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 The Breakdown of the 
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The Breakdown of the 
 Gothenburg System 
 
"\ 
 
 ^0^ 
 
THE 
 
 BREAKDOWN OF THE 
 
 GOTHENBURG 
 
 SYSTEM 
 
 By ERNEST GORDON 
 
 "The Gothenburg procedure of b'vu.:^ np'i)^.e dr.nkMcpi, suppressing some and 
 operating others, has naturally from our point of vieiv no justification. It suits only 
 the schemes of (hose who believe in 'moderation' and who will neither work for nor 
 understand a thoroughgoing reform. It goes tvithout saying that for all clear heads 
 universal prohibition is the end aimed at." — Dr. Matthaei, Physician on the Gen- 
 eral Staff of the German Army. 
 
 "We have a good army for reviews but a bad one for war. "—Persian Official 
 to Lord Curzon. 
 
 "What medicine cannot touch, iron will heal, and what iron ijoill not heal, fire 
 will cure." 
 
 Published by 
 The National Temperance Society and Publication House, 
 
 373 Fourth Ave., New York. 
 
gO'3'*- 
 
 *\gi 
 
 Copyright 1911 
 By The American Issue Publishing Company 
 
 Publication rights transferred to The National Temperance Society 
 and Publication House. 
 
 NOTE— The wordt Satnlag and Bo(a£ are the Norwegian and Swedish syn- 
 onyms respectively for the word Company. They are loosely used for drink-selling 
 places. 
 
The Breakdown of the 
 Gothenburg System 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Introduction. 
 
 There have been hitherto two classes of reporters 
 on the Gothenburg System, — first, the theoretical who 
 explain how admirably it must work because of the 
 ingenuity of its mechanism; — secondly, the statistical 
 who seek to prove by figures of declining consumption 
 that it does work, all the while neglecting the historical 
 and prohibitory factors to which these results are 
 chiefly due. 
 
 What is now needed is a third kind of reporter 
 who will show how little satisfactorily the System 
 actually does work. He has but to live in any Scan- 
 dinavian community, small or large, where the Com- 
 pany shop is planted and to snap from time to time his 
 mental kodak. He will soon get material enough to 
 disprove the fairest Gothenburg theory. 
 
 This little booklet is an assortment of such pic- 
 tures which have been sent at intervals to American 
 papers. It has nothing in it of Wordsworth^s 
 
 270596 
 
lo THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 "keen research, 
 Unbiased, unbewildered, and unmoved." 
 
 The book which will prove scientifically the fail- 
 ure of the Gothenburg System to solve the drink 
 problem is yet to be written. This is published as a 
 possible stop-gap until such a work appears. It is 
 hoped that it may give pause to any well-meaning ef- 
 forts to transplant this institution to America as a 
 substitute for prohibition. 
 
 The great advantage of prohibitory legislation is 
 that it sooner or later weans the population as a whole 
 from the drink habit. Anyone who has lived a few 
 years in Northern New England would be convinced 
 of this if he but recalled the conditions prevailing 
 there fifty years ago when drink was used on harvest 
 fields, at barn raisings, at ''musters," at weddings, at 
 funerals, at church-dedications and at every other 
 function of social life. The enemies of prohibition in- 
 sist that alcoholism is but driven under. The Com- 
 mittee of Fifty, for example, claims that this concealed 
 alcoholism is indicated by an excessive consumption 
 of patent medicines in prohibition areas. Such an 
 abnormal consumption is, however, but a figment of 
 these investigators' mythopoeic fancy. There is abso- 
 lutely no statistical or other reliable proof of its ex- 
 istence. Turning to Scandinavia on the other hand 
 one finds the Company drink-shop continually educat- 
 ing new relays into the drink habit. And the substi- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM ii 
 
 tiites which do not play an important role in Maine 
 appear here alongside of the ordinary drinks. The 
 sequence is first beer, then spirits, then every imagin- 
 able villanous compound. Thus one reads in a 
 Swedish newspaper of a little town in Darlecarlia, that 
 charming, picturesque, and characteristically Swedish 
 province, where the angry people get together in mass- 
 meeting to protest against the sale by the local drug- 
 gist of lyptol, salubrin, and eau de cologne as bev- 
 erages. Indeed the abnormal appetite developed by 
 the Gothenburg drink-shop has carried drinkers so far 
 that Swedish chemists are considering the desirability 
 of putting emetics in denatured spirits. ^'^ The 1909 
 
 (O Socialists in Molnlycke (28 Feb. '09) consider the 
 following question: "What can be done to prevent the use 
 of denatured spirits as a drink?" 
 
 It was reported "that denatured spirits were widely used 
 for this purpose among working men and that the conse- 
 quences were ruinous to body and brain in an extreme de- 
 gree." 
 
 Mr. Karlsson of Gothenburg offered (1910) to the 
 Swedish parliament a bill to regulate the sale of denatured 
 spirits. He wants the amount sold to a given person limited, 
 the hours of sale reduced and the number of selling places 
 cut down. He said in his speech introducing the measure: 
 "We have sad experiences in Gothenburg and the neighbor- 
 ing parishes where furniture is made in hundreds of homes, 
 of the way in which denatured spirits are used for intoxicating 
 drink. This abuse has so developed that the guardians of the 
 poor in Gothenburg are urging thorough reform in the 
 matter of selling industrial alcohol." That there is need of 
 government action appears from the last report of the chief 
 
12 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 report of the Christiania Samlag says (p. 17) : "In 
 spite of a sharp control on the part of the police — 
 uniformed and secret — it has not been possible to over- 
 cqme the illegal sale of brandy and of furniture polish 
 for drinking purposes. This illegal brandy sale seems 
 almost to increase on the streets and in doorways, 
 although many have been brought before the courts 
 and very heavy fines have been imposed as a rule. 
 Denatured spirits also are still used for intoxication in 
 various parts of the city." And within ten days of the 
 writing an order has been issued by the Norwegian 
 government to all sellers of furniture polish in Christi- 
 ania to desist from selling that article at hours when 
 the Company shops are closed. Would such an order 
 be required in Portland, Maine, or Fargo, N. Dakota? 
 The Gothenburg System while constantly renew- 
 ing the constituency of alcoholists furnishes no effect- 
 ive guarantee against illegal selling. Indeed the ful- 
 filling of its first malign function clears the way for the 
 last named phenomenon. Students of the alcohol 
 problem are beginning to realize that, paradoxical as 
 it may seem at first thought, illicit sale flourishes 
 where the sale of drink is legalized even more than in 
 prohibitory places. In Philadelphia, for example, 
 the number of speak-easies according to the Committee 
 
 provincial physician of Gavleborg province. He declares 
 that cologne, salubrin, etc., are bought and drunk to a very 
 wide extent and that the vice is spreading, especially in 
 Halsingland. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM . 13 
 
 of Fifty "exceeds by not a little that of licensed 
 dealers" — in other words, is probably greater than the 
 entire number of all such illicit sellers in the older pro- 
 hibition states, Maine, Kansas and North Dakota. If 
 the illicit sellers in all the "wet" sections of the United 
 States were counted up they would presumably out- 
 number relatively those of the "dry" regions. This, 
 too, must be remembered, that as time passes the 
 number of alcohol users in prohibitory regions tends 
 to decrease by death and with them the illicit sale 
 which ministered to them. The eminent statistician. 
 Prof. Harald Westergaard of the University of 
 Copenhagen, gives an illustration from Denmark of the 
 same sociological law. He declares from a study of 
 1,495 replies to his question as to the extent of 
 illegal selling that Sjaelland, the province with by 
 far the largest number of legal drink shops, has 
 illicit drinking-places in 33 per cent of its parishes ; 
 Fyn and the other islands in 19 per cent ; and Jylland, 
 where temperance sentiment is strongest and drink- 
 shops relatively fewest, in but 1 1 per cent of the 
 parishes.^^^ 
 
 Legal sale does not therefore as a rule diminish 
 illegal sale. This is so under the Company System as 
 under the license systems of America and Denmark. 
 "Morgenbladet" of Christiania remarked the other day 
 that in the central quarter of that city it seemed as if 
 the stair-cases and hallways had become quite general- 
 
 (2) "Denmarks Kultur ved Aar 1900" p. 143-144. 
 
14 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 ly the business places of boot-leggers. But there is no 
 lack of drinking facilities in the Norwegian capital. 
 "It has been proved," says Dr. Scharflfenberg, an 
 authority on the Gothenburg System, ''that there were 
 more illegal sales in Frederikstad after the re-establish- 
 ment of the Samlag in 1904 than in 1903 when it was 
 closed." Indeed the Gothenburg System itself has 
 been known to have had a finger in unlawful business 
 and on no small scale. Thus some time ago it was 
 discovered that the Artisans Union of Trondhjem, 
 which was selling drink without legal permission, ob- 
 tained its supplies to the extent of 18,000 kroner yearly 
 from the Gothenburg drink-shop. The management 
 confessed that it was well aware that it was breaking 
 the law. 
 
 The fact so often dwelt on that the income of the 
 Company stockholders is severely limited does not 
 work out as one theoretically would suppose it would. 
 Business men like to see the enterprise they manage 
 prosper even though they do not profit greatly by it. 
 It is possible, however, that they do profit in certain 
 questionable ways. Dr. ScharfiFenberg hints at com- 
 missions from the distillers who supply the companies, 
 New Years gifts, and various forms of tantieme. ^^^ 
 The writer picked up recently from the seat of a rail- 
 way carriage in Sweden a local paper which displayed 
 on its (ront page the annual report of the Gothenburg 
 
 (iT Afholds Politiske Sporgsmaal No. 2, p. 70. By Dr. 
 Johan Scharffenberg. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 15 
 
 shop at Kungsbacka. Four things were noticeable : 
 
 First : The men who directed the affair and whose 
 names were given at the top all belonged to "the 
 classes." They were bankers, landed proprietors, 
 merchants and consuls. In other words this is a pet 
 institution of the rich. 
 
 Second: Of the expenses just one quarter was 
 salary paid to the directors. This is no doubt a potent 
 reason why such believe in the success of their institu- 
 tion. 
 
 Third: Of the sales only between one-fifth and 
 one-sixth were in drinks. Nearly five-sixths of the 
 value sold was bottled. When a man buys a bottle of 
 brandy there is no automatic brake which will come 
 into action to keep him sober. So far as five-sixths of 
 the trade of this institution is concerned, therefore, all 
 the safe-guards which are claimed for it are inoperative. 
 
 Fourth: The second column of the report was 
 almost entirely taken up with attempts to explain a 
 considerable shortage in the stock on hand. This sug- 
 gests scandal such as seems invariably to attach to the 
 alcohol traffic. 
 
 That in practise the Gothenburg System has 
 miserably failed to produce ideal results is patent on 
 every hand. One last example. The tobacconist shops 
 display in their windows this week a full page cartoon 
 of "Vikingen," the Norwegian comic paper, in which 
 the new recruits leaving for Gardemoen, the army's 
 central camp and drill grounds, are represented as be- 
 
I6 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 ing carried by their officers into the train. It is no 
 exaggeration! Certain of the railroad personnel said 
 to a representative of "Orebladet," "Never before have 
 we 'shipped* so many drunken soldiers. The higher 
 officers as well as sub-officers had literally to haul and 
 push the helpless young fellows into the trains." 
 
 Such are the fruits of. the Samlag*s regulations and 
 restrictions. A system which in Sweden has run up 
 arrests for drunkenness 400 per cent since its establish- 
 ment (from 10,831 in 1865 to 42,500 in 1905) ^'^ and 
 which in Norway has given us 9,384^2^ arrests in one 
 year in a city of 230,000 people (Christiania) has nothing 
 to teach Americans who are reaching out for better 
 things in their own land. The most inadequately en- 
 forced prohibition law is more satisfactory. 
 
 Fifteen years ago there was a certain Mr. Gustav 
 Thomann, who was wont to emerge at state-house 
 hearings when the brewing interests were in any way 
 threatened by temperance legislation. At one of the 
 earlier Anti-alcohol Congresses, the one held in Zurich 
 
 (O Petersson, "Svenska rusdryckslagstiftningen och 
 Goteborgs-systemet," p. 59. Of course the population of 
 Sweden Has not increased in anything like this proportion. 
 
 (2) The report of the Central Statistical Bureau, "Braen- 
 devinssamlagene og forbruket av braendevin, vin og 61," 1907, 
 p. 27) gives under the caption of "Straffaeldte for drukken- 
 skap, etc." (i. e., drunk and disorderly) for the five years 
 1900-1904 inclusive, an average of 18,042 arrests each year in 
 Christiania. Eleven hundred and twenty of these yearly 
 arrests were of women. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 17 
 
 in 1887, this attorney of the brewers represented the 
 United States ! The best thing that could be done at 
 the banquet which closed the congress was to arrange 
 that it should be "half alcohol-free," i. e., that those 
 who did not wish to drink could refrain from so doing! 
 
 Events have marched rapidly since then. Modern 
 investigation has about finished its great work on the 
 corpus vile of alcohol. As a consequence "moderation" 
 has been abandoned for abstinence. To abstinence pro- 
 hibition is the inevitable correlary. The Eleventh In- 
 ternational Anti-alcohol Congress (1907), convened in 
 the high places of the Gothenburg System, contempt- 
 uously repudiated that whole arrangement. The Con- 
 gress of 1909, which met in London, saw the formation 
 of an International Prohibition Federation. 
 
 And when in the United States the popular moral 
 conscience already accomplishing so much shall have 
 the reinforcement which modern scientific leaders 
 stand ready to give it, great things will indeed happen. 
 
 For at last the time of compromises, high-license, 
 dispensaries, Scandinavian exotics, — is over. From 
 now on it is to be a straight fight for the destruction of 
 the whole traffic. Sooner or later all must line up for 
 or against. 
 
 "Die ihr den grossen Kampf der Zeit 
 
 Ausf echten wollt, herbei ihr Ritter ! 
 Sprecht welcher sach' ihr euch geweiht, 
 Sprecht frei durch's offne Helmegitter ! 
 Entweder, oder!" 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ex-President White of Cornell on the Gothenburg 
 System. 
 
 In his entertaining reminiscences the honored ex- 
 president of Cornell University devotes some pages 
 to a discussion of the drink problem on which as he 
 remarks, he "has reflected seriously." Visiting Swed- 
 en some years ago he took pains to obtain information 
 regarding the Gothenburg System and "became satis- 
 fied that it was the best solution of the problem ever 
 obtained." 
 
 Dr. White's observations fall into two classes, — 
 those of a general nature and those which have to do 
 particularly with the success of the Company System in 
 Norway and Sweden. He opens with the familiar 
 statement of the extremely temperate habits of the 
 wine-drinking Latin peoples. The Italians, whom he 
 cites first are not, however, so sparing in their use of 
 alcohol as tourists would have us believe. Their con- 
 sumption per capita is more than twice as great as 
 that of the American people. ^^^ As to the French 
 
 (O" Vide Sundbarg, "Apergus statistiques internation- 
 aux" — lie annee. The order is France 18.9 liters (absolute 
 alcohol), Belgium 13.2, Italy and Switzerland 12 each and 
 the United States 5.5. 
 
 Dr. White has in time past set in contrast the theologian 
 and science. One might suggest in view of these travelers* 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 19 
 
 their progress along "the primrose path" has been all 
 too rapid as Dr. White himself confesses. France is in- 
 deed the largest consumer of alcohol in the world. 
 Nor can this be due to any rise in the price of light 
 wines as is suggested by Dr. White. Actually the 
 prices of wines have fallen so low as to lead to revo- 
 lutionary movements on the part of the wine growers 
 
 accounts of European sobriety a similar opposition of the 
 tourist and science. Dr. White has visited Italy twelve times 
 and gives it a clean bill of health as far as drunkenness is 
 concerned. An objective study of the subject issued by the 
 "Federazione Antialcoolista Italiana" ("L'Alcoolismo e un 
 Pericolo per I'ltalia" Milano, 1909) tells a different story. 
 Dr. Arcelli, for example, reports on infantile alcoholism. An 
 enquete carried on in the schools of Milan among 38,462 
 children (p. 21) brings to light the fact that 24.8 per cent of 
 the boys and 11 per cent of the girls confess to have been 
 intoxicated at various times. On pp. 127-138 are given tables 
 of the number of drink-selling places in Italian cities. Milan 
 had in 1907, 5,225, — one to every 46 resident males. The 634 
 streets and squares of the city average 8 drinking places 
 each. Turin has 2,482 saloons, one to every 55 male adults. 
 For every bakery in Turin there are six places where drink 
 is sold. The growth of alcoholic psychoses is exposed in a 
 report of the Florentine alienist Dr. Amaldi, (Rivista speri- 
 mentale di freniatria, vol. 34, 1903.) In the 45 asylums of 
 the kingdom, of 38,764 patients 3,398 are suffering from alco- 
 holic insanities. But in some asylums the percentage is far 
 higher. That of Ancona reaches 40 per cent. Wine 
 alcoholism is responsible for an important proportion of these 
 distressing statistics. Pp. 23-105 are taken up with an ex- 
 haustive enquiry among the royal procurators of every 
 province of Italy as to the relation of alcohol to crime. "The 
 
20 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 of South France, movements which only recently 
 seemed about to precipitate a political overturn. How 
 little wine effects as a prophylactic against the use of 
 higher saturations of alcohol is indicated by the 
 following confession from "L'Etoile Bleue," (Dec, 
 1909,) the organ of the "Ligue Nationale contre 
 L'Alcoolisme," an organization neutral as far as wine 
 
 opinion as to the great danger in which Italy stands from 
 alcoholism is practically unanimous." "In this circuit alco- 
 holism is a very great plague," writes the procurator of 
 Undine. The number of saloons is enormous. Sixty-five per 
 cent of the crimes of violence are due to drink." The 
 procurator of Treviso attributes more than half of the local 
 crime including crimes of carnal violence, to drink. In Padua 
 "the number of drunkards is not small. Crime and frequent 
 suicides are largely to be set down to drink." From Venice: 
 "The vice of drunkenness is widespread and deeply rooted 
 and the number of drink-shops continually increases." 
 Brescia: "Eighty per cent of the crimes of violence result 
 from the use of alcohol." The Milan prosecutor says: "It 
 falls to my lot frequently to have to sum up the causes of a 
 tragedy in two words — wine and knife. Alcoholism is one 
 of the great evils afflicting North Italy. An enormous number 
 of poison-distributing shops infest our city." Como: "More 
 than half of our crimes against persons are committed in a 
 state of intoxication and three-fourths of the thieving is the 
 result of the waste of wages in drink-shops." Parma: "The 
 increase in wages and the cheapness of wine have led to a 
 growth of drunkenness." Ancona: "The advance of alco- 
 holism is caused by the vast movement to and from America. 
 (This is a complaint which occurs frequently in these reports 
 and elsewhere). There are 9,579 drink-shops in this circuit." 
 In Lucca and Florence "the very greatest proportion of 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 21 
 
 is concerned though battling vigorously against other 
 forms of alcoholica. "It is particularly sad," so it 
 runs, "to have to affirm that the departments till lately 
 considered least in danger from alcohol because of 
 their great winecrops — Card, Herault, Bouches-du- 
 
 quarrels and bloodlettings result from drink." From Leg- 
 horn come reports of a popular drink, "ponci," in which 
 sulphuric ether and tannic acid are important elements. "The 
 stranger who visits this city cannot but be depressed," says 
 this procurator, "at the sight of the innumerable bars 
 thronged continually by people of both sexes and all ages 
 flagrantly given over to this vice. Drinking and quarreling 
 have become the inveterate and daily habits of entire classes 
 in our society. This terrible scourge threatens to sterilize 
 the best seed of our race." Iserina: "Alcohol has become 
 one of the most insidious factors of social pathology." The 
 procurator of S. Angelo dei Lombardi quotes Dr. Legrain's 
 definition of a saloon as "a laboratory of moral poison" and 
 remarks that in many cases which have come before his 
 court the criminal confesses to have deliberately charged 
 himself with wine or other alcohol solutions as a preparation 
 for committing crime. 
 
 To return to Sweden. Dr. Jacques Bertillon says 
 ("L'Alcoolisme et les Moyens de le combattre," p. 213): "I 
 ought to remark that I have hardly seen a man intoxicated in 
 the two visits I have made to Gothenburg. Messrs. Rown- 
 tree and Sherwell met but one." Then this naive Sir John 
 Mandeville proceeds to print the table of arrests for Gothen- 
 burg from 1879, when 39 drunkards were taken up to the 
 thousand of the population, to 1898, when the number had 
 risen to 57 to the thousand, or some 7,000 yearly! And thus 
 he gives us a fairly good guage of the value of these passing 
 tourist observations. 
 
2.2, THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Rhone, Var, Vaucluse, Pyrenees — Orientales, Saone 
 et Loire, are most ravaged with absinthe." 
 
 Dr. White declares next that "the European if he 
 ever takes distilled liquor sips a very small glass of it 
 after dinner to aid digestion." To any inclined to ac- 
 cept this extremely favorable picture of European cus- 
 toms the writer would recommend a day or two spent 
 among the miners of the Borinage (South Hainault) 
 or in the similar regions of Upper Silesia. Failing 
 this it would be sufficient to read such frightful stud- 
 ies as Dr. Wlassak's on spirit drinking among the 
 work people of Moravia or Massard's "De TAlcohol- 
 isme dans le Quartier St. Antoine." The last writer, 
 for example, says that from the Hopital St. Antoine 
 to the Place de la Bastille there are 87 drink-shops to 
 150 houses and that their average output is fifteen 
 absinthes to each of every other kind of drink includ- 
 ing wine.(^) 
 
 Again, Dr. White ventures the following: "The 
 best temperance workers among us that I know are 
 the men who brew light, pure beer." He means, we 
 take it, such representative brewers as Pabst and 
 Schlitz of Milwaukee and Seipp of Chicago who either 
 by mortgage or by ownership are said to control 75 
 per cent of the saloons of Chicago which they use as 
 
 (2) As a matter of fact the per capita consumption of 
 SO per cent spirits is given by the statistician Sundbarg for 
 1908, — for the United States, 5.36 liters; for Europe as a 
 whole, 6.94 liters. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 23 
 
 outlets for their manufactured product. We wonder 
 if there is another person within the bounds of the 
 United States who believes these men and their subor- 
 dinates to be effective "temperance workers." We 
 should like to ask further if Dr. White has ever looked 
 into a certain classic on the beer danger by Dr. 
 Hoppe?(3) Or does he know the position of Professors 
 Gruber, Kraepelin, and Buchner of the University of 
 the beer metropolis of Munich on this subect?^^) We 
 can assure him that he stands in his opinion at the 
 very antipodes from them. 
 
 Fourthly, he remarks that beer and wine used to 
 excess aid in freeing the next generation from men 
 of vicious propensities and weak will. Modern science 
 however proves precisely the reverse. ^s) Indeed it has 
 put into the hands of the prohibitionist no stronger 
 weapon than the investigations which show the blasto- 
 phthoric workings of alcohol. Two illustrations will 
 
 (3) "Die Biergefahr" (20th thousand). See also his 
 "Das Bier als Volksgetrank." 
 
 (4) Prof. Kraepelin is authority for the statement that 
 in 1905 of all the insane in the Munich psychiatrical clinic, 
 one-third were beer alcoholists. 
 
 (5) Dr. Fock remarks that from the point of view of 
 race hygiene it is not the completely degenerate progeny of 
 drinkers who are the worst for society, since they are doomed 
 to extinction but those on the middle grades not wholly de- 
 generate but of less value who lower the general average. 
 
 Th'e number of degenerates disappearing is small in view 
 of the constantly increasing number of alcoholists. 
 
 Publications of the Alkohol-Gegner Bund. No. 39. 
 
24 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 suffice to indicate that far from cleansing the race 
 from weak wills and intelligences alcohol increases 
 their number in succeeding generations enormously — 
 that it is in fact as Prof. Forel says the chief producer 
 of "Untermenschen." 
 
 a. Dr. Bezzola has investigated the life history 
 of over 9,000 idiots in Swiss asylums. One of the strik- 
 ing facts brought to light is the following. Having 
 secured the date of each person's birth, he reckoned 
 back nine months to the date of begetting and found 
 that in the majority of cases this fell at a season when 
 much alcohol was used, as carnival. New Year's, or vin- 
 tage times. 
 
 b. Dr. MacNichol at the instance of the New 
 York Academy of Medicine examined 55,000 school 
 children with special reference to the inherited results 
 of alcoholism. We have no space for the details of his 
 weighty studies but will quote merely one summarized 
 table of statistics: 
 
 1. Of those free from hereditary alcoholism 
 
 96 per cent were proficient. 
 4 per cent were dullards. 
 
 2. Of those suffering from hereditary alcoholic taint 
 
 23 per cent were proficient. 
 
 'jy per cent were dullards. 
 We pass now to Dr. White's observations on the 
 Gothenburg System. He says first that it has greatly 
 diminished intemperance. This is often asserted by 
 observers who have not really studied the subject. But 
 the two prohibitory features embedded in the legisla- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 25 
 
 tion of 1852 to which friends of the system almost 
 never call attention are quite sufficient to explain any 
 decrease of drinking in Sweden. First private distill- 
 ing was prohibited. This broke up or carried off the 
 family still from thousands of farms. Again there 
 was actual prohibition of the sale of spirits in nearly 
 the whole of rural Sweden. In Norway similar legisla- 
 tion effected similar results. Thanks to the law of 
 1845 consumption of spirits sank from 16 liter per cap. 
 in 1833 to 4.4 liters in 1865. Not till 1871 came the^ 
 Samlag. Since then the decrease has been slight. 
 
 Furthermore the magnificent temperance agita- 
 tion which has among other things made every ninth 
 person in Norway a member of one or another temper- 
 ance society has certainly contributed largely to the 
 result. If the same ratio prevailed in the United 
 States we should have nine millions of members of 
 temperance organizations instead of the not more than 
 two million at present. 
 
 Such facts as these are not cited by Dr. White in 
 explanation of the advance along the road to absti- 
 nence which Scandinavia has undoubtedly made. Like 
 so many others he lays stress on features of the Sys- 
 tem which to the writer seem comparatively unimpor- 
 tant. He says for example, that "no drink is sold with- 
 out something to eat with it." This is not true. One 
 may buy a liter of spirits from a Company store as 
 freely as in a Bowery dive. Nominally one is required 
 when buying a single drink to purchase eatables with 
 it. Actually as the writer has observed a dirty half 
 
26 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 cracker with a thin bit of cheese on it is made to do 
 service a dozen times, being shoved back and forth 
 from bar-maid to successive drinkers and never eaten 
 
 Secondly, he characterises the drinking places as 
 "clean, tidy and decent." We have seen such in Norway. 
 But in general and especially in the poorer quarters 
 of the large cities they are greasy, ill-smelling, crowd- 
 ed. One in particular which formerly stood at the 
 corner of Ostermalms Torg in Stockholm comes to 
 mind as a disgraceful example. It must be added how- 
 ever that the financial prosperity of the Company — 
 which with the Carnegie Brewery is the largest tax- 
 payer in Gothenburg, has enabled it since Dr. White 
 made his observations to put up far more sumptuous 
 drinking places. But the alcoholists one sees in and 
 about these premises are no less miserable and un- 
 kempt than formerly. 
 
 Thirdly, "only pure liquors are sold<^^^ instead of 
 those that are absolutely poisonous and maddening." 
 But alcohol itself is absolutely poisonous and madden- 
 ing. Sir Victor Horsley classifies in a most natural 
 way alcohol with diphtheria as a heart poison. Prof. 
 Sims Woodhead, the eminent Cambridge University 
 pathologist, declares it to be the most dangerous poi- 
 
 (0 "The Union of Importers and Exporters in Chris- 
 tiania has called to the attention of the department of com- 
 merce the fact that a number of Samlags are importing 
 brandy of an inferior quality. The department has sum- 
 moned the Samlags to explain," Christiania papers, Jan., 
 1908. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 2.^ 
 
 son in the whole pharmacopoeia. The matter of adul- 
 teration therefore is of minor importance. *Tt is a 
 widespread sophism," said the eminent French physi- 
 cian and anti-alcoholist, Dr. Jacquet, speaking before 
 the Societe de Medicine Publique (Feb. 27, 1907) 
 "that an unadulterated drink is a wholesome drink. 
 The purest vitriol remains vitriol. One is astonished, 
 in truth, to be obliged to make so obvious a remark." 
 
 Fourthly, "it forbids under penalties selHng to men 
 who have drunk too much." This statement recalls 
 the remark of Faust, "If there be no devil whence 
 so many devils?" If selling to those nearly drunk is 
 not customary where do all the staggerers come from 
 and why are the statistics of arrest so high? He con- 
 tinues : "The main point is that the men appointed to sell 
 the drink have no motive to sell more liquor than is 
 consistent with the sobriety of their customers." To 
 this we would object that those who sell the drink are 
 not men at all but women which is no unimportant 
 feature. Certainly not many girls would care to refuse 
 a big rawboned navvy or sailor in an advanced stage of 
 intoxication who demanded more drink. 
 
 But neither are the companies themselves as scrup- 
 ulous as is generally alleged. For instance some years 
 since the Bolag people in Stockholm determined to 
 open a new drinking shop in a quarter where none had 
 existed. The section is one of wharves where much of 
 the coal, oil, lumber, etc., of the city is handled. When 
 the longshoremen heard of the project they circulated 
 a petition against it which was freely signed and pre- 
 
28 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 sented to the managers of our benevolent institution. 
 The petition had not the slightest effect and only pres- 
 sure brought on the city authorities prevented the 
 forcing of this drink-shop on the people.^*^ 
 
 Another instance was reported recently in the 
 Christiania papers. The army people and the city 
 government asked the Company directors of Freder- 
 ickstad to close a certain shop near the army barracks 
 which was the cause of much disorder. They stead- 
 fastly refused to withdraw. I may add that this and 
 all other spirit-shops in the city have since been closed 
 by the disgusted voters. 
 
 Furthermore Dr. White has presumably over- 
 looked the fact that the rubric to which he refers has 
 to do only with the sale of spirits. The companies and 
 their agents are free to push the sale of beer to what- 
 ever extent they please and their profits on it are sub- 
 ject to no restriction. 
 
 Fifthly, he says and repeats the assertion : "I regret 
 to see that the fanatics have recently wrecked the Sys- 
 tem." In the second volume: "Unfortunately since 
 that time fanatics have obtained control and have pass- 
 ed an entirely prohibitory law with the result, as I 
 understand, that the community is now discovering 
 
 (O" The Hvita Band Forening, branch of the W. C. T. 
 U. in Sweden, has at a cost of 100,000 kroner erected an al- 
 cohol-free restaurant and recreation place in this quarter, 
 Wartan. The longshoremen have not and will not petition 
 against its opening. Thiey know their friends as well as their 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 29 
 
 that prohibition does not prohibit and that the worst 
 kinds of liquor are again sold." Here Dr. White has 
 passed into the realm of the imaginative. No such 
 change has taken place in Gothenburg or indeed in 
 Sweden. Conditions remain unfortunately the same 
 as for forty years past. In Norway there is a limited 
 local option law not ''an entirely prohibitory law." 
 There is no ground however for applying to its work- 
 ings the stereotyped anti-prohibition phrases. 
 
 An increasing number in both Sweden and Norway 
 would see gladly the transition to a prohibitory re- 
 gime. Let us recall some of these fanatics. There is 
 Dr. Wallis of the Karolinska Institut, doyen of the 
 medical profession in Sweden, and his colleague Prof. 
 Santesson, and the well-known Baron Hermelin and 
 that charming gentleman, Mr. Ernst Beckman, radical 
 leader in the Swedish Riksdag and the Hon. Sven 
 Aarestad, Minister of Agriculture for Norway, who 
 has recently delivered a remarkable speech in favor 
 of national prohibition. Again there is Dr. Ragnar 
 Vogt, docent in psychiatry in the University of Chris- 
 tiania, whose university record was almost without a 
 parallel and the Norwegian alienist, Dr. Scharffenberg, 
 and Dr. Helenius, author of "Alkohol Sporgsmalet" 
 and favorite pupil of the statistician, Prof. Westergaard 
 also a radical temperance man and Professor Laitinen 
 of Helsingfors whose investigations in the Halle Lab- 
 oratorium on alcohol and infectious diseases are epoch- 
 making. Then there is the political economist Prof. 
 Gustav Cassels and that gallant soldier, General Axel 
 
30 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Rappe, and the criminal-law professor, Dr. Thyren of 
 the University of Lund whose speech for national pro- 
 hibition in the last Swedish Riksdag was ordered 
 posted in every commune from Trelleborg to Hapa- 
 randa, and the psychiatrist Prof. Frey Svensson of 
 Upsala and Prof. Henschen and Prof. Medin and many 
 more. The Crown Prince of Sweden in a recent 
 speech has practically accepted the prohibitionist 
 position. 
 
 In a delightful passage Dr. White says of some of 
 the occupants of the Cornell University pulpit: "Be- 
 coming acquainted with them I have learned to love 
 many men whom I previously distrusted and have 
 come to see more and more the force of the saying, 
 'The man I don't like is the man I don't know.' " An- 
 other experience of the same sort awaits him when 
 armed with ample introductions he calls on the pro- 
 hibitionist leaders of Scandinavia. 
 
 There is one more statement to which we must 
 take exception. "Of course," says Dr. White, "I shall 
 have the honor of being railed at by every fanatic who 
 reads th*Nse lines." Have these anticipations been ful- 
 filled? We regret to notice the undignified epithets 
 "fanatics" and "temperance screamers" in the context. 
 We are sure that no prohibitionist would throw simil- 
 arly offensive names at one who has grown gray in the 
 nation's service. 
 
 The present writer holds extreme views — views 
 akin to those of the great investigator MetchnikoflF, 
 who said that if he could have his way every drop of 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 31 
 
 wine, beer, and spirits in France would go into the 
 sewer. Towards President White, however, he cher- 
 ishes that feeling of deep gratitude which all Amer- 
 icans share because of his services in behalf of clean 
 politics, international peace, and the higher education. 
 Dr. White in his great work at Cornell has been a lead- 
 er in many directions. One more piece of pioneering 
 we would gladly see him undertake : viz., the establish- 
 ment of a lectureship in alcohology. The famous sur- 
 geon Konig of Berlin in his "Lehrbuch der Allgemein- 
 en Chirurgie," speaks of alcoholism as the most widely 
 spread of all diseases. Yet extraordinary as it may 
 seem, there is not an university chair in the world de- 
 voted to its study. In Europe steps are being taken to 
 remedy this lack. Dr. Robert Koppe of Moscow being 
 especially earnest in the agitation. In the last eight 
 years a profound anti-alcohol movement has taken 
 place in European scientific circles. Thanks to the 
 fifteen cent magazine which is doing work our fifteen 
 million dollared universities ought long since to have 
 done, the American public is beginning to hear some- 
 thing of it. 
 
 At this juncture there is a clear opportunity for 
 Cornell to redeem the reputation of American schools 
 and to make history for itself. Dr. White describes the 
 visiting professors — Froude, Freeman and others — 
 whose lectures constituted a novel feature in the early 
 life of his university. There are other professors quite as 
 prominent who m'ight be induced to give the American 
 people a straight lead on the alcohol question from a 
 
32 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Cornell class-room, the following-, to name but a few: 
 
 The great anatomist, Prof. Weichselbaum of Vi- 
 enna, President of the Austrian Anti-Alcohol Society. 
 
