THAT BOLD BILL REVISED. Does the Brewer Tremble?

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 159, 18 July 1903, Page 8

THAT BOLD BILL REVISED. Does the Brewer Tremble?

IN the near future, when punty has a firm grip of the beer business in this country, it may be possible to obtain two imperial pints of beer in a quart bottle. In fact, should the Tied Houses Bill be passed tins session, nothing in the way of refoim need be deemed impossible. We took the liberty last session of saying that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the Hon. John Riggs's Bill to go through all stages and find a restingplace on the Statute Book of the country. *- - +- This year it appears for the second, but possibly not the last, time. In its essential points, the Bill is the same. It means, if it is passed, that the already much-harassed brewer will be harassed no longer, in that he shall not be able to dictate how the beer industry of this colony shall be run, and will have to find other fields of effort. As a matter of fact, he may remain a brewer if he wants to-, but w ill have to go out of the colossal business of a hotel-owner. * * * It means that the man who haiS his name above the door as the proprietor (save the mark l ) will, in actual fact, be the proprietor. It means that the trembling licensee, who is forced under ordinary present circumstances to do what he is told, like a very small boy, may purchase the beer the palate of his customers loveth best, and it means that the devious paths by which some brewers now own the hotels without acknowledging it will be closed. The Bill would be the means of breaking up the biggest trust known in the colony, and it would curtail the power of a coterie of men who control interests much larger than any other. *■»•*■ It is not a prohibitionist move. The prohibitionists might be averse to it, as it would certainly rob them in a great degree of their occupation. There would be less liability on the part of free licensees to err against the law, seeing that the largest share of profits accruing through the retail trade would not go, as at present, to their masters, the brewers. Alcoholic liquors would be purer and better. The licensee who, owning his own house, failed to provide! what was best, would be looked upon as a duffer. He would not survive as a publican for a fortnight. * * At present, the brewer insists that lus particular brand of liquor, be it good, bad, or indifferent, shall alone be sold in the house® he controls, and the public must drink it. Under the provisions of this bold Bill, he would have to hustle like his fellow-man to keep in the market with a good article. The Tied Houses Bill would do at one operation more real good than the prohibitionists could hope to do with years of steady work.