Some Hotel Profits.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 419, 19 October 1889, Page 3

Some Hotel Profits.

Thb evidence given before the Compensation Court, which sat at Geelong (Victoria) last month for the purpose ot fixing the amount to be paid for the taking away ot licenses of houses declared against under the local option poll, threw some instructive light on the methods and profits ot the trade. The licensee of Dunns Club Hotel (says the ' Daily Telegraph') is a woman with a disabled husband and a large family, She paid £300 for the goodwill, furriiture. and license of the hotel ; her weekly ' takings ' amounted to from £17 to £20, and of this sum one-half was clear profit.' For a capital expenditure, that is of £300, this woman was able to earn ' profits' amounting to £500 a year. Her services to society consisted in ' distiibuting ' 1500 worth of beer, whisky, etc., annually ; and for this society paid her another £500 per year. The details of a publican's probt are of a highly suggestive kind. According to the licensee's own evidence, she got a return of £3 for every £2 expended on beer ; J but, according to the brewer, the actual piofits are much more amazing. A barrel of beer costb £2;. if sold in pints, the hotelkeeper makes a profit of about 75 per cent ; if sold in medium glasses the profit is 300 percent.; it in 'pony glasses,' the pi*ohV leaps up to the modest dimensions of &ix hundred and fifty per cent. ! Beer drinkers must surely be an extraordinarily simple race, f or beer-sellera extraordinarily shrewd, to account for "such ' profits 1 "" I What i "other branch of honest' commerce knows of such * earnings ' ? A local wine and spirit mei chant, Mr M'Mullen, gave evidence that ' publicans generally made 170 percent, piorit on » the sale of whisky and brandy ; ' but the licensee herself declared she made £3 out of every £1 expended in spirits, a profit of 300 per cent. ; and crossexamination sheas an interesting light on how this ' profit ' is made. According to Mr JVlcMullen' evidence, 'publicans generally got sixteen nobblers from a reputed quart, and six reputed quarts went to a gallon.' The licensee admitted in cross-examination that she ' generally made sixteen nobblers out of a quart of whisky,' which is making her spirits go very far indeed ; but her actual profits pointed to a still more extraordinary inflation of the original quart of \vhi?ky. To yield the 300 per cent, of profit which the licensee declared she got, something like twenty-six nobblers must have been extracted trom each individual quart of whisky. How is it done ? Some people, as His Honor Judge Molesworbh reflected, ' like water with their whisky,' and only ask to be spared tobacco juice. The licensee berself explained : 'We do nob charge for the water ; that is given in — we only charge tor the spirits ' — a statement which the unfeeling audience received with laughter. But is there any other trade in any civilised community which is conducted on the methods of the liquor traffic, and realises quite literally ' unearned increment ' of such surprising dimensions ? Compensation, it seems to us, should not be paid for stopping such a trade, but should be exacted tor allowing it to exist. Pure reason, however, has a very limited office in human atiairs.