THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1909. A DRINK BILL IN DETAIL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3186, 11 May 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1909. A DRINK BILL IN DETAIL.

The compiler of the New Zealand "drink bill," Rev. Edward Walker, in his last rendering of the account interestingly elaborated his viewpoint in order to give "rome idea of the iniquitously wasteful expenditure en alcohol of the habitually thirsty." Th:""bill" for ]9OB totalled up £3,701,968, an increase of £84,589 on that of the previous year, but a decrease of 4£d per head of the peoph, the {ovulation having increased in th 3 meantime. Mr Walker recognises, however, as everyone must, that the per capita method of calculation is a rough one, useful in emphasising a moral, but not of much value as a penetrative index to the habits of the people as a whole. One man drinks, another "never touches it"; one district is alcohclically absorptive, another is barren ground for "the trade." If it could be got out, a calculation showing how many of the people drank, and how much, would be valuable, if only because it impartially informed reformers and their opponents where the enemy was, and enabled the fight to be reduced to a close-grips affair. How many households kept drink on the premises would perhaps be knowledge worth still more, especially in a country where there are/'dry" districts, the adverse argument being that restriction of this sort leads to drinking at home. Evidently in this view, Mr Walker makes a household calculation. Over all, and allowing live persons to a household, he shows that the "bill" psr household in the Dominion is £lB 17s SJd. Allowing that at least one-fifth of the households do not use drink (surely a very conservative estimate) it is £22 12s 3d per household of the users. And reckoning that tho actual consumer, buying retail, pays a good deal more than the gallon rates which the national "bill" ia necessarily computed on-- inasmuch as its basis is the liquor that pays Customs and excise duty—"an under-estimate of the actual cost" would be £3O per household of the users. A~calculation line this, which reduces the whole queation to the proportions of a homely demonstrat on,

evidences strikingly what drink means in relation to the unceasing struggle to live well within an income. As there must be more than a fifth of the homes it) New Zealand that never house strong drink, tne expenditure of the users must be more than is estimated. Taking it at £3O, however, that must be quite the amount of rent paid for many and many a house in the Dominion; and it is undoubtedly the amount that would pay interest on a £6OO house and leave the tenant rent free. Of course the unknown quantity, the individual consumer, mysteriously recalls himself when wo get thus far, but not quite fully as before, because it is absolutely certain that someone in the house spends thß money. And after all, the potent; startling fact is that so much money is spent in a country, no matter by whom individually, on liquor. The British expenditure this year, for example, is about £5.000,000 more than the ordinary revenue of the United Kingdom, and more than four and a half tiires the amount of the record naval vote asked for by the Admiralty this year. And as far as that goes, it means much more drinking than in Australasia, principally owing to the lower price at which many kinds of liquor can be obtained. A recent estimate puts the consumption of beer in the United Kingdom at (roundly) 29 gallons per head of the population as compared with nine gallons in New Zealand and New South Wales, though the British per capita absorption of spirits is scarcely higher than ours. It is the bulk figure that tells, however. If through some national temperance obsession none of that money was spent for a year, it might not be all saved, and the revenue would have to be stimulated in ways that would perhaps provoke a good deal of grumbling. In some respects the nation, it may be argued, would not be better off. All the same, it could be hoped—and for more reasons than the purely financial —that the experiment was practicable.