DRINKERS AND SMOKERS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 5 December 1912, Page 26

DRINKERS AND SMOKERS.

The enormous immigration of Britishers to Canada is said to have brought about an increased demand for British-brewed beer and British and Irish spirits from Canada. The “Ottawa Free Press’ deals with this cause and effect as follows: — The skilled workman in Canada “keeps from drink,” and it is owing to the fact that i inmigrants from older lands have brought with them the habits of Europe that recent figures of the Canadian Inland Revenue Department tell the. tale they do. Be that as it may, the tale is plain enough. It is that Canada is smoking and drinking a good deal more in proportion to her population than she used to. A year’s increase of population in the Dominion is computed at 3 to 4 per cent. The percentage of difference over the figures of the previous year in the consumption of alcohol is much greater, as the following table shows: Beer 21 per cent. Spirits 20 per cent. Wines 9% per cent.

There is matter of satisfaction, the “Free Press” finds, in the reflection that the condition of the tobacco and liquor trades may be taken as reflecting the general financial condition in the country. It derives comfort also from the thought that it is not the Canadian who is paltering with the accursed thing. “Canada,” it writes, “is receiving from the United States and Europe a quarter of a million new citizens. Most of these are drinkers and smokers. If it were not for the American arrivals it could be said with general accuracy that all are drinkers and smokers. Most of these European arrivals, too, are cigarette smokers. Thus, while one Canadian-horn citizen out of every three or four alone is a tobacco user and liquor drinker, and while the use of both weed and intoxicant probably grows less among this large class, still the Canadian average of use is kept up; in fact, is materially advanced by newcomers. About these newcomers there need be little worry, They will, after a few years here, learn the Canadian customs and catch the Canadian spirit. Their training in the various countries of Europe has been that working men shall drink whenever opportunity offers. The Canadian spirit is different. The skilled Canadian workman keeps from

drink. This they will learn as they imbibe other Canadian customs and ways of success.”