GIFT OF cy «-w.-o^^AA.flLAjiJL Qb^*^ ^^v « . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/drinl4 PREFACE This book deals mainly with the drink question in the United Kingdom, but numerous illustrative facts are drawn from other countries. It is written from the standpoint of an observer and student who has no interest in the liquor traffic, no connection with any temperance organisation, no foregone con- clusion to prove and no favourite panacea to advo- cate. It rather endeavours to remove the subject from these associations, which are apt to distort the vision, and to see things more as they are than as interest or fancy would have them be. The chapters to which I would draw particular attention are those on * Drink in the Past,' ' The Decline of Drunkenness,' * The Forces of Temper- ance,' * The Forces of Intemperance,' and * The Principles of Liquor Legislation.' They embody a connected argument bearing on the last point. A portion of the matter contained in the first three chapters mentioned has been published before in the form of separate essays. They attracted some vm DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION attention at the time, and communications reached me from various quarters. I promised republica- tion in a complete form, and the present time, when liquor legislation is in the wind, seems opportune. The rest of the book consists of subsidiary essays. I am encouraged to hope that it may meet with acceptance from persons interested in the subject by the more than kind reception given to a paper, containing an outline of the main argument, which I read at the St. Albans Diocesan Conference in 1900. To my great astonishment it met with unanimous approval. On the other hand I am well aware that some will dissent very heartily from much that they will find in this book. The subject is, unfortunately, controversial in the highest degree, and it is impos- sible to avoid contentious matter. I beg those who differ from me to believe that I respect their mo- tives and am animated by no hostility. I beg them also to note all that is said on particular points in different passages, for observations made in one connection are frequently qualified by further re- marks made in another. All statistics and official quotations are taken direct from the official sources, and second-hand informa- tion is avoided as far as possible. The reader wiU find a good deal of repetition, for which I ought, perhaps, to apologise ; but it is a choice of evils. When the same facts are approached from PREFACE ix different directions the only alternative to repetition is to omit something and run the risk of being mis- understood — a real risk, as I have often found to my cost. There is, however, one deliberate repeti- tion, for which I offer no apology. It is insistence on the principle of self -responsibility, if I may coin a word. A social philosophy is current to-day which proclaims collective, but denies individual, responsi- bility; which would make every one responsible for every one else, but not for himself; or, taking an- other form, would relieve some individuals of all responsibility for their own conduct and would call others to account not only for themselves but for the rest. These confused ideas, which profane the names of Science and of Social Reform, are the product of a civilisation suffering from senile dementia. Whether we are our brothers' keepers or not, we must first be our own, if there is to be any responsibility at all. To deny it is to deny free will, which may be well enough as a philosophical speculation, but is fatal in real life. If, for instance, the consumer of liquor is the helpless victim of heredi- tary tendencies, irresistible cravings, environment, temptation, laws, and systems, the seller is no less at the mercy of the same forces and equally irre- sponsible. He suffers from an irresistible craving (to make money) and cannot withstand the temptation (of seeing so many thirsty people about him). And X DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION SO with all of us; you cannot pick and choose in responsibility. By the same reasoning we are all the products of ancestry and environment, all the pup- pets of circumstance. And the State, being but a collection of such puppets, is a fortiori helpless and irresponsible. From this impasse there is no logical escape if we once tamper with the principle of indi- vidual responsibility. The whole social fabric is built upon it; dislodge the foundation and it all topples down. Temperance reformers certainly do not desire that; but the fallacy that leads to it takes many disguises and creeps in unrecognised ; it is subtle and pervasive. How it pervades and colours the liquor question will, I hope, be made clear in the following pages ; for I believe we are still sane enough to throw off the delusions of dementia, when we see them, and to resume a healthy habit of thought. April, 1902. CONTENTS^ CHAPTER I INTEODUCTORY AND PEBSONAL PAGE Author's study of the liquor traffic — Knowledge of its actualities important — Want of such knowledge among reformers — Lord Salisbury's wisdom — Oppo- sition to schemes of reform — People who use the public-house not consulted — The * solution ' fallacy — Evils of drink — ^Alternative evils — Diminution of drimkenness accompanied by increase of betting — Moral law the only * solution ' — Total abstinence necessary for inebriates — Good for others but not for all 1-13 *• CHAPTER II DBINK nsr THE PAST Excessive indulgence prevalent from the earliest times — ^The Ancient Britons — The Saxons — Drinking healths — Temperance movement a.d. 570 — King Ed- gar, Dunstan, and * drinking to pegs ' — The Danes and Normans — English beer in 1130 — Early closing in the thirteenth century — Complaints of excessive number of taverns in 1330 — Power given to justices to suppress them in 1495 — Licensing introduced in 1 55 1-— Camden on the increase of drunkenness — Bacon and other writers in the Elizabethan age — The liquor traffic at the beginning of the seven- teenth century — ^Repressive Acts in 1603, 1607, and xii DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION PAGB 1610 — Burton on drinking in 1621 — ^The clergy im- plicated — Drunkenness among the Puritan troops — Female drunkenness in 1657 — Adulteration — Consumption of beer in 1688 — Home manufacture of spirits — Defoe on the English working man — Gin Act of 1736 — Increased consumption of spirits — Shocking state of things — Number of bars and con- sumption per head in London — Gin Act repealed — Fielding on gin — ^Moderate legislation in 1751 more successful — Beer v. spirits — Drunkenness among the upper classes — The public-house in the eight- eenth century — ^Medical attack on intemperance — London in 1824 — Beer-house Act of 1830 — Select Committee of 1834 — Remarkable evidence — Female and juvenile drunkenness — Sunday mornings — Drinking a condition of employment for working men — Conclusions of Committee .... 14-42 CHAPTER III THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS '^ New era since 1830-40 — Important changes — Organic improvement — Select Committee of 1854 — Evidence of improved conduct of liquor traffic — Abuses still existing — Increase of intemperance 1867-76 — House of Lords Committee of 1876 — Evidence of improve- ment — Reduction of public-houses — Dnmkenness more confined to lowest grades of society — Royal Commission of 1896-99 — Evidence of improvement from all parts of England — Scotland — Ireland—^ Statistics of drunkenness — London 1834-92 — Liver- pool 1866-95 — Glasgow 1857-96 — England and Wales 1857-98— Ireland 1885-95— Reduction of li- censes 1831-91— Consumption of alcohol 1831-99 . 43-74 CHAPTER IV FEMALE DRUNKENNESS Alleged increase — Distinction between upper and lower classes — Increase among former — Its causes — Feminine emancipation — Narcotic drugs — Lower CONTENTS xiii PAOB classes — Alleged diminution — Sir John Bridge — Alleged increase — Dr. Norman Kerr — Death-rate8 . from intemperance — Critically examined — Police ' statistics 1874-98 — Remarkable diminution — Less than among men — The reasons — Women more often habitual inebriates — Statistics in Liverpool and Dundee — Conclusion 76-89 CHAPTER V THE FORCES OF TEMPEBANCE Temperance Societies and Liquor Laws — Origin of temperance organisation 1826 — Belfast and Glas- gow 1829 — Yorkshire and Lancashire 1830 — London — British and Foreign Temperance Society 183i — Queen Victoria — Teetotalism 1832 — Dissensions — Father Mathew 1838-42 — His wonderful success — Comes to England 1843 — Decline of the temperance movement — ^Also in United States — ^The Maine law '^ — ^The United Kingdom Alliance — Revival of move- ment 1860 — Political element — Benefit Societies — Good Templars — Church of England Temperance Society — * Danesbury House * — Membership of So- cieties — Juvenile abstainers — Failure of teetotal- ism — ^Liquor laws — Activity of Legislature — Act of 1834 — Metropolitan Police Act 1839 — Beer-house Amendment Act 1840 — Gaming Act 1845 — Acts 1854-55, Sunday closing in Scotland — Act of 1860, Grocers* Licenses — Acts 1861-64 — Wine and Beer- house Act 1869 — Licensing Acts 1872 and 1874 — Their beneficial effects — Sunday closing in Ireland 1878— In Wales 1881— Acts 1882-1901— Other in- fluences — Public opinion — Indirect effects of So- cieties — Example of upper classes — The Court — The future 90-114 CHAPTER VI THE FOBCES OF INTEMPEEANCE Physiological effect of alcohol — ^People drink because they like it — Its exhilarating effect — ^Most desired in circumstances of depression — ^Hence influence of climate — Drunken countries in North of Europe — xiv DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AlO) LEGISLATION Sobriety of the South — Consumption per head no measure of sobriety — Diffused and concentrated y- drinking — Distribution of drunkenness in the United Kingdom — Greater in North and West than in South and East — Scotland — Spirit drinking and climate — Sweden — Influence of race — ^Hungarians — Celts — ^Abstemious nations decadent — ^Heredity and the Darwinian theory — Influence of occupation — Seaports, mining, manufacturing, and agricul- tural districts compared — The most and the least alcoholic classes — Other conditions of life — ^The real attraction of the public-house — Conviviality — Facilities — Need of restriction — Number of public- houses and drunkenness — Deficiency of regular facilities — Clubs — Hours of closing — Arrangement of premises — Food and non-intoxicants — State of wages — Price of liquor — Children and the public- house — Public opinion — The temptation theory and irresponsibility 115-157 CHAPTER VII THE PBINCIPLES OF LIQUOB LKQISLATIOISr The right to legislate — Proposed drastic measures — Need of guiding principles — Material for forming them — Ignored by Peel Conmiission — Functions of the law— Order and justice — Limits of the law in dealing with moral evils — Criminal law — Success- ful legislation — Police Act 1839 — Other closing Acts — Sunday closing — Acts of 1869, 1872, and 1874 — Evidence of their success — tjnsuccessful legislation — Gin Act 1736 — Beer-house Act 1830 — Act of 1860 — The Gothenburg system — Other Scan- dinavian legislation — Good effects of restriction — Compulsory virtue in the United States — Its effects — Local option — Limited application — Distinction between spheres of law and moral agencies — Tend- ency to confound them 168-176 CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII THEIB APPLICATION PAQB The aim of the law — The disorderly person — ^Requires more severe treatment — Suggestions — The dis- orderly place — Grocers* licenses — Clubs — Public- houses — Local option — * Trust the people * — Would leave the disorderly traffic untouched — Disinter- ested management — Its limits — Existing legal ma- chinery — Its success and failure — Its defects — The police — Weak points — Watch Committees — Effi- cient supervision of liquor traffic — Liverpool model system — Its success — Railway refreshment bars — The magistrates — Their leniency — Suggestions-^ The licensing bench — Its functions judicial not pa- ternal — Opposition excited by temperance zeal — A popularly elected element — Reasons against — Ire- land — Licensing courts should be made more ju- dicial — * Superfluous ' public-houses — Tied houses — Attack the wrong-doer — Disorderly hours — Earlier closing — Sunday closing in England — Con- clusion 177-199 CHAPTER IX THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE The customers — The publican — His difficulties — ^Atti- tude to customers — Visit of observation to the East-end of London — The exterior — Its influence overrated — The interior — Its arrangement — Pri- vacy and women — The liquor — ^Adulteration — In eighteenth century — In the present day — Current fallacies — Proportion of intoxicated persons to drinkers — ^A dramatic incident — Drimkards — The deliberate drunkard — A working man on the pub- lic-house — The publican and drunkenness — 'Push- ing the sale' — Sale of non-intoxicants — Difficulty of preventing drunkenness — Women and children in -the public-house — Responsibility of parents — Betting in public-houses — Conclusion . . . 200-223 XYi DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION CHAPTER X THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE PAGB Lord Grey's trust scheme — The first model public- house — The Rev. Osbert Mordaunt — ^History of the Boar's Head at Hampton Lucy — Mr. Mordaunt's experience — Difiiculty in obtaining good beer — Tricks of the trade — Financial results— Good ef- fects in the village — The house described — The village ale-house — ^How it diflFers from the urban house — ^Reasons why less well conducted — The liquor — Bad stuff sent from the brewery — ^Advan- tages of the model system — ^Mr. Mordaimt's advice —Probable effects of the trust system . . . 224-238 CHAPTER XI OOTHENBUBG AND THE SCANDINAVLIN SYSTEM Attractions of the system — ^Two ways of studying it — Gothenburg — The town described — The liquor traffic— The Gothenburg system— The Bolag— The model spirit-house — Scene inside — ^The liquor — Swedish capacity for drinking — Further details of management — The 'oflF' traffic — Beer-houses and beer — Effects of the system — On consumption — On drunkenness — The drunkenness of Gothenburg — Compared with England and Scotland — Increase due to beer — Female drimkenness — General effect on the working classes — Benefit of^ exchanging spirits for beer — * Clubbing ' — Methylated spirits — Probable effect of system in England — Gothenburg compared with Cardiff — ^The police — Greater license permitted in Sweden — Detailed reforms considered — Elimination of personal profit — Early closing the most important reform — Difficulties of apply- ing it in England — Other towns in Sweden and Norway 239-270 CONTENTS xvU CHAPTER Xn HABriXTAL INEBBIATSS PAOI Retreats and reformatories — ^Amount of accommoda- tion — Inebriates classified — The experience of re- treats — Small number of patients — Legal condi- tions — Majority of patients enter for short terms — Their dislike of restraint — Procuring liquor — Demoralising atmosphere — ^A patient quoted — Results — Reformatories — Compulsory restraint — Moral aspect of inebriety overlooked — * Irresistible craving ' — Dr. Johnson — De Quincey — Abstinence not a moral cure — Warning against discourage- ment — DiflBculty of dealing compulsorily with non- criminal cases — Compared with lunatics — Begin- ners would not be affected — Nor the bulk of work- ing-class drunkards — Women — Conclusion . 271-294 BiBLIOQBAPHT 295-296 Index ... 297-302 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY AND PERSONAL An explanation of my interest in the drink question seems due to the reader, and desirable in order to make clear the point of view maintained in what follows; but it is not essential, and this chapter may be skipped. It contains my credentials, so to speak, and cannot avoid being uncomfortably egotistic. Some years ago I was much engaged in the investigation of strikes and other labour questions. In order to get at the minds of the rank and file of the men — which is indispensable to a real under- standing of such matters, though generally neglected — I sought them where they most congregate and most readily enter into conversation, namely, in the public-house. I was thus led to spend a great deal of time in public-houses frequented by working men, conversing with them and joining in their pro- ceedings on a friendly footing, which included the consumption of vast quantities of * four ale.' I soon 2 dm:^ tempskance, and legislation became interested in what went on apart from the immediate question in hand, and fell into the habit of observing the manners and customs of the place and of the people frequenting it. Many things struck my attention which were quite at variance with statements I had often seen, and still see, made in public by persons interested in the liquor question but possessing only a second-hand knowledge of its actualities. I pursued the subject further and made a regular study of it, not only in all parts of this country but abroad; and I have since kept it up. It has, in fact, been my practice for several years past to observe the habits of the people and the conduct of the liquor traffic on the spot, wherever I go, at home or abroad. Every part of London and every class of house is familiar to me, from the fashionable restaurant to the sailors* dancing saloons (now abolished) in what used to be Ratcliff Highway, the foreign clubs about Soho and the so-called * opium dens ' frequented by Chinese firemen in Limehouse Causeway. I have made similar observa- tions in most of the large centres of population in these islands, in mining villages and purely agricultural districts; I have explored the lowest drinkshops in Paris by day and by night, alone and with the police, and have carried on my researches in nearly every country in Europe and in Canada. In short I may fairly say that my acquaintance with the pothouse and its ways is * extensive and peculiar.' These observations have been supplemented, as INTRODUCTORY AND PERSONAL 3 will be seen from subsequent chapters, by other studies. I have laboured over statistical returns, reports of official inquiries, historical and other literature; and I happen — by chance, not design — to have had experience of dipsomania, far more close and intimate, though less extensive, than that of the keeper of an inebriate home. I also heard all the evidence given before the Peel Commission — it fills nine closely printed Blue-books of the largest size — and wrote an abstract of it. Few phases of the subject, therefore, are unfamiliar to me, but I attach the greatest importance to a knowledge of the actual living thing. It seems to me the indis- pensable foundation for a clear comprehension of the problem as a whole, for without such knowledge it is difficult to interpret and appraise other evidence, which always varies widely and is often apparently contradictory. For instance, there is the