STATE CONTROL OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

White Ribbon, Volume 32, Issue 371, 18 May 1926, Page 1

STATE CONTROL OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

(By Jcssis Mackay—a paper read at Convention). STATE CONTROL IN NORWAY AND SWEDEN. “You cannot make a people sober by Act of Parliament.” “Long and hard use has given this saying the worn look of a George 111. halfcrown. Of late, a counter belief has assumed as worn a character though it is seldom stated in its naked force:—“You can change Cabinet Ministers and policemen into angels by turning License into State Control.” On this and no other ground depends the whole State Control argument —the vision of a beautified Minister flourishing a lean, saintly budget—a seraphic policeman hunting like a lynx the misdemeanors of the Government that pays him, and a pious, patient people taking its daily drink when and where the Government directs. Recurrently, every three years this vision pressed upon us —a vision of dewy virginal freshness, untried, untested. Rut stay! Is State Control indeed so young? Mr John Vale, of Melbourne, who has made this subject a world-embracing study, tell?; us it is very old. William L. Johnson, the historian of the South Carolina and Russian experiments, states that public control is as old as King Hammurabi, who reigned 4,000 years ago. Countless systems of control have been tried during 40 centuries. “The net result,” he says, “is that the consumption of alcoholic liquors

is greater than at any time in the world’s history.” As State Controllers will not tell us the history of State Control, let us examine it briefly ourselves, tai ing it up where it begins to touch institutions and conditions like our own. The record of the Gothenburg system in Sweden, now dying in execration, is the finished story of Corporate Control. Prohibition is not the experiment of a day. The strong Nordic spirit of Scandinavia came to it a century before America dreamed of it. Th:

quiet, happy, prosperous condition of Sweden in 1775, under prohibition, was admiringly recorded by contemporary writers. Rut the thrifty country got an unthrifty King, Gustavus 111., who to refill an empty treasury, forced a Government brandy monopoly on his people. Drink shops were established, drinking songs composed to order, anti congregations lured, almost dragooned, to the royal taverns after Church. Sweden, once the most sober, was soon the most drunken nation in Europe. In due course .the short-lived boom was followed by bankruptcy. The monopoly was dropped, but that did not check the engendered appetite of the Swedes. Domestic distillation was legalised. In 1899 a population of 2.855,000 paid license fees on 17 3, 124 spirit stills. Physical degeneration set in. In 1854 a Parliamentary report passionately declared the very existence of the people to be at stake. In 1855, amid a religious revival, a temperance crusade secured Local Option and abolished private distil-

ling. The number of licenses was fixed by the municipal rate-payers. Rural districts went solidly for NoLicense. Sweden was transformed. Rut heavj spirit drinking continued in the towns. In Gothenburg, a company was formed to buy up all the city licenses, regulate the trade, and fight strong drink by pushing the sale of beer (as in Canada to-day). Rut Sweden and Canada have found oil to be no quencher of fire. Thus, in 1866, was the Gothenburgh system born. Led by a respectable brewer, Mr Carnegie, the Company started business on philanthropic lines. Like all public control systems, the Gothenburg scheme was intensely difficult to formulate. A British Commission was told some years later by a citizen that only one man ever understood it, and he had gone mad. The Company soon forgot its philanthropic beginnings it became more and more battered by the diverse agencies of pressure always restive against liquor control. The. Gothenburg managers were paid a fixed salary for the sale of spirits, but allowed a profit on beer. The shareholders received 6 per cent profits. Of the surplus profits, 7/10 per cent went to the city, 2/10 per cent to the Government, and 1/10 per cent to locally organised agriculture. The system loudly trumpetted, spread rapidly. Almost every city in Sweden still has its “Bolag,” or liquor company. I may interpolate here that Norway and Finland both adopted modifications of the Gothenburg system. In Norway the “Bolag.” or Company was called the Samlag. The Samlag

li**hl its monopoly more Isrally, amt (lie Norwegian authorities avoided some of the already obvious faults in the Swedish system. Hut, in handing most of the profits to charity, instead ot to the municipalities. Norway raised up trouble of another kind; the Norwegian <iti's were still strongholds of drinking, though, as in Sweden, most of the eonntry districts had none dry under Local Option. Hoth Norway and Finland adopted prohibition during tiiv war, and have resisted hard commercial pressure from their old customers, the Mediterranean wine co untries. The Gothenburg Company, we have said, soon lost its phil&ntrophy in Sweden. Strangely, also, it soon abandoned its monopoly. After thirty years, a review was taken of the seventy licenses it “started with. Seventeen had been sold back to private clubs, pestuarants, and hotels, and hotels vending liquor for gain. Twenty-three more hail gone to wine and spirit merchants who did an “ofT sale” trade. Sewn went to carry on another “Offsale ' system in which the Company was mixed up. Four were retained for the sale of spirits with meals in eating houses. Only nineteen “philanthropic” houses remained to vend spirits under regulation as originally planned. This deeply significant tabulation indicates how impossible it is for any system of public control to hold its intricate and unwieldy business a* a monopoly. The great name of the Gothenburg system was acquired under false pretence*: the tremendous decrease in Sweden’s drinking took place under Local Option during the ten years before it came in. Careful calculation shows that, for our century, the Gothenburg scheme reduced the drinking of spirits one quarter of a gallon per head, and increased the consumption of beer eight gallons per head. Gothenburg itself is one of the most drunken cities of Europe. In one pre-war year of this century, it had 1600 more arrests for drunkenness than the most drunken American town of its size. On the number of convictions for drunkeneaa, it is judged five tiims as drunken as Aberdeen. Cardiff, or Liverpool. It is the most drunken city in Scani dinavia. One of the Company s original aims was to decrease pauper-

