NEW PHASE OF PROTECTION.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2650, 15 August 1871, Page 3

NEW PHASE OF PROTECTION.

(From the Australasian.) A new phase of “protection to native industry” has turned up. Some of the Melbourne brewers are asking the Government for pci mission to convert bad beer into indifferent vinegar; and they state that, at the lowest computation, (500,000 gallrns of beer are annually wasted in this city and its suburbs. But why is this ? An immense amount of “swipes” is manufactured at a very low price, in order to enable the keepers of publichouses and shanties of the lowest class to undersell respectable traders. Much of this rubbish, badly brewed, rapidly fermented, and destitute of keeping properties, turns sour within a few days or a few hours of its being placed in the publican’s cellar, and has to be return d to the brewery and allowed for. Sometimes indeed whole “ gyles ” of beer pass into the acetous ferraenta’ ion even before leaving the brewer’s premises ; and this is the stuff whicli the Government is asked for permission to transform into vinegar, in which shape it would be as valueless as in its original one ; while it would be brought into competition with the genuine article, to the injury of those persons who are engaged in producing the falter. If the Treasurer wishes to offer a premium for the tnanufacturc of deleterious “she-oak” in preference to sound and wholesome malt liquors, he cannot do better than comply with the request which has just been addressed to him.