THE DRINK BILL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 996, 25 May 1911, Page 4

THE DRINK BILL.

FIGURES FOR 1910, REV. EDWARD WALKER’S REPORT. The following statement, showing the “ drink bill ” for 1910, has been prepared by the Rev. Edward Walker, who for some years past has annually calculated and published the Dominion’s expenditure on alcoholic liquors. The drink bill of the Dominion for 1910, calculated as usual at per gallon rates on the quantity which passed through the Customs and excise, amounted to £3,803,438, being an increase on the previous year of £175,301, or £3 13s l/4d per head of population, being an increase per head on the previous year of 2s o%d. The bill is like a barometer for showing the current spending powers of the people. Anyone may form his own estimate of what the figures would be if the increase, after passing the Customs and excise, of the quantity of liquor, by methods known to the trade, and the actual cost to the consumers, not at per gallon, but as, sold across the bar, could be calculated. Probably live million pounds sterling, and live, pounds per head of population, or £25 per household, is less than was really spent on liquor in New Zealand last year. Considering that it would have been less harmful, and saved many after costs, if the whole quantity had been dropped into the sea as soon as purchased, the folly of such a costly way of contributing national revenue should be plain to the most ordinary intelligence. The fact that so many whole families are abstainers and have taken no part in this expenditure shows how utterly reckless in its wastefulness the liquor habit

The Customs and excise revenue from it was £799,634, not nearly enough to cover the direct and indirect cost of its baneful effects so far as these are measurable in money, and utterly negligible in view of its blighting and blasting effects upon its victims and their homes. It is not surprising that the nations are rising in their wrath to pronounce the liquor traffic’s doom. It is evident that the expansion of the drink bill in these prosperous times would have been enormously greater but for the temperance propaganda. For purposes of comparison the expenditures for both 1909 and 191° may be quoted, the figures covering the period from January I to December 31, inclusive :

13.803,438f£3 13 l-f Increase. Increase. £175,301 £0 2 Of Estimated population, 1,040,442 ; increase, 19,228. The population is calculated by taking tlie mean of the four quarterly estimates issued by the RegistrarGeneral and adding Maoris 47,731 (as per last census), but not the population (12,340) of the Cook and other islands in the Pacific annexed to the Dominion in 1901. (The slight apparent excess In the totals is accounted for by unr expressed fractions of a farthing in the amounts standing over them. Mr C. M. Gray, of Christchurch, who for a number of years calculated and published the annual drink bill, estimated from the Customs and excise returns, that for the sixteen years from 1870 to 1885, inclusive, it averaged £2,599,553 per annum. This would give for the fifteen years from 1870 to 1884, inclusive, a total of £38,993,295. Following this are given below the annual expenditures for the twenty-six years which have since elapsed to 1910, inclusive. The estimated population prior to 1896 was exclusive oF Maoris, but in 1896 and onward has been inclusive of them. For 1897 and onward the year’s expenditure is reckoned for the twelve months from January Ist

to December 31st (inclusive), but for the year 1896 for the twelve months from March 30th, 1896, to March 30th, 1897, and similarly for the years prior thereto: — Estimated Cost cost per head Estimated of liquor popuYear. populat’n. consumed, lation.

Total for 41 years - £108,138,853 Prior to 1870, in the days of the diggings, the drink bill per head of population was much heavier than it has been since, cheques and gold being “ knocked down ” with the utmost recklessness, so that in the absence of the figures it is difficult to form an estimate of the drink expenditure on the cost per gallon basis for the thirty years of the country’s history up to 1870. An estimate which would bring the total to the present time up to £125,000,000 would probably be much within the mark. It must be remembered that this cost is estimated upon the actual quantity of which the Customs and excise has taken cognisance, and as if the customers purchased it all by the gallon at ordinary per gallon rates, and takes no account of dilution and adulteration, nor of the much greater cost of a gallon to the consumers when it is served to them by the glass or the nip, nor of the cost to the man who knocks down his cheque for just what he may get when drunk and helpless. It is obvious that £250,000,000 might be a moderate estimate of the amount that has been squandered for liquor, involving many millions more cost to the State to cope with the consequences.