 Prof. Max von Gruber, successor to the renowned 
 Prof. Pettenkofer in the chair of hygiene, in the Uni- 
 versity of Munich. 
 
 His associate in the same university, the psychiat- 
 rist, Prof. Kraepelin. 
 
 Prof. Rubner, who holds the chair of hygiene in 
 the University of Berlin. 
 
 Prof. Masaryk of the University of Prague. 
 
 M. le Dr. Legrain, editor of *'Les Annales Anti-al- 
 cooliques." 
 
 Prof. Dr. T. Laitinen, Helsingfors, Finland. 
 
 Prof. Dr. August von Froriep, Director of the An- 
 atomical Institute in the University of Tiibingen. 
 
 The physiological chemist. Prof. Dr. von Bunge, 
 of Basel. 
 
 The statistician Prof. Westergaard of the Univer- 
 sity of Copenhagen. 
 
 Prof. Sims Woodhead of Cambridge University. 
 
 Prof. Dr. Forel, late of the University of Ziirich. 
 
 Dr. med. Wlassak of Vienna and Rome. 
 
 Prof. Dr. AschaflFenburg. 
 
 Prof. Kassowitz of the University of Vienna. 
 
 Dr. Roubinovitch of the Salpetriere. 
 
 Prof. Vandervelde of the Belgian Social Democ- 
 racy. 
 
 Prof. Hercod of the International Anti-alcohol 
 Bureau, Lausanne. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 The Gothenburg System Invades a Gothenburg Park. 
 
 " 'Tis enough to make half 
 Yonder zodiac laugh 
 When rulers begin to allude 
 . To their lack of ambition 
 And strong opposition 
 To all but the general good." 
 
 Thomas Hardy, "The Dynasts." 
 
 Three thousand people in the big circus amphi- 
 theatre of Gothenburg! Three thousand angry citi- 
 zens mostly men of the intelligent middle and wage- 
 working classes crowding the largest hall of the city 
 and hundreds more unable to get admission ! What is 
 it all about? 
 
 They wanted to take the people's park from them 
 and hand it over to the Gothenburg System. The 
 good city fathers lamented that the tender feet of 
 little children should be cut on the glass bottle bits 
 which "irresponsible drinkers" now and then brought 
 into the park from the city and determined to arrange 
 for "orderly drinking." They regretted the unhealthy 
 conditions which prevailed in their ill-ventilated city 
 drink-shops and sought to facilitate drinking in God's 
 own out-of-doors. They declared that if a drink-shop 
 were not attached to the people's pleasure ground, 
 tourists, — American, English and above all German, 
 
34 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 would pass by Gothenburg on their northern ex- 
 cursions. Of course they had no thought of the money 
 the enterprise would produce. They never have! Their 
 whole interest was in the people's welfare. 
 
 But the people were thinking, too. A week before 
 this meeting the socialists had foregathered, packing 
 the Winter Pavilion. Their grievance was of a double 
 nature. They were there to protest against the 
 action of their owm leaders in supporting the pro- 
 posal of the city government and so betraying the 
 party on whose programme work for temperance has 
 a distinct place. More than one speaker suggested 
 suspension as a just penalty for this unfaithfulness. 
 From five o'clock until nine the discussion lasted. 
 Some twenty speakers were heard. Again and again 
 the fact was emphasized that industrial emancipation 
 and emancipation from drink were causes indissolubly 
 linked. "It is pure nonsense," said Thorsson, "to work 
 for the uplifting of the common people if at the same 
 time we neglect the fight against alcohol." And the 
 resolutions adopted asserted that any favors to the 
 alcohol capital would drive from the socialist-labor 
 movement great masses of work-people and temper- 
 ance folk who otherwise would stand very near to it. 
 
 This socialist meeting, however, was a mere pro- 
 log to the great citizens' gathering of Sunday evening. 
 Enthusiasm was at a white heat. "Engelbrechts- 
 Marsch," the song of the national hero who whipped 
 the Danes out of Sweden in the old days was sung no 
 less defiantly because the enemy was the liquor dealer 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 35 
 
 and not the foreigner. The address of the chief 
 speaker, a young clergyman of the state church and one 
 of the cleverest of the newer men in Sweden was a 
 masterpiece of militant attack and sarcastic unveiling 
 of hypocrisy. "They are anxious about the children's 
 feet," he said. "We thank them for that but we could 
 wish that their thoughtfulness went further. If they 
 had considered the children's physical well-being and 
 moral wants they would never have proposed a gilded 
 saloon in this our 'thousand childrens' park.' I appeal 
 especially for the children of the poor. When summer 
 comes the well-to-do take their children into the coun- 
 try. The others must stay at home. But at least 
 they have the Slottskogen park. The mother can 
 send the little ones there with their elder sister and 
 a lunch basket. Cannot these be free anywhere from 
 the sight of the drink-shop? What an example for 
 their plastic little minds. Up there sit the fine ladies 
 and gentlemen. Hear how they talk and see how they 
 drink ! How brilliant they are with their fine clothes 
 and with the automobiles waiting for them when they 
 are ready to move away! Thus it appears to the 
 childish fancy. 'Wait till I grow up/ it says. *Then 
 it will be my turn.' " 
 
 So the protests were reiterated amid thunders of 
 applause. The meeting would have been a surprise to 
 any American friend of the Gothenburg System. The 
 proposed drinking place was to be put in the System's 
 charge. All those putative safeguards of which we 
 hear so much were to be in operation. No drink 
 
36 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 was to be sold without food and none was to be sold to 
 intoxicated persons. There was to be no pushing of 
 the sale or among the buyers. Everything was to be 
 orderly and decent. But the good folk of Gothenburg 
 know their Pappenheimer. They have grown up under 
 the System and have not made their observations at a 
 distance of three thousand miles. They have learned 
 the difference between phrase and actuality. 
 
 The traveling gentlemen who stop off at Gothen- 
 burg on their way between the Fjords and the Russian 
 capital to examine "the System" get their information 
 from prejudiced sources. The cultivated, rich Swedes 
 to whom they bear letters of introduction favor it with 
 all their heart. It pays their taxes, provides charity 
 money for the institutions they direct and leaves them 
 their wines undisturbed. Furthermore it gratifies their 
 national feeling to have a national institution examined 
 and praised by tourists. But the thousands gathered 
 in the Gothenburg circus were middle class and work- 
 ing folk. They 4cnow the disaster these regulated 
 drink-shops bring to their own strata and are not satis- 
 fied that poor throats should pay the city taxes instead 
 of rich pockets.^*^ 
 
 (O Dr. Scharffenberg calls attention to the altered at- 
 titude of the Norwegian well-to-do towards spirit drinking 
 from the earlier days when such of their representatives as 
 Schweigaard, Fr. Stang, and Falsen were wont to speak in 
 flaming words against the habit. "What is the reason for 
 this undoubted change of front? The fanaticism of the tem- 
 perance party, so repellant to the educated is, of course, the 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM . 37 
 
 No, the Gothenburg System does not settle the 
 drink probem. Its agents violate the state's laws and 
 they violate the System's regulations. Men get drunk, 
 families are neglected, the insane asylums recruit their 
 delirious alcoholists, the temperance party must or- 
 ganize, its committees to watch for breaches of law, and 
 when the System's friends get especially bold and try 
 to push their institution into the parks the citizens 
 have to rise and agitate in self-defense just as they 
 must in drink-cursed St. Louis. ^^^ Those who commend 
 the Gothenburg System usually contend that parks, 
 good dwellings and the like will settle the drink 
 difficulty. In Gothenburg they have both model drink- 
 shops and parks — the former contaminating the latter 
 — and the drink nuisance is as much in evidence as else- 
 where. 
 
 ready reply. But this is only a mask. In my judgment the 
 true cause of the change is to be found in the indirect pecun- 
 iary interest which this class has in the Samlag's continued 
 existence. The quota the Samlag pays of communal taxes 
 and of public charities relieves to an undoubted extent the 
 purse of the bourgeoisie. This it is which makes its judg- 
 ment of drink so indulgent. There is no doubt that the great- 
 est part of the Samlag's income is from the under classes." 
 
 Dr. J. Scharffenberg, "Afholds Politiske Sporgsmaal." 
 Part 2, p. 60. 
 
 (2) Where, when city regulations forbade the sale of 
 intoxicants "within 500 feet of the limits of Forest Park" the 
 brewers' puppets in the city council decided that the sale of 
 beer was not forbidden "in" the Park by the ordinance in 
 question. 
 
38 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 But will the authorities heed the expressed wishes 
 of the people? Perhaps, and perhaps not. If not 
 they are but bringing fuel to their own burning. On 
 Ascension day the usual temperance demonstration 
 took the shape of an additional protest against- the 
 park saloon. It was interesting to see six thousand 
 people on the drill grounds with their banners, their 
 bands and their choruses. It was interesting to see 
 students, socialists, White Ribboners, Good Templars 
 and a huge interested public uniting in the demonstra- 
 tion. Most interesting of all was it to hear a clean- 
 cut prohibition address in the very home of the Sys- 
 tem. The new suffrage law will sooner or later change 
 the character of the upper house of the Riksdag. This 
 dam being broken the waters will race away in a man- 
 ner to astonish old conservatives. Sure as the 
 coming of the seasons will be the advance of the tem- 
 perance reform. To the System's winter will succeed 
 the spring of local option and then the full-blown 
 summer of national prohibition. 
 
' CHAPTER IV. 
 On "Pushing the Sale." 
 
 The anti-alcohol agitation has in late years 
 brought to light an enormous mass of cogent fact 
 thanks to the brilliant group of investigators who in all 
 lands have been studying the subject. From the other 
 side we get little but phrases — "the poor man's club'* 
 "the food value of alcohol/' "the sinlessness per se of 
 wine drinking." One of the most popular of these 
 phrases has to do with the Gothenburg System. It 
 expresses approval of that arrangement on the ground 
 that the limit of profit being fixed at five per cent, the 
 managers are not tempted "to push the trade." Many 
 "class conscious" representatives of our American cul- 
 ture treat this as final. We question, however, the 
 soundness of their contention. ^^^ 
 
 To whom is the "pushing of the trade" with us in 
 America chiefly due? Who cover the blanket sheets 
 of the daily press with advertisements? Who blazon 
 the merits of particular brands of beer on the billboards 
 
 (i) One keen observer alleges that the communal ava- 
 rice to which the Gothenburg System ministers is more de- 
 vastating morally than the private avarice of the free sale 
 system. 
 
 Ulrich-"Goteborgssystemet och dess anvandning i Stock- 
 holm och Goteborg," p. 30. 
 
40 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 and barn doors along the great trunk lines? Who send 
 out the army of commercial travelers to drum up trade 
 in every corner of the land? Who is it that constantly 
 watches for corner locations in the large cities on 
 v^hich to place his agents? Is it the retailer that does 
 these things? Not at all. Most of this "pushing" is 
 done by brewers, distillers and their immediate repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 The retailer himself — what "pushing" does he do? 
 Does he stand at the door and "push" in passers by? 
 No. Does he urge drinkers at his bar to drink, and 
 drink, and drink again? Not commonly. Does he 
 have agents about his neighborhood pressing people 
 to purchase his wares? No. How does he "push the 
 trade." Chiefly, if at all, by breaking restrictions 
 placed on his business as to Sunday-selling, closing at 
 fixed hours and selling to minors. For the remedying 
 of this evil only a little decent energy on the part of the 
 police and of the executive is necessary. 
 
 The Gothenburg System concerns itself only with 
 the sale of drink. The entire manufacture is in the 
 hands of private parties. The introduction of this 
 system into the United States would not therefore af- 
 fect the great alcohol capital in Milwaukee, Peoria and 
 St. Louis which is chiefly responsible for the rise in our 
 statistics of alcohol consumption. 
 
 There is, however, one fact to which the friends 
 of the system point with apparently justifiable satis- 
 faction. This is the large number of refusals to sell 
 drink to persons in an advanced or advancing stage of 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 41 
 
 intoxication. Yet even here a little analysis dissipates 
 the alleged advantage. 
 
 In the capital city of Norw^ay there were last year 
 19,646 such refusals — certainly an imposing figure. A 
 footnote in the report, hov^ever, explains that 12,931 of 
 these were persons already intoxicated, the remaining 
 6,627 being repulsed through fear of intoxication. In 
 other words of every three persons asking for drink 
 and refused, two had already obtained enough to be 
 drunk.(^) These, therefore, can hardly be considered 
 trophies of the Samlag's self-denying ordinance. 
 There remain 6,627 refusals or twenty each day. This 
 divided among the thirty retail drink-shops of the city 
 would give two-thirds of a man refused drink daily 
 in each. The money value of the drink refused to 
 these twenty men would not probably bulk altogether 
 larger than $5 a day, only one-half of which would be 
 profit. The voluntary loss of $2.50 a day by thirty 
 drinkshops is hardly enough to prove the superior 
 morality of this particular excise system. 
 
 But there are other considerations which further 
 prove the futility of any theory based on these statis- 
 tics of refusal to sell. One who follows present day 
 investigations of the pathological workings of alcohol 
 
 (O Someone may object that these intoxicated persons 
 may have got their drink at one of the twenty-nine Christiania 
 private sellers outside of the Samlag. This may be, but as 
 the Samlag sells in bottle quantities sufficient to intoxicate 
 completely, it is equally probable that their intoxication 
 was due to the Samlag itself. 
 
42 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 soon discovers that occasional intoxication in its ex- 
 treme form is considered by physiologists less danger- 
 ous than the cumulative effect of constant moderate 
 drinking. Drinkers are often seriously intoxicated in 
 the original sense of the word when there is no sug- 
 gestion either of violence, somnolence, or uneven gait. 
 These continue to drink at the Samlag's bar. One has 
 only to step into a shop of an evening to realize the ex- 
 tent of this type of intoxication. In Morley's "Life of 
 Gladstone" is a passage describing a visit the English 
 statesman made to the great church historian Doel- 
 linger in Munich. He wrote that after supper beer 
 was freely drunk by the group of scholars who had 
 been invited to meet him. He soon noticed that all 
 became exceedingly voluble and that no one in talking 
 answered the others. They had passed into a pathologi- 
 cal state. Now this state of intoxication is normal in 
 Samlag society. The writer has often noticed the 
 clatter and babel of alcoholized talk and has compared 
 it to the noise of twenty sewing machines in a Yiddish 
 sweat-shop. But this condition and really serious con- 
 dition of intoxication does not at all disconcert the bar- 
 maids in a Company shop. 
 
 In the judgment of the writer whatever successes 
 restrictive legislation in Scandinavia has had are not 
 due to any monopolising features peculiar to that legis- 
 lation. Rather are they due to the limitation of drink- 
 ing places. When our American cities have reduced 
 the number of their drink-shops to the average pre- 
 vailing in Norway we shall see correspondingly good 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 43 
 
 results. Whether these are managed by "pushing" 
 folk from Waterford and Tipperary or five per cent 
 Back Bay philanthropists will be a matter of compara- 
 tive indifference. Prohibition of private distilling, 
 prohibition in rural districts, prohibition by local op- 
 tion in one-half the cities formerly provided with Com- 
 pany shops, has in Norway done much. National pro- 
 hibition of the manufacture and sale will complete the 
 upward trend. 
 
 One other fact sheds a flood of light on the inner 
 workings of the Gothenburg System and the intentions 
 of its directors. In looking over the table of sales 
 given in the last report of the Samlag one notices that 
 several of the smaller cities of Norway sell amounts of 
 spirits greatly in excess of the sales in Christiania. 
 Thus: 
 
 Christiania (population 230,000) 379,799 liters. 
 Trondhjem (population 35,000) 503,931 liters. Bergen 
 (population 60,000) 511,185 liters. 
 
 Why is this? Why does Trondhjem with hardly 
 more than one-seventh of Christiania's population 
 drink one-half again as much alcohol? 
 
 The explanation lies here. Bergen and Trondhjem 
 are on thQ west coast of Norway where the prohibition 
 movement has been much more widespread than in the 
 country around the capital city. Throughout the 
 country and small towns all drink shops have been 
 closed and the benevolent Samlag makes by far its 
 major profits in breaking the intention if not the lette; 
 of the law by selling in prohibition areas. I will not 
 
44 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 say that they "push the trade" there but they certainly 
 make no effort to limit it and exercise absolutely no 
 control over it. It is a startling fact that nine-tenths 
 of the business carried on in the Samlag shop at 
 Egersund, for example, is that of flooding by rail and 
 steamship districts where the people have voted out 
 the poison seller.^^) The results of the Trondhjem 
 Samlag's activities are pictured in the following 
 clipping from the "Namsdal Folkeblad :" 
 
 "A meeting of 700 men and women gathered at 
 Gjaelslingerne passed unanimously a resolution that 
 the authorities see to it that no intoxicating liquors be 
 sent to the fishing village of Gjaelslingerne during the 
 fishing season. 
 
 "This resolution was sent in accordance with the 
 decision of the meeting to the Namsdalen and the 
 Bergen steamship companies, to the Trondhjem Sam- 
 lag for selling spirits, and to the national government." 
 
 Pastor Mollerup, the village pastor, in comment- 
 ing on the above, remarks : 
 
 "It is miserable that honest people can't have 
 
 (2) Of the traffic of this particular Samlag Dr. Hansen 
 writes in "Darlenes Tidende," (17 Oct. 06.) 
 
 "Drunkenness and riot follow the Egersund brandy busi- 
 ness. Infinite misery is spread by it over the country dis- 
 tricts. If you doubt it go to the railway station and see the 
 number of packages sent out daily from this Samlag. And 
 then notice the constant reports of fightings and disorders 
 when the Egersund brandy reaches the distant farmhouses. 
 Two dreadful examples have just come to us." 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 45 
 
 peace, but that drink and drunkenness should have the 
 privilege of forcing themselves in everywhere. 
 
 "Let us see now which is to triumph in our village, 
 drink or decency! 
 
 "There are many who stand with hands in pockets 
 and look with indifference on the misery in and around 
 our fisher folks' homes. 
 
 "When will the hands come out of the breeches 
 pockets to take up in all earnestness the fight against 
 drink?'* 
 
 This village has no drink-shop, not even of the 
 approved Gothenburg System type. But this fact does 
 not save its people from being drenched with spirits 
 from the one in Trondhjem. 
 
 This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. 
 Scandinavian monopolisation touches only the retail 
 trade while in America it is the great manufacturing 
 capital which does practically all the "pushing." Such 
 rigid state control as would confine the action of this 
 manufacturing capital to areas legally its own would 
 seem to offer possible advantages pending the intro- 
 duction of a general prohibitory regime. But such 
 measures would tend to make prohibition by assisting 
 in its local enforcement too brilliantly successful to 
 please the American advocates of the Gothenburg 
 System. For it does not need much shrewd guessing 
 to conclude that their chief interest in the System is 
 to thrust it as a stick between the spokes of the pro- 
 hibition wheel. It is rarely brought out for discus- 
 sion except during the height of some prohibition wave. 
 
46 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 The Swedish people are a remarkable people. 
 By nearly all the tests of civilization they stand at the 
 top. Their death-rate is at the lowest figure; their 
 statistics of literacy at the highest. Anthropological 
 measurements indicate that racially they are the 
 standard people. They have the culture of the Ger- 
 man, the taste of the French, the religious and 
 moral interests of the English. In all directions where 
 intelligence is applied to handwork they stand un- 
 equalled. In charm, politeness, hospitality their at- 
 tractiveness is all their own. One black mark alone 
 runs across this fair surface, the smudge of Swedish 
 alcoholism. The Gothenburg System has not availed 
 to remove it. For this they need a more mordant 
 preparation — the acid of national prohibition. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 Expert Opinion on the Gothenburg S5^tem. 
 
 "For a time and a country with such a distinct temper- 
 ance tendency as Sweden's the Gothenburg System is played 
 out. And for other countries to attempt to erect a system 
 of a like pattern, dropping ' its money-making features, is 
 likewise impossible. For since we are not worse than other 
 people nor more addicted to mammon worship, the same 
 temptation to coin money would soon arise elsewhere." — 
 Oscar Petersson, "Sv. Rusdryckslagstiftningen," p. 66. 
 
 Dr. H. S. Williams has given us in two numbers of 
 "McClure's" a good birdseye view of the injury which 
 alcoholis doing in the human body and in human society. 
 In his third paper he passes to the remedy and reaches 
 what is indeed a lame and impotent conclusion. Our 
 old friend "the System" bobs up again. It is in his 
 judgment (his judgment leans in this instance on the 
 broken reed of Harvard professordom^^^) the "scien- 
 tific" solution of the difficulty. 
 
 (1) Dr. Williams' authority is the Committee of Fifty, 
 or rather three professors on that committee. 
 
 In 1865 appeared the first of Lancereaux' studies on alco- 
 holism which have continued down to 1896. Baer's great 
 work, "Alkoholismus," appeared in 1878; Bunge's "Die Alko- 
 holfrage" in 1887; Demme's "Einfluss des Alkohols auf den 
 kindlichen Organismus," 1895. The investigations of Schmie- 
 deberg, of Frey, of Destree were published in 1893-97. In 
 1895 came A. Smith's studies on reaction time, "Ueber die 
 Beeinflussung einfacher psychischer Vorgange durch chro- 
 
48 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 What does he mean by "scientific?" It is not easy 
 to say. The "scientific" method of treating other 
 poisons is surely quite different. No doctor out of 
 Asia would recommend fighting the use of opium by 
 opening shops for its free sale, ten hours in the day, 
 six days in the week, to anyone who could slap an 
 obolus on the counter. The "scientific" method of 
 
 nische Alkoholvergiftung" ; also Legrain's "L'Alcoolisme." 
 The last half of the nineties was made noteworthy 
 by Kraepelin's famous studies, "Neuere Untersuchungen 
 ueber die psychischen Wirkungen des Alkohols" and 
 the rest. In 1897 Delearde of the Pasteur Institute 
 published his ''Contribution a I'Etude de TAlcoolisme Ex- 
 perimental et de son Influence sur I'lmmunite." In 1898 ap- 
 peared Grotjahn's "Der Alkoholismus," Aschaffenburg's 
 *Traktische Arbeit unter Alkoholwirkung" and Strumpell's 
 "Ueber die Alkoholfrage vom arztlichen Standonnkt aus." 
 Nicloux' valuable studies were published in 1899-1900. Lait- 
 inen in 1900 issued the first of his epoch-making works "Ue- 
 ber den Einfluss des Alkohols auf die Empfindlichkeit des 
 tierischen Korpers fiir Infektioiisstoffe." In 1901 came the 
 masterly work of Rosenfeld, "Der Einfluss des Alkohols auf 
 den Organismus." The net impression of these and numer- 
 ous other investigations is summed up in the words of Pro- 
 fessor Max von Gruber of the University of Munich: — "One 
 cannot say anything too bad about alcohol." 
 
 In 1904 the American Committee with its numerous col- 
 lege professors and presidents, Drs. Atwater, Shedd, 
 Hyde, Low, Peabody, Bowditch, Eliot, Brooks, Farnam, 
 summarised the results of their investigation. They had tak- 
 en every precaution, had arranged that "men of all religious 
 faiths" should be represented on their body, and had hired a 
 half dozen investigators to do the work for them. The pub- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 49 
 
 fighting diphtheria would not be to allow its manufac- 
 ture in all the horse-stables of the city and its sale on 
 every tenth street corner. The "scientific" method 
 would be to stamp it out, put on it every prohibi- 
 tion possible without regard to people's inconvenience 
 or prejudices or traditions. And this surely ought to 
 be the "scientific" method of handling what Dr. Wil- 
 liams calls "the most virulent of poisons," alcohol, the 
 
 lishers' announcement on the cover of the report alleged that 
 "America's ablest thinkers" were here represented. 
 
 What was this committee's verdict as to alcohol? Well, 
 they concluded that alcohol is a food, but that sugar (suffi- 
 ciently concentrated) is a poison. "The Liquor Problem." 
 Edited by Prof. F. G. Peabody (p. 32). Nothing more start- 
 ling in the world of knowledge has come to daylight since 
 the French physiologist, Paul Bert, after painful researches 
 affirmed that oxygen is a poison for the human system. One 
 is reminded of the discovery by a great scientist in one of 
 Octave Mirbeau's novels that poverty is a neurosis! But this 
 is not all. They laid before the American public, and it stilt 
 circulates (1910) as the ripe thought of our American uni- 
 versities, a sentence which is certain to go down in history. 
 "The term poison belongs with equal propriety to coffee, 
 pepper, ginger and common salt" (as to alcohol). "The 
 Liquor Problem," p. 2$. 
 
 This was the sum of their wisdom on the physiological 
 action of alcohol. The results of European research gave 
 them no concern. 
 
 It was to be expected that these professors should approve 
 of the Gothenburg System. But why should Dr. Williams quote 
 as authoritative, persons who are, to use Disraeli's phrase, 
 "in such a pitiable arrears of intelligence" on the alcohol 
 question? 
 
50 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 excrement of the yeast plant. Pro-alcohol opinion 
 even of German immigrants in Cincinnati and St. 
 Louis should be considered just as little as the feel- 
 ings of Bombay Hindus who riot because of hygienic 
 measures against the bubonic plague. For it is just 
 as superstitious and even more dangerous to society. 
 
 But perhaps he means "scientific" in the sense of 
 approved by those who have especially studied alco- 
 holism. This it is not. The best general expression 
 of scientific opinion on all phases of the alcohol prob- 
 lem is probably to be found in the reports and papers 
 of the various International Anti-Alcohol Congresses. 
 
 The eleventh of these Congresses met in Stock- 
 holm in order that its members might have a chance 
 of judging at first hand the value of this widely adver- 
 tised and highly praised method of retailing alcoholic 
 poisons. Every opportunity was given for inspection, 
 both advocates and enemies being allowed a hearing. 
 The result is summed up in the Report of the Con- 
 gress which has just appeared from the press. 
 
 Of the speakers Messrs. Ljungren, Hercod, Berg- 
 mann, Forel, Haehnel, Ulrich, Helenius, von Koch, 
 Malins, and Froken Dickson spoke in strong con- 
 demnation, and Scharffenberg, Wallis, and Petersson 
 were scarcely less severe. Of those favoring it Ruben- 
 son is a director of the Stockholm Bolag and Milliet is 
 connected with the Swiss spirits monopoly. Dr. 
 Eggers, editor of "Gasthaus-Reform" the German 
 Rowntree, advocated it only in its unrealized improved 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 51 
 
 form. As it now is in Sweden he subjected it to severe 
 criticism. 
 
 August Ljungren said: "The modern alcohol 
 investigation recognizes no so-called 'moderate' use of 
 narcotic poisons as harmless either for the individual 
 or for the race. Every system that overlooks this fact 
 is doomed to failure." 
 
 G. Von Koch, the Swedish sociologist: "I held 
 for many years that the Gothenburg System was based 
 on a sound principle but the more I have studied the 
 question the more decidedly have I come to the con- 
 clusion that in practise it works out altogether badly.'* 
 
 Dr. Bergmann: "In my judgment the whole 
 system is obsolete and must give way to a purely pro- 
 hibitive system. The only possibility of its further 
 usefulness would lie in some amendment which would 
 provide that all income go to purely anti-alcohol work. 
 e. g. temperance-education, cure of the alcohol-sick, 
 etc." 
 
 Dr. Helenius of Finland: "Times are wholly 
 changed since the System came into operation forty 
 years ago. Almost every school child here in the North 
 now knows that alcohol is a poison. Professor Lai- 
 tinen has proved to us in the present congress that 
 even minute doses of alcohol corresponding to a glass 
 of beer a day poison the organism. But the Gothen- 
 burg System sells ordinarily and to individuals 
 amounts that exceed even the so-called maximal 
 amount of drink which the German advocates of 
 moderation place as an hygienic limit. So if we look at 
 
52 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 the thing wholly without prejudice we must conclude 
 that the Gothenburg System, as every other system 
 of license, is an organized arrangement not only for 
 forwarding vice but of actually murdering men. 
 
 "Where is the "keen vision" in those who cannot 
 see this or the "warm heart" in those who defend a 
 system whose managers advocate restoring the sale of 
 drink in certain localities because the mere supplying 
 of meals does not pay? This international congress 
 should waste no more time in thrashing out this old 
 straw. We can and should use our sessions for some- 
 thing more profitable. 
 
 "The talk is constantly of supplanting private 
 profit by disinterested capital. The advocates of this 
 idea forget that the retailer is a small person alongside 
 of the great manufacturer. The great weight of the 
 alcohol capital lies in the brewery and distillery. And 
 the brewer and distiller will rest content as long as 
 they have an outlet for the sale of their products in 
 the Gothenburg System. 
 
 "The Stockholm Anti-Alcohol Congress has ac- 
 complished much. It could have no more satisfactory 
 ending than to guillotine the Gothenburg System in 
 so far as the System is proposed as a substitute for 
 prohibition." 
 
 Prof. Dr. Forel : "Our hearty thanks to our 
 Swedish friends for their candor. That the Gothen- 
 burg System in Sweden is bad we have all seen and 
 it is confessed on all sides. How can alcohol be fought 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 53 
 
 as long as the community or stock companies are in- 
 terested in its sale? 
 
 "The question is can there be a good Gothenburg 
 System, one in which no one has money interest, 
 which will pave the way for prohibition? 
 
 "Dr. Eggers thinks so. He believes that we can 
 fight the alcohol interest with such an one. He con- 
 fesses that as it exists in Sweden it is bad. Now the 
 responsibility is on him to propose a practical system 
 which will not do harm and which will lead to pro- 
 hibition. 
 
 "As it is we see that in Sweden interested parties 
 reduce all rules to a dead letter and compromise the 
 System all around. Personally I believe that the plan 
 of Cauderlier (Brussels) of a progressive restrictive 
 monopoly is preferable to the Gothenburg System. 
 And yet after all I must say that the abstinence move- 
 ment can only reach its goal by the use of the local 
 veto." 
 
 F. Haehnel of Bremen : "The introduction of this 
 system into other lands would constitute a great bar- 
 rier to the healthy and speedy development of our 
 cause. We have investigated it thoroughly. Our 
 Swedish friends of opposing opinions have presented 
 the pro and contra at length. We have had oppor- 
 tunity to see the System at work and we have con- 
 cluded that any hopes based on its introduction into 
 Germany are gone forever. The next questions are 
 whether its introduction with improvements would 
 contribute to the fight against alcoholism and secondly 
 
54 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 whetner our agitation ought to expend the effort and 
 money for its introduction which might be used to 
 better advantage. To both queries we answer, *No.' 
 
 "If Dr. Eggers and his associates of the 'Gasthaus- 
 Reform' had used in the enlightenment of our people 
 the time, effort, and money expended on their Sisyphus 
 work of improving the saloon, our organizations would 
 have been far stronger than now and more developed. 
 With every thousand new abstainers in the land, far 
 more can be accomplished against drink than can be 
 brought about by changing one hundred saloons into 
 Gothenburg improved drink-shops. To introduce the 
 System into lands which are now without it even 
 though it should be freed from its glaring weaknesses, 
 would be to act unpractically, to give brewery and dis- 
 tillery ground to pasture on. No opponent of alcohol 
 to whatsoever party he belongs can take on himself 
 the moral responsibility of tampering with this plan. 
 
 "If our deliberations today have led to showing 
 clearly that in the future we should cease from experi- 
 menting with this arrangement concerning which we 
 hear at home such diverse opinions, they will have been 
 profitable. No flirtation with the System will avail. 
 Only the enlightenment of the people will count 
 against the alcohol capital. I beg our Germans 
 especially to avoid splitting or checking our movement 
 by seeking to introduce the Gothenburg System." 
 
 Thus far those who are best fitted to estimate the 
 worth of the System. A few words more about Dr. 
 Williams' article. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 55 
 
 In the leading paper of Sweden, "Svenska Dag- 
 bladet" (June 22-'og) this article is placed with others 
 in a review of ill-informed American judgments con- 
 cerning Sweden and Swedish culture. Its unreliability 
 as to fact is measured by a sample statement. "This 
 enthusiast for the Gothenburg System tells us that 
 it has reduced the number of distilleries from 23,000 
 to 132 greatly to the advantage of temperance. He 
 does not seem to know first, — that the System has 
 nothing whatever to do with the manufacturing regu- 
 lations, — secondly, that this reduction is due wholly 
 to the drastic law of 1852, — thirdly, that the 132 dis- 
 tilleries produce more brandy than the entire 23,000 
 home distilleries ever did." 
 
 The decrease in the number of drink-shops is 
 susceptible to a similar analysis according to Mr. 
 Petersson, one of the speakers at this Congress. The 
 decrease from 1865 when the Swedish Bolags were 
 introduced to 1895 was 1,052, a little more than one- 
 half. But 724 of these were life licenses which fell in 
 at the death of their owners. Only 328 closed saloons 
 in thirty years can be credited to the Gothenburg 
 System. Of the sixty-five saloons closed in the next 
 ten years only thirty-six have been closed by the Sys- 
 tem. They have beaten this record in Indiana in 
 three months ! 
 
 Further it must be remembered that many holders 
 of licenses presumably with the Bolag's permission 
 split their license and run really two drink-shops, first 
 and second class, on the one permit. Mr. Petersson 
 
56 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 thinks it more than probable that the official diminu- 
 tion of drinking places has been outbalanced by an in- 
 crease through such devices. 
 
 As to consumption. In i860 the curve of Swedish 
 brannvin consumption went down to four liter per capita, 
 a point to which it has never descended since. (') This was 
 five years before the Gothenburg System was introduced 
 into Sweden. Whatever variation there may have been 
 from year to year in consumption of alcohol is probably 
 due in both Sweden and Norway to the alternation of 
 good and bad times. This is indicated by the curious 
 fact that Denmark's curve, and here there is no Samlag, 
 varies almost precisely as the curves of the lands with 
 Samlags, though on an average higher rate of con- 
 sumption. Mr. Petersson believes that it is very 
 doubtful if any credit at all can be given to the Sys- 
 tem and bases this opinion on four factors, two posi- 
 tive and two negative : — 
 
 1. The undoubted effect which the tremendous 
 temperance movement in Sweden since 1870 must 
 have worked. 
 
 2. The similar results of the labor movement 
 which has transformed in a large degree the wage- 
 working class. 
 
 (O O. Petersson, "Svenska rusdryckslagstiftningen och 
 Goteborgs-systemet," p. 52. This fact is conveniently dis- 
 guised, for example, in Bertillon's "L'Alcoolisme et les 
 moyens de le combattre," where the statistic is given for 
 1856-60 as 107 liters of 50 per cent spirits, which contrasts 
 pleasantly with the lower consumption of y.2, for 1902! 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 57 
 
 3. The persistent refusal of the System to re- 
 spond to petitions for restrictions which labor-unions, 
 temperance societies and communal authorities have 
 sent in to them. 
 
 4. The development in the System of subletting 
 of sale, with its consequent abuses. 
 
 In comparing the alcohol consumption of the 
 three Scandinavian lands we find that since 1870 it 
 has dropped in Denmark where sale is free: .8 liter 
 per head for all forms of alcohol and 1.9 liters for 
 brandy alone. 
 
 In Sweden the fall has been .15 and 1.3 liters re- 
 spectively. 
 
 In Norway it has been .85 and i liter per head. 
 
