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CONCLUSION
IN considering some of the preceding schemes, and especially
the Public-House Trusts, it must be frankly stated that
they suggest the idea that the promoters look to the present
normal consumption of alcohol continuing, though under less
dangerous conditions than at present, rather than to a substantial
reduction. If such an idea really exists in the minds of
the promoters, then it marks at once a fundamental defect
in the schemes as instruments of reform. Nothing is clearer
than the fact that the present consumption of intoxicants
in this country is not only excessive, but seriously subversive
of the economic and moral progress of the country, and no
scheme of reform can be regarded as satisfactory that is
not solidly based upon a clear appreciation of this fact
and a determined intention to alter it. In the judgment
of the present writers the most decisive test of any scheme
of temperance reform is its ability to effect a considerable
reduction in the national consumption of alcohol. The good
conduct of the traffic is certainly a consideration of high
importance which no careful reformer will underestimate;
but no one who studies the public-house problem in its relation
to the economic and moral progress of the people and the
present and ultimate needs of the State, can fail to see
that much more is required than what is ordinarily understood
by the good conduct of the traffic and the discouragement
of flagrant intemperance. The advancement of civilisation,
accompanied as it has been by an increasing severity of
international competition, has necessitated a stricter inquiry
into the conditions of national success and well-being,
with the result that we now see how seriously the welfare
of the State is threatened by the present excessive expenditure
upon alcohol.
The facts ascertained cannot fail to have far-reaching
effects in modifying the national attitude toward intemperance.
While there is nowhere a disposition to restrict the rightful
prerogatives and freedom of the individual, there is a growing
appreciation of the power of law and of social arrangements
in educating public opinion and tastes, and especially in
directing thought and effort towards moral development and
self-control. Good management may make the public-houses
respectable, and it may also diminish flagrant intemperance
and disorder ; but if it accomplish no more than that it
will fail to make any important contribution to the solution
of a grave and pressing problem. The chief test of any scheme
of temperance reform, let us repeat, is its ability to bring
about a substantial reduction in the national consumption
of alcohol. It is not a small or unimportant fact that if
the consumption of alcohol per head of the population in
this country could be brought down even to the level of
the American consumption, our national drink bill would
at once be reduced by £66,000,000 per annum!
RELEASE OF LOCAL PROGRESSIVE SENTIMENT
Another essential requirement in any scheme of reform is
that it shall leave localities free to work out their own
salvation from the evils of the drink traffic. It is one
of the condemnations of existing licensing arrangements
that they fetter and retard the progressive instincts of
a community, whereas substantial progress can only be made
under a system which will quickly register such progressive
sentiment and give it full opportunity for effecting reforms.
At the same time, security must be taken that local interests
shall not alone determine the policy to be adopted; and
especially is it necessary that the State, by explicit legislative
provisions, shall make it impossible for municipal or local
cupidity to take the place of private cupidity. In such
a matter as the appropriation of the profits it would obviously
be unsafe to give absolute freedom of action to the locality.
The theory that only by allowing a wide variety of practice
can we hope to discover the best method of appropriation
overlooks the fact that already a large body of decisive
evidence has been established. Experience shows that, in
the absence of explicit legislative provisions, methods
of appropriation are likely to be adopted that would injuriously
affect the cause of temperance in certain localities by
offering inducements for the continuance of the traffic
(in the form of subsidies and other local benefits) which
even an advanced temperance sentiment could hardly hope
to withstand.
We would suggest that the true lines of policy to be adopted
in proposals for the public management of the liquor traffic
are suggested by the principles followed in much of the
best modern social legislation, and especially in such cases
as the Poor Law, Public Health legislation, and the Education
Act. All of these Acts have one feature, or, more strictly,
one general principle in common. In each case the broad
lines of policy are explicitly defined and are subject to
central supervision and control, but the details of the
policy and the actual administration of the Acts are reserved
as matters of local arrangement. In this way local initiative
and energy have been powerfully called out, and release
has been given to the progressive sentiment in a community.