all-impor- tant question of the execution of the law. As we all know, laws on the statute-book are one thing, laws in operation another; and whatever measures may be passed for the control or suppression of the liquor traffic, their efficacy depends on the action of the police. To understand that, we ought to know what goes on and the conditions under which the police have to act. Then there is the question of improvement or the contrary in the conduct of the liquor traffic and the effect of legislation or other influences upon it. One can hardly judge whether things are getting better or worse without knowing them as they are. K 4 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Again, there is the fundamental question of the mutual relations between the people and the liquor trade, their attitude towards it and its attitude to- wards them; their habits and behaviour with regard to drink, how far they are * driven ' or * drawn ' to it or seek it proprio motu. These things can only be learnt by observation inside the public-house. Theo- retical considerations may be very fallacious, and second-hand information often needs checking. In addition to such general questions we are confronted with a string of minor details — child messengers, the arrangement of premises, compartments, side-doors, the sale of non-intoxicants, the serving of drunken persons, the preservation of order, tied v. free houses, disinterested management, and so forth. A real insight into these and the like questions cannot well be acquired without studying them from the inside. At IcEist such study cannot fail to be highly instruc- tive, and the wider the field of observation the greater the instruction derived from it. I cannot help thinking it a great pity that those who take the keenest interest in the subject and are most eager to deal with it by legislation should possess so very little of this inside knowledge. What they do know — it is that, of course, which makes them eager — is the evil of intemperance, the effects of which are visible in the streets, the home, and the police-court; but to be familiar with effects is not a sufficient equipment for grappling with causes. It provides the motive, not the knowledge. Contemplation of the devastation caused by a flood INTRODUCTORY AND PERSONAL 5 and an earnest desire to remedy it do not qualify any one to undertake the task. The emotional spec- tator, without knowledge, thinks it quite simple. * The river must be stopped,' he says decisively, and cannot understand that any one should oppose such an obvious solution except from sheer love of floods. Singularly enough the engineer does not see it in the same light. Lord Salisbury was severely taken to task for say- ing not long ago in the House of Lords that the matter of liquor reform required great consideration because it was a case of the cellared classes legislat- ing for the uncellared. Some critics were astonished and others indignant at the * flippancy ' of putting off this important question with a truism which applies to our whole body of liquor laws, as if it were a new thing. Lord Salisbury's critics failed to see the point of his remark because — as not infrequently happens — they had not an equal grasp of the subject. He really went to the heart of it. So many blunders have been committed in the past just because one class has always legislated for another without suffi- ciently knowing the conditions; and it is for the same reason that there is so much division and con- troversy now and so much danger of blundering again. The opposition offered to many schemes of liquor legislation is always ascribed by their promoters to the machinations of the trade. No doubt there is opposition on the part of liquor sellers, who, like other people, resent interference with their business, 6 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION and they are a powerful body. But the suggestion is that by some obscure influence they induce others, who have not the same direct interest, to join in fight- ing their battles. A recent pronouncement of this kind may be quoted as typical. At a meeting held in Ijambeth Palace to advocate Sunday closing, the noble- man who moved the resolution said that * in fighting this question they had to contend with the opposition of the trade, which was strong in wealth, in active co-operation and organisation, and, above all, in a subtle influence which permeated every street and every city and almost every lane of every village and hamlet. ' ^ If his lordship had that inside knowledge of the liquor traffic to which I refer, he would understand the * subtle influence ' and the opposition better. I venture to think — ^indeed I know — ^that a great part of the opposition is not due to any machinations of the trade, but to ignorance of the forces with which they have to deal commonly displayed by temperance reformers. They want to stop the river v^ithout studying its origin and course, and the many who know it well perceive that the naive plan is imprac- ticable. How many temperance reformers have ever set foot inside a public-house? I often think, when I read the account of enthusiastic meetings and the speeches delivered at them, what an instructive change it would be if the audience and the speakers would adjourn to the public-house and acquire a little practical knowledge on the subject. For while they » Standard, February 14, 1902. INTRODUCTORY AND PERSONAL 7 are enjoying themselves at the meeting with intoxi- cating words about the wishes of the people, the people are enjoying themselves at the public-house with intoxicating liquor, and are about as much dis- posed to abandon that privilege as the reformers would be to support a measure for the suppression of meetings. It was not even thought necessary to consult them when an exhaustive inquiry was recently held into the operation of the liquor laws. Everybody else was consulted. Hundreds of witnesses repre- senting every other interest, including the trade, were called and encouraged to state their views and fancies, often at intolerable length; but the people, who are the vital factor in determining the ultimate result, whose desires, needs, and habits form the real test by which every measure stands or falls in practice, and by which, therefore, it should be judged — they were ignored. Two or three presented them- selves, and received the scant attention which they deserved for thrusting forward their opinions on a matter which seems to be the business of everybody except those who are most concerned. There is something ludicrous in the lists of witnesses and their occupations, apart from the magistrates, police, and others who had a real connection with the question, and gave valuable evidence. It is as though one were to hold an inquiry into coal-mines, and were to call up the butcher, the baker, the candlestick- maker, and solemnly elicit their views, while leaving out the miner. But it was typical of the manner 8 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION in which the subject is usually approached. Truly local option is more reasonable: nominally, at least, it sets out to give those who use the public-house a say in the matter. One disadvantage of living in an atmosphere of words untempered by reality is that we become the slaves of phrases. All questions of social legislation abound in them, and there is one master-phrase which applies to them all — the * solution of the problem.' We see so many problems, as it were, set up in a row, and each is supposed to have a solution somewhere, like so many poisons and their antidotes. The game is to find the solution. * A solution must be found,' say the newspapers oracu- larly, and we all cry our nostrums in the market- place. Eventually the political parties begin to fight over one of them, and then its fortune is made. The game is played more often with temperance than with anything else. The number of solutions is so great, and each has such splendid testimonials, that the bewildered public does not know which to choose. By a solution is meant some system or scheme which shall be a short cut to virtue, and shall accomplish by a wave of the legislative wand that which all the efforts of all the saints and sages have failed to achieve in a score of centuries. If it does not profess to do quite so much as that, it promises at least a great reformation, and therein lies its attractiveness. The belief in a solution of the drink problem in this sense is a delusion, and its domination is mis- INTRODUCTORY AND PERSONAL 9 chievous, because it turns away the eyes of people from the straight and narrow way, and fixes them on an alluring vision, which they cannot reach. No one can study the actualities at first hand without discovering that alcoholic indulgence is far too deeply rooted in human nature to be dug out by any summary process. The most despotic power could not do it, for its decrees would not be executed. The sooner we get rid of the solution fetish and its specious promises, the more clearly shall we see the way before us, and the more firmly tread it. To that end I would say — pay less attention to words and more to actual life. Another lesson derived from observation may be mentioned here. The reader will perhaps notice in this volume an omission unusual in a book on drink, and needing some explanation. Nothing, or very little, is said about the evils of drink. They have been so often and so fully detailed that I thought it unnecessary to repeat them, but as a frequenter of public-houses I feel bound to say something on the subject. I think the individual harm done by drink — the absolute degradation and ruin, the misery and cruelty resulting — cannot possibly be over-stated. But the collective harm seems to me often exag- gerated. People speak as if they believe that the abolition of drink would virtually put an end to poverty, vice, and crime, and that all the money saved from the public-house would be sheer gain and spent on useful things. Singular delusion. Is there no poverty, vice, and crime in abstemious /^ 10 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION countries ? Ten times more than in our own drunken one. And with us * nine-tenths of the crimes are crimes against property, and would not be affected by drunkenness * (Judicial Statistics, 1901). Even crimes of violence do not correspond with the amount of drink and drunkenness. The consumption of drink in the United Kingdom in 1899 was about 8 per cent, higher than the average for 1894-8, and the police drunkenness in England and Wales was 15 per cent, higher; but the crimes of violence — namely, common assaults, aggravated assaults, as- saults on constables, felonious and malicious wound- ing — decreased 1.62 per cent. (Introduction to Judicial Statistics, 1901). I do not seek to extenu- ate intemperance. Far from it. I have an intense abhorrence of it, and regard a drunken person with an unchristian disgust and contempt of which I am sometimes ashamed. But I see that there are other things, less tangible and visible, but not less degrad- ing. Intemperance is not a moral diseeise, only a symptom. The disease, the real malady that manifests itself in this and many other forms, is that moral weakness which prefers immediate gratification to ultimate good. And the symptoms are largely interchangeable, though several may co-exist to- gether. Drink and gambling, for instance, are to a great extent complementary; as one wanes the other waxes. The sober nations in the south of Europe are fierce and incorrigible gamblers ; and in our own country, as the habit of intoxication has dropped into disfavour lower and lower in the social scale, its INTRODUCTORY AND PERSONAL 11 place has been taken by betting, which has become increasingly prevalent among the working classes.^ I have watched the process myself and have made some investigation into the prevalence of betting. There is no doubt that money saved from the public-house goes chiefly into the pockets of bookmakers. The vice is morally more degrading than indulgence in drink, for it appeals to a baser motive and it causes a vast amount of poverty, misery, and crime. The police constantly get the most piteous letters from relatives begging them to stop it. The evidence given before the House of Lords Committee will bear me out. Here are the remarks of Mr. Horace Smith, metropolitan police- magistrate : * His experience was that while crime in general was decreasing, cases of fraud and embezzlement were increasing, and he believed this was due to betting. People started betting, and when they lost they be- gan to rob. . . . * Is not betting among the poor increased owing to its prevalence among the rich 1 — I cannot help sus- pecting it, but I cannot say that it is. In my great- grandfather's day they used to get drunk and roll under the table. I am glad, however, that poor peo- ple are beginning to appreciate the fact that it is not correct to get drunk now. I should like to be able to say the same thing in regard to betting, but I am afraid it is impossible. * ^ * The prosecutions for gaming increased 116.36 per cent, in 1895-9 over 1880-4 (Judicial Statistics, 1901). Those for drunkenness in the same periods show a marked fall {see Chapter III). * Times, February 15, 1902. 12 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION So, too, the Rev. J. W. Horsley, formerly chaplain of Clerkenwell Prison. When chaplain, he * saw that betting was increasing very much, and had heard from chaplains since he left that it was increasing still more now.' On the other hand, * he could say that there is much less drinking among working men than there was years ago. ' ^ Betting is only one of several alternative vices, which are often supposed to be the monopoly of the idle rich, but are enormously prevalent in the lower social strata. I have heard betting defended on the ground that men who do not bet spend their money on women, and there is no doubt some truth in this allegation. However, it is not my purpose to write a treatise on vice. I merely wish to show that the whole question touches much wider and deeper issues than are dreamt of in the problem-and-solution philosophy. We cannot assume that if by some device the poorer classes were prevented from spending on the publican the monstrous proportion of their earnings which still goes into his pocket — and I fully agree that it is monstrous — they would devote it to any worthier object. In other words they do not spend it to please him but to please themselves. The bearing of this fundamental fact is fully discussed later on. The ultimate lesson to be drawn from it is that the only * solution ' lies in the moral law working through the individual. With regard to total abstinence my own opinion is that for habitual inebriates abstinence is the only *• Timest March 20, 1902. INTRODUCTORY AND PERSONAL 13 chance, and that many other people are better in health without alcoholic liquor. But for many it is a good thing. I know it is a good thing for myself. I have virtually abstained on various occasions for months together and have no difficulty in doing so. Nor does it affect me prejudicially at first. But after a time my brain suffers from lack of nutrition and will not work so well. I derive immediate benefit from the use of wine or beer. Perhaps I should add that I come of abstemious parentage and was very sparing all my youth. Once when at school I got a wound on the finger at cricket, which obstinately refused to heal. At last the surgeon, having exhausted his art, ordered me a glass of port wine every day. The place healed at once. I have seen many cases in which the moderate use of alcoholic liquor as an article of diet has been equally beneficial. But it is a mistake to lay down abso- lute rules. There is no law applicable to everybody; individuals differ so much. I suppose it is true enough that many people drink too much, yet never exceed to intoxication. But then, we are all always doing things * too much.' We eat too much, work too much, and talk too much. What is * too much *? What is the final test and the object of life? Let us remember that there is something more obnoxious to God and man than mere physical excess : and that is self-righteousness, and the desire to regulate our neighbours* lives by some little formula which hap- pens to suit ourselves. 