 It is hard to see that this proves any particular ad- 
 vantage in the legislation of any of the three lands. 
 Certainly it does not prove the superiority of the 
 Gothenburg System, for Sweden which has this system 
 alone, shows up not only worse than Norway with the 
 System plus a defective prohibitory arrangement, but 
 worse than Denmark with free sale, i. e. of course as 
 far as decline in consumption in thirty-nine years is 
 used as a test. 
 
 Dr. Williams prefers the System to prohibition, 
 first, because prohibition would destroy an immense 
 economic interest; secondly, because masses of people 
 are so accustomed to alcohol that it could not be taken 
 from them. 
 
 But how futile such reasonings. The alcohol in- 
 dustry is wealth-destroying, not wealth-producing. 
 
58 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 To annihilate it would be but to put out a great con- 
 flagration. When the Reformation closed the English 
 monasteries it took some of them, notably the great 
 monastic complex at Reading, and worked them into 
 road metal. If the same were done with the breweries 
 of Milwaukee and St. Louis wealth would be con- 
 served rather than destroyed. One might quote 
 Herault de Sechelles' "Ruinous nous; nous soyons 
 libres," if the facts would not turn the quota- 
 tion into a jest. The "ruin" which would send 
 two billions yearly now spent for poison into legiti- 
 mate channels of trade would be a ruin beneficent be- 
 yond the best dreams of prosperity. 
 
 As to the second contention we can only say that 
 measures must first be taken to protect the well from 
 alcohol sickness. Of the already infected Prof, von 
 Bunge says : "Numbers of men drink only a moderate 
 glass but hang to that glass as desperately as the 
 morphinist to his syringe." Such must be cured of 
 their cravings as the morphinist of his peculiar sick- 
 ness by removing the narcotic drug from their reach. 
 "Old prisoners leave their cells unwillingly." Never- 
 theless the beer Bastille must down ! Sooner or later 
 the alcoholist Latudes will become accustomed to their 
 new freedom. 
 
 But while the finical are questioning the feasi- 
 bility of prohibition the broad masses of the people 
 whose instincts are so often right are acting. The 
 success of the radical method is being proved in an 
 ever-widening area in America. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 59 
 
 One recalls the philosopher in Tristram Shandy 
 who answered a sceptic's disputings as to the reality 
 of motion by rising on his legs and walking across the 
 room. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A Bridge of Wood Over a River of Fire. 
 
 "If we liken it (drink) to a terrible monster, the Swedish 
 system may be said to be the chain round its neck. This 
 chain cannot prevent it entirely from doing damage but it 
 can hamper its progress to some extent." "Morality rather 
 than profit is the principle of the Gothenburg System." — 
 Mr. S. Wieselgren, the System's historian. 
 
 Mere statistical and financial accounts of the 
 Gothenburg System are not sufficient. They give little 
 idea of the flood of misery which year in and year out 
 flows from its hundreds of drink-shops. To right; 
 thinking people the weightiest of all questions is what 
 effect does the sale of drink under the System have on 
 the distress of families, on the struggles of mothers, 
 on the miseries of the alcohol-sick, on the deprivation 
 the children endure. Is the Gothenburg System an 
 alleviating force in the unending tragedy of alcohol 
 suffering? 
 
 "Not to any appreciable degree," — is the only hon- 
 est answer one can give who has lived in sight of it 
 any length of time. 
 
 Not that statistics, either, when objectively used 
 g^ve a flattering picture of the System. Take 
 Stockholm for example. The System has been in op- 
 eration there for many years. Do we see constant im- 
 provement in the matter of drunkenness? We do not. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 6i 
 
 The police report for 1909 has just been published. 
 The number of arrests for drunkenness went up to the 
 huge total of 15,218. The increase has been pretty con- 
 stant. Thus in 1902, 11,586; in 1903, 12,598; in 1904, 
 13,065; in 1905, 13,942; 1906, 12,291 ; 1908, 15,147- And 
 the police in Stockholm are not at all severe in their 
 administration. This represents only a portion of the 
 total drunkenness of the city. One sees more reelers 
 in Swedish cities generally not merely than in Amer- 
 ican prohibition cities but in drink dominated centers 
 like Boston and Chicago. If you doubt it saunter along 
 Postgaten, Gothenburg, the evening before the Ameri- 
 can sailings. You will realize then what the peculiar 
 Swedish vice is and how little the patented Gothen- 
 burg arrangement has done to check it. 
 
 A champion of the System and general director in 
 its management, Mr. Wieselgren says : ''Experience 
 shows that a considerable number of these companies 
 seem to be without any conception of the System's 
 true purpose and totally without shame in their viola- 
 tions of its spirit. "^^^ Nothing shows more clearly the 
 justice of this unsparing judgment than the records 
 which the police of both Stockholm and Gothenburg 
 keep of the number of times individuals are arrested 
 for drunkenness in a given year. If any practical at- 
 tempt had been made to prevent drunkards from fall- 
 
 en In his "Kunna utskankningsbolagen tjena nykter- 
 heten." Quoted in Ulrich "Goteborgs systemet och dess an- 
 vandning i Stockholm och Goteborg, p. 19. 
 
62 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 ing again and again such a statistic as the following 
 would be impossible. 
 
 For 1905 in Stockholm there were : 
 
 1,207 arrested 2 times; 429 arrested 3 times; 203 
 arrested 4 times; 119 arrested 5 times; 62 arrested 
 6 times; 53 arrested 7 times; 32 arrested 8 times; 25 
 arrested 9 times; 13 arrested 10 times; 11 arrested 11 
 times; 9 arrested 12 times; 8 arrested 13 times; and 
 so on up to one who had been arrested 30 times in a 
 year for drunkenness. 
 
 In Gothenburg we get the same picture: 
 
 799 arrested 2 times; 283 arrested 3 times; 124 
 arrested 4 times; 78 arrested 5 times; 40 arrested 6 
 times; 25 arrested 7 times; 22 arrested 8 times; and 
 48 from 10 to 25 times. All the claimed safeguards 
 against drunkenness are mere waste paper. And this 
 is not the worst feature of the police report. Of the 
 army of Stockholm drunkards in 1905, 1,065 were 
 women. To insist that a system yielding such fruits 
 is better than the Maine law is to make oneself a super- 
 lative illustration of **the will to believe." 
 
 There is on the Ponte Sisto in Rome a mortuary 
 chapel on the walls of which bones are arranged in 
 stars and crosses and arabesques. There are decora- 
 tions of childrens skulls, ribs in circles, finger bones 
 in patterns — all decently ordered. 
 
 But can such order change the face of death? 
 
 Just as little can regulation and restraints of a 
 greater or less effectiveness gloss over the repulsive- 
 ness of an ' institution for selling intoxicants, that is 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 63 
 
 toxic, poisonous drinks. In all essential respects the 
 drink-shop of Scandinavia is the same as elsewhere. It 
 ruins and degrades and sickens and kills. It closes at 
 7 o'clock Saturday night as cemeteries do and is 
 supposed at least like them to be quiet and well- 
 ordered. But it still remains a charnel-house. 
 
 Let us pas^ to illustrations. This is taken from 
 the leading paper of Gothenburg the "Handel och 
 Sjofarts Tidning." 
 
 "THE UNEMPLOYED, HUNGER, AND THE SALE 
 OF DRINK. 
 
 "Those who passed this morning through Forsta 
 Langgaten must have seen a painful sight. Just out- 
 side a drinkshop near Masthugg Torg there was 
 gathered a group of ragged, wretched men. They were 
 there to purchase a supply of brandy with which to 
 celebrate properly the present Easter holidays. It 
 will not do to say that they were people who had suf- 
 ficient to make such expenditures. On the contrary 
 they bore the marks of extreme poverty and misery. 
 The crowd was so great that it was necessary to send 
 for the police to keep order and to force them into line. 
 
 "At a time when the press generally is urging all 
 charitably disposed to show sympathy with those out 
 of work and when a special organization is being 
 formed to deal with the present distress it seems 
 highly regrettable that men should use for drink their 
 hard earnings and in some cases what they have 
 begged. It is no wonder that the generous public gets 
 hard-hearted towards poverty when they see a long 
 
64 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 line of tattered fellows waiting for the drink shop to 
 open! 
 
 "And this at a time when there is so much suffer- 
 ing and lack of employment ! 
 
 "The drinl^shops should be closed ! 
 
 "Signed, A Citizen.— April 8, '08." 
 
 The writer is living far up in the Gudbrandsdal. 
 Complaints are there being made of the great activity 
 the Samlag in Lillehammer has displayed in the 
 holidays just past in flooding the valley with drink. 
 One writes from Tretten of "the pyramid of brandy 
 bottles which this particular shop has sent into the 
 villages spreading everywhere trouble and sorrow in 
 the homes and destroying Christmas joy." He sug- 
 gests that there be a special car of detention on the 
 trains to handle the holiday victims of this Samlag. 
 "It is highly inhuman," he adds, "to leave these in- 
 toxicated men by themselves in the railway stations 
 during the bitter winter nights." 
 
 Does that not read differently from Rowntree and 
 Sherwell's idyll? 
 
 The following is from the recently published re- 
 mains of the well-known Pastor Mortensen of Christi- 
 ania : 
 
 " 'How dreadful/ I heard some one at my side call 
 out the other day as I passed through one of Christi- 
 ania's main streets. The remark brought me suddenly 
 to myself as I was walking rapidly, immersed in 
 thought. I turned about to see what the occasion of 
 the outcry might be. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 65 
 
 "The sight filled me with horror and the deepest 
 compassion. The whole street was filled with men. 
 In the middle of a dense crowd I detected two police- 
 men, who were dragging to the station an intoxicated 
 woman. Drunken, nay she was mad with drink, the 
 froth stood on her mouth while she shouted and 
 screamed the vilest songs and the wildest oaths. How 
 did she look? Her whole appearance bore the stamp of 
 a drunkard at the end of her course although she was 
 clearly not over forty years of age. Her face was 
 swollen with drink, her eyes shot with blood, her hair 
 dangling loose in the wind. But her clothing! It was 
 torn and hanging in shreds and every struggle with the 
 police made it worse. She had been taken out of one 
 of the city's drinkholes and now was being dragged 
 stationward through the streets." 
 
 Prof. Forel has said somewhere that future genera- 
 tions will look on our drink customs with the same 
 horror with which we regard the Inquisition. The re- 
 pulsive scenes one meets with under the regulated drink 
 regime in Scandinavia will constitute no exception. 
 
 Here is how the System set the joy-bells in the 
 North a ringing at Easter-tide, 1909. 
 
 "Verdandisten" reports: "In many places the 
 evening before Easter long rows could be seen waiting 
 at the doors of the brandy-shops for a chance to pur- 
 chase. The consequences appeared later. 
 
 "Two persons at the railway station at Lindome 
 were seriously stabbed by a drunken man Easter Sun- 
 day. 
 
66 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 "K. E. Anderson was killed by his intoxicated 
 brother Easter even when visiting the parental home 
 at Lyckeby. 
 
 "E. J. Karlsson a Hardemo shoemaker was ar- 
 rested for having stabbed a neighbor Easter evening. 
 
 "J. W. Sunden of Boras was stabbed by a neigh- 
 bor. Both were drunk. 
 
 "A laborer from Gothenburg got drunk Easter 
 Sunday and was drowned at Surte. 
 
 "A seventeen year old boy, Gustaf Lofvendal, on 
 Good Friday stabbed a drinking companion named Bo- 
 man." 
 
 "An iron worker's family in Avesta/* remarks the 
 same paper, "has been in a dreadful state. The mother 
 spent most of her time in the drink-shop in company 
 with a farm-laborer she had taken up with. Five 
 children were left without care and the father finding 
 things unendurable disappeared. 
 
 "Finally the people of the town could stand it no 
 longer and determined upon a demonstration. A 
 great company of citizens, men and women, old and 
 young, collected around the house where the children 
 had been left with a drunken butcher while the mother 
 was in the drinkshop. The butcher was summoned 
 out but thought it best to run, and run he did, head over 
 heels, pursued by the crowd. He was at last taken 
 into custody by the police. 
 
 "The people now hurried to the drink-shop, pulled 
 out the farm laborer and gave him a thorough beating. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 67, 
 
 The woman was treated to a severe lecture and sent 
 home. 
 
 "After this resolute action the people of Avesta 
 went each and every one about his own business with 
 a light heart." 
 
 Query. — How did the Gothenburg System "solve 
 the drink problem" in this case? 
 
 In many places one sees posters pasted opposite 
 an Utskankning or Company saloon, urging men to 
 keep away from the place. These have been put up by 
 friends of the alcohol-sick to restrain them from further 
 infection. But how futile! It is like appealing to the 
 public to keep away from a villainous drain which 
 year in and year out spreads typhoid. Suppression of 
 the nuisance and not "suasion" of the sick is the thing 
 required. 
 
 Another significant indication of the System^s 
 failure to root out alcoholism is to be found in the fol- 
 lowing notice which one reads in every third class 
 railway coupe in Norway: 
 
 "Warning! In accordance with section seven of 
 the law of July 24, 1894, drunkenness on the train is a 
 punishable offense. Travelers are urged to report 
 any occurences of this sort immediately to the con- 
 ductor." 
 
 I do not recall whether similar signs are posted in 
 Swedish railways. They are not needed to remind one of 
 the omnipresent vice. The writer has made the long 
 twenty hours* ride from Stockholm to Jamtland many 
 times. One of the invariable incidents of the trip has 
 
68 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 been the drunken rioting at the end of the train. Young 
 roughs without collars, unshaven, with coat-collar 
 turned up, nails in deep mourning, bearing all the 
 stigmata of a degraded alcoholism the more striking 
 because of the refinement and order everywhere notice- 
 able among this the most highly civilized people in 
 the world, — with whisky bottles sticking out of 
 pockets, swearing, pushing, quarreling — what a frontis- 
 piece would they not make for some eminently proper 
 professorial essay on the Gothenburg System. 
 
 Verner von Heidenstamm is one of the most 
 popular novelists of present day Sweden. He is by no 
 means a temperance agitator. Yet it is clear that he 
 is not satisfied with the civilizing tendencies of the 
 System. In a paper before me I notice the report of 
 an address he delivered Midsummer Day at Wadstena 
 to a large gathering of Swedish young people who 
 were working for tree planting and other public in- 
 terests. 
 
 "Why is it," said this shrewd and accomplished 
 man of the world, "that it is difficult to plant allees 
 of shade trees? It is because drunken youths on Sat- 
 urday and Sunday nights insist as they go homeward 
 on breaking down the young trees. (The howling, 
 swearing Saturday night drunkard is a characteristic 
 feature of Swedish life as every one who has passed a 
 few months in the country well knows). In Switzer- 
 land one can journey for miles under rows of fruit- 
 trees and even in vast swarming Paris flower masses 
 and grass mats can be left out safely without fear of 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 69 
 
 ruffianism. But when our countryman has taken his 
 drink the barbarian in him rises to the surface and he 
 immediately feels impelled to injure or destroy. I 
 know nothing under the sun more stupid than a 
 drunken Swede. Drink disorders him in a specially 
 noxious way. Here is one reason more why we should 
 take ofif our hats" — (to the Gothenburg System with its 
 restraining and moralizing influence? Not a bit of it!) 
 "to the flags of the temperance organizations on which 
 are inscribed in letters of gold the future's pro- 
 gramme." 
 
 One could wish that a Gothenburg cinemato- 
 graph showing the System in action could be sent 
 about New York drawing rooms and the lecture-rooms 
 of American universities where it is believed in and 
 praised. It would be a vivid panorama of fighting, 
 reeling, seedy, depraved victims of alcohol. One finds 
 material at every turn. My eye lights on this from 
 "Svenska Dagbladet" (June 4, '09) : 
 
 "A tailor from Multro named Hilbom visited to- 
 gether with his wife Solleftea, where they purchased 
 brandy. On reaching home they began a wild carousal. 
 Late in the night he lay down on the floor and went to 
 sleep. In the morning he was found dead. The home, 
 remarked the local paper, exhibited a dreadful sight. 
 The wife, the hired man, and the housekeeper lay in 
 their respective beds still drunk after the night's orgies. 
 In the open air just outside the house a sister of Hil- 
 bom lay in a drunken stupor close to an apprentice also 
 
70 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 When the Hugenots sent the Grand Monarque a 
 pitiable appeal for relief, recounting their dreadful dis- 
 tresses, he wrote at the bottom merely "Neant." ('Tt 
 is nothing.") The professors and theorists will perhaps 
 say the same here. "Such things occur everywhere," 
 they will object, shrugging the shoulder just per- 
 ceptibly and adjusting their glasses. But it is for the 
 future to see to it that they do not occur everywhere, 
 that alcoholism become as rare as leprosy is or as small- 
 pox bids fair to be. We have beaten the lepra bacillus. 
 We shall yet down the yeast plant. But we can only 
 do it by stopping its manufacture, by leveling to the 
 ground the beer brewery "beside which," as Dr. 
 Moebius the Leipzig psychiatrist solemnly said after a 
 profound study of alcohol and its workings, "the man 
 who has murdered a multitude is an innocent orphan 
 boy."(»> 
 
 It is generally known that the Company System is 
 more stringent in its regulations and in its workings in 
 Norway than in Sweden. If it had produced social re- 
 sults of an advanced type anywhere we should expect 
 
 (O "Ein Massenmorder ist ein Waisenlcnabe gegen eine 
 Bierbrauerei." So we have Ghingis-Khan, Alva, Tilly, Ab- 
 dul Hamid and Adolphus Busch. Thirty-five thousand pair of 
 eyes were handed Agha Mohammed Khan on platters after the 
 sack of Kerman, The fifty thousand dollar bills presented to the 
 Germanic Museum by Harvard's beer Maecenas represented 
 doubtless as many diseased livers. Is it not time that the 
 Puritan motto "Christo et Ecclesiae" give place to the 
 pagan "Non olet" of the Emperor Vesoasian? 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM ;i 
 
 to see them in the capital city of Norway where Nor- 
 wegian culture and Norwegian intelligence touch their 
 highest point But what is the case? Christiania is a 
 city of 230,000 inhabitants. In the Norwegian review 
 "Kringsjaa" (July, 1908) Dr. Paul Winge discusses its 
 criminality. He says that on a low estimate 4,000 men 
 and 2,000 women support themselves as criminals. In- 
 cluding children and other dependents there are 10,000 
 persons in Christiania belonging to the criminal strata 
 of society, or nearly 5 per cent of the whole population. 
 And by this he means not occasional criminals like the 
 intoxicated but predatory criminals. 
 
 There is of course no prohibitory community with 
 such a record, not even Portland or Bangor, which 
 "New England's greatest newspaper" has so often 
 adduced as examples of the terrible results of prohibi- 
 tion. Alcohol from the Company store works in pre- 
 cisely the same way as alcohol from the American 
 corner saloon. It produces a parasitical criminal 
 class.(^> 
 
 But what are its effects on the better situated? 
 Are they restraining or enlightening? Just take a 
 look at the porcine faces of the punch drinkers gathered 
 about the little round, marble-topped tables of the 
 
 (2) A Christiania paper describes what are called "nose- 
 drinkers" as far as I know a specialty of that city. These 
 pour out their brandy into the hollow of the hand and snuf? 
 it into the nose in quick drafts. Intoxication in this way is 
 soon attained. 
 
y2 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Cafe du Nord, in Stockholm/3) How gross the typej 
 Swedish charm has at last evanesced! The evolution 
 of the Swedish student youth — courteous and delight- 
 ful as ephebi of classic Athens — into such monstrosi- 
 ties, 
 
 "Dewlapped like bulls 
 
 Whose throats have hanging to them 
 
 Wallets of flesh" 
 
 is a crime against culture peculiar to Swedish drink- 
 selling. • No drinkers on earth, under whatsoever sys- 
 tem degenerated, are more repulsively goitred. One. 
 recalls the Iceland bird, which is so fat that with a 
 wick in its throat it burns as a candle through half a 
 winter's night. There would be no need of arc lamps 
 if the punch drinkers of the Cafe du Nord were lighted 
 and placed about Norrmalms Torg ! 
 
 "Norske Intelligenser Sedler" gives a picture of 
 recent Norwegian student excesses which indicates 
 how backward public opinion is in certain circles of 
 Christiania as well, after forty years of the System. 
 
 "Drunken students," it remarks, "began the 
 seventeenth of May (Norway's National Independence 
 Day, the anniversary of the Eidsvold Convention) 
 with howling and yelling in the streets. The police 
 
 (3) To such cafes the system delegates the right of re- 
 tailing intoxicants under conditions much the same as those 
 prescribed for the regular drinking places. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 73 
 
 were obliged to confiscate their banners. Some joined 
 themselves to the brigade-band and marched to the 
 palace, rioting all the way. Numbers were pulled into 
 the Pipervik police station and fined." 
 
 Again on the 4th of June the same paper writes : 
 
 "The conduct of young students at St. Hans 
 Haugen yesterday evening was so rowdyish and low as 
 to be almost incredible. One would have thought 
 them the scum of society rather than the scions of 
 educated families. A great gang of these drunken 
 students collected on the hill, where they yelled and 
 rioted and annoyed the restaurant servants. Finally 
 they were ejected. But they continued outside, hoot- 
 ing and howling, annoying the animals in the Zoo- 
 logical collection, throwing beer mugs into the bear- 
 pits, etc. The attendants secured a policeman but he 
 was immediately surrounded by the gang, who threw 
 gravel and stones at him. Thirteen of them were 
 finally arrested. Many of these represented the best 
 families of the city. The police declared that they 
 conducted themselves as hatefully as the worst hooli- 
 gans they had ever had to deal with." 
 
 "Student excesses," one will say. "Young blood !" 
 "Liable to happen anywhere." 
 
 Yes, anywhere where alcohol is sold. Against 
 alcoholized vulgarity neither the Gothenburg Sys- 
 tem nor academic culture is a safe prophylactic. 
 Rather we may say Samlag drink neutralises all the 
 restraining and enlightening values of academic cul- 
 ture. The present case ought to have shown the Sys- 
 
74 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 tern at its best. Wines, light-beer, cognac, student- 
 punch, sold under theoretically satisfactory conditions 
 to young men of high breeding and selected blood, 
 trained in all the culture the cultivated Norwegian 
 capital could give them — and the result? Negro min- 
 ers, Italian sewer diggers, Kanuck lumber men, — the 
 most unprivileged and untrained elements in our he- 
 terogeneous American society would if kept from al- 
 cohol show up better. But ply them with the drink 
 which the Norwegian students procured from Gothen- 
 burg shops or their affiliated bars and they would soon 
 sink to the same cultural level. 
 
 In striking contrast are the manners of Nor- 
 wegian students who have been brought up not in the 
 densely alcoholized atmosphere of Christiania but in 
 the alcohol-free surroundings of a small Minnesota 
 town. 
 
 In 1906 a glee club of Norwegian-American col- 
 lege boys, the St. Olaf Chorus, toured the mother coun- 
 try. Prof. Kildahl in recounting their triumphant pro- 
 gress said : "It awakened general surprise when it was 
 known that our boys drank neither wine, beer, nor 
 brandy. Other guests at the receptions usually drank 
 strong liquors. If I had taken one-fourth of what my 
 neighbors did I should have been under the table. It 
 seems to be an understood thing in Norway that at 
 every social function there shall be a great quantity 
 of liquors on the table and the waiters see to it that 
 the glasses are kept full." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Where the Poor Man's Clubbed. 
 
 "With the wife out washing, her rub, rub, rub, 
 Beats time for the songs of the poor man's club. 
 If you don't need clothes and can live without grub 
 Why just go and join the poor man's club." 
 
 — Song of the Anti-Saloon movement. 
 
 Many years ago the Norwegian poet, Ibsen, in a 
 speech at Trondhjem declared that for the regenera- 
 tion of society we must look to two classes, — the 
 women and the wage-workers. This might be called 
 as far as the movement against alcohol is concerned 
 a veritable prophecy. 
 
 It was the joint effort of women and working 
 men which placed on the Finnish code the first na- 
 tional prohibition law in existence. In Sweden the 
 working men have shown themselves of like mind. 
 The National Socialist Congress of last year was no- 
 table from the fact that a prohibition declaration was 
 forced through by the rank and file against the protest 
 I of the more fearful and perhaps less conscientious 
 leaders. In Norway this year at Hamar only the 
 threat of resignation which Jeppesen and other 
 leaders made prevented the convention from com- 
 mitting the party to the same policy. The writer 
 was interested in reading the devices borne by social- 
 
,r. 
 
 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 ists in the first of May demonstration in Christiania. 
 There were "Down with Altar and Throne," 
 "War is Murder of Brothers," and "Away with In- 
 toxicants." Not a suggestion of "The Poor Man 
 Should have his Beer," or "Save Us Our Tidy, Well- 
 regulated Cheerful Club, the Samlag Shop, Where 
 There Is No Pushing, Where Nobody Makes Any 
 Money Out of Us, Where Everything Is As Delight- 
 ful As It Is Disinterested, Where Excess Is Never 
 Seen, Where There Is An Atmosphere Of Correcti- 
 tude Unequalled Out Of Boston." 
 
 No, the real wage-worker knows better about the 
 System shops. My eye lighted recently on the de- 
 scription of one such in "Verdandisten" — the organ of 
 the Swedish temperance socialists. Those who make 
 it a point "to see the best that glimmers through the 
 worst" are welcome to do with it what they can. 
 
 "In the country mother earth produces as in early 
 times without regard to the hard competition which 
 rules in our cities. The peasant harrows and sows and 
 harvests not without labor and sweat. Now the barns 
 are full and the products of the soil and pasture ready 
 for city markets. Our countryman shall now get his 
 reward for his long toil. 
 
 "It is Saturday and market day in the city. In 
 long rows stand the carts, barrels, and baskets of the 
 country-folk. Loads of straw and hay, grain, eggs, 
 potatoes, fish and meat are all about. It is a long 
 way to market and profits are considerably lessened 
 when one reckons the time spent in going and coming, 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM ^^ 
 
 but as our proverb says, 'Flying crows pick up a 
 dinner; sitting ones get nothing.* Purchasers are 
 numerous and much business gets itself done. The 
 wagons are empty again. 
 
 "At one corner of the market stands a notorious 
 drink-shop, a veritable scourge for the peasants. At 
 the unpainted tables sit helpless men, some sleeping, 
 some shouting monotonously painful melodies, some 
 swearing and striking their clenched fists so that the 
 beer mugs are upset and their contents run in streams 
 mingling with vomit and urine on the floor. At the 
 bar stands the girl opening bottles. Money runs in a 
 steady stream into her till. It is the billowy grain 
 fields, the products of the dairy, the hard weeks of 
 labor which now as ringing coin pass into the drawer. 
 
 "The money begins to give out. The drinkers 
 can get no more drink. This angers them and the fight- 
 ing begins. They push each other out. The police ap- 
 pear and drag one after another to the lockup. Some 
 are carried to the wagons, the horses are untied and 
 start off on the run, irritated with cold and the inces- 
 sant whippings which they now receive. Meanwhile 
 fights started in the drink shops are continued in the 
 market place.'* 
 
 What a picture of "the poor man's club !" In the 
 Paris colloquial such a place is called a bludgeon 
 'un assomoir." It is where men are "assome" — 
 knocked down, mauled, oppressed as the diction- 
 ary defines the word. I suppose no one ever 
 heard a genuine wage-worker use the phrase "the poor 
 
78 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 man's club." It drops usually from the mouths of 
 "delicate handed 
 snowy banded" 
 "society" rectors or of professors in our seaboard uni- 
 versities. There is an interesting passage in Prince 
 Krapotkine's "Memoirs" in which the writer describes 
 the uneasiness which the work people on his Siberian 
 expeditions always felt when drawing near to a town. 
 They feared the temptation to drink and the danger of 
 arrest. If they had known what the modern alcohol 
 investigation has revealed their fear would have been 
 far more intense. 
 
 The System out of its opulence has been putting 
 up well-built drink-shops in parts of Stockholm where 
 tourists are apt to wander. These are, however, merely 
 the Potemkin villages of Gothenburgism. Leave Grev 
 Thuregaten and Malmskilnadsgaten and go into the 
 mean streets. There you find mean shops to match. 
 
 To call the saloon, whether of the American or of 
 the Scandinavian type, the working man's club is an 
 insult to those w^ho in the last analysis hold up our 
 whole social structure as the tortoise the Hindu cos- 
 mos. That after his frugal meal of "potatoes and 
 racket gravy" he should have no place to go to except 
 these dens where his liver is hobnailed and his kid- 
 neys rotted, where he is sold tuberculosis^^^ and men- 
 
 (O To frequent a drink-shop is one of the most certain 
 ways of receiving frequent and large doses of infection (of 
 consumption and cancer.) — Sir Victor Horsley "Alcohol and 
 the Human Body," p. 349. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 79 
 
 tally stupified is a shameful indictment of our social 
 arrangements. Until we can do better every basement 
 in the school and other public buildings of our Ameri- 
 can cities should be fitted up as rest and recreation 
 places for the humbler public. 
 
 The System in its relation to the poorer strata of 
 society stands for two things — narcosis of the masses 
 and taxes from the masses. Whatever the feeling in 
 America, in Europe where the thought of the revolu- 
 tion always lingers in society's subliminal conscious- 
 ness, the drinkshop with its quieting and deadening in- 
 fluence is undoubtedly looked upon with favor by the 
 privileged. It is no accident that the fight against the 
 English excise reform of 1908 was led by Lord Roth- 
 schild. Dr. Blocher speaking in October, 1900, to a 
 thousand workmen in Vienna was stopped by the po- 
 lice when he began on the stupefying effects of alco- 
 hol on the masses. The case of Dr. Froehlich is even 
 more striking. A physician in the Vienna General 
 Hospital, a convinced socialist, a speaker of great 
 power and warm personality, — to his efforts have been 
 chiefly due the great growth of abstinence principles 
 among the proletariat of Austria. Four years ago he 
 started on a lecture tour in Germany. His agitation 
 was on purely anti-alcoholist lines, — not a whisper of 
 revolutionary socialism. Yet in Dresden, Breslau and 
 other places he was forbidden to speak and at a great 
 meeting in the English garden in Kiel was interrupted 
 by gendarmerie and ordered out of Prussia in three 
 days. 
 
8o THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 But besides furnishing a social chloroform, the 
 Gothenburg System in common with excise arrange- 
 ments generally, deflects taxation from the rich to 
 shoulders least able to bear it. The income from 
 this source is in most Swedish towns and cities the 
 largest single payment made.^^^ This is in itself a pretty 
 good statement of the System's failure as a temperance 
 institution. And it must be remembered that by this 
 tax the poorer classes are victimised^^^ — self-victim- 
 ised if you will though there is much in our social ar- 
 rangements to explain and even excuse the fact. Not 
 long since, for example, a general strike was declared 
 in Helsingborg. The leaders ordered a boycott on all 
 
 (O This pecuniary prosperity gives a prestige to public 
 poisoning which is positively immoral. The writer recalls 
 visiting a fine new church in Lysekil largely constructed by 
 the profits of the alcohol shop. The founder of the shop had 
 been given a free pew in perpetuam and was the only citizen 
 so honored. 
 
 (2) "The Gothenburg System has degenerated into an 
 institution for squeezing the poorest of our population 
 through their thirst for drink in order to get money to ease 
 the tax burden of the well-situated classes. It has altogether 
 lost its philanthropic character. It keeps the wage-worker 
 on a low cultural and social plane. It is a typical illustration 
 of communal greed and selfishness. The most scandalous 
 inhumanity thrives year after year and the worst breaches of 
 law are practised in the Company's drink-shops. Away with 
 the blood money of the Gothenburg System! Away with 
 this thoroughly corrupted institution!" 
 
 Ulrich: "Goteborgs Systemet och dess Anvandning i 
 Stockholm och Goteborg," p. 37. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 8i 
 
 the shops of the System and posted pickets^ at the door 
 of each saloon to urge workingmen not to enter. The 
 result on the day reported — June ii, 1908, — was that 
 the money taken over the bars of the city was not 
 enough to pay the bar-girls wages for the day. 
 
 If such a strike against drink could be made per- 
 manent, and this is what the Swedish socialists have 
 declared for by their advocacy of prohibitory legisla- 
 tion, other sources of taxation would have to be tap- 
 ped. It is this indeed which is leading many Swedish 
 temperance workers to mobilise behind Henry 
 George's theory in preparation for an attack on the 
 unearned increment. ^^^ And it is doubtless for this 
 reason that vested interests find the Gothenburg Sys- 
 tem so "satisfactory in its moral workings." 
 
 At the present writing there is a noticeable move- 
 ment among the work people in Sweden towards peti- 
 tioning for some slight relief from the blessings the 
 System brings. The early closing of the shops in 
 Gothenburg during the present season of industrial 
 depression has given hope of similar action elsewhere. 
 The White Ribbon Society of Stockholm has received 
 a petition for forwarding to the Bolag authorities from 
 women and children of wageworkers for Sunday clos- 
 ing of the drink places in that city as well as for the 
 suppression of the sale of drink when food is not sold 
 and for early closing on Saturday. Encouraged by 
 
 (O See Hansson's "Jordvardebeskattning i stallet for 
 Rusdrycksbeskattning," pp. 21, 22. 
 
82 THE. GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 early closing in their city, Gothenburg workmen have 
 asked for one o'clock closing on every day in the week. 
 This has been declined on the ground that said petition 
 "has not come from suitable parties." 
 
 In Landskrona an association of the unemployed 
 has sent to the magistrates this petition. 
 
 • "Our union of unemployed observes with pain 
 how many persons in this period of need and depres- 
 sion continue to buy drink with money they need for 
 other and useful purposes, and respectfully beg the 
 magistracy to seek some way of preventing this state 
 of things. Best would it be in our judgment if the 
 drinkshops were all closed during this slack period 
 but if this is too radical, a limitation of hours would be 
 of great advantage. 
 
 "In many a workingman's home the need is far 
 greater than it otherwise would be because the wages 
 are, week after week, spent for drink instead of for 
 family supplies. To appeal to the better instincts of 
 the drinker does not avail. Such are no longer in pos- 
 session of a free will. They cannot desist from drink- 
 ing. 
 
 "For this reason the authorities should at least 
 limit the hours of sale and the quantity any given in- 
 dividual can buy. This is especially necessary at a 
 time of want and unemployment. Well would it be 
 if at all times drinkers should be obliged to abstain 
 from a low and coarse pleasure which increases their 
 misery and destroys their moral and physical health." 
 
 A socialist temperance lodge in Arboga recently 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 83 
 
 issued an appeal to workmen to keep away from the 
 drinkshop. It was posted on the billboards of the 
 town but was torn down by the city treasurer (signifi- 
 cant fact!) Again it was put up; again torn down. 
 Here is a part of this dangerous document : 
 
 "Workmen, Comrades. 
 
 "Avoid the drink-shop. Don't visit these miserable 
 nests which are set up to pull you down, to keep you 
 in ignorance and to rob you of your hard earnings. 
 Don't be misled by the enticements of the brewer and 
 the saloon-keeper. Thousands upon thousands are 
 pining behind Swedish prison walls because of drink, 
 thousands upon thousands of homes are laid waste be- 
 cause of the same drink and thousands and thousands 
 of hungry children cry themselves to sleep because of 
 the ravages of this terrible evil. 
 