In the judgment of the present writers the promoters of
public management will move upon the lines of safety by
observing the general principles of the Acts named above.
If supervision and control by the Central Government are
needed in regard to the matters covered by those Acts, still
more must they be needed in connection with the control
of a monopoly so dangerous as that of the drink traffic—a
traffic which, while it enriches private persons, throws
heavy burdens upon the State.
The first step is clearly to ascertain in the light of
available experience the limits within which localities
should be free to undertake experiments, and then, when
the necessary limitations and safeguards have been imposed
by law, localities should be left free to work out their
own salvation in their own way.
A NEGLECTED FACTOR
But there is another point that must be considered. The
facts of intemperance are eloquent of moral enfeeble-ment
and economic waste. Do they not also testify to a deep-lying
moral and intellectual need ? In our estimate of the problem
hitherto, have we sufficiently allowed for the fundamental
needs of human nature, and for the compelling force of those
social and recreative instincts whose legitimate gratification
is a part of the scheme of progress ? It is the conviction
of the present writers that no scheme of temperance reform
can be satisfactory that does not include a full recognition
of these social and recreative instincts. The attractiveness
of the public-house for tho average man or woman has results
that are often disastrous; but any one who has knowledge
of city and even of village life knows that at bottom the
public-house problem is largely (by no means wholly) a question
of forgotten needs—the revolt of certain neglected
qualities in men which, when allowed favourably to expand,
become the instruments of progress. It may be well to abolish
the public-house, but it is ill if our effort end there.
But can it end there ? What is to take the place of the
public-house ? This is a question which is by no means premature,
and which cannot afford to wait. The social instincts of
the people will not be denied, and we shall be wise as a
community to recognise this and to give them their legitimate
place in the scheme of human progress.
It is for this reason that the present writers attach so
much importance to the provision, in any scheme of temperance
reform, of adequate and efficient counter-attractions to
the public-house. Their criticism of the arrangements made
in some of the foregoing schemes for the appropriation of
surplus profits is not merely based upon the fact that such
appropriations are in themselves inexpedient or calculated
to hinder progressive temperance reforms, but that they
overlook or give inadequate attention to one of the fundamental
facts in the problem of intemperance. So long as no really
effective challenge is given to the public-house as the
working-man's club and meeting-place, so long will it be
comparatively useless to expect an improvement in popular
tastes and an appreciable diminution of intemperance.
But here again it is necessary to observe that any attempt
to meet this need by associating recreations and amusements
with the sale of liquor must certainly fail of its object.
Such an arrangement might conceivably lead to reduced drinking
in the case of a few regular frequenters of the public-house,
but any good that it might accomplish in this direction
would be far outweighed by the temptations and inducements
it would offer to multitudes of youths and girls who have
not yet learned to frequent the public-house. If the problem
of reform be really to break a tyrannous national habit
which has grown to disastrous proportions, it would seem
self-evident that nothing must be done that would make the
attractions of the public-house more seductive. The aim
and effect of temperance reforms should be to draw men away
from, rather than attract them to, the public-house.
THE NECESSITY FOR A MONOPOLY
Further, in the working of the Company system it is essential
to its full success that a Company should take over the
whole of the retail licences in a town. A partial experiment
covering the operation of a few licences only will necessarily
be hampered by competitive conditions. Even if no actual
disaster arises, an experiment working under such conditions
can give no sufficient demonstration of the possibilities
of public management. In such a matter as the retail sale
of liquor, competition does not make for betterment, but,
on the contrary, is calculated almost in the nature of things
to lower the standard of management. " The chief test
of competition," according to Mr. Sidney Webb, "
is success in attracting the consumer." Gresham's law
of currency — namely, that bad money drives out good
— is, in Mr. Webb's opinion, " equally applicable
to all forms of competition. In the matter of municipal
competition in the drink trade the private drink-seller
would drive out the municipal one." A company or municipality
could easily enforce stringent regulations if it had a monopoly
of the local traffic—i.e. when the choice open to the
customer lay between stringent regulations or no liquor.
