiv more than he ,ia's for draught boor. Naturally the rhenpor I'ottled beers are. not go .good to drink.