 "But in their elegant palaces beer and brandy 
 kings roll in luxury at the cost of hungry, weeping 
 women and children. 
 
 Comrades, give nothing to your enemies ! 
 Comrades, shun the saloon !" 
 
 Some one will perhaps object that a large part of 
 the moneys taken from the poor returns to them in the 
 form of relief and of free institutional arrangments of 
 various sorts. The list of the donations to charities 
 made by the Hamar Samlag is before me. On the face 
 of it it seems a fairly satisfactory document. From the 
 surplus of the business 400 kroner are given to an 
 orphan asylum, 500 kroner to clothing poor children, 
 300 to poor relief, 300 to a hospital, 300 to a workman's 
 
84 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 academy, 500 to a cooking school, and so on down a 
 quarter of a column of a newspaper, — Sunday schools 
 and mission halls not being forgotten, either, in the 
 kindly distribution.^'^ 
 
 The particular vice of the vicious circle which 
 such reports represent seems to one person at least to 
 be hypocrisy. The fines for drunkenness in Stock- 
 holm are estimated by the editor of "Verdandisten" to 
 have amounted in 1908 to something like 222,000 kron- 
 er. Most of this comes from the poorest of the poor. 
 The amount granted this year by the Swedish parlia- 
 ment to temperance societies and various forms of tem- 
 perance work, the cure of drunkards and the like, was 
 201,750 kroner — 20,000 kroner less. And this is for all 
 Sweden while the above mentioned fine money came 
 from Stockholm alone. 
 
 Mr. Jonsson of Hokhult,in his motion for local option 
 in the Riksdag mentioned the fact that there are today 
 more than 50,000 drunkards in Sweden. Such is one 
 fruit of the Gothenburg System. For the cure of these 
 alcohol-sick the Riksdag of 1909 set apart 50,500 kron- 
 
 (O It has been recently remarked that this particular 
 Samlag refused to make a grant to the Orje Sanatorium for 
 the Cure of Alcoholists but in 1908 gave 1109 kroner and in 
 1909, 255 more to a Festivity Hall in Hamar and gave re- 
 bates on liquors sold to a gathering of singing clubs at Nes 
 to such a point that these liquors were actually delivered 
 below cost! The management defended itself against the 
 complaint of the government auditor by explaining that these 
 reductions were made for business reasons. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 85 
 
 er — 27 cents apiece. But four times as much — 222,0000 
 kroner — was according to Mr. Tornfelt's estimate 
 mulcted from the alcohol-sick of Stockholm alone. 
 
 The shamhumanitarianism of Gothenburgism could 
 have no more vivid illustration. Whatever little re- 
 lief the poor get is but a percentage from the pickings 
 of their pockets. If they keep hold of their saloon 
 money they will need little charity and any such help 
 would then be genuine. 
 
 One of the most striking reports from the great 
 local option war in Ohio in 1909 is that after prohibi- 
 tion it is almost impossible to get washerwomen in 
 "dry" towns. Wives of drinking men are now support- 
 ed as they should be. Similar stories came from Kan- 
 sas when the joints were closed. The shoe dealers 
 never sold so many women's and children's shoes. If 
 the Gothenburg System had been set up in these places 
 the women would still be washing, the shoes would be 
 in the show windows, and the various denominational 
 and fraternal societies would be rivals for the profits 
 of the common wealth from common woe which the 
 System brings. For this is a thing which is too often 
 forgotten. Scandinavia is a homogeneous land racially 
 and religiously. It is a land too without political in- 
 trigue and graft. The immense sums to be divided 
 among asylums and hospitals and institutions of diff- 
 ering folks and faiths in America would be a fruitful* 
 source of discord and logrolling. The right of dis- 
 tribution would be a basis for machine action with 
 
86 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 hardly a parallel in our present system/^^ The only 
 wisdom is to keep the money in the pockets of those 
 who earn it/3) 
 
 (2) "It gives influence and prestige to sit on the direc- 
 torate of the Samlag and to distribute moneys to hungry in- 
 stitutions." Scharffenberg's Kampen mod Alkoholen i Norge, 
 
 p. 7. 
 
 (3) The following incident will ilustrate the short sight- 
 edness of the admirers of the Samlag charity system: 
 
 In a fight against the Samlag in a small Norwegian 
 town one of the prohibitionists asked an old woman if she 
 would not vote against the drink-shop. No, she wouldn't; 
 she earned a kroner every Saturday washing for the Samlag. 
 
 "But haven't you a husband who earns something?" 
 
 "Yes he earns 14 kroner a week in a saw-mill." 
 
 "But that's surely enough for you?" 
 
 "For the land's sake, I don't get anything of that. He 
 drinks his whole pay up at the Samlag." — Menneskevennen. 
 Sept. 6, 07. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Violation of Law Under the System. 
 
 "And Trinculo is reeling ripe. Where should they 
 find this grand liquor that hath gilded them?" 
 
 — The Tempest. 
 
 By means of the prohibitory law Americans get 
 rid of legal sale. There often remains however a 
 troublesome though exaggerated illicit sale which 
 time, patience, and additional federal legislation will 
 reduce to a minimum. But the Gothenburg System 
 while retaining the legal sale, and that is its essential 
 evil, gives no especial guarantee against illegal sale. Its 
 managers violate the principles at least of the System 
 by shipping drink into no-license territories. They 
 undoubtedly often sell to bootleggers their stock in 
 trade. 
 
 We have referred elsewhere to Egersund, the 
 town nine-tenths of whose Samlag's sale is in sur- 
 rounding "dry" territory. The city government and 
 the directorate of this Samlag are one and the same 
 persons. When, therefore, they were in their capacity 
 of city fathers appealed to by individuals and societies 
 in prohibition Stavanger not to send drink into that 
 city they naturally enough did not see their way clear 
 to intervene. Later, however, it was agreed not to 
 ship drink to a place if the authorities of that place 
 
88 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 requested them to refrain. But they have not kept 
 their promise. Drink has been sent to neighboring 
 places and then trans-shipped to "dry" towns. It has 
 also been sent to false addresses. 
 
 The editor of the "Egersund Post" is chairman of 
 the Samlag. Consul Puntervold, a shareholder, sent 
 to the paper criticisms of the Samlag's management. 
 He was denied access to its columns. He stated 
 therefore on a flier which he sent about the place that 
 the management paid to the city exorbitant rents for 
 its building, in this way giving the city money which 
 ought to have gone to the Norwegian state. ^^^ 
 
 It has further paid excessive salaries — five times 
 as much to its auditor as the auditor of the commune 
 is paid, — extra pay to a director "for making addresses 
 and writing articles in defense of the Samlag," etc. 
 
 Abuses in little Egersund ! What would there not 
 be in Boston or New York? 
 
 On the North Cape a drink shop affiliated with the 
 System has been opened for those philistine tourists 
 who cannot enjoy the glory of the midnight sun 
 without wine. It was not expected that this shop 
 would sell to fishermen and country folk round about. 
 
 (O Mr. Oskar Petersson intimates that similar tricks are 
 played in Sweden. In a large city on the west coast the 
 Bolag threatened to suspend selling altogether because the 
 city interfered with its building plans. Up to that time it 
 had hired its selling place from the city at an unreasonably 
 high rate and the city authorities did not wish to lose this 
 golden egg. — Svenska Rusdryckslagstiftningen, p. 58. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 89 
 
 The law indeed allows this but the alleged moral and 
 restraining influense of the System ought to have 
 been a guarantee against it. "I notice," writes an 
 indignant correspondent, "boat after boat coming 
 from Gjaesvaer and other adjacent fishing villages to 
 buy wine and recall with a shudder the conditions in 
 which they return home. Many a poor fisherman has 
 spent 100 kroner there. Nowhere in Norway are the 
 regulations of the law more violated. They sell night 
 and day; Sunday and holiday." (Correspondence in 
 Menneskevennen, 5, June, 1908.) 
 
 The ''Karlstad Tidning" (June, 1909) writes of 
 the Bolag shops of that city: "All our drink-selling 
 places without exception act in the most irresponsible 
 way towards confirmed drunkards. None know better 
 who have reached this stage of the vice than the per- 
 sonnel of these places. Yet they rarely make any at- 
 tempt to prevent drunkards from getting drunk. *He 
 is a good customer. We can't very well refuse such 
 a one what he a§ks for. It is the morality of the busi- 
 ness to treat purchasers well.' " 
 
 At a recent meeting of the municipal authorities of 
 the Swedish town of Saeter a protest was issued 
 against the phrase used by the management of the 
 local Gothenburg System Company to the effect that 
 their activity was "in the interest of morality." As 
 indicating how far from the truth this was, the fact 
 was adduced that at times when the police had ordered 
 the shutting up of the Company drink-shop they had 
 actually kept it open. By a large majority the follow- 
 
90 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 ing statement was adopted : "Under no circumstances 
 can the traffic in intoxicants be spoken of as being 
 carried on in the interests of morality. Least of all can 
 this claim be justified in the case of the institution in 
 Saeter where it violates the laws laid down by the 
 city government. We make as the responsible leaders 
 of the city, a distinct protest against this contention 
 as to the moral character of the Company drink-shop." 
 
 One would suppose that in Gothenburg, the home 
 of the System, whither the already convinced go from 
 England and America to study its working and whence 
 they return with such expectedly rosy reports, there 
 would be no law breaking on the part of the manage- 
 ment. Not so! 
 
 An observer examining the situation here writes 
 to the "National Kuriren" : 
 
 "One can see the drink-shop a long way off. 
 Outside stands a line of people, among them many 
 children, waiting their turn. A large number of them 
 are semi-intoxicated. All shiver in tHe cold and some 
 swear because things do not move more quickly. A 
 policeman from time to time straightens out the line 
 of drunk and sober. After an interval each has made 
 his purchases. Sober and drunk leave the place to- 
 gether with the bottle or bottles which they have 
 bought. 
 
 "But! — drunken people and minors are according 
 to the law not allowed to purchase drink. This is ex- 
 pressly forbidden by the royal regulations of the 9th 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 91 
 
 of June, 1905. Nevertheless it is done in broad day- 
 light and as a matter of course. 
 
 "Again. Just opposite a third-class saloon of the 
 Gothenburg System a crowd of people have gathered. 
 They are watching a man beastly drunk lying in the 
 gutter outside. He has just been thrown out by the 
 drink seller after having sat the whole day spending 
 the money he had saved in the house of correction at 
 Svartsjo, where he had broken stone for months be- 
 cause the drink sold him by our moral institution had 
 been too much for him. 
 
 "But! — the royal regulations say definitely in the 
 31st paragraph: *A drunken person may not be 
 turned out of a drinkshop where he has been drinking 
 or left without supervision.' 
 
 "And once again. Your correspondent happened 
 recently into a suburban inn. There, too, he noticed 
 violations of law. The royal regulations, paragraph 6, 
 say : 'Innkeepers are not allowed to serve beer unless 
 at the same time food is ordered." 
 
 "But ! — the clause was being scandalously violated. 
 A large number of people were in the dining room 
 drinking. No food was to be seen. Intoxicated per- 
 sons entered and were served drink. People not in- 
 toxicated were plied with drink until they became so. 
 The noisy ones were unceremoniously ejected as the 
 evening wore on. Violation of this type is so common 
 that it is a question if people generally realize that it 
 is a breach of law. 
 
 "And still again. Passing another place we noticed 
 
92 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 a group of loafers who were putting together money 
 enough to purchase another liter of spirits after they 
 had finished together one bottle. One of the party 
 took the money and went into the Company Shop to 
 buy a bottle the contents of which he would then sell 
 to his cronies. 
 
 "But! — the law forbids all such subselling. Yet 
 as in the other case such violations of law are of daily, 
 rather hourly occurence throughout the year." 
 
 Mr. Oskar Petersson, who has made a searching 
 critique of the System, says that in the yearly reports 
 of the Swedish Finance Department there are many 
 severe references to the actions of a large number of 
 Companies. These strictures especially relate to un- 
 justifiable incomes which have come to various indi- 
 viduals and institutions from the Company and 
 secondly, to abuses in the system of letting out rights 
 of retailing drink to affiliated drink-shops. 
 
 Many Bolags have attempted to increase their in- 
 come by sending out agents to push the trade (liter- 
 ally so! *'For uppdrivande af affaren!") and by re- 
 ducing prices before church holidays as Easter and 
 Christmas. 
 
 These attempts to stimulate trade have been made 
 sometimes for the sake of the legitimate dividings be- 
 tween state and charitable institutions, sometimes to 
 increase the incomes of directors and administrators. 
 A certain per cent of the income has gone to different 
 servants of the company as additional pay. 
 
 Other ways of milking the Company have been, — 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 93 
 
 a. Charging it unreasonable rents and pocketing the 
 increased charge; b. taking rebates which really be- 
 longed to the Company ; c. buying spirits from the dis- 
 tillers on credit and charging the Company commis- 
 sions for advancing money, etc. 
 
 The system of subletting has opened the way for 
 great abuses. Mr. Petersson mentions one Company 
 which rented out all its licenses, not operating a single 
 one itself! Some of these sub-sellers of the System 
 have received their right to sell that they may deal in 
 finer grades of liquors but as a matter of fact sell the 
 wretchedest kinds of cognac. 
 
 He also gives a vivid picture of how the law is 
 violated as to closing at ten o'clock at night in an 
 affiliated restaurant of the better sort under the Goth- 
 enburg System. The police telephone that they are 
 coming for inspection and when they arrive two hours 
 after closing time lights are all put out and the guests 
 sit still in darkness. 
 
 When the police commissioners asked why the 
 restaurants at Hasselbacken — the well-known Stock- 
 holm resort — were not closed at the time of evening 
 service on Sunday as the law requires, one of the 
 restaurateurs bluntly said: "That would never do. 
 There would certainly be a riot." And to such law- 
 breakers the Gothenburg System sublets the right of 
 drink-selling.^^^ 
 
 (O O. Petersson "Svenska rusdryckslagstiftningen och 
 Goteborgs Systemet," pp. 30-31 and 40-43- 
 
94 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 When Caligula was reproached by Antonia, his 
 grandmother, for some bad deed, he retorted with 
 astonished eyes, "Have you forgotten that all things 
 are allowed me?" This is the attitude of Pabst and 
 Schlitz and Blatz and Seipp and Busch — the beer 
 uitlanders. The brewer is the chief hindrance to the 
 enforcement of liquor laws in the United States. 
 
 The temper of this personage is much the same in 
 Scandinavia. The System having nothing to do with 
 the manufacture is powerless to control him, which is 
 the capital reason why its adoption in the United 
 States would be so futile a move. His bootlegging 
 agents when in trouble are reasonably secure of having 
 their fines paid for them by some one higher up. Beer 
 is packed and shipped like mineral waters for the con- 
 venience of violators. "During the field manoevres 
 at Jederen last week" so runs a clipping before me, 
 "there were many complaints of traders bringing beer 
 to sell to soldiers and sight-seers. One man is said to 
 have disposed of a hundred cases of beer in this way. 
 Where were the police?" 
 
 So even if the Samlag were really a sort of air- 
 tight stove which kept the fire strictly confined it 
 would be of little protection to "Mother Norway." 
 Another fire burns merrily all the while out of sight in 
 the plaster. Here is an illustration of the lawlessness 
 of Norwegian brewerdom. The keeper of the skyds- 
 station in Mysen in Smaalene trading in drink con- 
 trary to the law, as the brewers who supplied him well 
 knew, returned in nine months, 1904-05, to various 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 95 
 
 breweries 230 cases of empty bottles. There were 
 many tragic consequences of this blind tiger's activity. 
 Thus one evening a young man stopped at the station \ 
 on his way to Christiania where he was to be married. 
 He had 500 kroner on him. He began drinking, lost 
 his money at cards, and on reaching Christiania at- 
 tempted in his desperation to shoot both his sweetheart 
 and himself. He was punished, but the blind pig and 
 ,the brewer swineherds of Christiania remained un- 
 touched. 
 
 It is not necessary to multiply instances. We will 
 give but two more, one from the Swedish capital and 
 one from the Norwegian. 
 
 "Social-Demokraten" of Stockholm some time 
 since described a blind pig in that city whose sales are 
 constantly increasing. The proprietor who is nomi- 
 nally a cigar-dealer buys brandy en gros and bottles it 
 in half liter flasks which he sells at a considerable 
 profit. "J^st ask for a white cigar and you will get 
 your bottle." The business is quite lively perhaps 
 three hundred bottles a week being sold. 
 
 "Afton-Posten" of Christiania says: 'Tn spite of 
 all measures it has been impossible to stop the sale of 
 furniture polish for drink to the lazzaroni of the city. 
 It is bought from masked brandy shops operating as 
 shellac stores. Bottles containing spirits with a little 
 coloring matter to give the appearance of shellac and a 
 slight tincture of the latter to enable the seller to 
 truthfully excuse himself to the police, constitute the 
 stock in trade of these ingenious law-breakers. 
 
96 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Women, too, engage in the business. One of these 
 female 'gaukerinde' has profited so largely by this 
 lucrative trade that she is now able to live a care- 
 free existence in America." 
 
 The nullification of liquor laws under whatsoever 
 system it occurs raises the whole drink question to a 
 level of the highest constitutional importance. Is the law 
 to be supreme? Is majority rule to be the norm of 
 legislation? Are statutes to be repealed or altered at. 
 the will of those who wish to break them? Open the 
 dikes at one point and we will soon be submerged at 
 every point. 
 
 The Sunday closing law of St. Louis was for years 
 nullified by the brewers. "Repeal it therefore," said 
 President Eliot in his contribution to the Report of the 
 Committee of Fifty. A wiser and firmer man, Gov. 
 Folk, effected its rigid enforcement. Darwin speaks 
 in one of his letters of the law against sending sweeps 
 up chimneys. "It makes one shudder," said he, "to 
 fancy one of one's own children at seven years being 
 forced up a chimney, to say nothing of the consequent 
 loathsome disease and ulcerated limbs and utter moral 
 degradation. Yet the brutal Shropshire squires are as 
 hard as stones to move. The Act out of London 
 seems most commonly violated." 
 
 Some would have gasped "You can't enforce it; 
 be satisfied with regulations. Let it apply only to the 
 smallest chimneys and the most dangerous." But 
 Darwin's clear-headed sister, Susan, prototype of so 
 many clear-headed American temperance women, or- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 97 
 
 ganized a society and prosecuted the offenders. And 
 this is the only thing to be done under all such cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 If the management of the Gothenburg System 
 were really interested in temperance, as is supposed by 
 many, they would not only obey all regulations for 
 preventing drunkenness but would of their own initi- 
 ative do many things which would materially help on 
 the fight against alcoholism. They could make of their 
 sales rooms for bottled goods (Minut-Handel) a per- 
 manent anti-alcohol exhibition like the traveling ones 
 of Switzerland. The thousand and one weighty facts 
 which the alcohol research has given us could be 
 brought to the knowledge of precisely that constitu- 
 ency which needs most to know them. On the walls 
 of the drinking places quotations from Forel and Krae- 
 pelin and Legrain would dissuade drinkers from slow 
 suicide. On the labels of bottles medico-hygienic 
 matter in regard to alcohol of the first importance could 
 be printed. Wrapping paper would be a useful ve- 
 hicle of statistical and physiological information — and 
 so on. 
 
 But the System if it will not dissuade its cus- 
 tomers from suicide does not propose to commit sui- 
 cide itself. The enlightenment of the public as to 
 alcohol is the last thing it wishes. 
 
 Finally. Of all the terrible toxic essences ab- 
 sinthe is without doubt the most to be feared. Bel- 
 gium and Switzerland — thoroughly alcoholized lands 
 — prohibit its sale. Holland is planning to do the same. 
 
98 TH:B; aoTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 The best elements in France lead by the Academy of 
 Medicine are in arms against it. One would have ex- 
 pected that the Gothenburg System would have long 
 since taken the moderate step of absinthe prohibition. 
 But no. It has no scruples in dealing in this absolutely 
 lethal poison. 
 
 To be sure the System has lowered the alcoholic 
 strength of "Company nectar" (i. e. potato brandy) 
 from 39.7 per cent to 39.2 per cent and plumes itself on its 
 moral self-restraint. But 13 per cent of the yeast 
 plant's excrement in a solution is enough to kill the 
 yeast-plant. Nearly three times that strength is what 
 the Company allows for the sensitive cells of the human 
 brain. 
 
 To expect such an institution to look after the 
 interests of temperance would indeed be as the Nor- 
 wegian proverb has it "setting the ram to guard the 
 oat-sack." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 A Dam of Ice and the Breakwater of Granite. 
 
 "It is not wise men who build dams of ice in the spring." 
 — Swedish proverb. 
 
 In Norway the first movement after the passage 
 of the local option law of 1894 was towards closing the 
 drink-shops. Twenty-seven cities voted dry out of 
 fifty-one. Then followed a slight reaction. Seven 
 Samlags were reinstated and only two shut down. 
 Rowntree and Sherwell made much of this lapse. 
 
 But the next stadium has been distinctly prohibi- 
 tionist again. It is as if the Norwegian electorate real- 
 ised that after all its first intuitions were the right 
 ones. There are now thirty-six dry cities against 
 twenty-seven wet, th« rural districts at large being 
 under prohibition. In the local option contests of 1907, 
 out of 13 wet cities contested the temperance party 
 won six. It is a striking fact showing how satisfied the 
 people are with prohibition that in only six of the pro- 
 hibition cities did the alcohol interest attempt to bring 
 back the Samlag and in all of these they were defeated. 
 It may be added that in the 19 local option contests of 
 1907 the votes stood 21,942 dry to 16,238 wet. In 
 the preceding election the same cities gave 13,641 dry 
 and 19,457 wet. The result shows clearly enough 
 whither the popular consciousness is turning. 
 
lOO THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 If the Gothenburg System were the ideal thing it 
 is made out to be, its agents and supporters, one would 
 suppose, would hold aloof in local option con- 
 tests and let the people decide the question on its 
 merits without their intervention. This has not been 
 the case however. The Samlag fights for its life with 
 all the tenacity of any vulgar American saloon. It 
 does not hesitate either to hit below the belt. In the 
 last election it repeatedly tried to muzzle temperance 
 workers. The eloquent Pastor Gunderson was threat- 
 ened with the bishop's interdict against his speaking. 
 To cow Dr. Scharffenberg, a well-known physician- and 
 *'Samlag stormer" holding a position in a Christiania 
 hospital, suggestions of action on the part of the city 
 government were bruited. 
 
 In Frederikstad the teachers worked against the 
 Samlag. Therefore they must be punished. Their re- 
 quest for increase in salary, previously endorsed by 
 the school committee and city authorities, was when 
 the result of the local option vote became known, 
 thrown out without ceremony. In Honefos where the 
 workingmen fought the Samlag they too were pun- 
 ished. How? By denying free school material to their 
 boys and girls. Such is the spirit and temper of the 
 Norwegian System in practise, whatever it may be on 
 paper. 
 
 Facts are continually cropping up which explain 
 this envenomed attitude. It has been recently discov- 
 ered for example that the largest stock-holders in the 
 Holen Samlag are the well-known Christiania whole- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM loi 
 
 sale liquor dealers, Damman and Baltzersen whose ad- 
 vertisements blazon the sides of the daily papers of 
 the metropolis. The Samlag is presumably an outlet 
 for the sale of their wet goods. 
 
 It is not surprising that the Norwegians are get- 
 ting weary of the Samlag. ^^^ If you open the official 
 report ^^^ of the System for 1907 you will see why. 
 The statistics of drunkenness are given for the whole 
 of Norway from 1866 to 1904, — an entire generation. 
 Not only is there no improvement but things are act- 
 ually going from bad to worse. Christiania's arrests 
 per thousand inhabitants during the years 1866-70 
 averaged 37. In 1900-04 it was 80, or more than 
 double. Trondh Jem's record is even more discourag- 
 ing. The average number of arrests have risen in the 
 same group of years from 19 to 70. Bergen is practic- 
 ally stationary but all other towns together show in 
 
 (O According to article 7 of their program the temper- 
 ance party in Norway is seeking to put all outstanding private 
 sale under the System. The alcohol capital opposes this. 
 But the chief reason for the action of both parties does 
 not lie in any anticipation of a greatly decreased sale in case 
 such a re-arrangement of the retail trade take place though 
 a certain decrease would perhaps result. It is because this 
 step is a preliminary to prohibition. Nero wished a single 
 head for the Roman people that he might cut it off at one 
 blow. The temperance party seeks to concentrate the trade 
 that it maj' more easily destroy it. It opposes the Samlag 
 and aims at ultimate national prohibition. 
 
 (2) Braendvins Samlagene og Forbruket av Braendevin, 
 vin og 61 i 1907, (p. 2^, 29.) 
 
102 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 this period an average increase (from 23 to 49 arrests 
 per thousand.) Even the prohibition country shares 
 in this increase (from .9 to 2.7 arrests per thousand) 
 but the slight number of arrests compared with that 
 of the cities shows clearly enough prohibition's advan- 
 tages. If the Samlags were not allowed to nullify 
 the prohibition regime in the country districts and if 
 the sale of beer were universally prohibited there as 
 well as that of spirits, this increase in arrests would 
 presumably not have to be registered. 
 
 But how, some one will ask, does the fact of increas- 
 ing drunkenness square with Norway's decliningalcohol 
 consumption? There are two possible explanations. 
 Any recent decline ^^^ comes from the increasing num- 
 
 (i) As a matter of fact the great decline in Norwegian 
 consumption came in the early years before the Samlag was 
 first established. It was a direct result of legislation pro- 
 hibiting home distilling and prohibiting sale in the coun- 
 try. Since 1870 when the Samlags were established decline 
 in consumption has been inconsiderable. 
 
 Mr. Andre, manager of the System in Gothenburg, calls 
 attention to the fact that while Denmark's consumption is 
 10.87 liters per cap., Sweden's 4.5 liters and Norway's 2.69 
 liters, the arrests in Copenhagen are only 7,797 or 20 in the 
 thousand of population against 11,232 in Stockholm (37 to the 
 thousand), and in Christiania 17,083 or ^d per thousand. In 
 other words while incomplete prohibition in the country has 
 cut down the national consumption of alcohol in Norway 
 and Sweden, the Samlag in the capital cities has pushed the 
 drunkenness up far in excess of that of drunken Copenhagen 
 with its free sale. In view of such facts one wonders how a 
 "system" so little "refutation tight" can find defenders at all. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 103 
 
 ber of abstainers and from the greater prohibitory 
 area. Where the Samlag operates drunkenness ad- 
 vances. Christiania is the citadel of the system. With 
 only one-tenth of the nation's population it consumes 
 one-fourth of its alcohol. Director Kjaer made in 1899- 
 1900 a study of the capital's drunkenness. He discov- 
 ered among other things that of the male population 
 over fifteen years who drank at all, 16 per cent or 
 9,600, were either intemperate or pronounced drunk- 
 ards. 
 
 From Director's Kjaer's investigations ^^^ it ap- 
 pears that the yearly consumption of alcohol per cap- 
 ita is: 
 
 In Christiania under the System (and with 29 
 private dealers) 6^/2 liter of absolute alcohol. 
 
 In the other cities of Norway (some under prohi- 
 bition and some under Samlag) 43^ liters. 
 
 In the country under prohibition (but overrun 
 with Samlag brandy) 2 liters. 
 
 In 1900 Christiania had 13,890 arrests for drunk 
 and disorderly. In the entire country districts (exclud- 
 ing all cities) the aggregate population of -which is 
 nearly six times that of Christiania there were but 
 4,663 such arrests. ^3) Not far from 18 times as many 
 arrests relatively under the System as under prohi' 
 bition. 
 
 (*) Scharffenberg's Kamp mod Alkoholen i Norge, p. 
 23- 
 
 (3) Scharffenberg's Kamp mod Alkoholen i Norge, p. 24. 
 
104 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Any objection that the country everywhere shows 
 up better than the city begs the whole question. The 
 first reason for the bad record of the city is its alco- 
 holism. 
 
 The statistics of death from alcoholism are quite 
 as convincing. In 1900 the rural population was two 
 and a half times that of the combined urban population 
 of Norway. But the deaths from acute alcoholism given in 
 physicians' statements between 1896 and 1900 were a 
 little over one-third as many in the country as in the 
 cities, 38 against 95. Here again the prohibitory re- 
 gime, and that of Norway is partial and defective, 
 shows up better than the System.(^> 
 
 Another proof of the same superiority is found in 
 Dr. Scharffenberg's tables of Sunday arrests. In 
 Copenhagen where the drink-shops are open on Sun- 
 day the number of arrests exceeds that of the average 
 on 'Week-days (159 as against 140). In Christiania 
 the Samlag shops are closed on Sunday and holidays. 
 On the 61 such days in 1907 there were in all 576 ar- 
 rests, or 9-10 per day. The average for the week days 
 throughout the year was 29 per day. Sunday should 
 have the largest number of arrests, being a day of un- 
 employment, but prohibition keeps down the number. 
 While in certain continental cities of the number of 
 assaults 35 to 46 per cent are according to the same 
 tables on Sunday, only 10 per cent in Christiania fall 
 
 (i) Scharffenberg's Kamp mod Alkoholen i Norge, p 24. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 105 
 
 on that day, considerably less than on any week day/^^ 
 
 From Sweden we get a similar story. Mr. S. Wiesel- 
 gren, the Company's spokesman, naively says: *'By 
 prohibiting the sale of spirits on Sunday the Company 
 is continually bringing down the figures of drunken- 
 ness for that day in Gothenburg!" 
 
 Prohibition is not widely enough developed yet in 
 Scandinavia to give us extensive comparative evidence, 
 yet now and again statistics emerge in the public press 
 the meaning of which is unmistakeable. Here for ex- 
 ample: Grimstad was a prohibition town down to 
 1900. Then it lapsed. The number of arrests the last 
 year under prohibition was 147 ; under the first year of 
 the Samlag 272 and in each year since has been higher 
 than in any prohibition year in spite of the fact that 
 the Hasseldalen Ship Building Company has closed its 
 works and taicen from the town a considerable drink- 
 ing population. 
 
 Of four little towns on the South coast of Norway, 
 Lillesand and Mandal adopted prohibition ; Grimstad 
 and Ekersund established Samlag shops. The com- 
 bined population of the last two is slightly in excess of 
 the first two, — 6,252 against 5,275. But their superi- 
 ority in drunkenness is not in the least slight. The 
 figures of arrest are, for the two prohibition towns, 34 ; 
 for the Samlag towns, 341, a tenfold multiplication. 
 
 During the local option contest in Larvik in 1908 
 
 (^T Braendevins Samlagene og Forbruket av Braend- 
 vine Vin og 51 i 1907, p. 21-22. 
 
io6 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 the citizens of Sandefjord which had driven out the 
 Samlag sent the following statement to encourage the 
 people of Larvik to follow their example. It reads not 
 unlike documents of loc-al option contests in Ohio, 
 1909: 
 
 "The undersigned with a full sense of responsi- 
 bility wish to state that conditions in Sandefjord have 
 decidedly improved since the Company drink-shop 
 was suppressed in 1908. This is clearly indicated by 
 the fact that arrests in the last year of the drink regime 
 were 288; in the present year of prohibition (1906) 
 only 137. 
 
 "With regard to prohibition's effect on trade, it is 
 admitted on all sides that conditions are better and 
 that sales are distinctly greater than before. This is 
 proved for example by the fact that the amount of im- 
 ported articles sold in the last decade has increased, 
 according to custom-house statistics, 300 per cent and 
 that the working capital of the city banks has in the 
 same time more than trebled. 
 
 "A large number of those who at the last election 
 were most zealous defenders of the Samlag now assert 
 that if the question should be brought up again they 
 would be found on the side of the present prohibitory 
 regime. 
 
 (Signed). Andreas Hasle, 
 L. Sorenson. 
 
 Sandefjord." 
 
 In 1907 there was a great lockout in the Borre- 
 gaard cellulose industry at Sarpsborg. During the 37 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 107 
 
 days of the lockout 1,800 men were idle. Fortunately 
 when the works were closed down, the drink-shop^''^ 
 operated by the Borregaard Company was at the same 
 time shut. During these 37 days when the operatives 
 were out on the street with all their time at their dis- 
 posal public order was according to the daily press 
 beyond criticism. Only 14 arrests for drunkenness 
 occurred. If the average had been up to that prevail- 
 ing for the five preceding months when the men were 
 employed and when the drink shop was open, the 
 number would have been 87, or six times as many. 
 This is about the measure of the superiority of prohi- 
 bition over restriction and regulation. 
 
 The statistics for prohibition Sunday in Sarpsborg 
 compared with open week days (January to July, 1907) 
 were as follows: 
 
 Sundays 2 arrests, Saturdays 97 arrests, Fridays 
 56 arrests, Mondays 65 arrests. Can one doubt for an 
 instant but that if the drink-shop were open on Sun- 
 day, the single free day of the week, the arrests would 
 have mounted up to at least that of the most temperate 
 week and work day, Tuesday with its 41 arrests, i. e. 
 have increased twentyfold?<^^) 
 
 (O Not indeed under Samlag control but managed on 
 the same plan as to time of closing, regulations concerning 
 sale to minors, the drunken, etc. It cannot be supplanted by 
 a Samlag because of certain inherited privileges. The com- 
 pany controlling it is one of the largest and most responsible 
 in Norway. 
 
 (2) Scharffenberg, "Afholdspolitiske Sporgsmaal," III 
 p. 116. 
 
io8 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Every year there is a winter market lasting some 
 days at Kongsvinger, a town near the Swedish 
 frontier. In this town is a Samlag whose shop has up 
 to the present run full blast on fair days. The writer 
 noticed in the newspapers, accounts of the shameful 
 state of things in the week of 1908. Ladies were afraid 
 to go on the street after sundown because of the 
 drunken rowdyism. A visitor narrated that his coach- 
 man when driving through the crowd on the main 
 street was obliged to push aside drunken men in order 
 to prevent his horse running over them. In 1909 the 
 drinkshop was closed in the fair season and an im- 
 provement was immediately noticeable. "The market 
 of the present year showed no falling ofif in attendance 
 as some feared," writes one. "Indeed there were ex- 
 ceptionally large crowds present. Yet there was 
 hardly a drunken man to be seen." The police report 
 corroborates this fact. Here is the statistic: 
 
 Arrests for drunkenness during fair days at 
 Kongsvinger : 
 
 1905 — 34 arrests. 
 
 1906 — 30 arrests. 
 
 1907 — 54 arrests. 
 
 1908 — 33 arrests. 
 
 1909 — 7 arrests under temporary prohibition. 
 
 In other words prohibition has done away here 
 with four-fifths of the drunkenness which the Svstem 
 has to its credit. 
 
 In December last there occurred a frightful 
 murder in the Vestfjorddal. It now transpires that 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 109 
 
 the murderer had prepared for action by purchasing 
 spirits from the Kongsberg model drink-shop. When, 
 to quote Keats, "the wine had done its rosy deed," the 
 wiseacres of the government, past-masters in the be- 
 lated shutting of stable-doors as the governing class 
 elsewhere, thought it well to investigate this drink- 
 shop. It found that the alcohol was procured by post 
 and drunk both by murderer and victim and also that 
 this same shop had sent out by mail during the year the 
 weight of 1,068 kilograms (about 2,100 pounds) ! 
 Over a ton of poison and glass distributed through the 
 mail by this regulated drink shop in violation of the 
 spirit if not of the letter of the law. The department 
 in Christiania now threatens to annul the license of 
 the Kongsberg Samlag. 
 
