LICENSING AND TEMPERANCE IN SCANDINAVIA.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43095, 21 May 1907, Page 1

LICENSING AND TEMPERANCE IN SCANDINAVIA.

THE LATEST PANACEA.

By Bobert E. Batty.

(Continued from last issue.} The figures which have so long done duty on behalf vof the British supporters of the company system are demonstrated by Mr Pratt to be just as fallacious in the case of the Christiania Samlag are in that of the Gothenburg Bolag, while the bar retail and hotel sales of the Christiania Samlag are officially reported to amount to 413,000 litres per year, it has to be remembered that 29 wine and spirit merchants hold licenses from the Samlag for the retail trade, and it is estimated that their sales of spirits amount to no less than 2,000,000 litres per year. In| this chapter on Samlags profits, Mr Pratt, after a review of many figures, writes: “ Bub of one thing I have * no*' doubt—that while the consumption of alcoholic beverages of all kinds may be decreasing in the country districts of Norway , under a system of rigid hibition, the working of the Samlag system in the towns operates quite as much in the in the direction of drunkenness as it does in the direction of sobriety.”

Mr Pratt is very Successful in challenging the contention of the Gothenburgers that the increased drunkenness of the people is to be attributed simply or mainly to the increased sale of beer. He expresses the wonderment that has so. long bewildered every judiced student of the problem: “ I must confess I do not quite understand how the Bolag party in Sweden engaged in distributing . among the people native brandy with an alcoholic strength of over 40 per , cent can attack the distributers of beers having a small percentage of alcohol, and accuse them of being the cause of drunkenness following up this accusation by demands that the beer purveyor-? should be brought under the control of the native brandy, purveyors in order to prevent them from doing any harm! What I found really happens especially in Gothenburg city, is that men first of all go to the dram - shops, where (following up various drinks during the day) they get their two glasses of raw spirit, swallow these off at a gulp each, and then proceedto a beershop (there is alwaj's one in the neighbourhood of a Bolag bar), where a feW bottles of beer may very well settle their case. The intoxication that follows is thereupon attributed to the beer!”

In Norway there is •still less reason tMn in Sweden to attribute any increased druukenness to increased beer-drinking,/ the higher duties imposed in the interests of the Eevenue having made beer too expensive a drink for the ordinary worker. In fact, the average consumption of beer per head of the population in Norway was less in 1904 than it had been in any year since 1872. Mr Pratt concludes his chapter on drunkenness and Beer Drinking with a strongly .expressed conviction : “ The conclusion •at which I arrived as the result of my investigations into this particular branch of the question was that, although a certain amount of drunkenness may l e directly due to beer-drinking—-especially as followed under Swedish conditions —the earn* paign now being activelvdirected against beer by representatives of the company system is largely inspired by what is nothing Is s than trade jealousy towards a rival drink -