14 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION CHAPTER II DRINK IN THE PAST Excessive indulgence in strong drink has prevailed in this country from the earliest times. We may- go back century after century until all records fail, and find the same complaints about the appalling havoc wrought by drink, the bad habits of the people, the superabundance of public-houses and the need for measures of reform, reappearing again and again as something new. The evidence left by writers from age to age is sufficiently contiQuous to show that we have always been a drunken nation, and sufficiently explicit to prove beyond the possibility of denial that in times past the evil has been incom- parably greater than anything within modem ex- perience. As with crime, poverty, ignorance, brutal customs, and the prevalence of disease, so with drink — the * good old times ' of which we hear so much were disfigured by a condition of things which would be intolerable in the present day. In what follows I shall try to make good these observations by putting together some of the more interesting facts recorded in the past. For that purpose I have drawn freely on various authors and particularly on DRINK IN THE PAST 16 Valpy French and Lecky. So few people, however, appear to be acquainted with those writers that I make no apology for reproducing a good deal of matter from their pages, together with some of my own. We do not know much about the ancient Britons, but it is recorded that they used three kinds of in- toxicating liquor — mead or metheglin made from honey, beer made from barley, and cider; and, however sober they may have been in ordinary life, they could on occasions get drunk and disorderly with anybody. The occasions were mostly religious festivals, and it is worth noting that ever since, up to the present day, religious ceremonies have always been observed by the common people as their chief opportunities for drunkenness. Weddings, christen- ings, and, above all, funerals are celebrated in this way, which explains the true object of burial clubs. The line * We drew his club money this morning ' in a recent comic song has an inner meaning which might escape the uninitiated. But that is a digres- sion. The Romans, who appreciated strong drink, like all conquering races, introduced wine and viticulture, but under the Saxons mead and beer were still the chief liquors. These heroes brought with them the custom of pledging healths, which continued through succeeding centuries until a comparatively recent period, and has been repeatedly blamed by different observers at various times as a great cause of in- temperance in the higher ranks of society. Probably with justice. If not the cause, it is certainly the 16 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION occasion of dnmkeimess. Its abandonment by Eng- lish society, save in a ceremonious sense, during the nineteenth century has coincided with a notable im- provement, while in other countries where it is still practised — Scandinavia and Hungary — orgies were common only the day before yesterday, and are not unknown to-day. Among the more sober nations of Europe, on the other hand, it has never obtained. The Saxons were mighty eaters and drinkers. The mead-horn plays a great part in the very earliest literature, and already in the sixth century the temperance movement definitely began. Members of the Church of England Temperance Society will be glad to know that it began with the Church, but that, unfortunately, was because the Church required it. St. Gildas the Wise (a.d. 570), observing with pain that not only the laity but also the clergy were scandalously given to habits of intoxication, issued some rules to his monks, and ordained that ' if any one, through drinking too freely, gets thick of speech so that he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of his supper.' This does not err on the side of severity, and the test is charmingly naive, but at any rate the blame was laid on the culprit. St. David (a.d. 569) took a more modern view and punished the publican in addition, so to speak. His monks were also accustomed to go about and get drunk in a friendly way, so he ordained among other rules that * he that forces another to get drunk out of hospitality must do penance as if he had got drunk himself.' However, things seem to have gone on DRINK IN THE PAST 17 much the same until we come to King Edgar, who, at the instance of Dunstan, made the first attempt at sobriety by Act of Parliament — if the anachronism may be allowed — as near as may be 1,000 years ago. He suppressed a great number of ale-houses, and, in order to lessen the depth of his subjects' potations, invented * drinking to pegs,' which would be equiva- lent to regulating the size of the tumbler. People used to drink then out of wooden pots holding half a gallon, and the King had eight pegs or pins inserted, dividing the pot into so many doses of half a pint, like a medicine bottle. But alas for human attempts to circumvent the demon of drink ! Drink- ing to pegs presently became a merry pastime, and a means of encouraging intoxication, like ' buzzing ' in the nineteenth century; and at no distant date Anselm had to forbid his clergy expressly to ' go to drinking-bouts and drink to pegs.' Meanwhile the Danes had come upon the scene and made things worse, as they were still more valiant potmen than the Saxons and more given to toasts. * Waes hael ' and * drinc hael ' — if that is right — went more merrily than ever. The Normans are credited with having introduced some refinement, but, like other con- querors, they went down in their turn before the conquered. William of Malmesbury (a.d. 1130) remarks that * the Saxon nobility passed entire nights and days in drinking, and consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses '; and he adds that they imparted the qualities of over-eating and over-drinking to their conquerors. At this time 18 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION the fame of English beer and its effects had travelled far, for Innocent II., who became Pope in 1130, passed some sarcastic comments on our national habits. In the thirteenth century we come across early closing. It was not enforced directly in the interests of temperance, but because of the increase of crime fostered by public-houses in London. By the Statuta Civitatis London., passed in 1285, taverns were forbidden to remain open after curfew in the metropolis. But in spite of legislative interference they continued to increase and multiply, and in 1330 complaints were made of * the great number of taverns set up in back lanes, corners, and suspicious places.' So things went on for 150 years, until in 1495 power was given to the justices to suppress and control ale-houses. In the reign of Edward VI. the first attempt was made to control the evil by means of licensing. * For as much as intolerable hurts and troubles to the commonwealth of this realm doth daily grow and increase through such abuses and disorders as are had and used in common ale-houses and other places called tippling houses,* Acts were passed in 1551, 1552, giving further power to the magistrates over them, and providing that all such places should be licensed. Once started in this direction, the authorities were compelled to return again and again to the Sisyphean task, and thence- forward the road is strewn with innumerable legislative failures. The first Acts of Edward VI. being found inadequate, more were passed in the DRINK IN THE PAST 19 following year, but thirty years later Camden found things as bad as ever, or, as he thought, worse. Like other moralists in every period, he believed his own times to be disgraced by something un- known before. He maintained that drunkenness was still a recent vice in his day (1581), that there had been a time when the English were ' of all the northern nations the most commended for their sobriety, ' and that * they first learnt in their wars in the Netherlands to drown themselves with im- moderate drinking.' The times to which he alluded must have been those of Boadicea. He ought to have known better, for there was no concealment about it in the previous century. As Dr. Valpy French says, * the consumption of strong drink at public entertainments was something prodigious in the fifteenth century. At the banquet upon the occa- sion of the installation of George Neville, Archbishop of York, in 1464, no less than 300 tuns of ale and 100 tuns of wine were consumed.' He further quotes an old writer on the practice of the common people at weddings: * When they come home from church then beginneth excess of eatyng and drjoiking and as much is waist^d in one daye as were sufficient for the two newe-married folkes halfe a year to lyve on.* To do Camden justice, however, they seem to have been pretty bad in his day. Of that we have abun- dant evidence. Stephen Perlin, a French physician who was in England about the time of Henry VIII. 's death, wrote: ' The English, one with another, are joyous and are very fond of music; they are 20 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION also great drinkers.' The Rev. William Kethe preached about Sunday in 1570 — ' which holy day the multitudes call their revelyng day, which day is spent in bul-beatings, beare-beatings, bowlings, dicjTQg, cardyng, daunsynges, drunkenness, and whoredome.' Philip Stubbes (1583) wrote that the public-houses were * crowded from morning till night with inveterate drunkards. * Bacon saw enough to convince him that ' all the crimes on the earth do not destroy so many of the human race nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.' The testimony of Shakespeare (particularly lago) and of the other dramatists of the period is too familiar to need quota- tion. At this period the upper classes drank wine and the lower still stuck to beer, but spirits, the in- vention of which dates from the earlier Plantagenet days, were beginning to be known. Geneva, or gin, was brought home from the Netherlands, and Irish settlers introduced the distillation of usquebaugh. In 1603 James I. again invoked the aid of legis- lation by an Act to restrain the inordinate haunting and tippling in inns, ale-houses, and other victualling houses. It was declared that the * ancient, true, and principal use of inns, ale-houses, and victualling houses was for the receipt, relief, and lodging of wayfaring people travelling from place to place,' and that they were * not meant for entertainment and harbouring of lewd and idle people to spend and consume their money and their time in lewd and drunken manner,' albeit that was the identical use to which they had been put from time immemorial. DRINK IN THE PAST 21 Innkeepers permitting unlawful drunkenness were fined 105. This met with such gratifying success that only four years later it was found necessary to pass another Act for * the better suppressing of ale- houses, whereof the multitudes and abuses have been and are found intolerable, and still do and are like to increaise. ' Also for * repressing the odious and loath- some sin of drunkenness,' which, it was mistakenly thought, had * of late grown into common use within this realm, being the root and foundation of many other enormous sins, as bloodshed, stabbing, murder, swearing, fornication, adultery a'nd suchlike, to the great dishonour of God and of our nation, the over- throw of many good arts and manual trades, the disabling of divers workmen, and the general im- poverishing of many good subjects, abusively wasting the good creatures of God.' Drunkards were fined 55. for each conviction. No improvement followed, and in 1610 more Acts were passed. Innkeepers breaking the law had their license suspended for three years. Notwithstanding all this, Charles I. was presently compelled to try again with yet an- other Act * for the further restraint of tippling in inns and ale-houses ' ; but severity appears to have led to illicit trade, for we find that in 1627 a penalty of 205. or a whipping was imposed for keeping an ale-house without license. Some interesting evidence of the state of things- about this time is forthcoming. Burton wrote in 1621 : * What im- moderate drinking in every place! How they flock to the tavern! 'Tis now the fashion of our 22 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION times, an honour. 'Tis now come to that pass that he is no gentleman, a very milksop, a clown, of no bring- ing up, that will not drink. 'Tis now no fault, there be so many brave examples to bear one out: the sole contention, who can drink most and fox his fellow soonest. 'Tis the summum honum of our tradesmen, their felicity, life and soule, their chiefe comfort, to be merry together in an ale-house or tavern; they will labour hard all day long, to be drunk at night, and spend totius anni labor es in a tippling feast.' Another writer in the year 1627 says: * The taverns, ale-houses, and the very streets are so full of drunkards in all parts of this kingdom, that by the sight of them it is better known what this detestable and odious vice is, than by any definition whatsoever. * Decker observes that in 1632 * a whole street was in some places but a continuous ale-house, not a shop to be seen between red lattice and red lattice.' According to Bishop Earle, the public-house was the common rendezvous for all classes. The clergy took their share with the rest, and in 1641 a com- mittee was appointed to inquire into the scandal. From some curious extracts quoted by Dr. French from the Darlington parochial registers it appears that when a strange clergyman came to preach he was always provided with quarts of sack or bottles of brandy for the occasion. The Puritans effected no improvement, if, in- deed, they were not just as bad themselves. Pepys observes of General Monk's troops in 1659: * The city is very open-handed to the soldiers; they are DRINK IN THE PAST 23 most of them drunk all day.* And a letter to a French nobleman about this time (* Harleian Mis- cellfiny ') says: 'There is within this city, and in all the towns of England which I have passed through, so prodigious a number of houses where they sell a certain drink called ale, that I think a good half of the inhabitants may be denominated ale-house keepers. These are a meaner sort of cabarets, . . . There the gentlemen sit and spend much of their time drinking. . . . Your lordship will not believe me that the ladies of greatest quality suffer themselves to be treated in one of these taverns where a courtezan in other cities would scarcely vouchsafe to be entertained.* A fervid gentleman of the name of Reeves wrote a tract called * A Plea for Nineveh ' in 1657, in which a terrific onslaught was made on the prevalent vices of over-eating and over-drinking. The latter, he said, had spread to women (bearing out the foregoing letter) : * Neither the bashfulness nor modesty of women can restrain them from participating in the guilt. . . . We amongst ourselves may find a multitude of these in- temperate sottish women who will quaff with the most riotous, and give pledge for pledge and take off cup for cup.* With the Restoration, of course, the bowl flowed with renewed vigour, and measures had to be taken to check adulteration, which is innocently believed by ninety-nine people in a hundred to be a modern invention. Penalties of lOOL were imposed on merchants and 40Z. on retailers. Up to this time, and nearly till the close of the century, wine and 24 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION beer remained the universal liquors. According to Mr. Lecky, from whom I derive many of the facts about the eighteenth century, the amount of beer brewed in 1688 was 12,400,000 barrels for a popula- tion a little over 5,000,000, which gives an average consumption of about ninety gallons a head (the present amount is about thirty gallons). British distilleries up to the time of the Revolution were quite inconsiderable, and French brandy too dear to be within the reach of the poor. The Government of the Revolution, however, in its wisdom, took a step fraught with disastrous consequences. In order to encourage native industries or to spite the French, it absolutely prohibited the importation of spirits, and threw open the trade of distilling, on the payment of comparatively trifling duties, to all its subjects. The English manufacture of spirits spread rapidly, and the people gradually acquired a passion for gin. The amount of spirits produced in 1684 was 527,000 gallons ; in 1714 it had risen to 2,000,000, in 1735 to 5,394,000, and in 1742 to 7,160,000 gallons. The habits of the working classes at the beginning of the century are described in strangely familiar terms in Defoe's tract on * Giving Alms no Charity ' (1704). * There is nothing more frequent than for an English- man to work till he has got his pockets full of money and then go and be idle, or perhaps drink till it is all gone; and ask him in his cups what he intends, he'll tell you honestly he will drink as long as it lasts and then go to work for more.' A writer in * The British Merchant ' of the same period, contrasting English DRINK IN THE PAST 25 habits with French frugality, remarks : ' It is well known that our people spend half of their money upon drink.' So also the Rev. John Disney, J.P. (1729) : * Labouring men very often consume there (in the ale-house) on the Lord's day what they have gotten all the week before and let their families beg or steal for a subsistence the week following.' Gin- drinking seems to have got fairly hold of London by 1725, when a committee of Middlesex magistrates stated that there were in the metropolis, exclusive of the City of London and Southwark, 6,187 houses and shops wherein * geneva or other strong waters ' were sold by retail. The population was then about 700,000. In some cases every seventh house was employed in the sale of intoxicants (Dr. French). The Grand Jury of Middlesex declared once more that much the greater part of the poverty, the murders, the robberies of London might be traced to this single cause. To judge from Hogarth's appalling representation of Gin Lane, women were the most given to spirit-drinking, which is entirely in accordance with modern experience. In 1728 an attempt was made to check the spirit traffic, by licensing and higher duties ; but the Act was evaded, did more harm than good by causing illicit trade, and was repealed four years later. In 1736, the Middle- sex magistrates presented a petition to Parliament declaring * that the drinking of geneva and other dis- tilled waters had for some years past greatly in- creased; that the constant and excessive use thereof had destroyed thousands of his Majesty's subjects; 26 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION that great numbers of others were by its use rendered unfit for useful labour, debauched in morals, and drawn into all manner of vice and wickedness,' &c. Thereupon came the famous Gin Act of 1736. Legis- lators, in their simplicity, thought that as the evil arose because gin had been made easy of access, it could be abolished by making gin difficult of access. So they clapped on a duty of 205. in the gallon and fixed the retail license at 501. per annum. No half- measures, observe, but prohibition in all but name, The first result was an apparent decrease of consump- tion, but that lasted a very short time, and it soon became clear that the Act was much worse than a failure. Illicit trade sprang up, and greatly aug- mented the evil. Although 12,000 persons were pun- ished for infringing the law in two years, it flourished notwithstanding beyond all power of control. Dis- tillers took out wine-licenses and sold a concoction of gin, sugar, and spice as wine, just as they do to-day in Norway and Sweden. Druggists put up gin in physic-bottles and called it * cholick water * or * gripe water, * with the direction, * Take two or three spoonfuls of this four or five times a day, or as often as the fit takes you.' Gin was openly sold in the taverns under fancy names. In short, the repressive Act gave a great stimulus to the traffic. The con- sumption in England and Wales rose from 11,000,000 gallons in 1733 to nearly 20,000,000 in 1742, and there is not the slightest doubt that a most shocking state of things prevailed. From all accounts the condition of the people must have been just like that of the DRINK m THE PAST 27 Swedes and Norwegians down to the middle of the nineteenth century. They were sodden in spirits. * Such a shameful degree of profligacy prevailed/ says the contemporary historian,^ * that the retailers of this poisonous compound (gin) set up painted boards in public inviting people to be drunk for the small expense of one penny, assuring them they might be dead drunk for 2d. and have straw for noth- ing; they accordingly provided cellars and places strewed with straw, to which they conveyed those wretches who were overwhelmed with intoxication : in these dismal caverns they lay until they had recov- ered some use of their faculties, and then they had recourse to the same mischievous potion/ Lord Lonsdale, speaking in the House of Lords in 1743, made these remarks: * In every part of this great metropolis whoever shall pass along the streets will find wretchedness stretched upon the pavement, insensible and motion- less, and only removed by the charity of passengers from the danger of being crushed by carriages or trampled by horses or strangled with filth in the common sewers. . . . No man can pass a single hour in public places without meeting such objects or hearing such expressions as disgrace human nature — such as cannot be looked upon without horror or heard without indignation. . . . These liquors not only in- fatuate the mind but poison the body; they not only fill our streets with madness and our prisons with criminals, but our hospitals with cripples. . . . Those women who riot in this poisonous debauchery- are quickly disabled from bearing children, or pro- duce children diseased from their birth.' ^ Smollett, Eist. of England, ch. xviii. 