 The respect for law and the means for enforcing 
 law undoubtedly stand higher in Scandinavia than in 
 American cities. If such scandals occur in Norway 
 worse ones would occur in New York and Chicago and 
 have occurred in South Carolina under a system 
 similar to that prevailing in. Norway. 
 
 In Sweden there is as yet no local-option legisla- 
 tion though the lower house of the Riksdag voted for 
 such in 1908. But in certain towns the authorities 
 have without popular mandate refused to permit the 
 model drinking places to continue their pernicious 
 work. Then comes a change for the better. We get 
 this for example from Elmhult in Smaland, not far 
 from the place where stood the country parsonage in 
 
no THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 which the great botanist Linnaeus was born. The 
 reporter is Dr. med. Soderberg: 
 
 "Between Oct. i, 1904, and Nov. I, 1907, — 37 
 months — there were in Elmhult not less than eight 
 cases of suicide, murder and fatal accident, all of which 
 were more or less directly traceable to spirits from the 
 Gothenburg shop. From Nov. i, 1907, when the sale 
 ceased there was in the 185^ months to the time of 
 the publication of this report not a single case of 
 death from this cause." 
 
 When the shop is closed in one town many of the 
 drinkers for the first few months send off to neighbor- 
 ing places after brandy. The result is of course in- 
 creased profits for the "open shop" town. The anti- 
 prohibitionist sages of the press make much of 
 this. Skeninge in Ostergotland for example has 
 profited to the extent of 18,000 kroner in the past year 
 by the action of its neighbor Mjolby in closing its 
 drink-shop. "If this continues," remark these smug 
 money-moralizers, "Skeninge's finances will soon be 
 on an enviably secure basis." 
 
 At the same time a similar case occurring in Dar- 
 lecarlia is adduced. Hedemora is "in the butter" be- 
 cause of the folly of Saeter whose town-council has 
 closed the local drink-shop. 
 
 But the coin has its reverse side. The "Ostergot- 
 land Correspondent," no friend of temperance either, 
 pictures it. It is not so pleasant as that of smiling 
 Plenty with 18,000 silver kroner running out of her 
 cornucopia. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM in 
 
 "A sigh of relief escaped all classes of society 
 when the last market man packed into the train. For 
 this time the crowd has been both mixed and decidedly 
 unpleasant. For example a woman was seen reso- 
 lutely hitting a man on his skull with a bottle so that 
 the blood spurted in all directions. The fellow was 
 forced to jump and run. People thought he had tried 
 to commit suicide. Meanwhile in the drink-shop the 
 carryings-on baffled description. A circus employe in- 
 sulted the wife of the man who ran the place and then 
 choked 'mine host' until he was blue-black in the face. 
 Everybody says that drunkenness, rowdiness, and 
 roughness took during this fair week dimensions ex- 
 ceeding those in any one's memory, at least for de- 
 cades. There was no lack of drink on all sides." 
 
 And how has it gone in prohibition Saeter? 
 "Though the temperance party is in the minority in the 
 town council," writes a correspondent, "yet none of 
 the opposite party will propose a return to the Sys- 
 tem. The general opinion is that the community is 
 better off without the Gothenburg shop. Formerly it 
 was at times dangerous to pass the streets because of 
 drunken men. In the past year I have not seen ten 
 intoxicated in the town. A customer of the shop -who 
 had been in the local jail nearly two hundred times 
 before prohibition is now a sober man. Many similar 
 cases can be instanced. Before prohibition one heard 
 of purchasers of drink hanging themselves, shooting 
 themselves, freezing to death. Now there is nothing 
 of the sort. The stream of tramps has dried up en- 
 
112 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 tirely. They go direct now between Falun and Hede- 
 mora past Skedvi. Crime decreases and the jail is 
 rarely used." 
 
 "There is only one thing certain in life," said 
 Stevenson, "and that is failure." But failure is a rela- 
 tive term. Stevenson's "failure" was indeed worthy 
 of the laurel leaf. The "failure of prohibition" is a tri- 
 umph of the first magnitude besides the best successes 
 of the Gothenburg System. At least that is the honest 
 opinion of one who has lived many years under each 
 system. 
 
 From an absolute point of view a law may be said 
 to have "failed" because it is violated when from a 
 practical point of view it is generally satisfactory. And 
 after all if it were not violated there would have been 
 no reason for putting it on the statute books. The 
 King of Korea ordered with an optimism which 
 smacked of opera bouflfe the immediate abolition of 
 national vices. The impatient critic of prohibition is 
 just as unreasonable. It takes much time for a vice 
 to disappear which is rooted as deeply in the past as 
 alcoholism is. To a level-headed observer its relative 
 disappearance in northern New England must be a 
 veritable marvel. It is not long as a student of history 
 reckons time since John Boyle was given a license to 
 sell rum on condition that his place be set up near the 
 Second church of Boston for the parishoners' con- 
 venience or since Dr. Strong, pastor of the First 
 church, Hartford, himself ran a distillery. This 
 temper prevailed throughout New England. A study 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 113 
 
 of the records of the little New Hampshire mountain 
 town in which the writer lives was made recently. The 
 pre-prohibition period gave a dreadful picture. More 
 than half of the purchases at the village store were for 
 New England rum. Houses were in disrepair and un- 
 painted; farms were mortgaged and the women sup- 
 ported the families. But under prohibition in 25 sum- 
 mers the writer recalls seeing but one intoxicated 
 person. 
 
 Five years ago the state prohibition law gave place 
 to a less satisfactory local prohibition law. Arrests 
 for drunkenness in the state have as a consequence 
 jumped 500 per cent. 
 
 Under the Gothejiburg System much of the free 
 alcoholism of early New England is still to be seen. 
 People continue "potent in potting." A funeral is still 
 called "a gravol," "a grave beer" and a baptism "a bar- 
 sol," "a child's beer" as in the earlier days the dedica- 
 tion of a church in England was called a "church-ale." 
 One of the speakers in the Stockholm temperance con- 
 gress of 1902 told of a church dedication in Norway 
 for which 360 bottles of wine and beer were purchased. 
 By evening all were empty. Some of the participants 
 naturally were staggering when they went home. Mr. 
 Isene mentions another church dedication in 1904 at 
 which twenty different toasts were drunk. ^^^ The 
 Swedish Bishop Rhode complains, and it takes much 
 to make a bishop complain about drinking here as else- 
 
 (O Menneskevennen, 3 March, oq. 
 
114 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 where, that the people in a certain region (around 
 Frillesas) "use at weddings, funerals, and on all festi- 
 val occasions altogether too much hard drink. On 
 market days, too, and at auctions they get drunk with 
 their endless consumption of brandy. This is true, too, 
 of all church festival times, — Easter, Christmas, Pente- 
 cost and the like." "It is horrible," he continues, "to 
 see how this spirit-drinking lays waste one home 
 after another. The dreadful consequences of alcohol 
 poisoning hang over the whole nation. Our people 
 are being ruined in body and soul. It breaks down 
 all their defences against inner and outer dangers." ^^^ 
 
 Confirmation time when the young are received 
 into the state church is marked with much social alco- 
 holism. At a great dinner of the northern schools in 
 Christiania in 1905 six hundred bottles of beer and 
 brandy and fifteen hundred of caloric punch were 
 served ! Investigations in the public schools of Stock- 
 holm have brought to light the fact that not less than 
 70 per cent of the children over twelve years are accus- 
 tomed to drink beer in their homes. At festal gather- 
 ings for "budeier" or dairy girls, who look after the 
 cows in the high mountains in the summer time, spirits 
 
 (2) In his last book Ossian Nilsson says: "Alcoholism 
 is a marked trait of the whole Swedish people. It takes its 
 victims from all classes, high and low, learned and ignorant, 
 poor and rich. It is the real shadow of barbarism which 
 threatens to stifle our civilization." 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 115 
 
 are dealt out as a matter of course. And So it goes 
 on all occasions ! 
 
 Here is a picture of what Anacreon called "Scyth- 
 ian toping" from the west of Norway. Such rioting 
 is of course not common but it is unheard of at least 
 in American prohibition districts. The clipping is cut 
 from "Sondfjord's Avis," a west country paper, (Aug. 
 1907.) 
 
 "On the farm where the marriage took place they 
 let loose the horses in the cultivated fields and mead- 
 ows. One sensible man shut the cellar where the beer 
 was to prevent further excesses. The door was pried 
 up and lifted off its hinges and thrown down a hill. 
 The beer-kegs were rolled after it when they had been 
 emptied (not on the ground). The host's supplies of 
 salt meat were grabbed as if by pirates. In one beer 
 barrel the contents of which seemed too thin for the 
 doughty drinkers flour was mixed and the resulting 
 paste cast about the walls and ceilings. The conduct 
 of the guests has made the host nearly crazy." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 "Ended, Not Mended." 
 
 The' boldest thoughts of the present are the cool reason 
 of the future. — Maeterlinck. 
 
 One of the early popes, so the story goes, put out 
 a great fire, (the Incendio del Borgo,) by making the 
 sign of the cross. Something of the same sort the 
 advocates of Gothenburgism attempt to do with the 
 dreadful alcoholist conflagration. They try to exorcise 
 it with pretty devices, they use incantatory phrases 
 such as "disinterested sale," or "pure liquors." With 
 water they will have nothing to do, preferring 
 to throw alcohol ( in strictly limited quantities) on the 
 flames. But nothing avails. The fire still rages. 
 
 And will so long as alcohol is sold. This is the 
 point on which the System of necessity goes to pieces. 
 Modern investigation has made any compromise im- 
 possible. Alcohol in the smallest quantities is a dan- 
 gerous protoplasmic poison. The best regulated shop 
 which can be imagined will still be a place for the 
 sale of epilepsy, pneumonia, cirrhosis, fatty degenera- 
 tions, and numberless other diseases. Dr. Brou- 
 ardel's dictum, "The public house is the purveyor of 
 tuberculosis," is as true of the drink-shops of Stock- 
 holm as of those of Paris. Indeed the more orderly 
 and better regulated the shop the more dangerous. 
 Dr. Baer in his chapter on drunkenness in "Die Deut- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 117 
 
 sche Klinik am Eingang des Zwanzigstes Jahrhundert" 
 says truly that not poverty nor climate but imitation 
 leads to drinking. If the drinking-place is repulsive 
 normal men and especially women are not likely to 
 enter it. If it is made cosy and refined there is danger 
 that they will and that they in turn will be imitated 
 by others. • 
 
 The Gothenburg System institutionalises drink- 
 ing and the drink trade. It has its analogues 
 in the institutionalising of gambling by the Ger- 
 man state lotteries, in state regulated prostitu- 
 tion and the like. Such a course gives per- 
 manency to the vice. It assures us future genera- 
 tions of alcohol-sick for, as Napoleon shrewdly said, 
 "Institutions fix the destiny of individuals rather than 
 individuals of institutions." The Gothenburg System 
 is an institution for a nation of drinkers. But this is 
 what the American people must not be. 
 
 The Gothenburg System has not broken the power 
 of the alcohol capital^^^ and here lies for Americans 
 
 (O There are places in Sweden where it would be dif- 
 ficult to find among the official and governing class a single 
 person who is not interested in some brewery. Ministers of 
 state and provincial governors make no bones of leading 
 meetings of brewery directors. Men of science are induced 
 to enter the lists for the mighty beer interest. A well paid 
 staff of publicists trumpet unceasingly the harmlessness and 
 even value of this drink. In fifty years the flood of beer has 
 risen four-fold from 7 liters a head in 1861 to 29 liters in 1905. 
 O. Petersson "Sv. Rusdryckslagstiftningen och Goteborgs- 
 Systemet," p. 71. 
 
ii8 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 the crux of the practical problem. The brewers and 
 distillers find the System a reasonably satisfactory and 
 wholl5^ secure outlet for their products, though they 
 would undoubtedly prefer "the Tartarean drench" of 
 the unrestricted sale prevailing in England. They do 
 not fight the System, however; they fight prohibi- 
 tion.(^) ^ The newspapers are their willing servitors 
 and those of the Norwegian Right, for instance, fight 
 their battles with a bitterness and unscrupulousness 
 which equals if not surpasses anything the writer 
 knows of. 
 
 The recent incident of the wine treaties is an. 
 illustration. The great brandy distillers of Bordeaux 
 and Cognac working through the French government 
 have forced in turn upon the three Scandinavian 
 states commercial agreements reducing the tariffs on 
 wines and brandies. The listing of Scandinavian 
 state loans on the Paris bourse was refused until these 
 
 (O Now and again the underground workings of the 
 brewers come to light. Here is an example. O. W. Fast- 
 ing, engineer and professor in the technical school in Bergen, 
 and well known as a speaker and writer asked permission 
 from the authorities to leave his post in order to make stud- 
 ies on the temperance question in Norway. The request was 
 granted. He started on a lecture tour in which he praised all 
 "true temperance" work but deprecated the movement toward 
 prohibition. After a little it was discovered that he was 
 highly paid by the Brewers' Association for services rendered. 
 Worse than that it also appeared that he had had part in il- 
 legal drink-selling in Bergen. The incidents of the anti-al- 
 cohol movement are essentially the same in all countries. 
 
 ScharfFenberg, "Kampen mod Alkoholen i Norge" p. 15. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 119 
 
 concessions were granted to French alcohol producers. 
 But this was not all. Secret clauses (divulged, how- 
 ever, in Norway) were introduced into the treaties the 
 purpose of which was to put a period for all time to 
 the promising prohibition movement in the Scandi- 
 navian peninsula. The Republique, champion of 
 European freedom, at the behest of the alcohol capital 
 interferes in the internal affairs of three smaller na- 
 tions and attempts to strangle a movement of moral 
 emancipation. 
 
 For this national humiliation certain elements in 
 Norway were in all probability responsible as well. 
 There can be little doubt that the alcohol capital in the 
 North cooperated with that of France if it did not 
 instigate the whole proceeding. The Christiania news- 
 papers prepared the way for the coup by bullying and 
 threatening the temperance party and by frightening 
 the public with the terror of an additional one-half per 
 cent on an hypothek loan of 25 million kroner which 
 subscription in London rather than in Paris would 
 entail. Their tactics were successful. ^^^ 
 
 Of course, the Gothenburg System was not re- 
 sponsible for this. But it has not made impossible such 
 interference in legislation by the alcohol capital. It 
 has not emancipated the press from its alcohol servi- 
 tude. Further, the moral sympathy of its directors 
 
 (2) Astonishing as it may seem the temperance party in 
 the Storthing were cowed into accepting the bitter treaty. 
 Only the twelve socialist members stood out for Norwegian 
 independence and the cause of morality. All honor to theml 
 
120 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 has been, if there has been no active co-operation in 
 this crisis, with the militant alcohol interests. 
 
 Finland has had its Gothenburg System as well as 
 Norway and Sweden. But Finland by the nearly 
 unanimous vote of its legislature repudiated it in favor 
 of a drastic national prohibitory law. Such action after 
 many years of the System is no recommendation in its 
 favor. In Norway and Sweden the temperance party is 
 committed to the same policy. In Sweden, to be sure, 
 the conservative upper house of the Riksdag threw out 
 legislation passed by the lower house which provided 
 for local option terminating in national prohibition in 
 20 years. But this is merely a preliminary skirmish. 
 Iceland and the Faroes in reforming their excise sys- 
 tem passed by the Gothenburg plan and adopted pro- 
 hibition. Most significant of all is it that the national 
 commission appointed by the Danish Riksdag to draft 
 the whole matter of new alcohol legislation for Den- 
 mark should take up an attitude of cold neutrality 
 towards the Gothenburg System, laying the emphasis 
 for reform on local option. All over Scandinavia, in 
 fact, they are preparing to disprove Montesquieu's say- 
 ing that "Northerners cannot get along without 
 spirits." 
 
 And yet there are good folk in America who 
 would have us take up with this thread-bare, cast-off 
 institution. Standardized opinion in our richer Eastern 
 universities generally favors it. Certain clerics among 
 them the rector of St. Paul at Three Taverns and the 
 clergy of the Church of St. George and the Flagon are 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 121 
 
 enthusiasts for it. New York club men who have 
 visited the fjords also believe it to be "the best solution 
 of the problem" as do various delightful Boston ladies 
 who have made their studies of the alcohol question in 
 the cathedrals and picture galleries of Europe. Then 
 there are the representatives of the alcohol Kismet,, 
 fatalists of the saloon, people that protest that because 
 we always have had drink-shops we must always have 
 them and that we should therefore have the best type 
 obtainable. These are as Prof. Forel intimates, minds 
 caught in contemporary modes of thinking which can- 
 not save with great effort of imagination or without 
 personal experience visualise the developments of the 
 future. 
 
 Now in the first place with these dilettante re- 
 formers as a storming column would there be any 
 hope of obtaining the Gothenburg System against a 
 powerfully intrenched alcohol capital? Not a bit. It 
 would be like expecting a triumph of Icelandic arms 
 over Prussian. 
 
 These excellent people who, one is sometimes 
 tempted to think, imagine themselves the wise spoken 
 of in the proverb whose mission it is to correct the 
 mistakes of the good, will of themselves never be able 
 to foist the System upon us. The real danger is lest 
 they climb to success on the shoulders of the fighting 
 prohibitionists and in that way retard or sterilize an 
 impending prohibition victory. When state after state 
 has adopted prohibition, when federal interstate legis- 
 lation has made possible its rigid enforcement, when 
 
122 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 the congressional representation of prohibition states 
 now in the majority begins to reach forward to com- 
 plete and final victory, then we are likely to hear much 
 about the System. The brewers who have opposed it 
 hitherto will now look upon it as the last possible 
 vaccine against the "dry" plague. Side by side with 
 them will fight the mass of what Dr. Koppe^^^ calls 
 "Alkoholophags," those anti-social epicures who refuse 
 to surrender for the common weal any table pleasure 
 however injurious to themselves. When to these ele- 
 ments are joined the numberless slow men who dislike 
 the quick and thorough methods of political idealism 
 the danger time will have come for the prohibition 
 movement.^2^ The Russian novelist Garschin has 
 written a parable of a palm in a hot house which 
 strove to reach the sun and grew passionately to that 
 end. Finally it touched the top and broke through the 
 glass roof only to freeze and die in the raw air outside. 
 
 (O In his brilliant essay "Das Alkoholsiechtum und die 
 Kurzlebikeit des modernen Menschengeschlechts," p. 34, an 
 essay of almost sibylHne power that should be solemnly pon- 
 dered by all who would see the civilized races saved from 
 ruin. 
 
 (2) At the date of writing we have an example of this 
 danger. By the county option law a large part of Oregon 
 is cleared of drinksellers. The prohibitionists now are plan- 
 ning to obtain a state law by means of the initiative. The 
 Gothenburg System for Portland is offered as a counter pro- 
 posal with a guarantee of ten years undisturbed existence. 
 At the end of that time the brewers would hope for a return 
 of private or rather brewery-mortgaged sale again. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 123 
 
 But prohibitionists must see to it that their powerful 
 social reform does not meet a similar fate in any at- 
 mosphere of specious compromise. 
 
 For we are as yet hardly able to realize how im- 
 mensely weighty this great reform is. That will come 
 only when a couple of generations shall have passed 
 after its triumph and its full economic and hygienic 
 effect shall have begun to be visible. Lecky remarked 
 that the habit of gin drinking which came from the 
 Netherlands with the English soldiery as leprosy 'from 
 the East with the Crusaders was the most momentous 
 fact in i8th century English history, — incomparably 
 more momentous than anything in the political or 
 military annals of the country. Dr. Bresler, the editor 
 of the "Internationale Psychiatrisch - neurologische 
 Wochenschrift" gives the movement against alcohol 
 an equally significant place in contemporary history. 
 In his essay "Alkohol auch in geringen Mengen 
 Gift" (p. 6) he says. "After some decades of toil- 
 some investigation men of science, especially physiolo- 
 gists and psychologists, have, thanks to the exact 
 methods employed, come to the positive, irrefutable 
 result that alcohol is under all circumstances, in small 
 as well as in great quantities, a poison for the body. 
 This knowledge will have for civilization an im- 
 portance equal to the discovery of micro-organisms, 
 indeed an incomparably greater importance, since in 
 spite of our knowledge of bacteria we stand at present 
 practically powerless against them, which is not the 
 case with alcohol poison. I do not hesitate to put this 
 
124 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 revolution of opinion as to alcohol on a higher plane of 
 importance than that which the Reformation occupies 
 in the minds of Protestants." 
 
 The truth of these words makes it not only unwise 
 to stop at any compromise, but also impossible. The 
 war on the Welt-Narkotikum has already attained a 
 momentum too great to be halted at this point by any 
 armistice. The idea of prohibition is in itself in- 
 trinsically reasonable. Peoples' minds are beginning to 
 get accustomed to it. There is a tremendous power 
 of mass suggestion in the continuous statement of a 
 clear-cut, radical principle. Year after year Mr. 
 Villiers made in the House of Commons his motion for 
 "Total and Immediate Repeal." At first he was ridi- 
 culed as an impossible idealist, then bitterly fought. 
 At last however reluctant opponents turned to advo- 
 cates and champions. The battle against license laws 
 which prohibitionists have fought so unwaveringly will 
 end like that against the corn-laws. Already there are 
 many signs that **the might," to use Boerne's phrase, 
 "is being mobilized behind the right." The action of 
 American railroads, the weight of business interests, 
 the moral enthusiasm of the Christian church, the 
 proofs of European scientific research, the sympathies 
 of social democracy — all these are being thrown in the 
 scale for prohibition. Even the politicians are be- 
 ginning to line up with us. Hitherto they have been in 
 America mortally afraid of oflFending the politico-alco- 
 hol interest. They have acted for a generation as the 
 mandarins of Moukden who shifted the railway for 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 125 
 
 fear lest the sleeper spikes should strike into the 
 vertebrae of the underground dragon which encircles 
 the city. Now they are waking up to the fact that the 
 alcohol dragon is less to be feared than the resolute 
 multitudes that are out after its hide. This marks the 
 beginning of the end. 
 
 A gifted student^^^ of history writing of America's 
 role in the modern world has said: 
 
 "In the eighteenth century the fundamental new 
 beginnings the race had made on the other side of the 
 Atlantic had an incalculable effect on the thought of 
 Europe. When the incubus of ancient institutions, 
 feudal monarchies, hereditary privileges, and a perse- 
 cuting church, seemed intolerable it was perhaps 
 mainly the spectacle of America that encouraged 
 Europeans."^'^ 
 
 The great growth of American wealth and its con- 
 centration in the hands of the unscrupulous and 
 frivolous have put us for the time being out of the 
 place of leadership. But a new opportunity is on us. 
 While France is not only herself heading straight to 
 the pit of absinthe, but using her politico - financial 
 power to bind the Scandinavian states in the chain of 
 alcoholism, while England stands helpless before an 
 impassable wall, — malt-lords, land-lords and "lords 
 spiritous" having thrown out with scorn the bill of 
 1908, while Russia is saturated, Germany saturated, 
 Belgium supersaturated, we in America stand face to 
 
 (O Prof. J. R. Seelye, "Growth of British Policy." 
 
126 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 face with an opportunity which ought to put us in the 
 forefront of moral civilization and with it of natiofial 
 power. In 1910 it really looks as if the people had 
 the poison capital in a corner and a clutch on its 
 throat. Certainly nothing would hearten the brave 
 anti-alcohol party in Europe more than a complete 
 'triumph of their ideas in America. And that lies 
 within the range of possibility. 
 
 At this favorable conjuncture prohibition would be 
 far more easily obtained than any wide application of 
 compromise plans such as the Gothenburg System rep- 
 resents. Its advocates have but to strike at the manu- 
 facture through the national congress to paralyze the 
 whole business. The sale, illegal as well as legal, 
 would then dry up of itself. Here are the steps: 
 
 1st. Combined with the widest application of the 
 local option principle a national control of the manu- 
 facture preliminary to its extinction. This to consist 
 of two features : 
 
 a. Federal excise officials to keep accurate records 
 of all shipments. If any are made to prohibitory areas, 
 directly or indirectly, the brewery or distillery to lose 
 its right of manufacture. 
 
 b. Interstate use of the railroads refused to the 
 manufacturers of alcoholic beverages. Each^ state to 
 manufacture its own poison. 
 
 This would make local option and state prohibition 
 automatically self-enforcing and would lead later to 
 
 2. A national law prohibiting the manufacture and 
 sale. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 127 
 
 Lastly to make any ideal reform effective a better 
 type of executive is required in our municipalities. 
 The condition precedent to this is an electorate en- 
 larged in one direction, purged in another. Womens' 
 political emancipation will have an immediate moraliz- 
 ing effect on the political life of the.nation. Side by 
 side with this should go a disenfranchisement of the 
 criminal classes. On the European continent the gen- 
 eral practice in passing judgment on a criminal is to 
 fine or imprison with the temporary loss of civil rights. 
 The introduction of this practice into the United 
 States would give a tremendous uplift to all strivings 
 for social improvement and political honesty. We 
 would suggest: 
 
 1. That all who are convicted of buying or selling 
 votes lose the right of voting permanently. 
 
 2. That all convicted of criminal offenses lose the 
 suffrage temporarily — for five or eight or ten years, 
 according to the gravity of the offense. 
 
 3. That as long as licenses are given for selling 
 drink, holders of such licenses should besides paying 
 the usual license fees lose civil rights until the license 
 lapses. This would make the seller more than ever a 
 pariah and cut out his malign influence from our po- 
 litical life. 
 
 Such legislation would not be difficult to obtain in 
 those states which have the initiative and referendum. 
 It would not be impossible to obtain in very many 
 other states. Its effect would be twofold, — first to re- 
 move the entire criminal and drinkselling class from 
 
128 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 political life; secondly to stiffen immensely the po- 
 litical independence and to improve the moral quality 
 of our local administrators. And this it is which is 
 chiefly needed to make prohibition a complete success. 
 
 By working along some such lines the American 
 people will be able to light a beacon for the alcohol- 
 sick nations. But to attempt to set it ablaze with the 
 System would be like trying, in Walpole's words, "to 
 light a fire with a wet dish-clout."* 
 
 ********** 
 
 I am writing these concluding sentences in one of 
 the high valleys of Norway with a noble landscape all 
 about. It has been raining heavily for several hours, 
 but the clouds have now lifted. I noticed some minutes 
 ago a black spot on the green hill-side a half-mile 
 away and asked a servant what it was. 
 
 "A man, apparently," came the reply. 
 
 "What! and lying out in this drenching rain?" 
 
 "Yes, he came up from Lillehammer (where the 
 nearest Samlag is located), stumbled off the train and 
 has been flat on his face ever since." 
 
 How many such block blotches has this particular 
 Samlag cast out today, I wonder? 
 
 I pick up a Christiania daily for relief. The first 
 thing that attracts my attention is an account of a 
 drunken woman's arrest. "It took two policemen to 
 handle her" wrote the reporter. "She had in her arms 
 a child wholly naked." 
 
 * The rapid extension of the initiative and referendum 
 will put a weapon of incomparable effectiveness into the 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 129 
 
 hands of American anti-alcoholists. But it must be used with 
 more regard to strategic considerations than in the ill-fated 
 'all or nothing' Missouri campaign of 1910. 
 
 The great difficulty of making the transition from local 
 option to state prohibition in three-fourths of the states of 
 the Union is the presence in each of these states of one or 
 two large cities where the law against sale would probably 
 be to a greater or less degree nullified. The strength of the 
 drink-shop in these centres rests in the backing of the brew- 
 ery which owns it and which by political and financial con- 
 nections is able to protect it from the law officers. 
 
 In view of this situation it is a question whether the at- 
 tack should not be made primarily on the alcohol capital, the 
 sale in the great centres being for the moment disregarded. 
 County option in many states has cleared the drink-shop out 
 of the country and smaller towns and has given the temper- 
 ance party a hold on state legislatures. If to county option 
 as to sale were coupled state prohibition of the manufacture, 
 the way would be cleared for a successful treatment of the 
 saloon in the cities. 
 
 Such a plan should however be a concerted one. We 
 would suggest the simultaneous year-after-year introduction 
 of prohibition of manufacture laws into all the legislatures. 
 Secondly the annual placing of a prohibition of manufacture 
 proposal before the people of the referendum states. Thous- 
 ands of conservative temperance men who would balk at the 
 idea of putting Louisville or St. Louis or Baltimore or Bos- 
 ton under a general prohibition law would gladly vote for the 
 closing down of the manufacture in their respective states — 
 especially if they knew it to be part of a concerted national 
 movement to this end. The ancient ungrammatical argument, 
 "prohibition don't prohibit," would have no cogency here for 
 the federal government remorselessly crushes out small illegal 
 distilling and the great brewers would never risk the confis- 
 cation of their plants by violating such a law. This plan 
 carried on year after year until it had generally succeeded 
 
130 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 would keep the agitation at white heat. Its success in a 
 half dozen states where the manufacture is largely concen- 
 trated would paralyze the national drink interests. It is a 
 policy, too, on which temperance radicals who think local 
 option "too local and too optional" could join with temper- 
 ance conservatives who look upon state prohibition of sale 
 as premature. The referendum would enable us to keep at it 
 until we won. 
 
 In view of the strong pro-prohibition decisions of the 
 supreme court it is doubtful if any objection to this policy 
 of prohibition by piecemeal would be raised in the courts. 
 The brewers have declared with characteristic impudence 
 in their official organ that they "will sell beer wherever the 
 profits are greater than the risks" and have boasted again 
 and again that they have broken down local option laws. 
 Their suppression therefore could be defended before the 
 courts as a necessary law enforcement measure. It should 
 not to be forgotten, either, in this connection that the modern 
 alcohol investigation has deprived the brewery of its single 
 possible justification as supplying a legitimate demand for 
 limited use. The old 'moderation' argument is knocked in the 
 head for ever. The brewery consequently stands naked and 
 bare as an unmitigated nuisance. Court decisions taking this 
 fact into consideration can hardly be more lenient than in the 
 past. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Prohibition During the Swedish General Strike of igog. 
 
 October i, 1909. 
 The death warrant for the Gothenburg System is 
 out at last. "Since the abolition of home distilleries in 
 1855," says "Verdandisten," "no event in the Swedish 
 temperance movement has been so important as the 
 five weeks of prohibition during the general strike of 
 
 1909" 
 
 The French make a distinction between "reforms" 
 and "reformettes." If the Gothenburg System is not a 
 positively evil thing as the writer believes it to be, the 
 best that can be said of it is that it belongs in the latter 
 category. 
 
 But prohibition is a reform of the first magnitude, 
 of the profoundest beneficence, and no more cogent evi- 
 dence of the fact has ever accumulated than that which 
 the weeks of the Swedish strike have given the world. 
 
 The saloon is usually the best strike-breaker. It 
 reduces the strikers' resources and discredits his 
 cause with riot and disorder. It was therefore a sur- 
 prise to many that the Swedish government should 
 have taken the precaution to close the drink shops 
 when the general strike broke out. The probable ex- 
 planation lies in the fact that distinctly anarchistic 
 elements smoulder in the left wing of the Swedish 
 
132 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 socialist party. The dynamite at Malmo, the agita- 
 tion of Hinke Bergegren, above all the recent assas- 
 sination of Gen. Beckmann in Kungstragarden, 
 warned "the upper classes" that it were best for the 
 time being to dispense with alcohol. 
 
 "As long as only the women and children of 
 drunkards were hammered," remarked a laborer, 
 "they shrugged their shoulders. When their own 
 hides were threatened the drinkshops quickly closed." 
 
 The results were immediate. Drunkenness dis- 
 appeared as by magic. The Swedish papers read like 
 a supplementary chapter in "Looking Backward." 
 "It seems incredible," writes the "Karlstad Tidning" 
 — "almost unreal! For eight days the jail has stood 
 empty. It is as if one had moved to a Karlstad of 
 later centuries when the fancies of the temperance 
 party had at last realized themselves." "An intoxicat- 
 ed person," says Soderhamns Tidning," "appeared 
 Friday on the streets. The unusual sight occasioned 
 general remark and he was stared at as if he were a 
 strange animal. The man himself appeared embar- 
 rassed at the general attention he received." And 
 "Svenska Dagbladet," Sweden's premier newspaper, 
 in the same vein under the caption, "A Strange Oc-. 
 currence," says: "At the Katrina (Stockholm) sta- 
 tion a man was brought in drunk. He is the second 
 since prohibition went into effect three weeks before." 
 
 Dr. Ivan Bratt writing in "Dagens Nyheter" 
 (neither writer nor paper are prohibitionist) says : 
 "When one goes through the streets of Stockholm 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 133 
 
 one would think one in another country. Our infalli- 
 ble national symbols, unsteady gait and resounding 
 oaths, are no longer perceived. The police have noth- 
 ing to do and the court average of fifty drunks a day 
 has sunk to just one! One knows oneself no longer! 
 One asks. Can it go on so? These two weeks have 
 brought much water to the prohibitionist mill." 
 
 After two days of prohibition "Goteborgs 
 "Handels-Tidning," the great paper of west Sweden, 
 remarked : ''The most striking thing thus far has been 
 the complete absence of drunkenness. The contrast in 
 Jarntorget (in Gothenburg) before and after the en- 
 actment of prohibition has been unmistakeable. Satur- 
 day, Sunday and Monday evenings the section swarm- 
 ed with people in a greater or less degree intoxicated. 
 The day following one looked in vain for such. The 
 police gave the same testimony. In three police dis- 
 tricts not an arrest was made and in the fourth but 
 one." "Goteborgs-Posten" adds, "Only ten drunks 
 during fifteen days of the strike. Twenty-five a day 
 is a common thing when the drinkshops are open. In 
 the Haga district instead of the usual eight or ten 
 only one person is in jail. The chief of police says 
 that in 22 years he never experienced anything like 
 this." 
 
 "Aftonbladet" (Stockholm) : "Thanks to prohibi- 
 tion only one person last night in the whole city was 
 arrested. Such a thing never happened before." 
 "Svenska Morgenbladet :" "Thousands are idle on 
 the streets, yet not a single arrest for drunkenness was 
 
134 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 made yesterday." "Dagbladet:" "Stockholmers are 
 astonished to find that punch and grog play a less im- 
 portant role in their life than they had supposed." 
 ''Dagens Nyheter:" "People sit quietly in the pool 
 rooms drinking coflfee and lemonade. One can go from 
 one end of the city to the other without seeing a sign 
 of an intoxicated person. At Jakob (parish) police- 
 station no arrests; Maria, none; Johannes, none; 
 Kungsholm, only one ; Katrina, one. Such model con- 
 duct the police of the last named parish hardly ever 
 saw. One realizes that under such a system the 
 Swedish people can really be admirable and not ill- 
 tempered as so often." 
 
