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INTRODUCTION
THERE are two classes in Great Britain to whom the subject
of licensing in Scandinavia has specially appealed : the
'Disinterested Management' party, who have thought they
saw in an adaptation of the Gothenburg ' Company' System
an effective method of controlling the consumption of intoxicants
; and the Municipal-Socialist party, who, without any idea
of' suppressing the liquor traffic,' would fain have the
exploiting of it, with the view either of securing the profits,
in order to apply them to municipal purposes or enterprises
(especially when it is felt that the British ratepayer will
not tolerate a much further increase of his local burdens),
or, alternatively, as part of the Socialistic propaganda
for ousting private enterprise in general, and obtaining
public control over every trade or undertaking that deals
with the supply of public requirements. Indications have
not been wanting that the combined influence of these two
parties—acting though they are from diametrically opposed
motives—may result at some not far distant date in
an attempt to bring the Gothenburg System, or a modification
thereof, within the range of practical politics hi the United
Kingdom; and it is, therefore, a matter of much importance
that the position should be well understood by that great
body of British public opinion — represented, on the
one hand, by moderate drinkers, and, on the other, by people
who are not Municipal-Socialists—by which the deciding
vote on the questions at issue will have to be given.
So much was written concerning the Gothenburg System some
ten or fifteen years ago that it might seem almost necessary
to apologize for offering still another book on the subject.
But, apart from the considerations just presented, and apart
from the fact that various new developments have been brought
about, I may say that, although I had prepared for a tour
of inquiry in Scandinavia by a diligent study of Gothenburg
System literature, this previous reading in no way prepared
me for what I found, on making my own inquiries, to be the
real facts of the case. It is only natural that those who
are officially concerned in the system in the countries
where it has been adopted should seek to present matters
in the most favourable light; but there has been too much
tendency on the part of inquirers from England or America—and
especially on the part of compilers of books on the subject
who have
not visited Scandinavia at all—to accept blindly the
official statistics, to draw absolutely erroneous conclusions
therefrom, and to make little or no attempt to get to the
' bed-rock ' of actual facts. One authority in Gothenburg
informed me that out of fifty visitors from England —
writers, politicians, and others—who had called upon
him to make inquiries into the system, many had spent only
a few hours in the city, and others had stopped a full day,
or even two, while the fact that one ' investigator' had
remained a week constituted a record. That record, I may
say, I took the liberty of breaking, in regard alike to
Gothenburg and Christiania. In the latter city I not only
obtained all the official information I could, but I visited
the artisan and slum districts, under the escort of a capable
and trustworthy interpreter, well acquainted therewith,
and ascertained for myself what effect the restrictions
enforced are actually having upon the people.
On completing my inquiries in Norway and Sweden, I went
on to Denmark, and I would call the special attention of
my readers to the account I give of the conditions in that
country, and, more particularly, to the remarkable work
which is being carried on by the Danish temperance societies
on the basis of allowing their members to regard beer of
low alcoholic strength as a temperance beverage. With the
policy thus adopted I have complete sympathy, because, although,
individually, I am entitled to rank as a lifelong abstainer,
I hold that the cause of sobriety—that is to say, of
' temperance' in the truest sense of the word—is greater
far than the cause of extreme teetotalism, and may well
be advanced, on practical common-sense lines, and to the
distinct benefit of the nation, without that interference
with individual freedom, that shelving of personal responsibility,
and that injustice to particular classes of traders, which
so much of the coercive legislation now being advocated
in various quarters would assuredly involve.
EDWIN A. PRATT
FARNBOROUGH, KENT, November, 1906.
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