28 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION The * History of London ' by William Maitland, F.R.S., published about this time, gives us some precise data which are of great value, because the author was a scientific man, a careful and dis- passionate observer, and a contemporary. There were, he says, at that time in London 95,968 houses, of which 15,288 sold drink for consumption on the premises. These numbers were ascertained by actual survey, so that there can be no possibility of doubt about them. The population was reckoned, by an extremely careful computation of the Bills of Mortality, at 725,903, which is clearly not far wrong because it agrees with the number of houses. There was, therefore, one pothouse to every six houses and to every forty-seven persons. At the census in 1896 the proportion was one to every seventy-seven houses and to every 585 persons. If all licenses, both for * on ' and * off * consumption, be included, the proportion was only one to 424 persons. Public-houses were, therefore, about twelve times more numerous in proportion to the population a hundred and fifty years ago than they are now. And it is interesting to note their character. Of the whole number 8,659 were * brandy-shops,' 5,975 were ale-houses, and only 654 inns and taverns. This disposes of the cherished fallacy that before our own degenerate times public-houses were places of refreshment for man and beast, not mere bars. On the contrary, more than half the whole number — namely, the 8,659 brandy-shops — were nothing but spirit bars, and 5,975 more were mere pothouses. DRINK IN THE PAST 29 Further, the spirit bars were crowded together in a comparatively small area eastward of the City and on the Surrey side of the river. In the City and the West-end they were comparatively few. The * congested ' areas in those days must have been congested indeed. In some of them one third or one half the houses must have been devoted to drink. The worst districts in London to-day sink into insignificance beside this. We may wonder how so many publicans managed to exist. It is explained by the consumption, which was prodigious. The quantity consumed in London in a year was: — Beer, 70,955,604 gaUons; spirits, 11,205,627 gallons; wine, 30,040 tuns. Leaving out wine, we get an annual consumption per head of — Beer, 90 gallons; spirits, 14 gallons. At present the quantities are about 30 gallons of beer and 1 gallon of spirits. The effects of such indulgence were in keeping with the figures. * The excessive drinking of spirituous liquors, ' says Mr. Maitland, ' has so enervated the stomachs of the populace as to render them incapable of performing the offices of digestion, whereby the appetite is so much depraved that its inclination to food is much lessened and the consumption of provisions greatly diminished; which has occasioned victuals, instead of rising, to fall in price very considerably, to the no small loss of the landed interest.' The cry was so loud against the Gin Act as the cause of illicit trade that the Legislature executed another manoeuvre in the game of see-saw, and 30 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION practically threw the trade open by reducing the duty from 205. to Id. and the license from 50Z. to 11. Now it is the turn of the individualist, who would throw the trade open to-day, to mark the result. Did it do any good? Not the least. In 1749 the number of private gin-shops within the Bills of Mortality were computed at 17,000 according to * The Gentleman's Magazine,* and crime and im- morality of every kind were still increasing. In 1750, London physicians stated that there were in or about the metropolis 14,000 cases of illness, most of them beyond the reach of medicine (true enough, no doubt), directly attributable to gin. Fielding, in 1751, declared that gin was * the principal sustenance (if it may so be called) of more than 100,000 persons within the metropolis,' while Bishop Benson accused ' those accursed spirituous liquors, which are so easy to be had, and in such quantities drunk,' of having * changed the very nature of our people; and they will, if continued to be drunk, destroy the very race of people themselves.' But more eloquent than any denunciations is the following episode, baldly related in * The Gentleman's Magazine ' for 1748. It indi- cates a state of public opinion which ig to us almost incredible, and marks the prodigious gulf between our own times and the eighteenth century : * At a christening in Beddington, in Surrey, the nurse was so intoxicated that after she had undressed the child, instead of laying it in the cradle, she put it behind a large fire, which burnt it to death in a few minutes. She was examined before a magistrate DRINK IN THE PAST 81 and said she was quite stupid aud senseless, so that she took the child for a log of wood; on which she was discharged.' The clamour now was that * the great increase in the number of gin-shops and the low price of the article were the cause of its excessive use amongst the lower orders,* so the Legislature was forced to turn to the weary task once more, and passed fresh Acts in 1751. Distillers were forbidden to retail themselves or to sell to unlicensed publicans, and tippling debts could not be recovered at law. These measures had a * real and very considerable effect,' says Mr. Lecky; and two years later they were reinforced by further regulations about licensing and the conduct of public-houses, which, * though much less ambitious than the Act of 1736, were far more efiScacious.' In short, reasonable legislation proved to be of some use where severity and laxity had both done nothing but harm. Gin-drinking began to fall off again in favour of beer, to the moral and physical advantage of the people, precisely in accordance with modern experience in Scandinavia. The whole story is exceedingly instructive, both as a lesson in unwise legislation and as illustrating the difference between different kinds of intoxicants. Writers on the subject generally class them all together under the comprehensive term of * alcohol,' but there is an immense difference in their effects. Spirits, and spirits alone, produce the absolute ruin of body and mind which makes the true dipsomaniac. And even among spirits some are more injurious 32 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION than others. Gin and brandy produce certain definite diseases of the body of which whisky and rum are innocent. There is, therefore, genuine truth at the bottom of the ribald old song : * Brandy and gin blows out the skin And makes you feel very queer: Then damn his eyes whoever tries To rob a poor cove of his beer.* In spite of the change indicated, however, there was no progressive improvement in the habits of the people. Nor could any be expected when the upper classes set the example of habitual intem- perance. The fact is too familiar to need any proof here, and one quotation must suffice. Sir Gilbert Elliot, writing to his wife in 1787, says : * Men of all ages drink abominably. Fox drinks what I should call a great deal, Sheridan excessively, and Grey (Lord Howick) more than any of them. Pitt, I am told, drinks as much as any one. * In fact, all through the eighteenth century leading statesmen, men of letters, judges, divines, and other persons of high position habitually drank to excess, and nobody thought much of it. What, then, was the use of trying to check the common people? A poem by James Smith, called the * Upas Tree in Marylebone Lane,' meaning the spirit bar, gives one a brief glimpse into the public-house of the period: 'The house that surrounds it stands first in the row. Two doors at right angles swing open below, ' And the children of misery daily steal in, And the poison they draw they denominate Oin. DRINK IN THE PAST 33 ' There enter the prude and the reprobate boy, The mother of grief and the daughter of joy; The serving-maid slim and the serving-man stout, They quickly steal in and they slowly reel out.* Swing-doors, bar-drinking, female customers, and young people are less modern features of the traffic than is generally supposed. Indeed, the traffic has no modern features, except its comparative respect- ability. Adulteration abounded to an extent un- dreamt of to-day. The * good old times * when taverns were places of legitimate refreshment, and nothing but * honest home-brewed * was drunk, never existed. Here is a rap for the brewers from ' The Gentleman's Magazine ' of 1762: * Taxes upon taxes, and beer sold at 3|d. not worth fd. ! Brewers pining at the hardships they labour under, and rolling away in their coaches and six to their several villas to drown their grief in burgundy and champagne.' Towards the end of the century, medical men be- gan to take up the cause of temperance from the pro- fessional point of view. It began, in 1788, with the academic thesis of a certain Dr. Trotter, of Edin- burgh, who took the effects of drunkenness on the human body for his theme, and afterwards expanded it into a book, published in 1804. There was also fresh legislation from time to time, which it would be tedious to particularise. In spite of all this, a Christmas in London is thus described by Charles Knight as late as 1824 : * The outdoor aspects of London enjoyment were 34 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION not unobserved by ine. Honestly to speak, it was a dismal spectacle. In every broad thoroughfare and every alley there was drunkenness abroad; not shamefaced drunkenness creeping to its home, but rampant, insolent, outrageous drunkenness. No decent woman, even in broad daylight, could at the holiday seasons dare to walk alone in the Strand or PaU MalJ.' That cannot be said to-day of any thoroughfare at any season. About the same time the organised temperance movement was initiated. The honour belongs to Ireland, where the earliest societies ill the United Kingdom were established. From Belfast the move- ment speedily crossed the Irish Channel to Greenock and Glasgow. England followed in 1830 with societies at Leeds and Bradford. Teetotalism — from the Lancashire colloquialism for total (abstinence) — came in 1832. Meanwhile the Legislature had been busy again with the important Acts of 1828, which are still the foundation of the licensing system in Great Britain, and with the Duke of Wellington's famous Beer-house Act of 1830, ' to permit the general sale of beer and cider by retail in England. * Twenty years later it was pronounced a failure by a Select Committee of the House of Lords, and there is no doubt that it did not have the intended effect of cheeking the consumption of spirits by encouraging beer and cider. The state of things which prompted the experiment was certainly very bad. The Middle- sex magistrates once more took the initiative and DRINK IN THE PAST 35 brought up the subject at the January Sessions in 1830. Sergeant Bell alluded to the increase of con- sumption of gin. Sir George Hampson said that the gin-shops were now decorated and fitted up with small private doors, through which women of the middle and even above the middle classes of society were not ashamed to enter and take their dram. Sir Richard Birnie said that there were 72 cases brought to Bow Street on the Monday previous for absolute and beastly drunkenness, and, what was worse, mostly women who had been picked up in the streets where they had fallen dead drunk. In 1834 a Select Com- mittee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate the subject, and their report contains some interesting evidence. A Mr. Mark Moore de- scribed what went on in a number of East-end public- houses. They had large rooms at the back, invisible from the street, and holding from 100 to 300 persons, who consisted of sailors, girls of the town, and Jew crimps. There they drank and danced all night * in a dreadful state.' He further had fourteen public- houses carefully watched for a week, and the number of customers that entered was counted. There were 142,453 men, 108,593 women, and 18,391 children; total, 269,437. This gives an average number per diem for each public-house of 2,750. The prospect of half that number would make the modem publican's mouth water — if a publican's mouth ever waters. It may be said that the public-houses were less numerous then. Far from it. They were nearly twice as numerous in proportion to population. 36 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Far more instructive, however, than any statistics are the contemporary descriptions of what used to take place sixty years ago. Mr. George Wilson, a grocer of Westminster, gave the following account of a Sunday morning: * Last Sunday morning I arose about seven o'clock, and looked from my bedroom at the gin-palace oppo- site to me. I saw it surrounded with customers; amongst them I saw two coal-porters with women who appeared to be their wives and a little child about six or seven years old ; these forced their way through the crowd; after much struggling they got to the bar, and cai|ie out again in a short time, one of the women so intoxicated as to be unable to walk ; she fell flat on the pavement with her legs partly in the shop and her person exposed ; the three who were with her attempted to raise her, but they were so intoxicated as to be unable to perform the task.* The crowd offered no assistance, but merely laughed, and continued passing in and out of the open doors past the prostrate woman, while the little child sat down and slapped her. * During this time a woman almost in a state of nudity, with a fine infant at her breast, the only dress being its nightshirt, followed by another child about eight years old, naked except a nightshirt, and with- out either shoes or stockings, followed a wretched- looking man into the house. I saw them struggling through the crowd to get to the bar; they all had their gin ; the infant had the first share from the woman's glass; they came back to the outside of the door, and there they could scarcely stand; the man and woman appeared to quarrel; the little child DRINK IN THE PAST 37 in her arms cried, and the wretched woman beat it most unmercifully; the other little naked child ran across the road ; the woman called to it to come back ; it came back and she beat it; they all went into the shop again, and had some more gin apparently to pacify the children.' That was between seven and eight in the morning on an ordinary Sunday in July 1834. Later in the day we get the following edifying scene: * Last Sunday morning I had occasion to walk through the Broadway at a few minutes before eleven o'clock; I found the pavement before every gin-shop crowded; just as church time approached, the gin-shops sent forth their multitudes, swearing and fighting and bawling obscenely; some were stretched on the pavement insensibly drunk, while every few steps the footway was taken up by drunken wretches being dragged to the station-house by the police. ' These circumstantial descriptions of a main West- end thoroughfare by an eye-witness whose accuracy was not questioned in the slightest degree, were con- firmed by an independent observer from the other end of the town, Mr. Abraham Ellis, a Spitalfields weaver : * Those in the habit of drinking get so intoxicated on the Saturday night that they lie abed the best part of Sunday ; but a great many of them that can- not lie, that cannot rest, they are at the gin-shops on Sunday morning between six and seven o'clock, and from that time until they shut up for church you can scarcely get by the outside of the door ; the doors are 38 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION continually opening, and there is a mob indoors com- ing in and out, so that it is impossible to count them. . . . About nine or ten o'clock you see many of them very much intoxicated, and hallooing and hooting, and the women likewise. I have seen the women lying down drunk, and the police have been obliged to lift them up bodily and take them away.' There appears to have been no regular or legal closing-time at this period, and publicans used to shut up very much when they pleased, early or late, or not at all. On Sunday they generally closed at I eleven o'clock for church time, when some turned their customers out and others shut them in. At night there was often no closing, and drunken riots were common at three or four in the morning. Hence, probably, the large number of police-court charges. Drunkenness seems to have been ex- cessively rife among women and children everywhere. * I am sorry to say,' said Mr. Broughton, a metro- politan police-magistrate, * that I find a great number of women, and sometimes decent women, that it is /nshocking to see brought up.' In reference to the / juvenile depravity, he spoke of the * vast number of / boys, for we are obliged to send them away in strings I to the van, * and of the young prostitutes, from twelve \ to fourteen years of age, who were brought up for >|?eing drunk and disorderly. In Lancashire, drinking was said to be particularly common among women and boys from fourteen to twenty years of age. One /'gentleman counted more women than men enter a ypublic-house in Manchester on a Saturday, and it DRINK IN THE PAST 39 was the custom to serve halfpennjrworths of gin to children. In Scotland, Mr. Thomas Roberts said of the people that * drunkenness forms a part of their education as much as learning A B C at school. These drinking schools are the domestic fireside; the parent takes it, and he gives a little to the child ; he gives it as something that is excellent.