 From the provincial cities came the same story. 
 ''Norrkopings-Tidning" writes: **Near the post-office 
 was a solitary policeman. When we accosted him he 
 seemed like one awakened out of a stupor of astonish- 
 ment at the admirable conduct of people. 'That is be- 
 cause they can get no alcohol. See how quiet it is. 
 Usually in the evenings one constantly sees men in a 
 more or less advanced stage of intoxication collected 
 on the street corners, swearing and quarreling and 
 fighting. Now we have nothing to do and since Tues- 
 day the jail has been empty. One could wish the 
 strike could go on forever. At least one can realize 
 the blessings of prohibition. It ought to be perma- 
 nent. The community would then be spared trouble, 
 misery and poverty.' " 
 
 "Nerikes Tidning:" "From July 30 to August 26, 
 about one month, only nine persons have been ar- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 135 
 
 rested in Orebro, none of them for drunkenness. In 
 the same period 1908, 92 persons were arrested, of 
 whom 80 were for drunkenness. Between the 2nd 
 and 29th of July, the month preceding prohibition, 100 
 arrests were made, 84 of which were for drunkenness. 
 What do these figures say? They cry out *away with 
 drink.' " 
 
 "Eskilstuna Kuriren:" "Thanks to prohibition 
 not a single arrest for drunkenness has taken place in 
 the city (Eskiltuna is a steel manufacturing center.) 
 The jail is empty save for two tramps who had no 
 place to lodge." 
 
 **Arboga Tidning:" "Only one intoxicated person 
 has been seen since the strike began." "In five weeks," 
 comes the report from Hudviksvall, "only one person 
 before the court for drunkenness. Usually we have 
 very many every Monday morning." 
 
 But there was further a sympathetic fall in ar- 
 rests for other crimes.* The Solleftea police report for 
 
 *Dr. Blocher of Basel, who was on the ground at the 
 time, calls attention to this parallel decline in general crim- 
 inality. The whole number of crimes registered in the Stock- 
 holm police court in August 1908 (drunkenness being excluded 
 from consideration) was 530; in August 1909, 268. Of thefts 
 412 and 196 respectively. Increased security of property in 
 spite of increased insecurity in social conditions and in spite 
 of rising economic need. 
 
 Internat. Monatschrift zur Erforschung des Alkoholis- 
 mus. Dec. 1909, pp. 454-456. 
 
 The prohibition days of the Finnish general strike in 
 1905 were marked by the same absence of crime. Dr. Helenius 
 
136 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 August recorded not an arrest for ordinary crime, but 
 three for violation of prohibition. The preceding 
 month there were 42 arrests for drunkenness and 20 
 for other crimes. August 26, "National Kuriren" re- 
 ported that "the Gothenburg police court of the pre- 
 ceding week had but one case to try. This was the 
 minimum record in the court's history." Of the Stock- 
 holm police court "Svenska Morgenbladet" remarked 
 (i6th August) : "An exceptionally short session, 
 Saturday, in the police court. There were nine per- 
 sons charged and the court closed in 20 minutes. The 
 most of these committed their offenses before the 
 strike began. The usual number of criminals dealt 
 with runs up to a hundred." 
 
 In Norrkoping the public prosecutor received on 
 the 7th of September, a pair of white gloves from the 
 
 says of Helsingfors: "During the whole strike week 
 there was but one single drunk person who had to be lodged 
 in the police station. There was not a single case of theft, 
 not a single fight, not a single instance of coarse conduct, 
 although the whole city every night was veiled in complete 
 darkness and during many nights and days there was not a 
 single policeman in service. And what was more important, 
 in spite of the restlessness and discord between the parties 
 not a drop of blood was shed during the whole strike. The 
 result of this experience was an almost unanimous adoption 
 of a prohibition law in 1907. When the news of its passage 
 came a general illumination took place throughout the 
 country. In many places schools were closed, thanksgiving 
 services were held in the churches and popular festivals in- 
 stituted everywhere." 
 
 Internat. Monatschrift, April, 1910, p. 106. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 137 
 
 judge (a symbol of a clean court). Not a case was re- 
 ported, a thing which had not happened for twenty-eight 
 years. And from the newspaper of little Sigtuna we 
 get this :— "It has been so calm and peaceful here since 
 Swedish potato water (i. e. spirits) was put under lock 
 and key that one could think Sigtuna a garden of the 
 Lord." 
 
 The temperance paper "National Kuriren" of 
 Gothenburg is wont to publish weekly, a column in 
 which are collected the week's crimes, accidents, deaths 
 and the like to the credit of the Gothenburg System 
 drinkshops. It is a striking fact that during the five 
 weeks of prohibition this column disappeared altogeth- 
 er from its accustomed place. There was simply no 
 material to fill it. 
 
 A writer in "Stockholms Tidning" says : — "My own 
 conviction is that prohibition has been the keeper of 
 the peace (it must be always remembered that 200,000 
 angry men were out on strike in all the Swedish towns 
 and cities) in a far greater degree than police and mili- 
 tary. All are delighted with it especially the wives of 
 workingmen. 'This is the best of all,' they say. 'Would 
 that the drinkshops never opened again.' " And in the 
 same strain a reporter quoted in "Verdandisten" re- 
 marked : — "A wife of a day laborer said to me 'Such a 
 blessed strike ! May it go on forever ! I have not been 
 so happy since I was married. I aways trembled when 
 my man came home lest he strike me or the children. 
 Now I have no anxiety ; whether he come early or late 
 he is always sober and the kindest man in the world.* 
 
138 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 That was her little temperance speech and who could 
 want a better?" 
 
 "The animals, too, if they were not like the women 
 without the franchise would doubtless vote 'dry' with 
 the women. A correspondent in 'Nerikes Tidning' 
 writes : — 'We get a very good impression from the 
 people who come driving back from Orebro on our 
 roads in the evenings nowadays. Before the strike 
 they drove furiously, whipping their horses unmerci- 
 fully. Now the same persons come at a reasonable 
 pace without torturing their horses. What has made 
 the difiference? Prohibition/" 
 
 Some of the good things which a longer period of 
 prohibition would undoubtedly bring are suggested by 
 the two following notes. 
 
 "Sundsvalls Posten" (Sep. 14) under the heading, 
 "Poverty and the Great Strike," remarks : "The guard- 
 ians of the poor of this city were astonishingly little af- 
 fected by the strike. Even now after its close the num- 
 ber of applicants for help is considerably less than last 
 year when conditions were normal. It has not been so 
 quiet at the relief bureau for a long time. This is chief- 
 ly due to prohibition. Money has gone for food and 
 clothes. Many poor families in this strike time have 
 clothed their children as they were unable to do when 
 their men were working." 
 
 And this, which may be merely coincidental, is 
 nevertheless interesting. "The mortality in Stock- 
 holm during the first week of the strike (Aug. 8-I-1) 
 has been the lowest in the history of the city — 8.7 per 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 139 
 
 thousand. The average for the same week in the past 
 ten years has been 13.4 per thousand." 
 
 "Sweden is the Eldorado of temperance," writes 
 one. "The French and English correspondents who 
 come here to find 'copy' during the great strike are in 
 desperation over the universal quiet. 'How shall I in- 
 terest my dear Parisians?' exclaimed Mons. Sestedt of 
 the sensational 'Matin.' That this was the fruit of prohibi- 
 tion a telegram in 'Stockholm's Tidning' clearly indi- 
 cates. It was from Helsingor (the Elsinore of Hamlet) a 
 city in Denmark a short ferry-ride from the Swedish 
 Helsingborg. "The city with its open drink-shops has a 
 singular appearance. Great numbers of drunken Swedes 
 are to be seen, strikers who have come over from Hels- 
 ingborg to quench their thirst. The steamer crossing 
 gives the same picture. The magistrates of the Swed- 
 ish city have requested those of the Danish city to 
 shut their drink-shops during the strike. " 
 
 The statistic of alcohol taxes gives the reason for 
 the sudden and extraordinary social improvement in- 
 dicated in the above notes. During the month of pro- 
 hibition the state's share of the usual Bolag spoil 
 shrank something like two and a half million kroner. 
 The official report of the strike estimates that the en- 
 tire saving to the Swedish people during the prohibi- 
 tion weeks amounted to about twelve million kroner. 
 For five weeks at least the Swedish proletariat escaped 
 the crushing economic burden which the System lays 
 on their shoulders.* 
 
140 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 "Our experience of prohibition," says the "Boras 
 Dagblad" has proved once for all : 
 
 "That the cry about substitute drinks in a prohibi- 
 tion community (denatured spirits and the like) is a 
 false one. 
 
 "That illicit sale under prohibition is a mere ba- 
 gatelle compared with the legal sale. 
 
 * Redogorelse for lockouterna och storstreiken i Sverige 
 ar 1909. Arbetsstatistik. A, 9. On page 223 it is remarked 
 that "this saving helped the strikers measurably in holding 
 out as long as they did.* 
 
 But this is not the only way in which alcohol is revealed 
 as a potent weapon with which to exploit the proletariat. In 
 a well-known passage in "Das Judenthum in Gegenwart und 
 Zukunft" Eduard von Hartmann remarks that "the checking 
 by legislative means of national drunkenness (in Germany) 
 would enable our people in a single generation to compete 
 with the temperate Jews. These propositions are fought by 
 the Jews not because they are eo ipso anti-Jewish but be- 
 cause they would limit the fields of Jewish parasitism." We 
 have called attention to the active leadership which Lord 
 Rothschild has taken in the fight against restrictive legisla- 
 tion in England. The Judeo-capitalist press is constantly 
 launching rumors of war and embittering the nations against 
 each other. Armaments mean loans; war means the destruc- 
 tion of capital, the rising of rates and the tightening of the 
 control of the international money market in a few hands. 
 But the mass consumption of alcoholica acts as an incessant 
 and destructive war. One can imagine the tremendous cheap- 
 ening of capital which would result from a few years of pro- 
 hibition in the United States not to speak of the world at 
 large. It is not hard to understand therefore why there is so 
 much solicitude about "the poor man's beer" in certain 
 quarters. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM . 141 
 
 "That the temperance fanatics are right in their 
 contention that drink causes practically all offences 
 against public order. 
 
 "That citizens almost without exception accept 
 loyally the prohibition enactment. 
 
 "That drunkenness disappears so that a reeling 
 person becomes a matter of remark." 
 
 And the"Handels-Tidning"of Gothenburg (a paper 
 of the standing of the "New York Tribune") expresses 
 a wish "that the remarkable prohibition experiment 
 with its admirable results in lowering crime to an un- 
 precedented point, drunkenness practically disappear- 
 ing altogether, be continued some weeks after the 
 strike closes. Its good results have been unmistake- 
 able. The violations of law which are generally pre- 
 dicted under a prohibitory regime have not occurred 
 to any noticeable extent. As was to be foreseen the 
 Swedish apothecaries are of too high a standing to en- 
 gage, as American druggists do in illegal sale and the 
 Swedish police government too strong and too little 
 accessible to lawless influences to be befooled in its ex- 
 ecution of the law. It has been now experimentally 
 demonstrated that at least local option prohibition 
 could be introduced to the great advantage of society." 
 
 Other papers express the same opinion. "Ostgot- 
 en" of Linkoping says : — ^^"Now that the great blessing 
 of prohibition has been proved it were desirable that 
 it never be taken from us. We no longer see on the 
 streets poor creatures lowered by drink to beasts. The 
 police are saved trouble, the state needs no longer to 
 
142 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 support drunkards in prisons and these latter have 
 their money in their pockets. How happy a thing if 
 this could go on forever." 
 
 And again (Aug. 2y) : — "As a result of experimen- 
 tal trial the shortest and easiest way to the permanent 
 adoption of prohibition must be considered as an ex- 
 tremely suitable and attractive proposition. All 
 doubts as to its desirability are now done away with 
 for good and with them the chief hinderance to the 
 realization of this great idea." 
 
 The great change of sentiment in regard to pro- 
 hibition has been reflected not merely by the press. 
 The socialist temperance lodges report unusually large 
 accessions as a result of the educating influence of the 
 prohibition period. Great demonstrations in favor of 
 permanent prohibition have taken place. We note 
 among others, those in Ostersund (2,000 people), 
 Skara (2,500), Mora (2,000), Linkoping (2,000), Orebro 
 (1,000), Gavle (3,000 strikers), Trelleborg (1,500), 
 Norrkoping (4,000), Halmstad (1,500), Gothenburg 
 (1,500), Solleftea (700), etc., etc. Most extraordinary 
 of all is the fact that the state churches have been 
 opened to prohibition meetings. The Swedish state 
 church has in the past been as little accessible to moral 
 movements as state churches elsewhere. Yet meet- 
 ings in demand of continued prohibition have been 
 held in e. g. Hernosand Cathedral, in Hedvig Kyrka in 
 Norrkoping, in Kopparbarg, Hjo, Karlstad (cathe- 
 dral), in Askersand and the other parishes of Strang- 
 nas, in Holm, Skallerud, Rising, etc., etc. In Lulea 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 143 
 
 prohibition demonstrations have been held in twelve 
 parish churches. 
 
 The most significant of all these prohibition meet- 
 ings, however, has been that of 25,000 strikers at 
 Hornsbargshdga (just out of Stockholm) which de- 
 clared unanimously for prohibition. This was no 
 piece of momentary enthusiasm. It was preceded by 
 two sessions of the entire leadership of the Stockholm 
 Trades Unions at which the whole subject was care- 
 fully considered from every point of view. 
 
 The manifesto put forth was adopted later at oth- 
 er strike meetings all over Sweden. It practically com- 
 mits Swedish organized labor to prohibition and is a 
 veritable Declaration of Independence. It reads in 
 part as follows: 
 
 "The immediate, magnificent and to many unex- 
 pected results of this provisional and incomplete pro- 
 hibitory enactment have astonished the world. Drunk- 
 enness has ceased and with it the accidents and 
 crimes which are a consequence of drunkenness. The 
 drink-seller's till which hitherto has been filled with 
 the money of poor men is empty. 
 
 "Shall this attractive picture fade away? Will 
 Swedish working people allow without protest the 
 alcohol capital again to throw its octopus arms around 
 ten thousands of Swedish fellow citizens? Will they 
 consent that thousands of Swedish men and women 
 be sacrificed on the altar of the Alcohol Moloch, — 
 that Swedish working people be plundered in the fu- 
 ture as in the past of 100 million kroner yearly, that 
 
144 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 society through this legalized drink trade hold the pro- 
 letariat down in ignorance, poverty, and social-polit- 
 ical weakness? 
 
 "Or is it not rather right that just in these days 
 when the entire working class of Sweden stands in 
 battle line that we declare we will no longer tolerate 
 a business of which the chief purpose is the ruin of the* 
 workers. The results of such a declaration may 
 not be immediate legislative action, but a united dem- 
 onstration on the part of the entire working class will 
 certainly reach all ears and be effective in many ways. 
 
 "The Finnish people, Iceland, and nine of the 
 United States have already stamped the drink busi- 
 ness as a social enemy. It is now the proud duty of 
 the Swedish workmen to put themselves at the head 
 of this world emancipating movement. In so doing 
 they will at this historic moment write one of the nob- 
 lest pages in Swedish history and will earn the bless- 
 ing of succeeding generations. 
 
 "Comrades, let us drop all unnecessary discussion. 
 Let us rally to the great task of our emancipation. The 
 way to this emancipation goes through drink prohibi- 
 bition, effective and permanent. Forward to this end 
 in all parts of Sweden." 
 
 Papers and people, trades unions and churches all 
 over the land asked for a continuance of the prohibi- 
 tion arrangement at least until the depleting effects of 
 the economic struggle were in some degree repaired. 
 
 A delegation even besought the king to use his 
 influence to this end. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 145 
 
 All in vain. The friends of the System in the ad- 
 ministration, in "the trade," in the circles of the rich 
 bourgeoisie and aristocracy hurried to open up again 
 lest their profit-bringing, tax-paying institution should 
 be doomed forever. But re-opening only added furth- 
 er proof of the enormous superiority of the Reform 
 over the Reformette. It was the end of a good dream, 
 Tinker Sly coming back to hard, gray reality — this 
 return to "normal conditions." 
 
 "Svenska Morgenbladet," the second day after the 
 re-opening of the alcohol saison in Stockholm, reports : 
 "The cessation of prohibition soon made itself felt. 
 The number of arrests has jumped fifteen fold." 
 Gothenburg's "Handels Tidning" gave the police report 
 for Gothenburg as follows: 
 
 "August, 1908, 647 arrests for drunkenness. 
 
 August, 1909, 113 arrests for drunkenness. 
 
 September 1-7, 1909, 3 arrests. 
 
 September 8-19, 1909, 259 arrests." 
 
 "Ornskioldsviks Allehanda," describing the situa- 
 tion in its little town during prohibition said : — "It has 
 hardly ever before been so peaceful here. The mili- 
 tary sent to keep order has had nothing to do except 
 to look after itself. The cause of all this is the new 
 prohibition order. Not a person in jail since its adop- 
 tion." 
 
 The same paper writing on the day following re- 
 opening said: — "Within two hours after prohibition 
 ceased the Company shop had taken in 700 kroner and 
 the jail opened for five disorderlies." 
 
146 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Enkoping reopens its drink-shop. The next day 
 three young men are taken to the empty jail. 
 
 Ulricehamn: "All was quiet and still during the 
 prohibition weeks. Yesterday the saloons re-opened 
 and at night there were nine drunks in jail." 
 
 In Lund the first day of opening 20 drunks ! The 
 police declared that on this day they had more to 
 do than during the five strike weeks. In Gothenburg 
 according to "Goteborgs-Posten," "the police have 
 rarely seen so much drunkenness. Persons were taken 
 to jail so drunk that on the following day only were 
 they able to give their names." On the single first 
 day the System shops opened in Gothenburg there 
 were 53 drunks! In prohibition August there were 
 but 113, most of which were to be set down to the 
 first three days when the System's shops were 
 running. In Orebro when the drink-shops were opened 
 up the wage-workers of the city petitioned the magis- 
 trates not to allow the System's agents to send drink 
 on order into homes. The magistracy refused ! In 
 this city according to "Nerikes Tidning^' there were in 
 1908, 127 persons arrested in the weeks corresponding 
 to the strike period of 1909. In the 1909 strike week 
 there were but 19 arrests brought before the court. On 
 the first day of the System's re-opening eleven drunks 
 were lodged in jail and one case of delirium tremens 
 reported. 
 
 The usual crop of accidents followed in the wake 
 of the System's renewal of activity. "Goteborgs Post- 
 en" recounts them. An intoxicated man tumbles off 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 147 
 
 Stora-Otterhallen (a high place in Gothenburg) and is 
 found dead later. A laborer is discovered dead in a 
 flat boat in Barnhusviken (cause alcohol poisoning). 
 A serious railway accident near Malmo : — cause, drunk- 
 en engineer, etc. * 
 
 But the friends of the System simply will not see 
 it. After the strike was declared off a meeting was 
 held of the Stockholm city council to consider the need 
 
 * From an interview with a Salvation Slum Sister. 
 
 "The women of the poor were delighted. Men who for- 
 merly were wont to be at home neither night nor day and 
 when they did come were such a terror to wife and children 
 that these were forced to flee to neighbors were absolutely 
 changed persons under prohibition. When they went off with 
 their families on excursions in the woods about Stockholm in 
 strike days the children could hardly realize that these were 
 their own fathers." 
 
 When asked if the reopening of the System's man-traps 
 had made itself felt in her work, she replied, "Yes," — that 
 several cases of fathers' taking and selling children's clothes 
 for drink had come to her ears. One woman for whom the 
 slum sister had received a warm dress did not dare to wear it 
 but had had it locked up in a neighbor's closet. Her husband 
 had struck and abused her in order to get it to sell. During 
 the strike much clothing had gone through her hands for 
 strikers' families. Since the System's shops had reopened 
 there were many reports of the pawning of these things by 
 drunken fathers. 
 
 One case mentioned was especially interesting. A coun- 
 try laborer having saved a little money took a trip to Stock- 
 holm during the first week of the strike to "blow it in." But 
 when he got to the city he found that the Gothenburg shops 
 were all closed. At first he hardly knew what to do. Then the 
 
148 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 of employing thirty new policemen (at a yearly cost 
 of 16,000 kroner) within the city limits. Friherr 
 Palmstierna arose and suggested that the cheaper and 
 more effective method for preserving order would be, 
 as the past weeks had shown, to keep the Gothenburg 
 System shops sealed tight. "Instead of this the city 
 govenment had let loose the drink-flood again and the 
 old sights of reeling men and women on the way to 
 pawnshop, drink-shop, prison and asylum met the 
 eye once more." 
 
 And the directors of the drink companies have 
 they learned anything from this experiment? Have 
 they made any correction or improvement or innova- 
 tion in their administration? 
 
 Yes, they have done one thing. The Stockholm 
 management has permanently discharged the 150 men 
 who went out in the general strike and has filled their 
 places with women. I do not know whether this help 
 is cheaper or not. It usually is. It is certain to be 
 more docile. 
 
 As to the hygienic and moral effects of the atmos- 
 phere of the poison-shops on the women, the directors 
 apparently have little or no concern. 
 
 idea struck him of buying new clothes and a pair of shoes. 
 After this he went to the Salvation Army restaurant to get 
 dinner. 
 
 He told his story and what a new experience it was to 
 have new shoes on his feet. The like had not happened for 
 years. He had fifteen kroner in his pocket, too!" 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 149 
 
 June 1st, 1910. 
 
 "The present state of things," writes a leading 
 Swedish physician, "is degrading and decivilising our 
 people. The blood-letting which comes from the great 
 emigration takes our best from us. But what is that 
 besides the injury which the blood-poisoning of those 
 who remain, causes?" 
 
 He may well say it. Under the Gothenburg Sys- 
 tem in 1909 every tenth man in Stockholm between 
 the ages of 18 and 60 was arrested for drunkenness. 
 "The police generally have a stiff job to keep order," 
 wrote a Stockholm policeman at the end of the August 
 days. "It is impossible to arrest all of the intoxicated 
 for we should have no place to lodge them. Those we 
 do take must often be dragged station-ward in the 
 most repulsive way and in their cells their action is 
 that of beasts. But during the prohibition days of 
 August, 1909, there were in Stockholm but sixteen 
 arrests for drunkenness as against 1,545 i^ August, 
 1908." * 
 
 That single statistic has been a clarion call to the 
 
 * There were actually 168 arrests for drunkenness in 
 August, 1909 but 152 of them fell on the first three days be- 
 fore the drinkshops were closed. The 28 prohibition days 
 registered but 16. For all Sweden the arrests for drunken- 
 ness in August 1908 were 5,612; for August 1909, 1,244. But 
 if the arrests for drunkenness for the first three days of Aug- 
 ust throughout Sweden were as relatively numerous as in 
 Stockholm, and this is probable, nine-tenths of the arrests 
 for August, 1909 would have occurred on these three drinking 
 days. 
 
150 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Swedish people and they have answered to it. The 
 "classes," with indecent haste, started the Bolag on its 
 destructive mission again but the nation has protested 
 magnificently against its continued existence. Within 
 six weeks after re-opening, a plebiscite was started on 
 the question of prohibition. Not since the Temporal 
 Power was voted away in 1870 has any institution re- 
 ceived a more crushing popular condemnation than has 
 befallen the Gothenburg System. 
 
 The burden of organizing a non-official vote has 
 been no inconsiderable one. Electoral machinery for 
 a whole nation had to be improvised. But the half 
 million members of Swedish temperance organizations 
 have come up admirably to their task. 
 
 The declaration to which the public was asked 
 to set its name was as follows : 
 
 "We, the undersigned Swedish men and women, 
 realizing the injury to public health and social progress 
 which intoxicants cause, declare it to be our opinion 
 that the time has fully come to take the first steps in 
 the direction of complete and permanent prohibition 
 of their sale in our land." 
 
 To this formula was added a short historical sur- 
 vey. "The greater part of the country districts are 
 already under prohibition. The national legislature 
 has repeatedly commended local option and in 1907 
 passed legislation (defeated however by the upper 
 house) for national prohibition of the sale of spirits. 
 Just recently his Majesty's government has set a com- 
 mission to consider measures for re-adjustment of tax- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 151 
 
 ation in case prohibition become the law of the land. 
 The extraordinarily beneficent results of the five weeks 
 provisional prohibition of this summer are pointed to 
 as an earnest of what a permanent adoption of that 
 policy would mean." 
 
 And the result of the referendum? 
 
 Gothenburg's "Handels-Tidning" declares it the 
 most powerful expression of public opinion which has 
 ever come through private initiative in any land. The 
 great 'extension-of-suffrage' petition of 1907 numbered 
 350,000 names. But the prohibition petition sums up 
 nearly six times as many. The Finnish national pro- 
 test of 1899 which was considered an extraordinary 
 fighting demonstration does not compare with the 
 Swedish prohibition one, even relatively. The econom- 
 ic resources for the work were wholly insufficient but 
 thousands of volunteers made up for shortage of 
 money. 
 
 The Central Statistical Bureau places the whole 
 number of persons in Sweden above eighteen years at 
 3,387,964. Of these one and one quarter million have 
 not been reached by the registration. It is not im- 
 probable that in this category there may be a some- 
 what larger contingent of the indiflferent and hostile but 
 there is no reason to believe that it would be propor- 
 tionately greatly larger. Of the whole number reached 
 i>878,5i9 voted for prohibition. This is 55 per cent of 
 the entire grown population. 16,613 voted against — 
 one-half of one per cent of the adult population. More 
 than one and one-half million persons above eighteen 
 
152 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 years of age who are outside of all temperance organi- 
 zations have declared themselves prohibitionists. In 
 sixty-three Swedish cities excluding Stockholm with 
 a total population of 400,000 over 18 years, 248,690 vot- 
 ed for prohibition and 2,458 against. In Stockholm, 
 the Gibralter of the drink interest, 43.4 per cent of the 
 whole adult population actually registered for prohi- 
 bition. There were 95,446 yes — vs. 6,074 no, with 29,- 
 861 refusing to vote. Of these last 3,637 declared them- 
 selves in favor of prohibition, 6,194 against and 20,034 
 indifferent. In Gothenburg the home of the System 
 47.6 per cent of the entire adult population voted "dry." 
 But one should not conclude from this that the friends 
 of the System are even here in a majority. Quite the 
 contrary. The ratio of signatures obtairusd (and every 
 effort was made to get as complete as possible a regis- 
 tration) was fully one hundred to one in favor of pro- 
 hibition. 
 
 It is not necessary to pile statistic on statistic. One 
 gets an impression of the great strength of prohibition- 
 ist opinion from such statements as that in the prov- 
 ince of Jonkoping, for example, 106,855 voted for pro- 
 hibition and only 836 voted against. In Upsala prov- 
 ince 54,021 for and 478 against; Jamtland 52,029 yes, 
 171 no; Gotland 17,030 yes, 156 no; Varmland 106,697 
 yes, 201 no; Alvsborg 96,264 yes, 815 no; Kopperbarg 
 102, 993 yes, 239 no, and so on. 
 
 One of the most astonishing and delightful sur- 
 prises in connection with this referendum has been the 
 extent to which university influence has favored pro- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 153 
 
 hibition. This is perhaps as much due to the prepara- 
 tory work among Swedish students which has bound 
 together eleven thousand university, gymnasial, poly- 
 technic and other students into the Sveriges Studer- 
 ande Ungdoms Helnykterhetsforbund — an admir- 
 able league of anti-alcohol students — as to the prohi- 
 bition weeks. In the chief university town, Upsala, 
 12,668 voted prohibition and 236 voted against it. Of 
 the students who voted 611 voted for and 114 against. 
 Prof. Frey Svensson the well-known psychiatrist de- 
 scribed alcohol as "the king of poisons,'* the great first 
 cause of national decay and threw his powerful influ- 
 ence to the prohibition side. Prof, Santesson denounced 
 those who selfishly refused to give up their vice for the 
 public good. Prof. Gustav Cassels, the political econ- 
 omist, declared the alcohol capital to be "worthless, 
 wasted, more than that, a positive evil. It is like cap- 
 ital laid down in the construction of a hostile fortress 
 in the heart of our land spreading ruin on all sides. If 
 the camp had cost ever so much it must be razed to the 
 ground." And then he went on to say what is so 
 obviously true and so unexpected from a political econ- 
 omist's lips: "There is no real wealth except life. 
 There is something wrong when people defend a busi- 
 ness the only fruits of which are tears and cursing. 
 This is a political economy of death not of life. To 
 make life cleaner, more beautiful, richer — to fill the 
 land with alert, clear-headed, bright young people-^ 
 that's the best political economy for Sweden.'* 
 
 The medical professors Henschen, Medin and 
 
154 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Petren signed the prohibition appeal. That charming 
 writer, Selma Lagerlof, expressed her hope for an alco- 
 hol-free Sweden. Prof. Wallis wrote : 
 
 "To find the right solution of the alcohol problem 
 is the central task of all social effort. Industrial prob- 
 lems, questions arising from falling birth and rising 
 death rates, and all the rest, can be settled only when 
 the use of alcohol has ceased. The Swedish people 
 must head the movement, first of enlightenment as to 
 the evil, and finally of its abolition through prohibitory 
 legislation. 
 
 "If we fail in obtaining the wills and consciences of 
 people through educational effort we must look around 
 for the political weapon which will break the way for 
 us. This we shall find in woman's ballot. The wives 
 of work-people in our capital city have seen the bless- 
 ings of prohibition in the strike days. With their po- 
 litical emancipation the strongest fortress of the Swed- 
 ish drink interest will soon be taken." 
 
 What are the prospects of the near future? 
 Bright indeed. The second chamber of the 
 Riksdag voted last February unanimously to take up 
 for consideration the subject of national prohibition. 
 The first chamber, like the English House of Lords, a 
 spider-clot of reaction with its landed aristocracy, 
 its bishops, its distillers, refused to consent to the 
 proposal. 
 
 Fortunately the new suffrage conditions point to a 
 decided change in the character and quality of this 
 chamber. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 155 
 
 Then look out, ye partisans of international race- 
 poisoning! Enforced national prohibition in Sweden 
 will give an illustration which will work like a quick 
 contagion elsewhere. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER 
 
 TO THE 
 
 Breakdown of the Gothenburg System 
 
 By ERNEST GORDON 
 
 On page 25 it is stated that the Swedish Company 
 
 managers receive all profits from the sale of beer. Since 1909 
 
 this is no longer the case in those shops which the Company 
 
 itself operates. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "Aftonposten,'" of Christiania, which represents the most 
 acrid type of pro-alcohol capitalist opinion, published on the 
 first page of its issue for the 12th of January, 1912, a long 
 article, entitled "A More Temperate City." Here are a few 
 sentences from it : 
 
 "The increasing drunkenness in the city is calculated to 
 awaken attention. It has been announced that arrests for this 
 cause during the past year (1911) show an increase of 4,500 
 over the number for 3909. We applied to Police Inspector 
 Sorensen for his opinion of the situation. 
 
 " 'Yes,' said the Inspector, 'our drunkenness is a disgrace 
 to us. This should be said, and often said, that it may stir peo- 
 ple. Something ought to be done to prevent our city's being 
 number one with a long lead in this direction. . . . You 
 may believe it is hopeless work for us police with all this drunk- 
 enness and wretchedness among the poorly situated classes. 
 Most of the arrested are dragged to the station dead drunk 
 Heads of families, who have drunk the money wives and children 
 require for food ; young boys, who have wasted the kroner 
 mothers needed ; loafers, shaking drunkards — every day in the 
 year the same unending tragedy.' " 
 
 And then, without moving a muscle of his face, he goes 
 on to suggest a remedy. "If the sale of half-liter bottles, which 
 can be easily secreted in the pocket, were forbidden and only 
 whole liters sold, things would be better." 
 
2 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 Something must be done ! There is to be an assault all along 
 the line on the Samlag System in 1913. The temperance party, 
 the Socialists and the women voters make a dangerous com- 
 bination. Inspector Sorensen confesses that the Samlags on 
 Grondlandstorv and Lilletorv (Christiania) are simply "traps" 
 (faldgriiher) for the poorest of the city. He thinks ''if the 
 drinking-places were kept clean, and if there were a distinct 
 limit to the amount of drink one were allowed to buy, we 
 should see an improvement." 
 
 The head director of the Christiania Samlag, Mr, Klingen- 
 berg, did not relish this semi-official exposure. He retorted the 
 next day in the press that the Police Inspector's utterances 
 showed little knowledge of the real situation, and that if there 
 should be any fixed limit to the amount of drink sold to in- 
 dividuals "much dissatisfaction would undoubtedly be awakened" 
 (among drinkers). He thought it eminently fitting that the 
 drink-shops should be placed "where the public passed" (i. e., 
 on the market-places in the poorest quarters of the city). 
 
 Whereat the Police Inspector returned to the charge in the 
 following words : 
 
 "I could never understand how it could be considered con- 
 gruous with the Samlag's alleged purposes to allow people to 
 sit in its drinking-places and pour down from ten to fifteen 
 glasses of spirits — sometimes even more, not to speak of a 
 greater or less quantity of beer^often early in the morning 
 and without serving food. I will not insist that there are 
 many who drink fifteen glasses on the stretch in these shops. 
 But it occurs, and nothing is done to hinder it. There are not 
 infrequently people who do away with ten glasses and a suit- 
 able amount of beer at the same time. Workmen sit and drink 
 in this way without having eaten. If these people are not clearly 
 drunk during their stay in the drink-shop they are drunk later. 
 Some are arrested, but some get home to terrorize wife and 
 children. 
 
 "Neither can I understand how the Samlag can serve brandy 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 3 
 
 and beer together, as much as is called for, and without food. 
 This combination is very intoxicating. The Samlag should sell 
 only one of them to people who have not eaten. From my 
 personal knowledge and from material in my possession I can 
 affirm that it is not uncommon for drink to be sold to intoxi- 
 cated persons. The Samlag does nothing, as far as I know, 
 to reduce the consumption of drink. Since last October they 
 have arranged in Gothenburg to sell spirits only with meals 
 Our Samlag ought to close its shops at 7 p. m., and to close 
 the worst of them up for good. There must be a change. If 
 not, I believe we may reckon with the possibility of the closing 
 of all of them in the next elections." 
 
 I happened across a delegation of three Englishmen last 
 summer, who were studying the Gothenburg System. They were 
 loud in its praises, having observed its action two days in 
 Bergen and a half day in Christiania. They were going, I 
 believe, to Gothenburg also. Professor Jensen, who was show- 
 ing them about the city, took us to the Samlag shop on Youngs- 
 torvet. The visitors seemed satisfied with its general appear- 
 ance. 
 
 This is what a correspondent in "Afholdsbladet*' (Novem- 
 ber 25, 1911) writes of this particular shop: 
 
 "At regular intervals there are complaints of drunkenness 
 on Youngstorvet. Sometimes these complaints come to the 
 surface in mass meetings, gotten up by the residents of the 
 neighborhood, and incredible stories are told of drunkenness 
 and rowdyism, even under the windows of the police station ; 
 of the discomforts which residents have to endure. Resolu- 
 tions are passed, the papers report the meeting and the result? 
 
 Status Quo! 
 
 "The last report is in 'Tidens Tegn' (a Christiania daily) : 
 'It is sad to see the crowd of ragged men who loaf around 
 the Samlag in Youngstorvet. It is a resort for a gang of 
 idlers and drunkards, and a dangerous centre of temptation 
 to the country people who come to the market with wares. In 
 
4 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 spite of the fact that police station and Samlag are close neigh- 
 bors this constitutes one of the ugliest places in our city.' " 
 
 Then this correspondent proceeds to tell other things. "I 
 had supposed that no Samlag gave credit, and had insisted that 
 here, at least, was one point in the System's favor. But alas ! 
 this light spot is darkened by a notice in 'Mercantil Oplysnings- 
 tidende' of the confiscation of property for debt by a Sam- 
 lag. This Samlag, as any other business, had, in order to hold 
 its nose above water in the general competition, given credit. 
 And one other interesting occurrence. Three hundred bottles 
 of brandy were confiscated lately at the Moss railroad station. 
 They had been consigned to Lars Karlstad, a bootlegger in 
 •Moss. The consignment was sent from the Samlag in Holen. 
 My last illusion concerning the Samlag System has died a pain- 
 ful death." 
 