But when it is a case of unattractive and carefully regulated
sale versus attractive and free sale, the former will have
no chance.
It would, for example, be of little use providing that
in the Company houses no credit should be given, that no
female bar-tenders should be employed and that no adventitious
attractions should be added, if in their near neighbourhood
ordinary licensed houses existed in which none of these
restrictions were enforced. The full measure of the competition
which such isolated experiments must encounter is made plain
by the number of licensed premises which already exist in
the towns, of which we append a few examples:
In view of figures such as these, which reflect a condition
of things universal in the towns, what important results
can be expected from isolated experiments which control
a few licences only? So, too, in the matter of those constructive
agencies which are now so widely seen to be needed in the
struggle against intemperance. Few now dispute the fact
that if important success in temperance is to be achieved
one chief factor in such success must be the provision of
efficient counter-attractions to the public-house. But such
counteracting agencies, even if they could be provided on
a scale far greater than is likely to be possible in the
absence of a monopoly, would be placed under very unfavourable
conditions for success if they were exposed (as they would
be) to the competition of privately conducted public-houses
in which adventitious attractions were provided. In this
connection it is to be rioted that the experience of the
United States, together with recent declarations in the
English Trade journals, point to a possible wide extension
of " attractions " in the public-houses of this
country. The Licensed Trade News, for example, in its issue
of December 1st, 1900, in referring to proposals for the
establishment of counter-attractions to the public-house,
said: " There is a growing disposition to meet the
publican ' with his own weapons,' it would seem, and what
the Trade has to do is to imitate the national attitude
in this warfare, and see that it provides itself with the
best weapons wherewith to meet the new competition. ...
It behoves us to see that we meet this new attack with bold
effectiveness. . . . The law very rigorously prevents cards,
billiards, and games of chance, and perhaps, with the sporting
inclination strongly developed in our masses, the restriction
at times is as judicious as at others it is galling. But
cards or no cards, billiards or not, the public-house still
contains a perfect fund of unexplored possibilities, which
the competition of well-meaning ' enemies' will compel us
to expose to view. If drinking is to be subsidiary to rational
entertainment, as indeed it should be, and the working-classes,
in whose electoral hands the power is, want to extend the
opportunities of the smoke-room, or will wisely and well
avail themselves of what the Trade, prodigal in speculation,
will offer them, we have not a shadow of fear as to the
future of the public-house. We can respond to every call
the legitimate opponent can put forth."
Nor must it be forgotten that limited and partial experiments
will fail altogether to secure that release of the progressive
sentiment in a community which is one of the primary aims
of reform. They may, indeed, while inspired by admirable
and absolutely disinterested motives, actually commit themselves
(as in Kelty) to lines of action disapproved by an important
and even preponderating body of local opinion. They are
in any case prevented from securing the unity in method
and administration which is urgently needed in the local
conduct of the liquor traffic.
The promoters of these isolated experiments are evidently
well aware of the limitations that attach to partial control,
and they would probably unite with the chairman of the Glasgow
Trust in suggesting that the raison d'etre of such experiments
is "the despair of receiving any early or effective
help from Government" which would make monopoly possible.
But while such a consideration appeals powerfully to many
earnest reformers at the present time, and has much on the
face of it to commend it, it should not be allowed to divert
thought from a common effort to remove the only serious
obstacle to monopoly by securing a Declaratory Act which
would solve once for all the vexed question of compensation.
The real hindrance to monopoly, as to all effective temperance
reforms, is the reluctance of the community summarily to
dispossess the private publican without notice or compensation.