ism. Hut it has increased; lifty per cent. There are about eight hundred licensed houses in Gotherburg, lint the Company's eighteen or ninebvn "philanthropic** houses were, not many years ago, calculated to be responsible for on* third of the drunkenness there. So great were the evils of the Gothenburg system that in 1914, a Stockholm expert, Dr. Ivan Hratt, was called on tu reform it. The purchase of liquor is limited by a "motbok” or license card. This is issued only to persons over 21, who for three years previous have not Isvn alcoholic patient* in hospital, nor convicted for drunkenness, nor punished for crime. The allowance runs from one to four litres a month (a litn* is seven-eights of a quart). A license card is cancelled for drunkenness, or if lent to another, and no om* under eighteen is served with liquor in a restuarant. The Hratt system has been in ojirralion since 11*21. During 1913-1915, years of free sale, consumption rose to 10,000,000 litres a year. It dropped to 25,000,000 litres later, hut in 1924 it had risen to 28,000,000, Convictions for drunkenness are also rising. There were 32,381 in a population of six millions. During the last three years drunkenness among young persons lias especially risen, amounting in 1 924 to 20.1 of the whole sum. The number of license-holders is also inert asing; in 1 925 they were 1.060, 441 and 92,981 of these were women. So much for the Gothenburg-Bratt reform. My authority for these recent facts h the International expert. Alexis Iljorkman, writing from Stockholm on January 12th, 1926. He adds: “The whole temperance movement in Sweden, comprising some 500,000 adult members, stands unanimously against the system and for total prohibition.” Hut why, it may be asked, do not the Swedish towns exercise Local Option and get rid of the Company system? The answer is that each town recives 7/10 per cent of the huge surplus profits. One idealist may quarrel with Mammon, but who ever saw a Corporation of idealists? At one blow', Gothenburg crushes both these myths of reformTrust and Corporate Control. Let a clear-sighted Swede, the Mayor of Safer, speak the last word: —“Endowed with the scinb-

lance <»f ttflbi.il just ire, morality ■ t-unperance, and wearing a giai, ln fl of saintliness, the Gothenburg sys® lias degenenvtcd into an unheard I humbug . . . It is the ki*s of j» J It creates a cruel lust for M® money ... Of it can only be ,® as of other profitable egon-im. ■ has God in the eye, but the tiwj® the fingers.’ fj Strangely the shadow ol Lott,A burg flashes across tie* screen ■ British politics. In 1 872. the lt ® anthropic brewer. Mr Carnegi . r a A over and joined with Mr J«s«® Chamberlain, then a Radical ■ dazzle England with this new s, ® lion, ilut Britain, however wrigh® with liquor trouble, refused to ® dazzl'd. Even then it regarde I breW’er as a dubious tempera:® reformer. Enquiry also shot® Gothenburg more drunken than d® British town. Mr Chamberlain. !i® ever, did not abandon his pioj’.'® liquor reforms with lii-s Lib<ra!i>® In the early nineties he set forth■ municipal monopoly of public ii<«® as a eo u liter-cry to Local Dpi ion.:® Liberals Ining pledged to the lat® Literalism foundered on other r<® that year, but the Tory victors® not municipalise the public hou® Yet the seed thus drop® produced some fragile Mow® of reform in England, s® as the Public House Trust ® sociation of Northumberland, lea® by Earl Grey, and taking over s*® public houses. The scheme soun® well, only pure liquor w r as to be sol I the managers were to receive a <® mission on food sold and on “e® management”—a fatally | phrase—but not on liquor, and profit® were to be administered for the b® fit of the community. The intent® of Earl Grey were good, but, after I few years, the "Grey Arms" was nounced as one of the worst coil ducted houses in the North 1 England, and two clerical shall holders pronounced the whoi* sell® a failure. Other and smaller T'Jj house experiments have been tried® London and other large cities. Tlfl are unknown to fame and to reforfl (To be continui'd).