The worst feature of it is not its destruction of hard material wealth, private and public, but its ruthless destruction of manhood; its wreckage of character, happiness, home and life. The enormous extent of this is suggested only by the following figures taken from the police reports annually laid upon the table in Parliament: — Separate Not known persons to have been charged with previously Year drunkenness convicted.

If they were not official police figures this one black record of a single form of the evil fruit of the liquor traffic would seem incredible. And be it remembered ours is recognised to be one of the most sober countries. Who can measure the heartache and heartbreak lying behind it all ? And yet only a fraction of the offenders reaches the Court. The trade itself can hardly be surprised that national prohibition is impending. It is obvious that if we had the figures for 1910, the last ten years would show over 50,000 separate persons brought before the Court for drunkenness against whom there was not traceable any previous such experience. If taking the present population roundly at a million (it was only about 823,000 in 1901), and allowing for those who have come and gone in the ten years, we were to make so large an allowance as that these 50,000 have been taken from a population of one and a half millions, that would mean one person in every thirty, each fresh year producing its new thousands of the liquor traffic’s victims in this young country. Shall this year’s national prohibition vote arrest this wreckage, and gladden hearts that are breaking? Until Parliament does justice to the people by altering the law to simple majority, 60 per cent is the vote needed to carry national prohibition, as also to carry local no-license. At the last triennial poll the vote for no-license throughout the Dominion was 53.45 per cent, of all who voted. Temperance reformers should use their full power of voting for both local no-license and national prohibition.

igog. O 0 __ 3 O ss - O Pwg C/> 0> tGallons. S 3 n> 0 r T3 & O O o' 3 £, £ s. d. Spirits at £2 per gallon, 719,130; 1,438,260 decrease 32,478 I 8 2 Wines at £2 per gallon, 138,679; decrease 10,156 277,358 0 5 5 Imported beer at 6s per gallon, 252,450 ; decrease, 19,370 75.735 0 1 5-v Dominion beer at 4s per gallon. 0.183,020; decrease 163,760 1,836,784 1 15 ui n od Decrease £123,831 io 4 5 Estimated population, 1,021,214, increase. 26,780. 19 m Spirits at £2 per gallon, 767,617; increase, 48,487 t,535,234 1 9 b Wines at £2 per gallon, 153.418;. increase, 14,739 306,836 0 5 io.. Imported beer at 6s per gallon, 271,600 ; in61 crease, 19,150 Dominion beer 81,480 0 1 at 4s per gallon. 9,399,440; m16 crease, 215,520 1,879,888 1 Id

i8;o to £ £ s. d. 1884 — 38.993.295 — 1885 600,000 2,289,514 3 16 0 1886 600,656 2,154.855 3 11 9 1887 603,361 2,093,430 3 0 5 1888 607,380 2,085,162 3 8 8 1889 620,279 1,911,788 3 1 8 1890 625,508 2,111,489 3 7 6 1891 634.058 2,083,898 3 5 9 1892 650,433 2,169,166 3 6 8 1893 672,265 2.198,335 3 5 5 1894 686,128 2,099.552 3 1 1 1895 703.360 2,129,119 3 0 5 1896 757.503 2,265,900 2 19 8i 1897 762,079 2,371,738 3 2 2 h 1898 776,288 2,458,998 3 3 4 1899 790,387 2,557.968 3 4 9 1900 803,333 2.747,170 3 8 1901 822,779 2,922,982 3 II o-J 1902 840,031 2,953,298 3 10 3? 1903 865,560 3,056,590 3 10 74 1904 889,776 3,152,849 3 TO 10* 1905 915,060 3,120,705 3 8 2i 1906 944,490 3.360,121 3 II i'i 1907 967,017 3,667,379 3 15 TO 1908 994.434 3,751,968 3 15 Si 1909 1,021,214 3,628,137 3 II oh 1910 1,040,442 3.803,438 3 13 Ti

igoi 8,032 4.456 1902 8,244 5,202 1903 8,815 4,944 1904 9,615 5,268 1905 8,707 5,141 1906 9,210 5,144 1907 10,203 5,809 1908 10,343 5,840 1909 10,657 6,042 47,846 (Separate persons in nine years.)