* Women of the middle classes, he said, meaning tradespeople and superior artisans, were in the habit of going out and taking glasses of whisky in the forenoon * by way of compliment.' In London a large proportion of the Poor Law relief was regularly spent at the nearest pothouse. According to an officer from Southwark, 30Z. out of every 1001. given in outdoor relief was spent in the gin-shop the same day, and another from St. Luke's stated that * the reckless- ness of people in indulgence is quite frightful. It is well known that a large proportion of those who receive pensions or outdoor relief from our parish cannot resist the temptation of going into the first public-house or gin-shop, and at all times im- mediately after money is given, paupers will be found in the gin-shops.' Other evidence to the same effect shows that the custom was general. In some trades the men were compelled to drink as a con- dition of getting work, and to spend a regular pro- portion of their earnings on drink. This was the case with the coal-whippers, who had to take their engagements from the publicans. One of them gave the following account of the trade practice : * When I want employment — me and the likes of me, of 40 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION course — I have to go to the publican to get a job, to ask him for a job; and he tells me to go and sit down and he will give me an answer by and by. I go and sit down, and if I have twopence in my pocket of course I am obliged to spend it with a view of getting a job; and probably when two or three hours have elapsed there is about fifty or sixty people come on the same errand to the same person for a job. He keeps us three or four hours there; those that drink most get the most employment. ' There was something like a regular tariff amounting to nearly half the wages. A man in full work would earn up to 4s. Id. a day, of which he had to spend from Is. 8d. to 2s. in the public-house so long as the job lasted. The working-man 's account of this iniquitous business was fully confirmed by Lieutenant Arnold, R.N., and other gentlemen. I do not know that the individual capacity for drinking was greater in those days than it is now: probably not, but there were certainly some remark- able topers. Dr. Farre described the case of a man who used to drink three or four pints of gin daily, apparently for many years. His wife said she had known him drink seventy-two glasses of the usual dram at a sitting * to show what he could do.' Another case was the chairman of a notorious drink- ing club, a hearty octogenarian, who, when Dr. Farre knew him, had lived a ' reformed ' life for thirty years on the modest allowance of one pint of brandy and six glasses of madeira per diem. These * drinking clubs ' were themselves an interesting sign of the DRINK IN THE PAST 41 times, but they only concerned the upper classes, among whom intemperance was, by universal con- sent, already on the wane. The conclusions of the Committee deserve to be stated at length if I could afford the space. They thought the vice of intoxication, though declining in the upper classes, had increased in the lower, and now included in its victims men, women, and chil- dren. As to the effects, they ' are so many and so fearful to contetnplate that it is as difficult as it is painful to enumerate even the outlines of them,' to wit : destruction of health, disease in every form and shape; premature decrepitude in the old; stunted growth, debility, and decay in the young ; loss of life by paroxysms and accidents; delirium tremens; paralysis, idiocy, and violent death ; item, destruction of mental capacity and vigour ; item, irritation of all the worst passions of the heart; item, extinction of all moral and religious principle, violation of chastity, insensibility to shame, and indescribable degradation; item, loss of productive labour, extensive loss of property, inefficiency of army and navy, injury to national reputation, injury to the British race, in- crease of pauperism, spread of crime, retardation of all improvement. They reckoned the general pecu- niary loss on all these counts, which I have abridged, to be * little short of fifty millions sterling per annum.' It is the most comprehensive indictment ever drawn up. They recommended a heap of immediate measures, which are recommended as new and brilliant ideas to-day, and also some ulti- 42 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION mate ones, including the absolute prohibition of the importation and distillation of spirits except for arts and medicine. They had evidently not studied the proceedings of their predecessors just a hundred years before. One comforting reflection is suggested by the fore- going retrospect. It effectually disposes of the bogey of national destruction by inherited alcoholism. If there were much in it, most of us would be hopeless drunkards, for we have all probably had some drunken ancestors. Far too much has been made of the theory; it is not in keeping with modern science, which negatives the hereditary transmission of dis- ease, and it is flatly contradicted by the facts. I return to this question in the chapter on ' The Forces of Intemperance.' i/ 48 CHAPTER III THE DECLINE OP DRUNKENNESS In the previous chapter I have briefly sketched the history of drink in this country down to 1834. That year is chosen for a pause because it was the date of the remarkable inquiry alluded to, and because a new era began to set in about that time. Several circum- stances contributed to make this period stand out distinctly as a sort of dividing line between the old and the new. The metropolitan police force was or- ganised and established on its present basis just be- fore, the reign of Queen Victoria began shortly after with all the new social movements and changes — loco- motion, sanitation, education, free trade, and so on — that have been identified with it, including the development of the temperance movement. On her accession to the throne her Majesty added greatly to its prestige and influence by becoming patron of the important English organisation called * The British and Foreign Temperance Society,' which had been founded in 1831. These and other circumstances are treated historically in Chapter V. on the Forces of Temperance. They are only mentioned now to explain the selection of the 1830-40 period as 44 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION marking the close of * drink in the past.* The quo- tations from the 1834 inquiry are sufficient evidence in themselves that, though the state of things was not so bad as it had been in the middle of the pre- vious century, such improvement as had taken place was not of a very effective character. We still see the people — men, women, and children — sodden with drink, lost to all sense of decency, revelling in degra- dation, and the most public thoroughfares given up regularly and in broad daylight to scenes of disorder which we can hardly realise to-day. I submit, therefore, that up to this period no sub- stantial, progressive, and lasting improvement had been effected. That it has been effected since no candid reader can deny. It is not merely that such wholesale outrages on public decency do not occur now, but that if they did occur public opinion among the people themselves would not permit them to continue for a day; the most callous would revolt at the idea. In other words, there has been a real improvement, an organic change, and it is not pos- sible to conceive a complete relapse into the condition of the past. Individual drunkards there are still, as bad as ever, and at times they become more numerous, mainly when trade is good and money plentiful; but the open, rampant, daylight drunken- ness-in-the-mass which history records has become a matter of history. The improvement has not been continuous. It has been interrupted by considerable fluctuations, but it has gone on through and in spite of them. THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 45 Since the inquiry of 1834 there have been three others on a similar or larger scale, at intervals of twenty years, and these give a fair insight into the changes that have occurred in the intervening period. They were the inquiry into public-houses by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1854, that into intemperance by the House of Lords in 1876, and that of the Royal Commission on the operation of the liquor laws in 1896. In reading the report of the 1854 inquiry, one is first of all struck by the absence of any evidence approaching that previously quoted. Many witnesses, including several temperance agents of great experi- ence, told what they knew of the evils and abomi- nations of the liquor traffic, but what they had to tell is mild and colourless compared with the revela- tions of 1834. One can only conclude that the previous state of things had already ceased to exist, for if not they would have been ready enough to describe it. This negative testimony is borne out by much positive evidence of actual improvement. The number of police charges had generally and markedly declined; the character of public-houses had notably improved in the large towns, and they were conducted with much greater propriety. Pub- licans, police, working-men, and temperance agents united in testifying to the improvement on Sunday mornings. Working-men spoke emphatically of the increased sobriety among their own class. The Com- mittee itself came to the conclusion that * there are no doubt many publicans and beer-shop keepers 46 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION who exercise the utmost vigilance to prevent drunk- enness on their premises, and to keep bad characters out of their houses.' They even had a good word for some of the much-abused beer-shops: * There are highly rated houses under the beer-shop license in London and other places, kept by parties of respect- able character, conducted with propriety and even advantage to the neighbourhood, and which furnish a valuable accommodation to the middle and work- ing classes. * Nevertheless great abuses remained, and the law was evaded in many respects. Drinking was carried on in houses only provided with off- licenses; gaming was permitted and adulteration practised. Wages were still commonly paid in public-houses, and the prevalent custom of paying * drink-footings ' on admission to a trade was the cause of much intemperance among working-men. With regard to adulteration, which had been ex- ceedingly bad from remote times down to the earlier part of last century, it is worth noticing that the inquiry of 1854 succeeded in eliciting very little posi- tive evidence of the use of the deleterious drugs previously in vogue. According to the results of chemical analysis, water, sugar, and salt were the means of adulteration generally used in the retail trade. Many of the abuses of the traffic, such as drunkenness, disorder, and gambling on the premises, were permitted to continue merely because the police had no power of entry at that time. It was, therefore, all the more creditable to the trade that the better class of publican should have earned a THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 47 good name for the respectable conduct of their busi- ness. On the whole, it is clear that the evils of intemperance had diminished, both in volume and intensity, and that a better tone prevailed generally. The inquiry held twenty-two years later is par- ticularly interesting, because it came immediately after a marked relapse, which was probably one of the reasons why it was held. The occurrence of the relapse is proved by a rise in the police returns, and a simultaneous increase in the consumption of liquor. The correspondence between the two adds to their value as evidence. Its cause was the great improvment in trade which set in about 1868, and lasted in its effects on the country generally down to 1875 or 1876. The police returns for London show that the arrests for drunkenness in the metropolis in proportion to population rose gradually from 4.9 per 1,000 in 1867 to 7.6 in 1876. In England and Wales the actual numbers were 100,067 in 1867 and 205,567 in 1876, and there is no doubt that the whole country was similarly affected. Between 1867 and 1875 the consumption of liquor in the United King- dom rose, in beer, from 28.1 to 34 gallons, and in spirits and wine from 1.41 to 1.82 gallon per head. The excessive consumption, it is to be observed, con- tinued after the height of the prosperity had passed, and the excess of drunkenness lasted somewhat longer than the excessive consumption — the effect of a habit established. But the remarkable thing is the comparatively slight effect which this debauch produced, and the rapidity with which it passed 48 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION away, proving, as it seems to me, more clearly than if it had never taken place, the deep-seated change which had come over the country. The people denied themselves nothing and drank as much as they wished in 1873, 1874, and 1875, but the police record in London, which is a very reliable rough barometer, indicated a maximum of only 7.6 per 1,000, whereas in 1836 it had been up to 13.6, and in 1850 — another relapse — it had reached 9.4. After 1876 the consumption fell off with ex^treme rapidity, and in ten years reached a general low level — that is, comparatively low — which was fairly maintained, with minor fluctuations, for another decade. The police returns followed the same course with a degree of general correspondence that is most striking; but I deal more fully with the statistics later on, and only refer to them here incidentally to show the comparatively slight and transient effect of the demoralisation that occurred in the prosperous seventies. I think it indicates an improved tone, and that conclusion is confirmed by much of the evidence given before the Committee in 1876. Al- though it was admitted that intemperance had increased since 1868, competent witnesses bore testimony to the great improvement in public order and the conduct of the liquor traffic in most of the large towns, including Liverpool, Manchester, Bir- mingham, Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol, Preston, and Cardiff. A large number of the worst class of beer- houses had been abolished. Between 1870 and 1876 they were reduced by nearly 6,000, while the THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 49 population increased by one and a half millions. The effect was everywhere recognised^ and also * the improved character of licensed houses generally/ Superintendent Turner said of the East-end of Lon- don: * The majority of publicans, I honestly believe, do their best to prevent drunkenness and preserve order. . . . The conduct of the majority of the pub- licans is good.' Sir J. Mantell, stipendiary magis- trate of Salford and Manchester, stated that the public-houses were * well conducted on the whole, and very much improved.' The Committee endorsed these and similar statements, and further reported that, * as a rule, the higher class of artisans are be- coming more sober, and the apprehensions for drunk- enness are becoming more and more confined to the lowest grades of the community.' Of course there was a good deal to be said on the other side, and I am not analysing the report, but only quoting it as evidence that distinct advance had been made even at an adverse period. Passing on to the Royal Commission of 1896-99, we find a very striking consensus of testimony from all parts of the country that drunkenness has de- creased of late years, and an equally striking absence of evidence to the contrary. As the facts on this point are not summarised in any part of the Report, it is worth while to set out in brief the statements of the more important witnesses. London. — Sir John Bridge, the senior metropolitan magistrate, and a gentleman of unique experience, stated that there was * clearly a decrease of drunk- 50 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION enness ' among both men and women, but that the decrease was less among women. He was corrobo- rated by two superintendents, one representing an eastern and the other a southern division. The only evidence to the contrary was that of the superintend- ent of the notorious Piccadilly district, who reported * a slight increase,' which he attributed to the preva- lence of low clubs in the Soho quarter. Liverpool. — The Chief Constable stated that there was * a very great decrease of drunkenness ' and * very material improvement in the conduct of the licensed houses,' with which there was * very little fault to be found.' He was corroborated by one of the justices, who said that ' the conduct of the houses and the appearance of the streets had very much improved. ' * A vast improvement — public-houses not now, as they were, centres of riot and dissipation * (Chairman at meeting of Liverpool Ladies' Temper- ance Association). Manchester. — The Chief Constable stated that * drunkenness had greatly diminished during the last twenty years ' and that * the licensed houses were well conducted as a whole.' He was corroborated by a temperance witness, who thought that * drunk- enness was steadily decreasing as a whole,' and that * a general improvement had taken place in recent years. ' Birmingham. — * A decrease of drunkenness ' (Clerk to the Justices, confirmed by Mr. Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S.). Leeds. — * A very great and marked improvement THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 51 in the sobriety and good order of the people generally* (Clerk to the Justices). * The licensed houses most undoubtedly well conducted ' (Chief Constable) . Bradford. — * Drunkenness certainly decreased in proportion to population; increase in the good con- duct of the houses, which were generally well con- ducted ' (Clerk to the Justices). Nottingham. — * Tone of the town very much im- proved ' (Town Clerk). Hull. — * A great improvement since 1890 ; the houses very well conducted in the suburbs and fairly well conducted in the centre of the town; decrease of drunkenness * (Clerk to the Justices). Bristol. — * Houses well conducted; gradual im- provement taking place ; great reduction in the num- ber of cases of drunkenness during last twenty years ' (Clerk to the Justices). Newcastle. — * Generally speaking, drunkenness de- creasing ' (Clerk to the Justices). ' Very consider- able improvement among sailors * (Chaplain to Sea- men *s Mission). Plymouth. — * Houses generally well conducted; drunkenness decreasing: holders of licenses very anxious to carry out the suggestions of the authori- ties ' (Chief Constable). Chester. — ' Houses well conducted and cases of drunkenness diminished ' (Chief Constable). York. — * On the whole a satisfactory decrease of drunkenness; the vast majority of the houses well conducted * (Chief Constable). 52 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Lincoln. — * Habits of the people improved — more temperate and more thrifty * (a Justice). Penzance. — * A decrease of drunkenness ' (ex- Chairman of Watch Committee). Lancashire. — * Drunkenness certainly diminished ' (Chief Constable). Staffordshire. — ' Less drunkenness than there used to be ; statistics show marked diminution ; houses very fairly conducted; better than they were * (Chief Constable). Gloucestershire.