A NEW TEMPERANCE AGENCY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 319, 23 March 1878, Page 10

A NEW TEMPERANCE AGENCY.

A Home correspondent of the Sydney Mornincj Herald writes :—“ A new agency has been brought to bear, with the happiest effect, against the beer-shops and gin-palaces, in the shape of coffee taverns, carefully regulated so as to provide the artisan or laborer with every comfort except the dangerous one of ‘ alcoholic liquors.’ The movement was started just a year ago by a * Coffee Tavern Company (Limited),’ with a small capital of only £IO,OOO, but highly patronised and managed by a board of unpaid directors, all men of mark. Their object was to supply cheap and wholesome food, iu regular meals or occasional refreshments, as well as recreation in public rooms furnished with newspapers, periodicals, &c. They commenced operations with two houses only, one in the Edgewareroad, opened May 15, 1877, the other in Lower Thames-street, opened on June 19. The success of these houses has been wondei-ful from the very outset. Coffee and cocoa which are supplied of excellent quality at the small cup, and Id. the large one, are the articles most iu demand ; after these, tea and serated drinks. In the Edgeware-road 55,600 cups of cocoa, and 25,400 of coffee were sold iu the first seven weeks, and iu Thames-street the consumption was still larger. Thus encouraged, the company are enlarging their operations, and have started several more similar establishments, with evei-y prospect of equal results. It is already abundantly evident that, in spite of the low scale of prices, the “ coffee tavenis ” will prove a commercial as well as a social success, and will easily pay the 5 per cent, ti which the articles of association limit the profits of the company. But the movement does not stop here. Local undertakings of the same cliax-acter have been set going in various metropolitan parishes by a small outlay on the part of the leading inhabitants ; and these too, in every instance that I have heard of, promise not only to be self-supporting, but to return a fair interest on the small amount of capital invested. At one of them in the neighborhood of Notting-hill, which a near relative of my own has taken a part in promoting, the sale of cocoa, coffee, and tea, already amounts to 5000 cups per diem ! I have gone into this subject at some length.

because I really believe that such houses, well managed, and made attractive by legitimate means to the hard working classes, will do more towards the solution of the great temperance problem than any other agency as yet employed. The scale is large enough to admit a liberal pi-ovision for both mental and bodily wants, the prices can be kept low, as there is no question of making money, and yet the customers pay their own way, and their independence is not interfered with. I wish Sir Wilfred Lawson, who is really a worthy man and has a good deal of fun in him—a rare thing in these days—would abandon his visionary schemes for making men sober by Act of Parliament or numeration of noses, and throw himself heartily' into what may be briefly termed the Coffee Tavern Movement. If he caunot bring himself to avow that a sensible man may refresh himself with a ‘ modest quencher ’ of ale or wine without endangering soul or body, he may surely assist in publishing the valuable fact that multitudes who feel no need for t king the pledge will yet prefer good coffee to bad beer or worse spirits.”