This being so, it is clearly imperative that temperance
reformers of all schools should unite in compelling a settlement
of this difficulty by the enactment of a national time-notice,
accompanied by a provision for money compensation (raised
from the Trade) if the time-period should be anticipated
by the action of the community. Once this were secured "
the field would be clear for any further legislation, experimental
or otherwise, which Parliament might be disposed to enact."
Meantime, if these isolated experiments are to proceed,
it is desirable that they should proceed upon lines that
will not ultimately prejudice the larger undertakings that
their promoters desire to see inaugurated.
WIDESPREAD ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
The evidence we have given of the number and rapid extension
of companies worked upon " Gothenburg" lines will
be sufficient to show that the system has taken firm hold
of the public mind, and that, for good or evil, it has come
to stay. The hindrance at present to its wide extension
arises from the difficulty of obtaining new licences. Were
the ground once cleared by the adoption of a time-notice
such as is proposed by Lord Peel, the Company system would
probably receive immediate and enormous expansion. And if
the system were once established on a wide scale without
adequate safeguards, legislation with regard to it would
become extremely difficult; communities which had for a
few years found themselves in possession of large incomes
from the profits of the trade would certainly be unwilling
to surrender them. The peculiar danger of the system as
carried on in the town of Gothenburg, of making the people
interested in the maintenance of the traffic by using the
profits in relief of rates, would then be experienced in
this country. A very few years might suffice to give the
system such lodgment that it could not afterwards be displaced.
It cannot, therefore, be too strongly urged upon temperance
workers, and not least upon those who are hostile to the
Company system, that the question is no longer whether there
shall be Companies or whether there shall not, but it is
simply whether there shall be Companies under wise and adequate
control, or whether they shall exist without such control
? The present is the " psychological moment" which
the Temperance party may either take or neglect. They have
it, we believe, now in their power to make sure that any
form of the Company system that may continue or come into
existence after the years of notice to the Trade have expired,
shall be upon wise lines. It may be useful and necessary
that they should criticise with the utmost keenness the
experiments now in force. But if temperance effort ends
with these criticisms, and if no effort is made to unite
the temperance forces in favour of some policy for securing
adequate control over these Companies, the golden opportunity
will soon be passed and it is difficult to see how it can
return. On every side there is evidence that the nations
will not much longer allow the monopoly profits of the drink
trade to pass into private hands. One country after another
is appropriating these profits for public purposes. The
State Spirit Monopoly which Eussia tentatively applied to
four of its provinces in January, 1895, has from July 1st
of this year been extended to the whole of European Eussia.
In Sweden and Norway since the seventies the retail sale
of spirits has been in the hands of Companies, while under
the Dispensary System four of the States of the North American
Union have more or less taken the sale of liquor into their
own hands. ( As we write, evidence reaches us that in
South Australia proposals are being pressed for State control
of the retail liquor traffic, and, as is known, the "
South African Alliance for the Reform of the Liquor Traffic
" is urging that a Government monopoly of the
traffic should be established in the Transvaal and the Orange
Kiver Colony. It is also noteworthy that, more recently
still (July 9th, 1901), a motion that the Natal Government
should introduce a Bill for the municipalisation of the
liquor trade at Durban was carried in the Legislative Assembly
without a division.)
The inevitableness of this national movement and the policy
to which it so clearly points were thus referred to by Lady
Henry Somerset in the Contemporary Review for October, 1899:
"Four-fifths of the amount of the profits from the
drink are monopoly profits, unearned by those who at present
enjoy them; and if they must be earned at all, they are
rightly the property of the nation. The people are awakening
to this, and soon they will claim and obtain their own.
Would it not, therefore, be well, while yet there is time,
to ally with the inevitable transference of the monopoly
profit of the liquor trade of the nation a scheme which,
with the people's sanction, would restrict the mischief
of the trade within the narrowest limits, and use the profits
arising from it for the promotion of the people's well-being,
instead of, as at present, allowing it to be used for the
poisoning of local self-government, the degradation of politics,
municipal and national, and the throttling of the Commonwealth?"
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