^ — * A very marked improvement in drunkenness * (Clerk to the Cirencester Jus- tices). Somersetshire. — * I can remember when it was unsafe in my county for ladies to walk about because of some drunken man being about in the roads. It was quite unsafe in the country, particularly in the cider country. Now that has so decreased that you never see a drunken person about. I do not know that I have seen one for years *' (Justice and Deputy Lieutenant) . That was pretty nearly all the evidence given on the point with regard to England. It must not be supposed that the witnesses quoted were of an ex parte character or satisfied with the existing state of things. On the contrary nearly all of them were anxious to point out numerous defects and to urge reforms. Some were engaged in temperance work and ardent advocates of drastic legislation. Their testimony to the improvement that has taken place is, therefore, unimpeachable. And there is hardly THE DECLINE OP DRUNKENNESS 53 anything to place against it. Two or three witnesses thought matters were stationary, and the clerk to the West Bromwich justices expressed the opinion that drunkenness was increasing, but he admitted that numerically it was not and that the traffic was well conducted. The total absence of * shocking revela- tions ' is most striking, and the admissions made by the stoutest champions of teetotalism and prohibition clinch the matter. Dr. Norman Kerr said: * I think that in very many respects intemperance has greatly decreased, but in certain details and in certain classes it has increased.' He explained this to mean that drunkenness * that is visible in the streets ' and among men generally had decreased, but that female intemperance had increased. I deal with this latter opinion, which was held by other witnesses, in a separate chapter. Even Mr. Whyte, the secre- tary of the United Kingdom Alliance, was constrained to admit that * open riotous drunkenness was less common than it used to be,' but he thought that * quiet soaking drinking was much more common.' I think he is quite right. Drinking has become much more quiet — that is to say, there is more mod- erate and less excessive drinking. In other words, people continue to drink — the word * soaking ' merely expresses Mr. Whyte 's disapproval of the practice — but they do not get drunk so often, which is precisely the point. The evidence with regard to Scotland, which is a much more drunken country than England, is to much the same effect, though less consistently favourable. 54 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Glasgow. — ' Drunkenness decreased considerably in the last forty years. The figures fluctuate greatly, principally according to trade, but society now looks upon drunkenness as a disgrace, and that has a great influence on the people, I believe more than anything I know * (Chief Constable). Dundee. — * Drunkenness decreased steadily from 1844 down to the present time ; nearly one-half less ' (Chief Constable and Procurator Fiscal). Greenock. — ' A great diminution of drunken- ness; very bad yet, undoubtedly, but nothing to what it was when I went to Greenock ' (Chief Constable). Edinburgh. — * No doubt whatever public-houses have very materially improved in character both in Edinburgh and Leith during the last twenty-five years; very distinct and decided improvement both in respect of a decrease of drunkenness and a limita- tion in the number of crimes ' (Solicitor to the Supreme Court and J.P. for Midlothian). * A de- cided improvement during the last thirty or forty years ' (Bailie and Chairman of Public Health Com- mittee). Renfrewshire. — ' Considerable improvement * (Chief Constable). Roxburghshire and Berwickshire. — * Habits of the people in respect to sobriety greatly improved * (Chief Constable). Aberdeenshire. — * Drunkenness on the whole de- creased ' (Chief Constable). An exception to this generally favourable experi- . THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 55 ence is furnished by the town of Aberdeen, in which drunkenness was stated by the Chief Constable to be * not on the decrease but rather the reverse.* A former Dean of Guild for Aberdeen, who had been in the grocery and wine trade for fifty-seven years, corroborated that opinion. The worst feature de- scribed was an increase of juvenile intemperance. The Chief Constable of Dumbartonshire thought drinking was stationary among both men and women in that county, but had improved at Clydebank, one of the most typical industrial townships. A bailie of Edinburgh, who is also a temperance lecturer and advocate of prohibition, spoke of an increase of drunk- enness among boys and girls under twenty years of age, afid habitual drunkards are undoubtedly very numerous in Scotland ; but on the whole the evidence went to show that there had been distinct and gen- eral improvement. This was recognised by Colonel McHardy, Chairman of the Prison Commissioners of Scotland, who said that there had * no doubt been a general advance in public opinion on the questions of temperance and street order.* The evidence from Ireland points rather to a sta- tionary condition of things, though several witnesses spoke of an improvement in the larger towns. Sir A. Reid, Inspector General of the Eoyal Irish Con- stabulary, said that since he last gave evidence in 1888 he considered that * little alteration had taken place in regard to the state of drunkenness in Ireland.' It * had not seriously increased,* though 56 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION there was * room for improvement,' which no one will dispute. DuBLEsr. — * Materially improving in the matter of temperance * (Mr. T. C. Harrington, M.P. for Dub- lin). * A recent recrudescence of drunkenness * (Mr. Swifte, police-magistrate). Belfast. — ' Drunkenness slightly decreasing * (Chief District Inspector of Constabulary). Londonderry. — * A uniform decrease of Sunday drunkenness since the Sunday Closing Act : week-day drunkenness decreased 25 per cent, in first five years after the Act, but slightly increased in 1895-96-97 * (County Inspector of Constabulary). Waterford. — * Less visible drunkenness than there was twenty-five years ago; drunkenness really de- creased ' (Rev. T. F. Furlong, C.C.). Kilkenny. — ' Practically no change at all in the last few years in county and city; if any it would be in a decrease of drunkenness ' (Resident Magis- trate). * Condition improving; a decrease of drunk- enness ' (County Coroner). Cork. — * Generally speaking, a diminution of drunkenness ' (Secretary of Licensed Vintners' As- sociation) . On the whole the Irish evidence does not contra- dict the general story of improvement, if it adds little to it. Now I submit that, taken all together, the fore- going expressions of opinion, coming as they do from every large centre of population in the kingdom, and for the most part from disinterested or even unwilling THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 57 witnesses, and being traversed by no testimony to the opposite effect, constitute a most remarkable body of evidence. They show that the improvement noted by previous inquiries has been maintained up to the present time, and that we are most certainly not going from bad to worse in this matter. A comparison between the facts and opinions revealed in 1834 and those elicited in 1896 makes such an hypothesis quite impossible. Let us now turn to the statistical evidence, and see what light it throws upon the question. There are three points on which statistics are available: (1) the number of drunken persons dealt with by the police; (2) the number of licensed premises; (3) tho consumption of drink. STATISTICS OP DRUNKENNESS On this head it is necessary to say a word. Police statistics are open to certain objections, of which advantage is always taken by ardent controversialists, who use them when they support, and decry them when they refute, a pet theory. We are told that police statistics do not represent the real amount of drunkenness. Of course they do not; that has been recognised ever since there have been police statis- tics. But they represent the amount of drunkenness of a certain degree, the degree of noise, disorder, or helplessness, which bears a fairly constant relation to the whole. They are therefore good for purposes of broad comparison, if allowance be made for 58 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION differences in the law or in classification which affect the number of legal offences. But, it is said, they vary indefinitely according to the local procedure and zeal of the police. The time-honoured dictum is quoted that a single ^ turn of the screw ' may increase the numbers tenfold. I agree that it may increase them considerably, though not tenfold. But as a matter of fact that turn is seldom given, and if given is not maintained. I have made long and extensive observations on this point from the life, and have come to the conclusion that in practice the police act everywhere in just about the same way, except, perhaps, in Russia, where extraordinary license to noisy and intoxicated persons is allowed. They act, that is to say, as com- mon sense dictates. Drunken people who can get away home quietly without giving trouble are ignored, or merely watched ; those who are disorderly or cause an obstruction by their helplessness are taken in charge. In short, the police look to disorder, which is their business. If there is any attempt to go beyond that and set up some higher criterion, it never lasts, because it is not a policeman's business to promote virtue; the higher procedure is quietly dropped. On the other hand, if laxity below the ordinary standard prevails, the public soon complains, and things are tightened up. Under the same law we should all do very much as the police do, after a short time, if we were in their place. Broadly speaking, therefore, the police returns are quite valid for purposes of comparison, when and where THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 59 the strength of the force in proportion to population is fairly equal ; but of course they must be used with common sense, and cannot be applied to minute comparisons. It is, however, unnecessary to labour the point. The objection is little more than a trick of controversy, which has done duty so long as to be somewhat threadbare. There are no police statistics for the whole king- dom, and those for England and Wales, which are the most complete, do not begin until 1857. The only records that cover the whole period under review are those of the Metropolitan Police, which are the more valuable because we have precise information with regard to the strength of the force and their procedure. The proportion of police to the popu- lation was in 1834 almost identical with that of recent years — I believe that at the present moment it has not quite kept pace — and the procedure, de- scribed in detail by more than one officer before the Committee, was quite identical, except in so far as the legislation of 1872 increased the number of offences. They took into custody the disorderly and the dead drunk, leaving the partially drunk alone, or even assisting them home. Moreover, the metropoli- tan record is a good barometer, because the London drunkenness is the mean of that for England and Wales (see Chapter VI.). The following table is taken from the annual re- ports of the Commissioner of Police. After 1892 a somewhat different classification of offences was adopted in the returns, which spoils them for purposes 60 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Metropolitan Abea Number of Year 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1861 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 persons apprehended for duct in proportion to Proportion per 1,000 12.305 13.328 13.692 12.672 12.357 12.178 7.919 7.088 5.708 4.936 7.319 7.559 7.994 7.076 6.776 8.500 9.459 9.041 9.028 8.845 8.088 ... 6.928 6.584 6.921 7.056 6.243 6.941 6.469 5.769 5.465 drunk and disorderly con- population v«,r Proportion ^^" per 1.000 1864 5.716 1865 5.764 1866 5.412 1867 4.907 1868 5.597 1869 5.722 1870 5.975 1871 6.358 1872 7.502 1873 7.535 1874 6.509 1875 7.578 1876 7.676 1877 7.274 1878 7.809 1879 7.345 1880 6.345 1881 5.698 1882 5.269 1883 5.264 1884 4.883 1885 4.295 1886 4.589 1887 3.772 1888 4.228 1889 4.794 1890 5.374 1891 6.350 1892 5.276 of comparison with the earlier years. The table con- tains the liquor question in a nutshell to any one who can interpret the fluctuations. They show the influences that govern the prevalence of drunken- ness, the part played by legislation and its limits. I THE DECUNE OF DRUNKENNESS 61 cannot here go into all the lessons to be learnt from it, but will point out those bearing on the immediate question. In the first place the reader will notice an im- mense drop between the period 1834-39 and the fol- lowing decade. This was due to three causes — (1) the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839; (2) Father Mathew's temperance crusade, which culminated in' 1843, the high-water mark of teetotalism; (3) the state of trade and prevailing distress. The duty on spirits was also increased, which affected consump- tion. I refer again to these points in subsequent chapters. The Act of 1839, which closed public- houses on Saturday night and Sunday morning, did more to diminish public drunkenness than any single measure before or since. Its immediate effect is shown by the drop from 12.178 to 7.919 in the pro- portional police figures. I wish to draw particular attention to this Act and its effect because it is not so much as mentioned in the summaries of liquor legislation published by the Peel Commission. An- other point, to which I shall refer again, is the fact that during the great decrease in public drunkenness a large increase of beer-shops was taking place. Passing on, the reader will notice that public drunk- enness has never again been nearly so high since 1839 as it was before. It has fluctuated mainly under the influence of good and bad trade, and the low- water mark was reached in 1887, a year of great distress, but the general tendency has been to keep at a comparatively low level and not to rise so high in prosperous times. This is markedly shown in 62 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION the unprecedentedly prosperous years following 1871, as already pointed out. The real meaning of this fact is that the practice of getting intoxicated is be- coming confined to a smaller and smaller section of the community, and that the standard of conduct which stops short of it is accepted more and more widely and lower down in the social scale. The following table, drawn up from the Chief Con- stable's returns, gives the proportional drunkenness of Liverpool in the last thirty years. It is less valu- able than the London one for the present purpose because it covers a shorter period and the procedure has been less consistent. Liverpool Number of persons drunk when apprehended in proportion to population Year 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1876 1876 1877 1878 1879 ^880 Proportion per 1,000 ...30 ...29 ...35 ...42 ...46 ...45 ...37 ...38 ...43 ...45 ...42 ...32 ...31 ...25 ...26 Year 1881 .... Proportion per 1,000 25 1882 .... 29 1883 .... 31 1884 .... 31 1885 .... 29 1886 .... 24 1887 .... 30 1888 .... 30 1889 .... 31 1890 .... 28 1891 .... 21 1892 .... 19 1893 .... 17 1894 .... 12 1895 .... 9 Li comparing this table with the figures for Lon- don it must be remembered that the classification THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 63 is different, which accounts to some extent for the difference in the relative drunkenness. ' Drunk when apprehended * is not quite the same thing as * appre- hended for drunk and disorderly conduct.* Still Liverpool is a more drunken city ; it contains a much smaller proportion of the well-to-do classes. The principal point is the very striking fall since 1889 ; it is due mainly to the introduction of a new method of supervising public-houses and is therefore highly instructive. For the rest we see here the same im- provement since the period of prosperity, which was felt somewhat earlier in Liverpool. From Glasgow we have the following police returns for forty years: Persons apprehended for Drunkenness Year 1867 1858 1869 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1866 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1«74 1876 1876 Proportion per 1.000 37 Year 1877 .... Proportion per 1,000 29 51 1878 .... 28 1879 .... 1880 .... 21 60 26 55 1881 .... 28 52 1882 .... 28 56 1883 .... 27 54 1884 .... 23 55 1885 .... 19 52 1886 .... 20 48 1887 .... 23 47 1888 .... 27 1889 .... 1890 .... 30 56 37 58 1891 .... 30 65 1892 .... 28 71 1893 .... 25 62 1894 .... 26 32 1895 .... 27 28 isyd .... 28 64 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Glasgow is obviously a much more drunken city than either Liverpool or London, but the same fluctuations and the same general improvement are shown. There is the high-water mark at the time of good trade and a low-water mark in the bad period, though both fell a year or two earlier in Glasgow. But the second twenty years show a marked and general improvement over the first twenty. It would be easy to multiply these police statistics indefinitely. London, Liverpool, and Glasgow have been given, not as particularly favourable specimens, but merely as the largest towns. Others show virtually the same result, and it must be remembered that the fall in the police returns cannot be explained by greater laxity of procedure; for by the general consent of all witnesses — official, temperance, and independent — before the Royal Commission the police procedure has rather incregised in stringency. No one has ventured to allege the contrary. The following table, showing the drunkenness for the whole of England and Wales during the last twenty-five years in quinquennial periods, is taken from the Judicial Statistics: Number of persons proceeded against for drunkenness in Eng- land and Wales per 100,000 of population 1874-78 812.48 1879-83 697.50 1884-88 636.40 1889-93 614.95 1894-98 605.93 THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 65 The story is plain, though the improvement has not been so continuous as it appears here. Latterly the figures have risen again, reaching 674.64 in 1899. Moreover the table begins in a peculiarly drunken period. Previous to 1874 the returns had been going up for several years: 1857-61 428.50 1862-66 478.26 1867-71 647.48 1872 656.62 1873 785.15 This, again, must be read with a double qualifi- cation. It begins in a period of low consumption, which rose with improving trade. At the same time the country constabulary, only established in 1857, were increasing in numbers and efficiency and were particularly stimulated by the Act of 1872, which had a marked effect in swelling the returns for the country as a whole, though it caused little change in London and other already well-policed towns. The Act must be borne in mind when any period anterior to 1872 is compared with one posterior to it. We may conclude this section of statistics with some figures for Ireland. Year Number of persons drunk and drunk and disorderly 1885 87,133 1886 79,828 1887 79,476 1888 87,572 1889 92,137 1890 100,202 Number of Year persons drunk and drunk and disorderly 1891 100,528 1892 93,197 1893 89,565 1894 88,215 1895 85,361 66 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION During this period the population has somewhat decreased. In 1891 it was 4,706,162, and the proportional drunkenness, therefore, was 2138.89 per 100,000. NUMBER OP LICENSED HOUSES I §ass on to the number of licensed houses in pro- portion to the population. I do not attach quite so much importance to this factor as some do, for there have been periods when a great increase of licenses has coincided with a great diminution of drunkenness and of the consumption of drink, and when exactly the opposite has occurred. Thus in the year 1833 there were in England and Wales 88,000 public-houses in round numbers ; in 1837 they had increased to 96,000, but the consumption of spirits had decreased by a million gallons (the amount of beer is not available), and the London * drunks ' had fallen from 19 to 12^ per 1,000. Again in 1869 there were 118,000 public-houses; in 1876 they had diminished to 108,000, but the consumption of beer had increased from 29.1 gallons to 33.7 gallons per head, and that of spirits and wine from 1.45 gallon to 1.80 gallon, while the London * drunks ' had risen from 20,391 to 32,325. Increase in the number of public-houses, therefore, does not always mean a worse state of things, nor can their decrease be relied on as a test of improvement. Still I think that, cceteris paribus, the number is a factor of impor- tance, and, taken broadly, I consider diminution a sign of improvement. THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 67 The diminution during the period I have taken has been very great, and it is going on steadily. Total number of licenses in proportion to population — 18Si 1891 DecreaM England and Wales United Kingdom . 