The Gothenburg System.

Opunake Times, Volume III, Issue 149, 6 December 1895, Page 2

The Gothenburg System.

People talk glibly about the Gothenbcrg System, but possibly precise information on the subject is not so widely extended as to make a brief explanation superfluous. At any rate, we visitors to Gothenburg were very glad to learn. The base of the system is the grant to a singfe Company of the absolute monopoly of the liquor trade in a particular municipality. The privilege is granted upon conditions which make compulsory the reduction of the number of grog shops to the lowest practicable figure, Only the fittest survive, and there are strict regulations for keeping them in a sanitary and orderly state. All expenses paid, and a small percentage allowed on the capital expended, the profit is handed over to the Government for the benefit of the poor, and for other public services. As the profits of the stockholders and the directors of the company are strictly limited, there is no temptation to force sales. The system has been in force in Gothenburg since 1874, and two years later it was adopted in Stockholm. Its results, as Mr Gladstone, ascertained, have been most beneficent. Figures were forthcoming to show that the consumption of drink per head had decreased from about 29 litres to about 16, very nearly one-half. The ills that accoinpany drunkenness have dimished in even larger proportion, convictions for drunkenness, and crime resulting directly from it, showing a decrease of 70 per cent.

This last fact mist be traced in large measure to another influence concomitant with, though not directly resultant from, the establishment of the Gothenburg system. The story in itself has some of the attraction of a romance. A quarter of a century ago there lived in Sweden a man known as the Brandy King. His family name was the more familiar one of Smith— Lars Olson Smith was his full style. He was not only a distiller but the chief retailer of spirits, his shops being counted by the thousand. It was estimated that three-fourths of the strong drink consumed in Sweden came from the stills of the Brandy King. His Majesty produced the concoction chiefly out of potatoes, which yield a potent spirit inflamed with fusel oil. Consequently, with hia schnapps the Brandy King was the wholesale and retail purveyor of crime, insanity, and most miserable death. One night, possibly having by exception sampled his own product, the Brandy King had a vision, in which he saw the evil he was bringing on his country. He got up in the morning resolved to put things v ight. He summoned at Paris a conference of experts to consider the question of purer drink. It cost him a large sum, since he paid all expenses, supplemented by heavy fees. The result was demonstration that fusel oil was at the bottom of the bad business. That eliminated, alcoholic liquor was a moderately innoxious form of refreshment. The Brandy King forthwith put his own distilleries in order with a view to eliminating the poison. But he found his most powerful competitor in himself. The Swedes, grown accustomed to his fiery beverage, did not care for the milder rectified spirit. The company of traders just then managing Stockholm under the Gothenburg system would not buy the new stuff. The Brandy King, nerved by his awakened conscience, was not to be beaten. His distilleries were a short distance up the river from Stockholm, outside the limit of municipal control. The Brandy King put on a fleet of fifteen steamers, luxuriously fitted up. If onyone wanted a nip, or desired to buy a bottle or a dozen bottles of spirits, they were welcome on board, had a pleasant sail up the river, and were brought back free of cost, save the customary charge for the refreshment. The thing took on wonderfully. Taste for the purer spirit became established. Within a year the municipality capitulated, and Stockholm was delivered from' the thraldom of a liquor which must have been like that Scotch compound once described in the House of Commons by the late O’Sullivan as inducing sensations akin to “a torchlight procession going down your throat.”