 In the fall of 1911 there were many complaints of drunken- 
 ness among passengers on the railways running out of Christi- 
 ania. This went so far that the West Railroad and Smaalens 
 Railroad appointed special officers to keep order on its trains, 
 and this not only at the terminal station, but on the route. 
 ("Aftonposten," November 22, 1911.) 'Tidens Tegn" declared 
 that the authorities were not strict enough in insisting on tem- 
 perance among the railway personnel, and a correspondent in 
 the same paper described how some of these fill their handbags 
 with bottles of spirits in the city and retail them to country 
 people along the railway. Another illustration of Christiania's 
 alcoholism is given by Director Kjaer. Some years ago he 
 placed counters at two suitable points to register the number 
 of intoxicated returning from Holmenkollen after the winter 
 sports on "Holmenkollen Day" (ski-running, ski-jumping, etc.). 
 Of the 15,785 persons who passed 308 were visibly drunk, or 
 one in every fifty! And this was a "better-class" crowd. 
 
 Pastor Eugene Hanssen, who is a member of the committee 
 j>et by the communal authorities of Christiania to consider re- 
 forms in the poor relief of the city, has just reported on the 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 5 
 
 relation of drink to poverty. He has made a careful study of 
 the life history of 300 representative families, and on the 
 basis of results obtained concludes* that 70% of the 
 city's poverty can be safely set down to drink; in other 
 words, that 1,600 of the 2,300 families receiving poor relief 
 were brought to their fall by parental alcohol excesses. In nine 
 years these families have cost the city 5 million Kroner. 
 After narrating the fate of various families the speaker said: 
 "I have been soul-sick at all the misery I have seen this winter 
 (in the course of the investigation). I had not dreamed that 
 things were so fearful. One sees how family after family 
 sinks lower and lower. All our efforts for their betterment 
 are essentially fruitless. The fault in our method is that it 
 is a hospital method rather than a preventative hygienic one. 
 It is of no use trying to doctor up these drunken men. We 
 must stop the sale of drink. These investigations have given 
 me a deeper and deeper understanding for the prohibitive prin- 
 ciple." 
 
 Eulogists of the Gothenburg System delight in pointing to 
 the relatively low consumption of drink in Sweden. Throw 
 out the Bolag-free districts and then take your reckoning, gentle- 
 men ! Stockholm's consumption of various forms of strong 
 liquors is computed at about seven million liters, or twenty 
 liters of spirits for every man, woman, child and sucking 
 infant. To this must be added 115 liters of beer for each 
 individual in these categories. The price Stockholmers pay for 
 these suicidal purchases is 35 million kroner yearly. Mr. Lind- 
 blom, a poor-inspector of the city, reported at a caritative con- 
 gress in Gothenburg that 51.07% of the children taken 
 in charge by the city of Stockholm were victims of parental 
 alcoholism, and that 6,400 people were helped yearly by com- 
 munal relief funds, who owed their poverty directly to drink. (i> 
 That sturdy defender of the System, the late Mr. S. Wiesel- 
 
 (1) Heleuius, "Alkoholsporgsmaiet," p. 352. 
 
6 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 gren, acknowledged in a paper read at the Brussels Prison Con- 
 gress of 1900 that alcoholism exerted an "unexampled influence 
 on Swedish criminality." Over 70% of the crimes of 
 the 19,453 men in Swedish prisons in 1887-97 stood in some 
 relation to drink. (Detailed tables can be found in Helenius' 
 **Alkoholsporgsmalet," ch. 8.) 
 
 And just as the great consumption of drink in Sweden is 
 in the Bolag-cursed cities, so the bulk of the drunkenness is to 
 be found there. At the Stockholm Anti-alcohol Congress Mr. 
 Almquist stated that while Swedish cities contained but 23.5% 
 of the population, 75.5% of all the convictions were from them. ^^ 
 How mercilessly the alcohol-sick are exploited can be gathered 
 from a letter which appeared in "Tidens Tegn" for January 
 23, 1912. It was from a Stockholm correspondent, and re- 
 ported the conviction to prison of a drunkard for the 130th 
 time, and of a woman suffering from the same sickness, who 
 had been, because of it, arrested 67 times. 
 
 We could go on indefinitely with illustrative matter of 
 this type. Professor Wallis, when asked at the Budapest 
 Congress to give his opinion about the System, said : "We 
 have had forty years' experience of it. Our feelings concern- 
 ing it are of a very mixed character. Theory is good gold ; 
 practise is bad nickel." *'* One of the most dispassionate and 
 most searching judgments of the System known to the writer 
 is the paper read by Mr. August Ljunggren at the Stockholm 
 Congress. After characterizing the System as "obsolete and 
 impotent" he went on to say : "It is, without doubt, a great 
 temptation for a Swede who loves his country and would 
 gladly see it honored and esteemed to join in the inter- 
 national hymn of praise which rises in honor of the Swedish 
 Company System ; but I must believe that telling the truth 
 concerning it will bring us the more enduring honor. . . . 
 
 (2) Bericht ii. d. XI. Kongress geiren d. Alkoholismus. p. 207. 
 
 (3) Xi^me Congr^s Int. eontre rAlcoolisme. Rapports et Compte- 
 Bendu. p. 298. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 7 
 
 One gets in Rowntree and Sherwell a wholly different pic- 
 ture from that which is current in Sweden. By referring 
 to legislation in Norway and Finland, and by tacking on 
 principles which do not belong to the Gothenburg System, 
 they succeed in conjuring up pictures which have little to 
 do with it." (1) 
 
 (1) Bericht ii. d. XI, Kongress, pp. 361 and 351. In the annual 
 course for the scientific study of alcoholism held in a hall of Ber- 
 lin University, Dr. Eggers says ("Der Alkoholismus," Berlin, 1907, 
 p. 86), and double-leads the statement in the printed report: "There 
 is no spirits capital in Scandinavia." But a year or more ago the 
 Swedish papers were occupied with the new spirits' trust, which the 
 various Swedish distilleries were on the point of forming. On p. 85 
 he affirms (again in double leads) that "the fall in the consumption 
 o.f spirits in Scandinavia must be put down to the credit of the 
 System." 
 
 Mr. Sherwell was lynx-eyed enough when it came to ferreting 
 out one or another kitchen bar in Portland. One would like to 
 know to what extent he and Mr. Rowntree and Dr. Eggers have 
 studied the published criticisms of the System which have appeared 
 in Scaadinavia. On this question of the decline of the spirits sale in 
 Norway, for example, a brief paper was read at the Third Int. 
 Anti-alcohol Congress, which constitutes a crushingly complete refu- 
 tation of Dr. Eggers' contention. This appeared in 1890, many 
 years before Rowntree and Sherwell's Bible of Gothenburgism 
 saw daylight. I will quote a few sentences. 
 
 Though granting that the number of drink-shops is less than 
 formerly, Mr. Aarestad points out that while the earlier ones were 
 generally in side streets and lanes, the Samlag shops, as a rule, 
 are posted near railway stations, quais and market-places, where 
 the number of passers is far greater. The visitation of a single 
 shop in the smaller cities is probably nearly as great as that of 
 two of the earlier type. During the first twenty years that the Sam- 
 lags operated the sales of certain of them distinctly increased. Thus, 
 Hammerfest's (13,014 liters in 1880) rose to 19,750 in 1888. Sarps- 
 borg's (28.927 liters in 1883) rose year by year until, in 1888. it 
 was 40,082. Skien's (18,209 1. in 1881, its first year) mounted stead- 
 ily during seA'en years up to 97.100. Arendal's snle advanced from 
 39,567 to 57.231. Drammen. Honefos. Vadso, Gjovik. Kongsberg .'ind 
 Bodo also showed a rising tendency in the years before 1890. The 
 directorate of the Ilonefos Samlag pointed out that there had been 
 a steady rise in sale, yet affirmed in every annual report that thej" 
 had done all in tlieir power to bring about a reduction in sales! 
 
 The regulative features in Samlag administration have no effect 
 on the wholesale trade of the Samlags, the so-called "anker" sale 
 (an "anker" is a forty-liter wooden cask). Yet it has been just 
 
8 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 One is astonished, indeed, at the hardihood of those who. 
 in attempting a description of the situation in Sweden, pass 
 by so much that is damaging and which lies on the surface 
 for the observation of every one. But there are further 
 sources of information which no thorough investigator should 
 have left unexamined, and which can furnish deep tones enough 
 
 in this line that the Samlag turnover has chiefly shrunk. While 
 the bar and bottle sale had in no case (up to 1890) gone down to 
 more than one-third af the initial sale, the "anker" or wholesale 
 trade, had melted to one-eighth, one-tenth, one-twelfth, one-four- 
 teenth, and in some cases to one-twentieth of the original sale! 
 Thus, in the representative and well-administered Kristiansaud Sam- 
 lag the retail trade declined from 140,372 to 95.527, but the Samlag's 
 "anker" sale fell from 10,635 1. to 346 1. (The private "anker" 
 sale in the town fell at the same time from 81,756 to 11,974.) But 
 this is not all. Mr. Aarestad aflirms (p. 180) that the retail sale, 
 the sale on which the Samlag System would naturally exert any 
 influence it was capable of exerting, had actually risen relatively. 
 In 1870 the sales under 40 liters constituted 41% of total sales. In 
 1890 they had risen to 46%. In other words, the Samlag System 
 had had no apparent part in the decline in Norwegian spirits 
 consumption. 
 
 To what, then, does Mr. Aarestad attribute the fall in con- 
 sumption, and especially the decline in wholesale trade? Solely 
 to the temperance movement. The "anker" trade was chiefly rural, 
 and the temperance movement has also had its strength predomi- 
 natingly in the country. Further, those Samlags whose trade had, 
 up to 1890, most fallen oflf were the ones situated in districts where 
 the temperance movement had struck deepest root, viz.. Stavanger, 
 Lister, Mandal, Nedenaes, Jarlsberg and Larvik. The tables which 
 Mr. Aarestad produces are extremely convincing. It is interesting 
 to note how by a regular progression the number of organized 
 temperance societies in Nedenaes rose from 3 with 50 members 
 in 1875 to 65 with 7,630 members in 1880, and how year by year 
 sales in the five Samlags of the province dropped from 182,185 
 liters to 114.284. and of the "anker" sale from 18,088 to 4.238 liters. 
 On the other hand, the provinces where the temperance movement 
 had, before 1890, difiiculty in entering, were just the ones where 
 the Samlag sale was either advancing or stationary — Buskerud (with 
 the Drammen. Kongsberg and Honefos Samlags) and the districts 
 about Hammerfest, Sarpsborg and Yadso. 
 
 It may be added that since Mr. Aarestad's paper was published 
 the closing of many Samlags all over Norway has. as in the case 
 of Trondhjem (see p. 43). stimulated the extra-urban sale again. 
 The drinking minorities of the areas, bereft of their own Samlags, 
 naturally turn for their supplies to the Samlags still remaining. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 9 
 
 for any canvas. We have in the preceding pages borrowed 
 from Mr. Oscar Petersson's relentless criticism of the System. ^2) 
 But this study was preceded by an earher one, which was based 
 Dn the Report of the Royal Finance Department delivered to 
 the Riksdag of 1895. (3) It is a brief pamphlet, but contains 
 game scent enough to have put any investigators on the right 
 track who were really in search of game. 
 
 We will not duplicate evidence, but merely add certain points 
 from Messrs. Petersson and Ljunggren, which have not been 
 emphasized. Mr. Petersson shows, for example, how the theory 
 of disinterested management is caricatured in empiry. "The 
 Bolags of Calmar, Oskarshamn and Karlshamn pay their man- 
 agement with 5% to 10% of the net income. In Ronneby the di- 
 rectors receive 300 Kr. plus 2% of the gross income. In Stromstad 
 they receive 500 Kr. plus 5% of the net income. In Skara the 
 manager is paid 2,000 Kr. plus 10% of the net income, zvhich runs 
 over 2,000 Kr. (One can imagine how this arrangement would 
 interest the manager in keeping down sales!) In Ostersund he 
 receives a free house, 5,000 Kroner and 5% of the net income. 
 In Marstrand, again, he is given 3 ore for every liter of spirits 
 sold, plus one half per cent, of the cost price of the wares sold.^*) 
 In many cases the regulation fixing the limit of profit is gotten 
 round by allowing the manager 1% to 2% of the gross income 
 — for leakage and spillage ! (^^ 
 
 There is a great variation in purchasing and selling prices 
 among the different Bolags. This is suggestive of juggling. Thus, 
 in Hernosand, for example, the cost price of spirits was 10.5 
 ore per liter more than in the neighboring Sundsvall Bolag. 
 In Engleholm the Bolag paid from 5.5 ore to 9 ore more per 
 liter for spirits than any other Bolag in the Province of Skane. 
 
 y ^ — 
 
 (2) Oscar Petersson. Sv. rusdrykshtjrstiftninKeu. etc. 
 
 (3) do., do., Goteborgs Systemet. En Studie, Stockholm, 
 1897. 
 
 (4) do., do., p. 14. 
 
 (5) Petersson, loc. cit., p. 18, 
 
10 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 In one year purchasing prices varied with diflFerent Bolags be- 
 tween 72 and 120 ore, and selling places between 105 and 155 
 ore. "' 
 
 What is even more discreditable is the fact, recently dis- 
 covered, that Bolags have, in order to attract trade, put down 
 the price of the brandy with a higher alcohol content. Formerly 
 the Bolags competed against each other by giving rebates on 
 large sales, but the government stopped this. Now they lower 
 the price of a "drunk" by increasing the alcohol percentage 
 and cutting rates on this more intoxicating solution. Thus prices 
 are at present (1912) for 
 
 Gothenburg 1.50 Kr. per liter for 30% spirits. 
 
 Kungsbacka 1.30 " ** ** *' 40% " 
 
 Marstrand 1.30 " *' " " 45% 
 
 Lysekil 1.25 " " " " 46% 
 
 and so on. "' 
 
 We have explained how Bolags have been found hiring their 
 places from the cities at exorbitant rates. Mr. Petersson 
 affirms that it is not uncommon for them to hire selHng-places 
 from shareholders. One is mentioned, which hired all its selling- 
 places from one stockholder. "^ In Skara, according to the 
 auditor's report, the Bolag suffered a clear loss of 4,100 Kr. 
 through excessive rents. "' In Ulricehamn the Bolag has 
 handed over its right of selling bottled goods to a private com- 
 pany, and pledges itself to buy all the spirits it needs for its 
 retail trade from this company, an arrangement which gives 
 abundant opportunity for making one hand wash the other. ^*^ 
 That such operations take place elsewhere is illustrated in a 
 
 (1) Petersson, loc. eit., p. IS. 
 
 (2) Dr. Scharffenber?. at the Haariie Congi'ess, 1911, publicly 
 charged Norwegian Samlags with sending pure alcohol to mining 
 and factory districts in the country. This enables drinkers to get 
 drunk more quickly. ("Direkte folkeafstemninger," p. 32.) 
 
 (3) Petersson, loc. cit., p. 15. 
 
 (4) do., do., p. lo. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 11 
 
 report in "Svenuka Morgenbladet" (February 13, 1912) of a 
 meeting of the Stockholm City Council the evening before. 
 The Stockholm Bolag was on the rack. It was asserted that 
 various wine-dealers were giving false declarations to the Bolag. 
 The reporting auditor sharply scored the Bolag for allowing 
 such practises to go on, and Dr. Bratt declared that its general 
 management was of such a. character that it deserved simply 
 to be dissolved and a new Bolag formed. 
 
 "The Bolag System has brought demoralization to city gov- 
 ernments and to individuals coming into contact with it," says 
 Mr. Petersson. This opinion is confirmed by Professor WalHs 
 in the above-mentioned speech at Buda Pest. "The Gothen- 
 burg System has corrupted the officials of the cities. All our 
 cities are corrupted in this respect." ^^^ This judgment was 
 given at an international congress, without heat, by one of the 
 most responsible persons in Sweden. In illustration, Mr. Peters- 
 son instances the fact that it is no uncommon thing, when a 
 man or company applies for the right to sell in a place, offer- 
 ing to be taxed on the basis of a 4,000 liter annual sale, for 
 another applicant, with a taxing limit of 3,000 liter, to receive 
 the license, even though the first person be in every way quali- 
 fied for the enterprise. This because thC' accepted person has 
 a "pull" with members of the communal government. ^^^ Mr. 
 Petersson adds the interesting fact that when communes with- 
 out Bolags have come into a tight place financially and it is 
 proposed to introduce a Bolag to ease the fiscal strain, this 
 proposal invariably comes from "the pillars of society," the 
 well-to-do — never from the people. (2) 
 
 These rich men in the communes, who profit in devious ways 
 from the Bolags, have been able, says Mr. Ljunggren, by their 
 connections in the Upper Chamber of Riksdag, to turn down 
 local-option legislation, which the Lower House has sent up. 
 
 (1) Xi^me Confrr&s Int. contre I'Alcoolisme, p. 299. 
 
 (2) Petersson, loc. cit., p. 24. 
 
12 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 "If the trade in spirits is forbidden," said one representative 
 of "the classes'' in the Upper House quite frankly, "it will not 
 be pleasant to be a taxpayer in the country." ^^'> It is from this 
 stratum that those in control of the Bolags come. In a great 
 number of cities the sale of spirits has become the monopoly 
 of a few town magnates, who, with their plural votes, have 
 had a commanding position in the community. <2) High salaries 
 and large honoraria for directors, managers and auditors have 
 tempted to the formation of companies with a very small num- 
 ber of shareholders. Of 87 companies in 1892 not less than 
 22 had only 2-3 shareholders. ^^^ In the smaller places the 
 Bolag often controls the whole communal administration. Very 
 many companies have handed over all licenses to private persons 
 to operate. The social position and character of the company 
 managers have not proved a guarantee against crookedness. The 
 companies have been the bitterest enemies of the temperance 
 party, especially when attempts have been made to limit the 
 number of drink-shops licensed. Yet when licenses have been 
 suppressed they have claimed this as proof of their concern 
 for temperance. ^^^ 
 
 Mr. Ljunggren gives further particulars of the extent to 
 which disinterested management is reduced to a farce in Stock- 
 holm. This Bolag, in 1904-5, rented out 138 of its licenses to 
 private persons, operating only 92 itself. From the 92 its profit 
 was 2,195,398 Kr. From the 138 it received only 367,577 Kr. 
 In other words, the bulk of the profits from the major part 
 of the licenses went into private pockets. Mr. Ljunggren made 
 investigations as to the amount of these profits in 1906. He 
 found them to have been 2,460,298 Kr, <*) 
 
 (It Berifht ii. d. XI. Int. Kongress gejren d. Alkobolismus. p. 
 352. The Riksdag has put a period to this game by the law of 
 Oct. 1. 1907. Art. 15., sec. 3. 
 
 (2) In some communes, before the recent electoral reforms, a 
 single person could, on the ground of property qualifications, out- 
 vote all other members of the communal corporation. 
 
 (.*?) Bericht ii. d. XI. Int. Kongress, p. 359. 
 
 (4) do., do., p. 353. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 13 
 
 These sub-let licenses are utilized to run saloons far over 
 the stipulated hours, and in many cases night and day. Sixty- 
 eight drink-shops were found to be running till 12 o'clock, 
 although the legal closing time was fixed at 10 o'clock. Forty- 
 six had permission to run all night through, this right being 
 given for one week at a time. From January 1 to December 
 10, 1906, 1,456 of these all-night permissions were issued in 
 Stockholm, 
 
 Fifty-nine wine-shops of the better type also have rights 
 of selling overtime. When objections were formally made 
 agdinst this practise not only did the drink-sellers themselves 
 protest against interference, but the management of the Bolag, 
 together with the highest administrative authority of the city, 
 unanimously and vigorously affirmed that to limit the hours 
 of selling would drive away tourists, rob thousands of their daily 
 bread and ruin the restaurants. ^^^ 
 
 The System bravely tries to keep up its reputation before 
 the international public. In 1904 Director Fitger, of Gothen- 
 burg, went to the Bremen Anti-alcohol Congress to defend Com- 
 pany management. He acknowledged that the Gothenburg Bolag 
 "was not carrying on the fight against drunkenness with the 
 bright enthusiasm of a victorious champion," but that "it was 
 on the defensive, in a resigned attitude." "One cannot make 
 the System responsible for human imperfections," he added, 
 affirming unctuously that "its task was to be a brother's 
 keeper to ^ those threatened with drunkenness." (2) 
 
 Director Rubenson, of the Stockholm Bolag, was less pious. 
 His theory was that the System "accustomed the working-man 
 to look on brandy not as a refreshing drink but as a condiment 
 for food. It had sought to give the serving of meals a domi- 
 nating place in the drink business." (3) 
 
 This was handed out to the Stockholm Congress, where 
 
 (1) Bericht ii. d. XI. lut. Kongress, p. 353. 
 
 (2) Bericht u. d. IX. Kongress, Bremen, pp. 216-217. 
 
 (3) Bericht u. d. XI. Kongress, Stoclsholm, p. 346. 
 
14 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 the visitors had an opportunity to test the director's affirmation. 
 Dr. Hercod went about the drink-shops, and reported having 
 seen many served drink without food, and many, obviously in- 
 toxicated, served more drink. He called attention to "the exces- 
 sive tolerance" which allowed the sale of two glasses of brandy 
 (price 16 ore) with a lunch costing 10 ore (less than three 
 cents). ^" The System's monstrous deal of sack, with its pen- 
 nyworth of bread, was also commented on by Dr. Eggers. The 
 "meal" in one case consisted of a little round cake, the size 
 of a peppermint drop. In another shop, when a glass of milk 
 was asked for, the barmaid answered : "Far de inte vara en snaps 
 i stalle?" (Can't it be a whisky instead?) "' 
 
 It may be well to stop a moment to consider this feature 
 of "meals," since it is one upon which advocates of the Sys- 
 tem delight to expatiate. The Temperance Legislation League, 
 an organization seeking to make sentiment for the System in 
 Great Britain, declares in one of its publications ("Recent 
 Criticisms of the G. S,." p. 5, 2d series) that "to speak of 
 public-houses is to mislead the reader. "* The Swedish v'drds- 
 husen are really restaurants in which no customer can pur- 
 chase spirits without purchasing food. Nor can he buy more 
 than two drams." 
 
 In the first place we would explain that the Gothenburg 
 Bolag Official Reports describe the drinking-places as krog- 
 afdelningama, which is the nearest equivalent to public-house 
 that one can find in Swedish ; next that the restriction men- 
 tioned is of a recent date. Up to October, 1911, one could 
 get a drink of cheap brandy without food, and only with the 
 second drink was one required to buy (not consume) food to 
 the value of 6 ore or 1.6 cents! Even this regulation dates 
 only from February, 1908. The writer went about Gothenburg 
 after reading the statement of the Eriglish writers to see just 
 
 (1) Bericht ii. d. XF. Konsrress. Stockholm, p. .346. 
 ' (2) Bericht ii. d. XT. Kouirress. Stockholm, np. 364 and 366. 
 
 (3) The same authors elsewhere ("The Temperance Problem," 
 p. Ill) speak of the Bolag shops as public-houses. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 15 
 
 how things stood. The first drinkshop entered was the show 
 place, Postgatan 14. A cup of coffee was ordered. The bar- 
 tender makes all the profit on such soft drinks and is, there- 
 fore, theoretically, especially interested in "pushing their sale." 
 This did not hinder him from asking if "the gentleman wouldn't 
 have cognac with it." The gentleman wouldn't. He sat down 
 and watched operations. In thirteen minutes five men entered, 
 one after another, marched to the bar, were served spirits, 
 swallowed them quickly and went out without smelling food. 
 
 One can buy cognac, whisky, gin, punch and any other 
 form of distilled liquors (save the cheap brandy) without food. 
 These sales are not inconsiderable. The entire amount of 
 spirits sold by the glass by the Gothenburg Company in 1910 
 was 811,429 liters; that of cheap brandy, 442,080. Much of 
 the "better" spirits were taken with food; much without. It 
 is conceded that alcohol taken fasting is more dangerous 
 than when taken with food, and on this fact rests, presum- 
 ably, the theoretical merit of this feature of the Bolag's admin- 
 istration. One cannot understand, however, why other forms 
 of spirits are exempted from this regulation. 
 
 Further, the flse of the word restaurant is, to say the least, 
 over-emphasis when applied to the saloon department. The 
 food to be eaten with a drink constitutes no real meal. One 
 is as well handled, if not better, at the free-lunch table of an 
 American saloon. The usual "meal" is a brimming glass of 
 spirits, a boiled egg as entr' acte, followed by a second glass 
 of spirits. Or perhaps in place of the egg is a spindling sau- 
 sage, with a dab of potato. Such a "meal" can hardly be con- 
 sidered a physiological life-belt in the alcohol torrent. I 
 noticed that in many cases the "meal" was further pieced out 
 with a half-liter of beer. Beer, by the way, can be bought 
 without taking this ethereal dinner. The Gothenburg Bolag, 
 with commendable honesty, published in its annual report (p. 
 13, 1910) the number of these meals which are served with 
 every 100 glasses of cheap brandy. In 1900 it was 17; in 1910 
 
16 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 it had risen to 25. The Stockholm Bolag directors themselves 
 acknowledge that during practically its whole existence the 
 Bolag saloon-department "restaurant" has been a mere mask. 
 In their 1909 report (p. 1113) they state that during the year 
 past the Bolag has transformed the saloon department to "real 
 restaurants." But another supporter of the Gothenburg theory, 
 Dr. Bratt, is not yet satisfied. In his (1911) proposals for 
 future reforms he would not allow cheap brandy to be served 
 "except with a real meal, i. e., with at least 50 ore's worth of 
 food" (14 cents' worth). "Brandy without food is to be looked 
 upon as a real and dangerous poison. In this way one would 
 have to eat in many places and much before one could be 
 intoxicated," The modesty of this reform proposal is a pretty 
 good measure of the bunkum which Gothenburg enthusiasts 
 have been dishing out for a generation to the public. Another 
 incident should be noticed here. In 1911 the revisors (t. e., 
 committee of the city government which audits the affairs of 
 the Bolag) requested the Bolag management to set out fresh 
 water on every table so that any one eating might not feel 
 obliged to take intoxicating drink with food. Mr. Rubenson 
 replied for the directors that "there were practical difficulties 
 which made this impossible.'' "' 
 
 (1) Mr. von Koch ealled attention, at tbe Stockholm Anti-alcohol 
 Cou>rress. to the fact that the restaurants of the Stockholm Bolag 
 make it very difficult for alcohol-free restaurants to establish them- 
 selves. The income the Bola^ drains out of the poor in its saloon- 
 sections enables it to sell food very cheaply in its restaurants. The 
 theory of the System is that drinkins: men are restrained from drink- 
 iii.er too much. It is questionable if much is accomplished in this 
 direction, but through its restaurants it makes, according to Mr. 
 Tornfelt, "many, many" men alcoholists. "At first they go there for 
 food, but ai-e soon snared in the alcohol spider's net. When they 
 have become inoculated with the taste they go for the alcohol" 
 ("Verdandisten," No. 4. 1011). For this reason socialists are urging 
 the organization of co-operative restaurants to make unmarried wage- 
 workers independent of System restaurants. There are in Stockholm 
 nine alcohol-free Automat restaurants. How easy it would have been 
 for the Stockholm Bolag with its great income to have covered the 
 city with such places where men could get meals without drink! In 
 six Stockholm market-places are milk Automats, which are greatly 
 prized by wage-workers selling night and day and, in winter, warm 
 milk. But they are operated by temperance women. The Bolag is 
 too busy running its alcohol business "in the interest of morality" 
 to undertake any such enterprises. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 17 
 
 I talked with various men at the tables as to the enforce- 
 ment of the regulation limiting the amount sold to two glasses. 
 Some averred that it was only necessary to step outside for 
 a few minutes and to come in again to get a second serving. 
 This may or may not be true. Certainly there are times in the 
 day when it would be difficult in the crush at the bar to detect 
 a second application. There is, however, no control which 
 can hinder a man from going from shop to shop. In three 
 minutes one is at another drinking-place. Thus, Andralang- 
 gatan 9 (Gothenburg), for example, is but a stone's throw from 
 Andralanggatan 51. 
 
 The Socialist paper ''Verdandisten" (February, 1912) — 
 the Socialists take a special delight in letting the gas out of 
 the System — speaks in a derisive way of the violation of this 
 regulation. "Numbers of bar-girls (in the Stockholm drink- 
 shops) serve five or six glasses with food after one gets a 
 little acquainted with them and when they see that the coast 
 is clear. The more accommodating they are the more certain 
 they are of getting tips for their trouble. One saloon (krog) 
 where these violations constitute a regular system is that in 
 Drotthuset in Stadsgarden. Every coal-heaver and longshore- 
 man knows about it. Many other places could also be named, 
 especially the few where there is no controller about. . . . 
 There should be a couple of hours between drinks but this 
 rule is sinned against daily and hourly. Indeed, it happens not 
 so infrequently that a person simply moves from one table 
 to another without leaving the room at all." 
 
 The writer adds the interesting fact that notices on the 
 walls forbid the bar-tenders "to make any suggestion as to 
 giving tips.'' This instead of a straight prohibition of tips ! 
 The rich Stockholm Company pays its girl bar-tenders 20 
 kroner, or $5.50, a month (with board and room) in the lower 
 grade drinking places, and 15 kroner, or $4.20, a month, in the 
 restaurants ! "One asks with astonishment why the girls are worse 
 paid in the so-called batter department. It is simply because 
 
18 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 the Bolag calculates that the public will piece out the girls' 
 pay with tips. This is to be taken, observes the writer sar- 
 castically, with the fact that the bar-girls in the saloon depart- 
 ment are ordered to have their hair combed tight, while those 
 in the upper class can have as many 'rats' in it as they wish. 
 The workingman's morals must be protected." 
 ■ In that extremely able little Socialist paper, "Der Abstinente 
 Arbeiter," of Berlin, a correspondent remarks (December 23, 
 1911) : "The bourgeois cannot think of the proletariat as a 
 mighty forward-moving struggler, animated by his own ideals. 
 For him he is a human being who lives in misery and will 
 abide in it unless the bourgeois come to his help and draw 
 him out of it." This spirit of patronage and of tutelage is 
 everywhere apparent in the Gothenburg System. The System 
 is a characteristic institution of the happily fading nineteenth 
 century liberalism. The more radical the democratic move- 
 ment in Scandinavia becomes, the more vigorous its anti-alco- 
 holism. The Norwegian Social Democracy has now joined 
 that of Sweden and Finland in making prohibition a party 
 program point, although this step has meant the retirement 
 of two of its most valued leaders. The Young Socialists, who 
 are largely syndicalists and determined to force the pace of 
 proletarian advance, are the strongest anti-alcoholists. One 
 can imagine what Traenmel, Jensen and their followers would 
 say of the calculation — in the spirit of the blessed Lafitte — 
 which is stuck away in fine print with other notices behind 
 a glass frame, high on the walls of the Gothenburg drinking- 
 places. The "workingman" is informed that, if he gives up 
 drinking one glass of potato brandy daily, he will save in 'the 
 •course of the year 29.7 kroner; two glasses, 59.4 kr., and three 
 glasses, 89.1 kr. This in 25 years will amount to 2,763 kr. 51 
 ore, which will, with interest properly compounded, bring in a 
 life rent of 167.64 kr. All very well, no doubt, and important, 
 for a will-less, psychopathic alcoholist to know. But could any- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 19 
 
 thing illustrate better the essentially burgher spirit of the Goth- 
 enburg directors? 
 
 The contrast between what rich "liberals" would do for 
 the people and what democracy does for itself, comes out when 
 one compares the six lounging-rooms established by the Bolag 
 in Gothenburg with, for example, the great People's House in 
 Zurich. In the one case we have "almshouse physiognomy" — 
 a table or two, wooden seats, a few newspapers scattered 
 about, and 400 books locked in a walnut bookcase. "* One is 
 indeed out of the rain. But how different the artistic warmth 
 and attractiveness, the freedom and opportunity of the Zurich 
 people's centre ! Dr. Laquer speaks of "the asserted relation 
 of the Gothenburg System to the intellectual activity of the 
 laboring class in that city" (p. 16, "Gotenburger System und 
 Alkoholismus"). If that assertion were ever made it was 
 made for export. Certainly no Swede would listen to it with 
 a straight face. In 1905 the average daily visit to each waiting- 
 room was 181 in a total of 13,500 laborers. The Bolag in 
 Gothenburg has had money enough at its disposal to have 
 built the most aesthetic and ample quarters for the people's use. 
 Its annual net income has risen steadily — from 50,782 kr. in 
 1865 to 1,387,520 kr. in 1910. 
 
 Lest these judgments of "disinterested management" in 
 practise should seem unduly harsh we would refer to Dr. 
 Laquer's above-mentioned "Gotenburger System und Alkohol- 
 ismus." Dr. Laquer is not unfriendly to the System; neither 
 does he show any enthusiasm for it. As far as Germany is 
 concerned he concludes that "it is not the Hercules required 
 to cleanse the Augias stable" (p, 54). Among the good points 
 which he mentions is the fact that drink-selling is "taken out 
 of the hands of an asocial class and placed in that of a higher 
 and philanthropic class" (the alcohol Jacobins, so to speak. 
 
 (1) Rowntreo and Sherwell. p. Ill : "They are used in combat- 
 ing intemperance througli satisf.vinpr to some extent the craving for 
 recreation apart from the public-house." But to what extent, pray? 
 
20 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 being replaced by loftier-minded alcohol-selling Girondists)."' 
 In view of the general history of the Scandinavian companies 
 one is permitted to question the importance of this fact. ''It 
 has raised the ethical-aesthetic level 9f spirits-selling.'' "The 
 drinkshops do not draw attention by signs." This last is 
 true. *■* In external appearance the System shops are far more 
 decent than American saloons. Within they vary as saloons 
 vary. Of the Norwegian Samlags he says: "They have a 
 melancholy appearance. Abandon hope all ye who enter here." 
 He further remarks that the System has done away with many 
 of the abuses which accompany private competition, meaning 
 probably selling to minors, on credit, etc. "On the other hand 
 it has only moderately affected the sale of brandy in the cities, 
 has favored home-drinking and only slightly lessened the num- 
 ber of deaths from alcoholism, of alcohol insanities, alcohol 
 crii|ie and pauperism" (p. 31). "The majority of the Bolag's 
 shops give the impression of places for supplying the alcohol 
 needs of the lower proletariatized strata of wage-workers. Be- 
 
 (1) "Verdandisten" (July 25. 1912) mentions the repulsive fact 
 that hardly a Bolag can be found on the directorate of which there 
 does not sit a member who is at the same time a member of the 
 local State Church council. And to be elected to such a position 
 one must be known as "God-fearing and zealous." John Brijrht's 
 sneer at the English State Church as standing for "religious educa- 
 tion and delirium tremens" clearly has its application elsewhere. 
 On the 20th of February. 1901, a Congress of repre.sentatives of the 
 Swedish Bolags met in Stockholm. Mr. Bagge. o-f Jfinkoping. in a 
 speech said: "We are assembled in a patriotic enterprise and hope 
 that, with God's help, the fruit of our work will be to the blessing 
 of our land and of many of its people." 
 