1 to 90 persons 1 to 102 persons 1 to 187 persons 1 to 196 persons 107 per cent. 92 per cent. Public-houees and beer-houses in proportion to population — 1831 1891 Decrease England and Wales United Kingdom 1 to 168 persons 1 to 200 persons 1 to 300 persons 1 to 304 persons 79 per cent. 50 per cent. Since 1891 a further considerable decrease has taken place. The census figures corroborate these tables. In 1831 the number of males over twenty years of age in England and Wales returned under the head- ings of * publican, hotel or inn keeper, retailer of beer ' and * spirit shops, ' and including both employ- ers and employed, was 57,664 in a total population of 13,897,187. In 1891 the numbers were respectively 66,678 and 29,001,018. To put them in a tabular form: - Population PereonB ensrased in * retailinfirllquor Proportion per 10.000 1831 1891 13,897,167 29,001,018 57,664 66,678 41 23 This is perhaps a better basis of comparison than the number of licensed premises, because premises vary so much in size. 68 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION The reduction in numbers has not been going on continuously during the whole time. On the con- trary, in England and Wales it only dates from 1869. Up to that year there was a steady increase of public- houses and beer-houses. Then a reduction of beer- houses began, followed, a few years later, by a similar fall in fully licensed houses, and this movement has continued steadily year by year up to the present time. In 1869 the total number of fully licensed houses and beer-houses for on-consumption was 118,602; in 1896 it was 97,014. That is to say, a reduction of 21,588 occurred, while the population increased by about 9,000,000. This remarkable change was the result of the legislation of 1869, 1872, and 1874. I consider it a distinct sign of progress; and it is difficult to see how in the face of these facts it can be maintained that the law has completely failed, and the liquor trade is increasing its hold on the people. In Scotland there has been a steady and almost continuous fall since 1829. In that year the number of public-houses selling spirits was 17,371; in 1896 it was 7,146, and meanwhile the population had in- creased from about 2,300,000 to 4,200,000. That is to say, the public-houses had diminished by 58 per cent, and the population nearly doubled. The case of Ireland is very different. The popu- lation has been falling since the census of 1841, when it stood at 8,175,124. Roughly speaking, it has been reduced by one-half, but the public-houses have in- creased rather than diminished. The date, however, THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 69 is hardly fair, because it fell at the time of Father Mathew's campaign and a period of great distress, when thousands of licenses were given up for lack of custom. Public-houses dropped from 21,326 in the year 1838 to 14,162 in 1841. To take the latter as a starting point, therefore, would be fallacious. None the less, it remains true that licenses have been gradually increasing for many years to a falling population. One explanation, given to me privately but from a serious source, is that the Roman Catholic clergy are secretly opposed to the reduction of licenses, because the Church profits largely by bequests from publicans, who buy their peace with Heaven in this way. It is worth noting in passing that whereas Scot- land and Ireland differ as widely as possible in regard to the number of public-houses in proportion to population — the one showing a progressive de- crease, the other an increase — they are both alike in having more than three times the amount of police drunkenness that there is in England, which comes between them in respect to public-houses. The fact is curious and susceptible of various explanations. One, no doubt, will be that police statistics are worth- less; but I have already discussed that. Having taken observations of drunkenness in the three countries, I should say that the police figures represent the relative amount with substantial accuracy. My own explanation would be the climate and the practice of drinking spirits in Scotland and Ireland. These points are further 70 DRINK, TEIMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION discussed in Chapter VI. on the Forces of Intem- perance. THE CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL Statistics of consumption are valuable evidence, but they lend themselves to error even more readily than police returns. In comparing one country with another they are totally misleading unless the mode of drinking is taken into consideration; and in comparing different periods in the same country they are equally misleading unless they are given consecutively and allowance made for abnormal circumstances. For instance, I have often seen comparisons between past and recent years, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter, but on examination it is found that the selected year or period in the past is one of abnormally low consumption, and the other, with which it is contrasted, above the average. Thus 1840 and the years immediately succeeding are often selected for comparison; but, as I have already pointed out, these were most abnormal years. How abnormal may be judged from the fact that whereas the average consumption of spirits in the United Kingdom during the five years 1834-39 was 30 million gallons, it dropped in 1840 to 25J millions, then to 24 and 22 millions; but in 1849 it was up again to 28 millions, whence it rose year by year to 31 millions in 1854. I have previously mentioned the accidental combination of conditions which made the 1840 period so abnormal. If we take it as a THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 71 starting-point of comparison we shall merely deceive ourselves. Another source of error is to reduce the various drinks to a common denominator expressed either as alcohol or as money. It is valid for comparing recent years with each other, but not for comparing the past with the present; because the amount of alcohol contained in beer and wine, and the pur- chasing power of money, have both undergone great change. Further, if we go back fifty or sixty years, the quantity of beer has to be assumed, as no official returrls are available. It is best, therefore, to take the recorded consump- tion under each head, and to begin with the year 1831, which was not of an exceptional character ; the consumption having, indeed, been considerably higher in the preceding years. Average annual consumption per head in United Kingdom Years Spirits Wine Beer 1831-40 1.113 gal. .260 gal. — 1841-50 0.945 gal. .231 gal. — 1851-60 1.018 gal. .233 gal. — 1861-70 0.941 gal. .420 gal. 27.53 gals. 1871-80 1.173 gal. .512 gal. 31.55 gals. 1881-90 0.990 gal. ' .388 gal. 27.77 gals. There is no continuous record of beer until 1856; between that and 1860 the average was 23.5 gals. This table shows neither a definite increase nor a decrease, but an alternation, with rather a tendency to increase latterly; but it must be remembered 72 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION that the returns in later years give the consumption much more completely than in the earlier part of the period. There was a great deal of beer brewed privately then, and still more illicit distillation and importation of spirits, whereas smuggling has now practically ceased, and what little beer is brewed privately is included in the returns. The Inland Revenue report for 1884 states that * in the year 1820 more than half the spirits actually consumed were supplied by the smuggler.' This disturbing element in the statistics was only eliminated by de- grees. Many years later there were still 10,000 prose- cutions in a year for illicit stills, and it was not until 1855 that smuggling was fairly suppressed. More- over, it must be remembered that modern beer is of much less alcoholic strength, while the light wines have displaced the heavy ones. The mean annual con- sumption per head for the whole period of sixty years is: Spirits Wines Beer 1 .030 gal. ,.340 gal. ( 30 years ) 28 gals. In the first half of the period the mean consump- tion of spirits per head was 1.025 gal., in the second half 1.034 gal., showing only a trifling fractional difference. Taken over a long period the consump- tion remains remarkably equable. The periodical fluctuations are caused by several agencies. The most important is the state of trade, which is re- flected with great fidelity in the returns. When the people have more money they buy more drink. THE DECLINE OF DRUNKENNESS 73 The same influence is seen operating conversely in the varying price of drink, as affected by the duties. I deal with these points more fully later on. ■ Since 1890 the annual consumption in gallons has been as follows: Year Spirits Wln« Beer 1891 1.034 .390 30.1 1892 1.034 .381 29.7 1893 0.980 .366 29.5 1894 0.966 .356 29.4 1895 1.000 .370 29.6 1896 1.020 .400 30.8 1897 1.030 .400 31.4 1898 1.040 .410 31.9 1899 1.085 .410 32.7 Mean of 9 years 1.021 .380 30.4 Here, once more, the inevitable influence of good times is shown. Drink has gone up with wages, but it has not gone up nearly so high as it did during the last period of marked prosperity. It is interest- ing to compare the two periods of five years. Spirits 1 Wine 1 Beer 1873-77 1895-99 1873-77 1895-99 1873-77 1895-99 1.22 1.00 .56 .37 33.5 29.6 1.26 1.02 .53 .40 34.0 30.8 1.29 1.03 .63 .40 33.3 31.4 1.27 1.04 .56 .41 33.7 31.9 1.22 1.09 .52 .41 32.3 32.7 Mean 1.25 1.03 .64 .40 33.3 31.3 Comparing the last nine years, 1891-99, with the previous sixty, we notice that the consumption 74 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION of spirits has been a little below the mean, that of beer and wine distinctly above it, and especially beer. If this be taken in conjunction with the fact that light beers and wines have displaced heavy ones, it goes to show a tendency to prefer the less intoxi- cating liquors. The general upshot of this branch of statistics is to prove that the improvement in good order and drunkenness and the reduction of public-houses are not accompanied by a corresponding diminution in the quantity of liquor consumed. The people ex- hibit no tendency whatever to give up drink, but they take it in a more decent fashion, and in times of prosperity they do not give way to such excessive indulgence as in former >iays. At the same time they show a growing preference for the lighter and less deleterious kinds of liquor. In short, there is more moderate — or, as Mr. Whyte puts it, quiet soak- ing — drinking and less drunkenness. Perhaps one may interpret the situation as persistent use with less abuse. Note. — ^The foregoing statistical review ends with 1899. Since then the absence of a quarter of a million male adults in South Africa has introduced a disturbing element. Trade reached a maximum in 1900, when exports of British produce stood at 71. 28. Ad. a head — nearly the highest on record. Nevertheless the consumption of beer fell off by a gallon a head, and the drunkenness figure fell with it from 674 to 636. The movement has since continued with declining trade. The high-water mark of the recent relapse, therefore, is 1899. Com- paring it with 1876, we find 20 per cent, less drunkenness. 75 CHAPTER IV FEMALE DRUNKENNESS I HAVE referred in the last chapter to female drunkenness as a separate subject. Its alleged in- crease is the great exception to the general improve- ment which has been shown, and is almost universally admitted, to have taken place in the behaviour of the people. The question is of sufficient importance to deserve more careful examination than it has yet received so far as I know. At the outset a distinction must be drawn between the upper and the lower classes. Against the former I think the charge must be admitted. There is no absolute proof, perhaps, but a good deal of evidence, that ladies belonging to the upper and middle classes have shown an increasing tendency to inebriety of late years. I prefer the word ' inebri- ety,* because it implies habit, and covers the use of drugs. There is a strong opinion in the medical profession to that effect, and it is corroborated by general experience. Most people know or have heard of cases in their own rank of life, if not among their own immediate friends. Probably it is not a new thing. There were those ladies of quality who 76 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION would ' take off cup for cup ' in the seventeenth century, and we know from Fielding that they had their successors in the eighteenth; but free indul- gence seems to have become decidedly more general among ladies in quite recent years. Within one's own recollection their habits and standard of be- haviour have noticeably changed, both in public and in private. The causes are obvious. One of them is the escape from conventional shackles, and the imitation of masculine ways. This movement was to regenerate man by feminine example and compe- tition. I am afraid the opposite result is more conspicuous up to the present. Women have shown an unforeseen facility for adopting masculine vices, without the saving grace of masculine self-respect. When they give way at all they are lost; and the temptation to which they are thus exposed by the removal of conventional safeguards is much greater than that which assails men, by reason of the physical weakness and emotional sensibility peculiar to their sex. They are generally led to take stimu- lants and other intoxicants by physical or mental suffering. Modern manners make it easy for them to continue the habit, and their comparative lack of self-control makes it difficult for them to resist. Hotel and restaurant life, the custom of lunching and dining out and alone, the general freedom of behaviour, the incessant pursuit of excitement, their newly won independence, and the command of money — all these things place women in a novel position, and provide them with fatal facilities for FEMALE DRUNKENNESS 77 indulgence when once they have given way. So one sees them at the restaurant or in the confectioner's shop, drinking wines and liqueurs to an extent which indicates the existence of a morbid appetite. Then the enormous multiplication of narcotic and anodyne drugs, and the medical fashion — for it is nothing else — of ordering everybody to drink Scotch whisky, are modern innovations which tend to promote feminine inebriety. There is also evidence to show that women on the downward path are assisted by the facility with which they can obtain liquor surreptitiously from the grocer. In view of all these considerations it would be surprising if some increase in this form of self-indulgence had not taken place in the classes of life affected by the novel conditions mentioned. Its importance, however, may easily be exaggerated. There is no reason to suppose that the movement is very large or of a lasting character. Rather the good sense and right feeling of the educated womanhood of this country may be trusted to apply the required corrective when the danger is fully recognised. Turning now to the larger question of feminine intemperance among the mass of the people, we find a different state of things. The same reasons for an increase do not apply to the women of the lower classes, and we should naturally expect that they would share in some degree in the general improve- ment. That was, in fact, the opinion of some of the most experienced witnesses before the Royal Commission. For instance. Sir John Bridge thought that female drunkenness had diminished 78 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION in London, though not to the same extent as male, and his experience was confirmed by that of the Chief Constable of Liverpool, the Chief Constable of York, and others. Some witnesses considered that matters were stationary in this respect, but a larger number expressed the belief that drunkenness was increasing among women. Many of these were members of temperance societies or engaged in temperance work, and no doubt they reflected the opinions current in their own circles. The recording of these opinions by the Commission without sub- mitting them to any sort of critical examination has in turn lent them an appearance of authority which has carried weight with the public. Some of the witnesses gave no reasons for their opinions. One well-known lady, to whose observations unac- countable deference was paid, was satisfied to remark * I fancy it is indisputable.* Another referred to criminal statistics, but those she produced were of a singular character and quite irreconcilable with the official figures. Dr. Norman Kerr based his opinion on the fact that ' thirty years ago he hardly ever saw a woman in a public-house,' and on the death-rates from chronic alcoholism in the Registrar-General's returns. This is the only piece of positive evidence that has been produced. The point on which stress has been laid is that the death- rates from this cause have increased more rapidly among women than among men. Before dealing with the figures it is necessary to point out a defect in the mortality returns, which is a familiar commonplace to students of FEMALE DRUNKENNESS 79 epidemiology but a source of constant error to persons unaccustomed to handle vital statistics. The Registrar-General's mortality returns are based on the certificates of the causes of death sent in by medical men, and therefore do not represent hard and fast facts, but only opinions as to facts; and those opinions are subject to constant change. An * alarming increase ' of some disease or other is often discovered on the strength of the Registrar- General's returns, when it may only mean that doctors have taken to inscribing that disease more frequently as a cause of death, either from improved knowledge or greater care or mere change of fashion. Then there is every year a considerable reserve of deaths the cause of which is uncertified or imperfectly cer- tified; and as registration improves, more cases are every year transferred from the class of * ill-defined or not specified causes ' to definite headings, and thus certain diseases, of which alcoholism is one, show an apparent increase, which is really due to more exact registration. Several causes, therefore, combine to qualify the significance of the annual mortality figures. Like other statistics they must be read with due regard to the conditions under which they are compiled. The figures in quinquennial periods are as follows: Death-rates from intemperance {chronic alcoholism and delirium tremens) per million living - 1876-80 1861-85 1886-90 1891-95 1696-99 Males Females . . 