 (2) Although the banishment of signs has practically no effect 
 on alcohol consumption it heightens immensely the impression of a 
 city's alcohol^ decency. The predisposed observer who visits a Swed- 
 ish city is given a favorable feeling in this way which he perhaps 
 does not stop to analyze. There can be little doubt, either, that the 
 extraordinarily high general culture of Sweden also unconsciously 
 prejudices the stranger in the System's favor. He comes from a 
 dirt-choked, Irish-administered American city, or from the drizzle 
 and rags and cheerlessness of an English manufacturing town to 
 Gothenburg, with its imma^i'ulately clean, granite-paved streets, its 
 high skies and sunshine, its self-respecting, well-dressed people. 
 He is naturally drawn to all things Swedish, and the Bolag comes 
 In for an unjustifiable share in this vague general feeling of satis- 
 faction. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 21 
 
 sides this class there is one other which frequents the places — 
 the incurable alcohoh'sts, the riff-raff of the large towns, mostly 
 neuropathic, sick and degenerate men." 
 
 Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell's organ ("Monthly Notes," 
 March, 1912, p. 3) asks plaintively: "Is it suggested that a 
 substantial diminution of the sale of cheap brandy has not taken 
 place in Gothenburg and Stockholm?" To this we would reply, 
 Is it suggested that the per-capita sale of cheap brandy in 
 Sweden, as a whole, has ever fallen again to the record low 
 point (4 liters) of 1860, five years before the Gothenburg- Bo- 
 lag started operations? The Gothenburg Bolag report for 1910 
 states that the sale of all spirits in the Bolag-operated shops 
 in 1875 (statistics given first in this year) amounted to 1,646,740 
 liters; in 1910, to 2,064,138. The rise in bar sales, where 
 restrictions are in operation, was from 260,836 liters in 1865 
 to 811,429 in 1910. This rise in gross sales represents, as the 
 city has grown, a fall in per-capita sale from 27.45 liters (1875) 
 to 12.62 (1910). In Stockholm the Bolag gross sales were 
 4,077,590 in 1877 and 4,904,446 in 1911. Here, too, the per- 
 capita sale has fallen (from 26.56 in 1877 to 14.27 in 1911), 
 but it should be remembered that during the first half only 
 of the Bolag's existence has this per-capita fall to be regis- 
 tered. During the second half sales have remained stationary 
 at a point about double the per-capita sale of Sweden as a 
 whole. Further it should be noted that there is a steady rise 
 in spirit sales in the drinkshops to which the Bolag has sublet 
 the right of selling, from 2,515,973 liters in 1895 (the first year 
 in which figures are given in the Stockholm report) to 3,300,- 
 935 liters in 1909, and that the consumption of privately sold 
 beer has increased by leaps and bounds. (In Sweden at large 
 this rise was from 8.3 liters per capita in 1861-70 to 26 liters 
 in 1896-1905. But in the larger cities it must have been far 
 greater.) These facts indicate not that, thanks to the Bolag, 
 the drinking people of Stockholm and Gothenburg are drink- 
 ing less than formerly, but that they are drinking elsewhere 
 
22 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 and other liquors. But even if a per-capita decline in entire 
 alcohol consumption could be proved, there would be no 
 especial reason to attribute this to the BoTag's trivial regula- 
 tions, or at least to those regulations peculiar to the Bolag. 
 Sunday-closing, for example, which is partial prohibition, has 
 apparently helped to cut down consumption in Gothenburg, as 
 the drunkenness arrests for that day in 1910 were but 590, as 
 compared to 2,613, for Saturday, a day in which Bolag restric- 
 tions run full blast. It is monstrous to assume, in using these 
 per-capita statistics, that the ratio of abstainers and drinkers 
 in these two cities is the same as in 1865 in spite of the wide- 
 spread development of temperance organizations, the revolu- 
 tionary transformation of the wage-working class by the labor 
 movement, and the general advance in culture. "' In view of 
 the great number of abstainers in Swedish cities (including 
 the women) the consumption of spirits by the balance of the 
 population must, indeed, be frightfully great. Another thing, 
 too, should not be forgotten. The restrictions, such as they 
 are, on the sale of spirits on draught, may have simply thrown 
 the incidence of consumption on the bottle trade. In 1874 the 
 cheap spirits bottle trade in Gothenburg was, per capita, about 
 
 (1) The Summary of the Quinquenuial Reports of the Govern- 
 ors, 1901-05 ("Sammandrag af Kung. Ms. Befalluiu^'shafvaudes 
 Femarsberattelser for Aren 1901-05"), p. 22, one of the most import- 
 ant of Swedish official documents, confirms this general line of 
 argument. It affirms that the number of convictions for drunken- 
 ness in Sweden in 1905 constituted 83.85^ of all court convictions, 
 and then goes on to say. "While the spirits consumption per capita 
 has on the whole fallen, convictions for drunkenness have increased 
 enormously (from 8.726 yearly in 1866-70 to 42,833 yearly in 1901-05). 
 It is probable that the number af non-consumers of spirits has 
 grown, thanks to _the temperance movement, in later years power- 
 fully, in comparison with the consuming number, which may even 
 have diminished. A development of this type could also be a natural 
 result of the concentration of the sale of spirits in the cities, which 
 makes it all the more difficult for people in remote country districts 
 to provide themselves with drink. So if the consumption of spirits, 
 reckoned per head of the whole population, has shown a tendency 
 to diminution, it is probable that, reckoned only on the basis of the 
 consuming part of the population, it would show an increase, and 
 this it is Mhich, in a certain degree, can have called forth the in- 
 crease in drunkenness." In other words, prohibition in the country 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 23 
 
 a third more than the bar trade; in 1910 it was more than 
 double ("Gothenburg Bolag Report," 1910, p. 8). The Report 
 of the Christiania Samlag for 1895 (p. 21) remarks justly: 
 "It is obvious that it is easier to prevent excess in drinking 
 when drink is consumed on the spot than when it is delivered 
 for home consumption." And the Stockholm Bolag Report, 1910 
 (p. 1204), declares that "the frightful number of drunks in the 
 city are due, in a very great degree, to the Bolag's bottled 
 spirits. Everybody ' knows that the most degraded drinker can 
 easily get unlimited amounts of cheap brandy from the Bolag's 
 bottle department." That statement is official! 
 
 Dr. Laquer estimates the spirits consumption of the aver- 
 age German wage-worker at 3 glasses of schnaps daily. The 
 Bolags of all the Swedish cities in which, in 1900, 1,104,000 
 persons lived (21.5% of Sweden's population) consumed 
 23,161,015 liters of spirits in 12 months (1902-3) or 21 liters per 
 person. This would mean, reckoning the male adult popula- 
 tion at 295,000, a consumption of 300 gr., or 6 glasses of spirits 
 per man and work-day, excluding all consumption of beer 
 (p. 21). 
 
 Laquer flatly denies that the System has had any influence 
 at all on alcohol-caused crime (p. 26). The proportion of 
 
 and tlie growth of the al>staiuing fraction of the population, and 
 not tite Gothenburg System, have been the determining factors in 
 ■ the Swedish alcohol situation. On page 23 af the same report we 
 get this instructive fact: "Criminality is, in relation to population, 
 enormously greater in the cities than in the country. In 1905 there 
 were convictions (per 100,000 of the population) in Stockholm, 4.480; 
 In all other cities together, 3,445, and in all country districts, 132." 
 Recall that 83.8% of Swedish convictions were for drunkenness and 
 you can realize what prohibition has done .for the Swedish country 
 districts. 
 
 One incident in the report (p. 20) is worth reproducing. There 
 had been much illicit sale of drink in Vasterbotten and Norrbotteu 
 provinces, and to end this it was thought best to open places for 
 legal sale In Jockmock and Giillivare. "Since they seemed to cause 
 a greater consumption of spirits in the Lappmark, however,, than 
 they should, they were suppressed at the end of three years. By 
 means of a new law forbidding transmission of spirits through the 
 mails and a vigorous conviction of illicit sellers a considerable reduc- 
 tion of consumption of spirits has been brought about in these 
 provinces and especially in their Lappmarks." 
 
24 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 those condemned to prison whose crime was committed when 
 intoxicated, does not vary essentially from that elsewhere. 
 As to the number of cases of alcoholism treated in Gothen- 
 burg hospitals, he points out that this has steadily risen (from 
 55 in 1888 to 139 in 1905— per thousand from .58 to 1.01)/" 
 He compares this with an alcoholized part of Bremen to the 
 lattcr's favor (p. 11)."' Various abuses are mentioned as jockey- 
 ing with the size of glasses, which in the course of the year 
 would bring in snug sums to the sellers, the selling of beer 
 in some Samlags below the price of mineral water, the planting 
 of drink-shops right in the path of wage-workers — a distinct 
 abuse. These '"restaurants" are not placed in the "West- 
 ends.'* "* He also remarks on the all too human cliques and 
 cousinly friendships in Bolag administrative circles. 
 
 "The System enlists the active co-operation of good citi- 
 zens. . . . Should a manager for any cause fail to carry 
 out the by-laws of the Company his dismissal can be instantly 
 effected." So affirm the theorists (Rowntree and Sherwell, 
 'Temperance Reform," pp. 109 and 127, abridged edition). 
 Wihen a competent witness, Mr. Ulrich, of Saeter. refutes this 
 he is given an insulting name ("Recent Criticisms of the Goth- 
 enburg System," 2d series, p. 7) and declared *'to represent no 
 large body of opinion." In "Verdandisten" (series of ai ti- 
 des in 1911 and 1912) there is a fulness of evidence from this 
 capable observer. He says that practically everywhere through- 
 CD It must be notpd in justice to the System that the num- 
 ber has fallen since IDOo again to 102, or .62 to the 1,000. 
 
 (2) Mr. LIndman. Minister of State, formerly lived on Master 
 Snrauelsi;atan in Stockholm, in the neighborhood of a Gothenburg 
 drink-shop. There were always the same fights inside and out- 
 side; always drunken persons making the streets unpleasant to 
 passers." The Minister appealed to the System directors "either to 
 close the place or to more it." They moved it. ("Yerdandisten." 
 1911, No. 4.) Does any one think the shop would have been moved 
 If the appeal had come from an honest bricklayer trying to bring 
 np his family in decency? On the 2d of April. 1911. a meeting was 
 held in the Kungsholm church, at which Prof. Santesson spoke, to 
 protest against niorinir the Company saloon from Scheelegatan to 
 the corner of Hantvarkaregatan and Pipersgatan, a point with 
 vastly more traflflc and in the neighborhood of a school and hospital. 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 25 
 
 out the country drinking people can get orders filled. The 
 Bolag shops are not better than private ones in this respect. 
 Directors carry on the business without regard to existing law. 
 Bottled goods are sold to minors, both boys and girls. In 
 describing a Saturday and Sunday round of the drink-shops he 
 discovers all manner of violations — selling drinks in the bottle 
 department, selling less than a liter in this department, not 
 having prepared food on hand,, etc. There is, he says, almost 
 a silent understanding, a freemasonry, between drink-sellers 
 and authorities. While the intoxicated are treated with utmost 
 severity and sent to hard labor those who get them drunk 
 contrary to law are rarely punished. In 1910, in Stockholm, 
 1,174 arrested persons acknowledged that they had become 
 intoxicated in Bolag retail shops. The law provides for the 
 fining of the sellers in every such case, but these fines are 
 almost never assessed. Mr. Ulricji urges the labor unions to 
 prosecute the System employees every time they get a man 
 drunk. "The wage-workers should show as much solidarity 
 in such cases as during a strike. The drink-sellers would not 
 then drive their business so saucily and so illegally." 
 
 "The political power of the distiller is a thing of the past" 
 (Rowntree and Sherwell, p. 125). We have no special reason 
 to believe this. It is stated in "Verdandisten" (August 3, 1911) 
 that the Conservative party in the 1911 elections was in many 
 ways financed by the distillers and brewers. In February, 1911, 
 there was a conference of the drink interests in Stockholm. 
 A petition to the government was drawn up for longer hours 
 of drink-selHng on Sunday, for lightening certain penalties for 
 law-violation, for limitation of the powers of the authorities 
 to suppress licenses, for the requiring of a two-thirds majority 
 instead of a bare majority in town councils for closing drink- 
 shops. Confidential representatives of the Gothenburg System 
 took part in the conference and hacked the spirits interests. 
 Prof. Santesson says ("Strodda Tankar i Alkoholfragan," p. 
 27) : 'The alcohol interests in Sweden work in silence through 
 
26 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 a part of the press or otherwise to check the temperance party's 
 efforts in legislation on social lines. One does not come on 
 these people directly, but one suspects their presence on all 
 sides as a cause of the tough resistance which reforms meet 
 that are calculated to forward temperance effort." And Dr. 
 Helenius, in his paper at the 1911 Anti-alcohol Congress at 
 'The Hague, asserted that in Finland the shareholders in brew- 
 eries and distilleries and their numerous friends do all in their 
 power to keep the System saloons open, because the winnings 
 in the last analysis flow into their pockets. The Central Com- 
 mittee of the System in Finland distributed among' the mem- 
 bers of the Finnish Landtag a brochure urging them to help 
 that the consumption of spirits should not fall further and thus 
 diminish the charity moneys of the cities. They would con- 
 tinue stealing leather, after the fashion of St. Crispin, in order 
 to make shoes for the poor. 
 
 The fear of prohibition is the beginning of alcohol wisdom 
 in Sweden as elsewhere. The first Swedish Bolag ever formed 
 was that in Falun. In the latter part of 1911 (that is, only 
 after more than 50 years of existence) its managers hit on the 
 in no way radical idea of refusing sale to recognized drunkards. 
 The Sundsvall Bolag has followed suit, cutting off forty per- 
 sons, and that of Kristinehamn is also to stop sale "to those 
 who have been sentenced many times for drunkenness." As 
 far as we know these are the only Bolags to take this step, 
 and the motive which has driven them to it is obvious enough. 
 Dr. Eggers, "' who calls himself a disciple of Rowntree, says 
 
 (1) Dr. Eggers contends that State prohibition was introduced 
 some centuries too early (in the U. S,). because the power of the 
 alcohol capital was not first broken (by disinterested management). 
 His information comes presumably from Rowntree and Sherwell who, 
 in .32 pages, count up well-nigh every druggist selling whisky 
 surreptitiously in American prohibition States, but can find no room 
 for the absolutely capital fact that State prohibition is successful 
 ii» annihilating thp whole alcohol manufacture. One can hardly 
 consider this omission unintentional. There are other things, too, 
 which seem to indicate that Rowntree and Sherwell are at least as 
 much interested in blocking prohibition as in introducing Company 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 27 
 
 ("Der Abstinent," June 1, 1911) : "I believe in gradual devel- 
 opment, I assume more than one hundred years to the final 
 introduction (of disinterested management). I am always 
 astonished when men want to take the second step before the 
 first.'' This spirit of deliberation is practically illustrated in 
 Sweden. One is not surprised that the drink interests are not 
 disturbed by it, but that on the contrary they should place 
 paid advertisements (beer, cognac, champagne) in "Gasthaus- 
 Reform," the organ of "disinterested-management" propaganda 
 in Germany ("Die Abstinenz," April, 1912).*'^ 
 
 In Rowntree and Sherwell one gets the fagade of the Sys- 
 tem, and fine, indeed, it appears. But one should go around 
 to the back of the house. Read, for example, in Mr. David- 
 son's "Samlagkamp og Folkedom," 1912 (pp. 17-19), how the 
 Samlag party jockeyed the people of Honcfos out of the elec- 
 tion result in 1907 whfen the Samlag was voted down by 539 
 to 523. The way in which doubtful irregularities were proved 
 
 control, the fact, for example, that they selected just this carica- 
 ture "study" of prohibition for special cheap distribution rather 
 than their Gothenburg chapter. 
 
 If one wishes to test further their uncritical book one should 
 compare, for example, the chapter on the Russian monopoly with 
 Levin's "Das Branntweinmonopol in Russlaud." The English writ- 
 ers affirm that this experiment "has been entered into with an honeat 
 intention of lessening intemperance." Levin shows that it was 
 undertaken simply because the excise taxing of spirits had been 
 carried to a point where cousumpticn was checked so that some more 
 effective way of bleeding the people had to be devised. Witte 
 chose just those four governments where alcohol consumption was 
 lowest for experiment, and when he found that the consumption 
 there steadily rose, extended the new system to Russia at large. 
 Of course, there is an alcohol tij?-leaf, as there is in Gothenburg, 
 but it represents mere hypocrisy. The Monopoly income has risen 
 steadily until in 1911 it reached 782,557,370 rubles. Russia's sor- 
 row has advanced pari passu. 
 
 Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell print six pages of extravagant 
 eulogy of their book from various deans and dons. Doubtless there 
 is much of value in those sections which have to do with the situa- 
 tion in England. On the other hand, there is little indication of 
 acquaintance with the Continental literature of the drink problem. 
 What can we say, for example, of writers who describe the Inter- 
 national Anti-alcohol Congresses indiscriminately as Temperance and 
 Alcoholic (!) Congresses (pp. 110 and 120)? 
 
 (2) German Gothenburgers have a model tavern at Marcands- 
 moor, in E. Frisi:u The barmaid is also midwife for the place and 
 gives newly confirmed girls instruction in cooking. How idyllic! 
 
28 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 and another election, together with a reversed majority of 87, 
 secured reads marvelously like a page out of American saloon 
 politics. Mr. Davidson also calls attention to the fact that 
 Samlags in Stathelle and Holen (the last a place of only 167 
 inhabitants) were established as pure speculations in order to 
 sell in neighboring towns whence the Samlag had been ban- 
 ished. The author affirms, indeed, that "the Samlag repre- 
 sented, for its time, a great progress," but adds, "It has far 
 from answered to the hopes raised by its introduction, and 
 the advantages which it has actually brought with it have 
 been dearly paid for in many ways by disadvantages. After 
 forty years it has developed so many and so great weaknesses 
 that the time may be considered ripe to supplant it by an 
 arrangement better suited for the new day." He affirms that 
 a feeling, very wide-spread even outside the temperance party, 
 finds expression in Burgomaster Berner's words : "The Sam- 
 lag has been a disappointment to me. We must go on to local 
 prohibition by voting it out." Beside this confession of an old 
 Samlag partisan we may perhaps be allowed to place the 
 recent utterance of Prof. Thyren, who, as Mr. Berner, is not 
 an abstainer: "No peace is possible before absolute alcohol 
 prohibition is carried.'' Indeed, one could, in the light of a 
 passage in the Gothenburg Bolag report for 1909 (p. 32-3), go 
 a step farther and ask if the Bolag people themselves really 
 believe in the value of the System. The proposal was made to 
 place under the Bolag various shops where higher-grade spirits 
 were sold by private persons. It was rejected by both the 
 directorate of the Bolag and the city revisors. These last 
 alleged that "if the Bolag should take over these licenses the 
 entire trade in spirits would be monopolized, which would be 
 of no value to genuine temperance activity or to the city's 
 economic interests, and of doubtful value to the consuming 
 public, but a decided injury to private interests hitherto con- 
 sidered legal." 
 
 Nothing scientific has yet been written in English on the 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 29 
 
 Gothenburg System. We are, at present, unable to make a 
 first-hand study of the sources, but have attempted to glean 
 whatever can be found in the Scandinavian literature of the 
 subject. A book of some importance, written by a^ committee 
 of the Swedish Medical Society and entitled "Alkoholen och 
 Samhallet (Alcohol and Society) has just reached us from 
 Stockholm. Its obvious purpose is to sidetrack the Swedish 
 prohibition movement. It represents the extreme opinions of 
 the "moderate" position, describes the Committee of Fifty as 
 "impartial and warmly interested in temperance," actually sets 
 a higher value on Miss Elderton's studies than on those of 
 von Bunge and of Laitinen, and describes Rowntree and Sher- 
 well's "Temperance Reform" as "a standard work." Like other 
 "moderates" the writers exhibit an air, at least, of meticulous 
 objectivity. "Thus, in order that one may not get a too bad 
 idea of the misery resulting from a father's alcoholism, they 
 tell us that this "can develop (in wife and children) self-con- 
 trol, mutual love, diligence and good habits.' It is from just 
 such typically academic minds that one would expect a eulogy 
 of the Gothenburg System, but from cover to cover there is 
 scarce a word in its praise. They are writing for a public 
 that has gone to bed and gotten up with the System during a 
 half-century. 
 
 Nearly half of the volume is occupied with casuistic mate- 
 rial, summarized alcoholist biographies, "illustrative of the more 
 important practical sides of the alcohol question." They also 
 illustrate, in the writer's judgment brilliantly illustrate, the im- 
 pertinence of the assertion that the Swedish Company System 
 has, in any degree, solved the alcohol problem for the Swedish 
 people. I find in these 176 pages six allusions to the System. 
 On p. 237 there is a long description of a hopeless alcoholist 
 which ends with the sentence, "One sees him often loafing in 
 the neighborhood of the Gothenburg System salesroom." On 
 p. 249 a drinker complains that "one can't get svagdricka 
 (alcohol-weak beer) at the Gothenburg System" (so that one 
 
30 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 is compelled to drink stronger liquor). On p. 270 a drunkard 
 says, "Before the Gothenburg System it was not dangerous 
 One took several drinks a day and was done with it"; and on 
 p. 271 another drunkard remarks, "Before the Gothenburg 
 System there was rarely so much drunk." On p. 273 another 
 drunkard says, "When the Gothenburg System, with its liter 
 sale, began its activity, things went straight to the woods with 
 me" (a figure apparently for a descensus Averni). On p. 300 
 an alcoholist who became insane said that "in 1902 he was hired 
 as a machinist by the System shop on Malartorget. He him- 
 self thought that this was the cause which led him to misuse 
 spirits. He began to go to the saloons early in the morning, 
 and by 11 o'clock could be full. He drank at least a liter a 
 day, besides beer, and by evening could not take his clothes off, 
 but slept in them." 
 
 This is a complete list of the allusions to the System in 
 the second half of "Alkoholen och Samhallet." Comment is 
 superfluous. 
 
 As to the prevalence of alcoholism in Swedish cities the 
 writers present much evidence. P. 22: "The degrading influ- 
 ence of our drinking customs can hardly be overestimated. 
 They result more often in intoxication than seems to be the 
 case in most other lands. . . ." "Some time ago a Stock- 
 holm newspaper compared the sums which Stockholm wage- 
 workers put out on cheap spirits (reckoned after Bolag reports) 
 with that expended in house rent by the same class. The 
 proportion is indeed abnormal, being 4^ and 5 million kroner 
 respectively. This is exclusive of beer expenses, which are 
 probably even greater . . ." (p. 81). "Saturday night 
 drunkenness is extraordinarily widespread among Stockholm's 
 wage-workers. . . . The drama of the home-coming 
 countryman, liter bottle sticking out of his pocket, traveling 
 dtjwn the high road with noise and disorder, is only too well 
 known. There rarely occurs an indignation-awakening deed of 
 violence which is not connected with this barbaric gulping down 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 31 
 
 of brandy brought home (from the System shop) . . ." 
 (p. 86). "The conditions which prevail in these (Swedish drunk- 
 ards') homes are of such a character as to constitute a con- 
 tinual source of astonishment that such things can go on, year 
 after year and to such an enormous extent, in an ordered 
 society. Fathers pawn the most necessary household articles 
 and clothing if the wives do not succeed in hiding them. They 
 smash up in their drunken state furniture, doors and windows, 
 maltreat their wives and drive them and the children out of 
 doors. Thousands of women in our land go to sleep at night 
 after listening to the most dreadful menaces about the blood 
 which is going to run," 
 
 More evidence ! "No impartial observer would be wn'lling to 
 deny the highly degrading influence which Swedish drinking 
 habits exert. It is a condition of things to which every one 
 who has visited other European lands can bear witness that, 
 apart from the poorest quarters in English ports, and possibly 
 some other places, one rarely meets with the rough and dis- 
 gusting conduct of drunken, swearing men, which one is com- 
 pelled to witness so often in our land. According to reports 
 similar scenes are numerous in Norway and Finland (System 
 countries). When, for example, the pick of our youth are 
 brought together for entrance into their military service, or 
 when they leave this to return home, they have been, for 
 decades, accustomed to intoxicate themselves in such a fashion 
 as to cause the observer to turn away in disgust. First in later 
 years, and not the least because of the energetic intervention 
 of the officers (not of the Gothenburg System,) has an im- 
 provement been brought about. . . . During Summer eve- 
 nings in Stockholm, when one or more warships are anchored 
 out in the stream, a drama can now and then be observed at 
 certain hours, which is without parallel in other lands. Down 
 at Skeppsholm the seamen, who have been out on a leave of 
 absence, are gathered together. Group after group steers its 
 course to the steam launch waiting at the quay. In every 
 
32 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 group are carried one or two irretrievably drunken youngsters, 
 and with a skill which argues long practise, the waiting under- 
 olficer manages to stow away these young men, one or another 
 sober person being placed on each side of a drunken seaman. 
 Even after the boat has left land one hears inarticulate noises 
 and young, strong bodies execute uncontrolled and reeling 
 movements" (pp. 18, 19). 
 
 On p. 150 the writers speak of Sweden as "burdened with 
 alcohol misery." They then take up the subject of the restau- 
 rants to which the System sublets rights of sale. "These often 
 make nothing on food sold but depend altogether for profit on 
 drink." The wine-dealers holding Bolag licenses also (p. 121 > 
 "drive their spirits business completely as any private dealers. 
 They have signs, advertise publicly and by circular, and are 
 often part-owners of large restaurants. Their full, legitimate 
 interest is to push up the consumption of spirits to the highest 
 possible point. . . . Legally, however, these wine-dealers 
 occupy an in no way enviable position. They are completely in 
 the Bolag's power. This can prescribe whatever conditions it 
 wishes and sees fitting. Up to date there have been hardly any 
 indications on the part of the Bolag of intentions to take any 
 measures save those by which the Bolag's income could be 
 increased. There has hardly been any tendency apparent to 
 do away with the private spirit sale altogether or to bring over 
 the temperance-furthering principles on which the Bolag itself 
 1^^ based." "' 
 
 On p. 157 the writers remark: "The Bolag u forbidden 
 to sell spirits to every depraved drunkard that comes along, 
 
 (1) While there is no evidence of grraft on the part of the 
 Bolag.s in conneotiou with sub-let licenses, the relation mijjht easily 
 open the way for it. A company rents out the majority of its 
 licenses; the profits of these licensed places exceed the profits of 
 the shops which it operates itself; almost six-sevenths of the profits 
 from these sublet licenses so to private pockets, and special privi- 
 l^gres are granted holders of sublet licenses, enabling them to sell not 
 only when the Bolag shops are open, but. in some cases, night and 
 day. The Stockholm revisors discover that these license holders, at 
 any rate, are grafting by reporting a considerably lower sale than 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 33 
 
 Yet violent young criminals, drunkards who have been fined 
 ten times in a year, unknown deliriants, masses of alcoholized 
 men with worn-out wives and underfed children, individuals 
 who, in their outer appearance, bear the clear marks of alco- 
 holism, all obtain without any control whatever, in liter quan- 
 tities, that ware which has made them what they are. It is 
 not at. all unusual that one and the same person can buy at 
 a single Bolag shop during the course of a day ten liter of spirits, 
 01 more, to retail out" (contrary to law) ! 
 
 On p. 135 confession is made to the notoriously loose en- 
 forcement of Swedish liquor laws. On p. 135 it is averred 
 that the Bolags compete with each other. On pp. 123-24 att,en- 
 tion is called to the fact that Bolag restaurants, by their low 
 price of food, prevent alcohol-free restaurants from coming 
 into operation. The young unmarried men who frequent the 
 System restaurants spend for spirits what they save on food. 
 "And the poor, self-supporting women who most of all need 
 nourishing and well-prepared food never visit these places, 
 which, without doubt, is best for them." 
 
 No credit is given to the System, as far as I can observe, 
 for reacting against Swedish alcoholism. Other factors, how- 
 ever, are mentioned. P. 106 : "The country's great distanc3s, 
 the sparsity of population, the average poor economic condition 
 of the individual, together with the relative difficulty of pro- 
 curing spirits in the country, have kept down total consumption 
 to a figure considerably lower than that of most other lands." 
 And, on p. 114, the "decided improvement in national drinking 
 customs are attributed to the general education, the steady 
 
 actually occurs, in this way holdins back money due the Bolag 
 (Stockholm Report for 1909, p. 1119), and fine twenty-one of them 
 42,990 kroner. In 1909 these sublet shops sold cheap bottled cognac to 
 the amount of 1,900,000 liters. How lively this sale has been can be 
 gathered from the 1910 report (p. 1152). On Midsummer Day, be- 
 tween 12 and 2, five dealers were visited by 1,215 purchasers, and on 
 Dec. 4, between 4 and 5, six were visited by 1,196! This did not 
 include sales by telephone! These facts might help to explain why 
 more drint is not sold in the Bolag-operated shops. 
 
34 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 improvement in social conditions and the strong temperance 
 movement." 
 
 The proposals for reform offered by this committee con- 
 stitute a pretty serious indictment against the expounders of 
 Gothenburgism for misrepresentation. Just those features which 
 these gentlemen have stated to be in successful operation are 
 here proposed as promising future reforms. Thus, p. 149: 
 'Tt is desirable that the drink-shops (of the G. S.) more and 
 more develop into restaurants where a glass of spirits shall not 
 be sold without food." Then follows an amazing confession: 
 "Bar sale without food can, however, with the present system 
 of bottle sale, have its justification. It can hardly be denied 
 that in places where such sales are done away with many, who 
 were content to go into a saloon several times a day to take a 
 drink, now provide themselves with a liter in the morning, of 
 which little remains by evening." The committee also argues 
 (p. 143) that private economic interest should be transferred 
 from alcohol sale to the sale of substitutes for alcohol (coffee, 
 berry and fruit juices, light beer, etc.). What we have been 
 taught to be accomplished fact is, so it seems, vague Zukunfts- 
 musik. 
 
 Dr. Gould alleges that the Gothenburg System has divorced 
 drink-selling from prostitution. True! But Dr. Scharffenberg 
 affirms that the neighborhood of Christiania drink-shops con- 
 stitute an operating-ground for prostitutes. At least, add others, 
 the Bolags do not sell drink on credit. True! But, as Mr. 
 Ljungren points out, there is nothing to prevent the pawn- 
 shops from taking a man's last rag when he is determined to 
 drink. What is to be thought of the sense of responsibility 
 exhibited by those who deal out Samlag licenses in Christiania 
 who for years allotted a license to the Students' Society of 
 the University for the sale of punch, whisky and other strong 
 liquors (this in addition to a wine and beer license which the 
 students still operate) ? Three years ago the license was with- 
 drawn because of scandalous irregularities in its operation — 
 sale to others than students, sale after midnight and exploita- 
 
THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 35 
 
 tion for financial profit. Mr. Davidson remarks that Samlag 
 partisans are less and less inclined to take part in public dis- 
 cussion during local-option fights. In view of such facts we 
 do not wonder at it ! 
 
 But nothing can disconcert Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell. 
 In "Monthly Notes," April, 1912 (p. 7), they say: 
 
 "As a matter of fact, the System was never so efficiently 
 worked, both in Norway and Sweden, as it is at the present 
 time, nor was its administration ever so free from abuses and 
 defects.'' 
 
 This is bad enough, but the attempt to make out that the 
 temperance leaders in Scandinavia are satisfied with the present 
 situation is indeed inexcusable. We would commend as suffi- 
 cient proof to the contrary a pamphlet which the Norwegian 
 temperance party has printed for mass distribution, entitled "Til 
 Kamp mot Drukkenskapen." One of the writers affirms (p. 6) 
 that, on an average, every thirty-fifth minute, night and day, 
 winter and summer, from January first to the next New Year's 
 morning, the prison doors of Christiania open to receive a 
 drunken man or woman. "^ 
 
 Professor Jensen, of Bergen, has described the 1907 Samlag 
 votings in Norway. In many places people stood out in the 
 rain until the vote was counted. When word came that the 
 Samlag was turned down hats would come off, while Gustaf 
 Adolf's hymn, "God is Our Strength," would rise from all 
 throats. In Dr. Laquer's monograph we read of country 
 women coming in from outlying places to help town women 
 in their house work, so that all might get to the polls to vote 
 the Samlag out of existence. In the last general meeting of 
 
 (1) On p. 12 Mr. Isene prints a striking table showing how the 
 System has massed its shops about marlcet-places, in the neighbor- 
 ihood of wharves, and along the currents of traffic. There are seven- 
 teen parishes in Christiania with seventy-one spirits -shops, retail 
 and otherwise. More than half of these (thirty-six) are pitched 
 Into one parish (Vor Frelsers. Our Saviour's). This parish has 
 7,234 people and one drink-shop to every seventy-four people (in- 
 cluding beer-shops not under Samlag control). Three parishes with 
 36,000 people have no shop ! A fourth Kampen has one to 8,447 
 people. 
 
36 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 
 
 the Norwegian Temperance Party, at Kristiansand (December 
 28, 1911), Mr. Hvidsten spoke of the attempts, in 1907, to 
 restore the Samlags in towns which had gotten rid of them. 
 This happened in Risor, Lillesand, Farfund, Stenkjaer, Levan- 
 ger and Porsgrund. Of the 7,535 votes cast 950, or 12%, were 
 wet; 6,585, or 88%, dry. In Risor the vote stood 1,810 to 53 
 against the return of the Samlag. 
 
 'More and more apparent is the drift toward prohibition in 
 both Norway and Sweden. During a lock-out in the summer 
 of 1911, many Samlags were closed by order of the govern- 
 ment, and others run on half time. The result was, as in 
 Sweden in 1909, of a highly educative character. In Dram- 
 men, for example, arrests for drunkenness fell to one-third of 
 the usual number in the forty days' interim. In Sarpsborg 
 there were but 2 against 60 in the preceding weeks. "Ny Tid," a 
 Socialist paper in Trondhjem, reported that as a result of this 
 prohibition experience organized labor was more and more taken 
 with the idea of a systematic campaign for shutting up the 
 Trondhjem Samlag in 1913. 
 
 When the weaknesses of the Company System are pointed 
 out many object that these can be corrected. This is, perhaps 
 true of some of them, but in practise they have not been cor- 
 rected after nearly half a century. Threatened prohibition, 
 however, is stirring the Bolag people to the thought, at least, 
 of better courses. Mr. Andree, director of the Gothenburg 
 Bolag, proposes that bottled goods be sold henceforth only to 
 persons provided with an authorization card, as drugs are sold 
 at apothecary shops only on prescription. But, as it is true 
 that the relative success of "regulation" always depends on 
 the extent of prohibitory sentiment in the background, so it is 
 also true that when this sentiment has actually attained political 
 power there is little likelihood of its being satisfied with any- 
 thing short of the end of the free sale of the narcotic poison, 
 alcohol. 
 
 And this is the situation in Sweden. 
 
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