60 24 66 31 74 40 86 50 100 60 80 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION The table shows a large and progressive rise for both sexes, but much greater for females than for males, the respective rates of increase being 150 per cent, and 66 per cent. If, however, we examine the facts more closely, it becomes clear that the explana- tion lies in a change of registration. The figures are those for * intemperance,' which is made up of * chronic alcoholism ' and * delirium tremens.' With these ought to be classed * cirrhosis of the liver,' which is mainly caused by intemperance. If there were a real increase of mortality from this cause, there would be a rise under all these heads, not perhaps exactly corresponding, but approximately equal. Instead of that we find the death-rate from * delirium tremens ' nearly stationary and only a small rise in that from cirrhosis, equally shared by males and females. The great increase is in chronic alcoholism alone, and it is wildly out of proportion to the other two causes of death. Now both delirium tremens and cirrhosis of the liver are well-defined and well-understood conditions, whereas chronic alcoholism is a vague term embracing many condi- tions and interpreted in different senses by different practitioners. It is one of those modem expressions which have come into use as a matter of convenience or fashion, and its increased application to conditions which used to be otherwise described naturally takes effect in the death certificates. Moreover inebriety has of late years been more studied as a disease, it has been more talked about, and there is less re- luctance to state it as a cause of death, especially FEMALE DRUNKENNESS 81 at coroners* inquests, which furnish a large propor- tion — about one-third — of these deaths ascribed to alcohol. But, it may be said, this does not account for the enormous difference between the relative increase of the male and female figures. It accounts at once for a very large part of the difference, for if chronic alcoholism be taken alone it is found that the increase is 91 per cent, among males, and 125 per cent, among females. This comparatively small difference may be explained, perhaps, by the increase of inebriety among the upper and middle classes already discussed and by the superior consideration to women shown formerly in greater reluctance to state that cause of death in their case. But the truth is that these death-rate statistics will not bear a close examination. They are too imperfect and cover too short a period to permit any conclusion to be safely drawn. The vagueness of the heading * Chronic Alcoholism ' leaves too much scope for error or accidental variation. This un- certainty shows itself in abrupt skips from year to year which cannot be accounted for. There was, for instance, absolutely no reason why the number of women dying from chronic alcoholism should jump from 269 in 1880 to 347 in the next year, or drop from 782 in 1893 down to 672 in 1894. Those who are accustomed to deal with death-rates recog- nise in such abrupt changes an element of accident which makes any deduction unsafe. The returns 82 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION for the next two or three years may upset the whole calculation. Further, it is to be remembered that alcoholism is a chronic condition, which varies in duration from two or three years to forty or fifty. The returns may be swollen, therefore, by a number of old-stand- ing cases, which have succumbed at last, while the general volume of intemperance is greatly diminished. Finally, there is arsenical poisoning. This recently detected cause of death and the marked suscepti- bility of women may account for the whole thing. I turn to another branch of statistics — namely, the police returns. Their defects have been discussed in the last chapter, and I need not repeat what was then said except to remind the reader that such variation as has occurred in police procedure of recent years has by general consent been in the direction of increased stringency, and would there- fore tend to increase rather than diminish the number of apprehensions. I will take the same term of 25 years — 1874 to 1898 — as in the last chapter. It covers the period of alleged increase. Complete figures for England and Wales are available. There was a change in the arrangement of the Judicial Statistics in 1893, but it does not affect the continuity of the returns. The cases, previously placed all under one heading, have since been divided into two classes: (1) apprehended, (2) proceeded against by summons. The two added together give the total of cases * proceeded against ' as in previous years. FEMALE DRUNKENNESS 83 Women proceeded against for drunkenness in England and Wales 1874-1898 Nnmber of Proportion per 10,000 Year women of poj ulation 1874 42,760 18.0 1875 47,521 19.7 1876 49,025 20.0 1877 47,567 19.0 1878 47,985 19.0 1879 44,240 17.4 1880 44,910 17.5 1881 42,650 16.3 1882 44,624 16.9 1883 44,264 16.6 1884 45,958 17.0 1886 41,231 15.1 1886 37,971 13.8 1887 38,099 13.7 1888 38,544 13.7 1889 41,726 14.6 1890 44,433 15.4 1891 43,496 14.6 1892 40,886 13.9 1893 42,090 14.2 1894 42,594 14.2 1895 40,896 13.6 1896 43,964 14.5 1897 46,185 15.0 1898 48,915 15.7 Arranged in quinquennial periods the proportional drunkenness comes out thus: 1874-78 1879-83 1884-88 1889-93 1894-98 19.1 16.9 14.6 14.5 14.6 These figures correspond very closely with those given in the last chapter, both for consumption and 84 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION drunkenness during the same period. There has been a general diminution of both since the seven- ties, but a rise since 1895 coincident with good trade. Female drunkenness has followed the same course, but the diminution has been somewhat less than among men. Sir John Bridge, therefore, and the other witnesses who expressed that opinion are fully confirmed. The accompanying chart represents the movement graphically from year to year. The mean for the whole period is a fraction under sixteen. The first eleven years are all above the mean; the last fourteen are all below it. The broad significance of these facts is unmistakable. I had no idea what the result would be when I began to work them out, and am in a measure surprised at it. The striking thing is the close general correspon- dence between these Judicial Statistics and the returns of consumption. There is the same high- water mark in 1875-76, the same low-water mark in 1887-88, the same minor rise after 1888 and again after 1895. Thus the police figures are confirmed. To complete the tale, the curve rose in 1899 to 15.9, but was still below the mean, and sank to 15.0 in 1900. It should read 15.7, not 15.0, in 1898. The general conclusion to be drawn is that female drunkenness among the people has not in- creased but very distinctly diminished during the last twenty-five years. The only ground for the opposite opinion disclosed is the comparatively small upward curve since 1895, which is fully accounted for by the state of trade. It is true that the period i ti s ir> 1 CM I o- 00 \, in in ' 00 > CD CO eo i oo K ^ ^ V y CO u / 5 < s < in X. to is > £S CO |i i eo CO Si |i C^' e Ss > CO CO is <, CO > CO CD eo r^ in ^ «o o ea ^^ 1 o «o c^ o ^2 CO V o» •♦ • **> 2 86 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION taken begins with the drunken years 1874-76, which do not fairly represent the standard of female drink- ing in the past ; but I am dealing with the allegation of increased drunkenness in this very period, which was not chosen by me. The statistics I have given are those which have been appealed to in support of the charge. They have been appealed to but not produced before. I have merely supplied the defi- ciency. It is a pity that evidence should be confi- dently referred to and accepted without examination as proof of a statement, when in reality it proves exactly the opposite. The reasons why female drunkenness shows less diminution than male during a period of improve- ment are simple and sufficient. One was mentioned by Sir John Bridge. It is that a large proportion of female drunkards are prostitutes, who drink at all times, and are not affected by the conditions which tend to sobriety among the rest of the community. The other reason is that the bulk of the habitual inebriates or dipsomaniacs among the lower classes are women, and with inebriates drink is a prime necessity. They must have it whatever else they forego, whereas others indulge or abstain at will, or according to the state of their pockets. In England dipsomania is extremely rare among working men, and even in Scotland, where it is commoner, the women have far the worse record. Some interesting facts have been brought forward to show the greater prevalence of habitual inebriety among women. In Liverpool the chief constable said it was almost FEMALE DRUNKENNESS 87 confined to them, and gave the following figures for a period of ten years; Persons apprehended in Liverpool in ten years Male Female More than 5 times 1,047 1,675 More than 10 times 202 580 More than 20 times 25 160 More than 30 times 4 70 More than 40 times 1 32 More than 50 times none 14 A similar table for Dundee gives the recidivists for one year as follows: Times before the Court Males Females Twice 301 165 Three times 101 45 Four times 19 24 Five times 8 15 Six times 3 10 Seven times — 8 Eight times 1 5 Nine times — 3 Ten times — 2 The tendency of women to monopolise the field of habitual inebriety among the working classes is an important fact which is not sufficiently realised. It is due mainly, perhaps wholly, to their addiction to spirits, which in England are only drunk by a few special classes of men in that rank of life. Habitual inebriety among men is far more common in the upper and middle classes, which are more given to spirits and less to beer. However, I am not dis- cussing that point at present. I only wish to lay stress on the prevalence of habitual inebriety in 88 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION women as a reason for their failure to improve in sobriety so quickly as men. It is not a new thing. I have given sufficient evidence in the previous chapters to show that female drinking and drunkenness are very old- established features of social life in this country. Dr. Norman Kerr's belief that some years ago women were never seen in the public-house is a strange delusion. They have been in the habit of frequenting that institution for a couple of centuries at least, and apparently in far greater numbers than in the present day. We have a pretty continuous record of their habits in that respect for the last seventy years at any rate. It is amusing to hear philanthropic ladies expatiating on the * modern ' construction of public-houses, the separate entrances, private bars, and other wily devices to entice women. They do not know that the same things were described in almost identical terms from the magisterial bench in 1830, when * the greater number ' of cases brought up at Bow Street were women. Then there was Mr. Moore's public-house census in 1834, which gave a daily average for each house of 2,749 customers, of whom 1,114 were women, or not far short of half. This is corroborated by the police returns. Out of 38,440 persons apprehended 16,780, or 43 per cent., were women, while the * disorderlies ' numbered 5,178 women to 3,382 men. The police record is continuous since then, and women have always borne their share of the charge-sheet year by year. The question has cropped up at each of the inquiries FEMALE DRUNKENNESS 89 periodically held, and evidence of their drinking habits has always been forthcoming. In 1854 a public-house census in Manchester gave 44,838 female to 78,168 male customers, and a Mr. Balfour deposed that he ' had known women go in with children in their arms and get drunk at the bar, and had seen them come out and fall down with those children.' Again in 1876 the House of Lords Committee thought female intemperance was increas- ing because in some places the women nearly equalled the men. Apparently they were not aware that the same state of things had been demonstrated forty years before. Indeed, the more closely the facts are examined the more clearly they point to the conclusion that so far from women having recently taken to frequenting the public-house they have never frequented it less. It is to be regretted that the Royal Commission should have given currency and authority to an erroneous opinion which a moderate acquaintance with easily accessible facts would have enabled them to correct. 90 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION CHAPTER V THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE The ostensible agencies by which temperance has been directly promoted in this country are the organised societies and the liquor laws, the one acting by voluntary, the other by compulsory means. Many appear to think them the only agencies. Thus they speak of the * temperance movement ' and * tem- perance progress ' as synonymous with the operations of the societies, and consider a ' reform of the liquor laws ' the one thing needful to make everybody sober. It is worth while, therefore, to inquire how far and in what way the societies and the law have been instrumental in effecting that improvement which I have already shown to have taken place during the last fifty or sixty years. Temperance Societies. — So long as drunkenness has existed there have been men who have denounced and combated it — priests, lawgivers, sages, and physicians — and in a sense, therefore, the * temper- ance movement ' is as old as the evil itself; but the institution of organised societies for the promotion of sobriety belongs to the nineteenth century. Their history in this country falls into three periods. The THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 91 first covered about fifteen years, from 1829 to 1844, and was marked by great activity and success; the second, of about equal length, from 1844 to 1860, was a period of reaction, decline, and failure; the third, which has lasted until now, brought a revival of interest and activity, but on somewhat different lines. It will suffice for the present purpose to run briefly through the three periods and point out their main features. At its outset the movement was mainly or wholly religious in character, at least religion was its ani- mating principle. According to Dr. Dawson Burns, whose * Temperance History * — a sort of annual record of the doings of the societies — is the chief authority on the subject, we originally borrowed the idea from America, where isolated attempts at organisation were carried on here and there during the first quarter of last century, and eventually took definite shape in the American Temperance Society, founded in 1826 by ministers of religion. They were imitated by the Rev. Dr. Edgar, of Belfast, who, together with other Presbyterian clergymen, estab- lished in 1829 the * Ulster Temperance Society,' the first central body of the kind in these islands, although for some years small semi-private associa- tions had been formed in different places in Ireland, of which the earliest is said to have been a club started by a working man at Skibbereen, near Cork. After the foundation of the ' Ulster Temperance Society ' the movement developed very rapidly. By the end of the year there were twenty-five societies 92 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION in Ireland, with 800 members, and at least one in Scotland, on the Clyde. In 1830 the campaign advanced to several towns in Yorkshire and Lanca- shire, with Bradford at their head. London followed, and the * Temperance Societies' Record,' a paper published in Scotland, stated in its report for the year that they had then 127 societies, with 23,000 members, and 60,000 associated abstainers. These figures, surprising as they are for a movement so young, were said to be doubled in the following year, and though estimates of the kind must always be accepted with caution, it is quite clear that the cause did make extraordinarily rapid progress in those early days. From about 1831 England appears to have taken the lead, and soon outstripped her earlier competitors in the field. In that year an important central body was formed in London under the title of * The British and Foreign Temperance Society,* with Bishop Blomfield for president, and various other bishops and dignitaries as vice-presidents. On her accession to the throne in 1837, Queen Victoria gave additional prestige to this society, and a new impetus to the cause it represented, by becoming its patron. The number of abstainers in the United Kingdom at that time was estimated to be about 170,000, of whom 150,000 were credited to England and Wales, while Ireland, the original parent of the movement, only contributed 5,000; but the day of Father Mathew was still to come. Meantime a little rift had already appeared within the lute, which was destined to turn the harmony into discord, and THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 93 eventually to discredit the temperance societies to an extent which very few of their adherents appear to realise down to the present day. The pledge originally required of members only committed them to abstinence from distilled liquors, which were rightly thought to be the great means of demoralisa- tion. Fermented liquors — beer, wine, cider, and so on — were permitted as comparatively harmless. In other words, temperance was really the object aimed at, and moderate drinking was not made into a sin. But about 1832 the spirit of fanaticism began to appear in that home of fanatics the North of England, and demanded the inclusion of all alcoholic drinks in the ban. Total abstinence, so inaugurated, soon spread with an outburst of spasmodic enthusiasm, and was not a little helped by the catch-word * teetotal,' which is merely an intensive form of * total ' colloquially used in the North. The British and Foreign Temperance Society, however, declined to fall in with the extremists, whereupon a quarrel ensued, and led to a partial break-up of the society, some members of which formed a new and rival organisation on teetotal principles. About this time Father Mathew was entering upon his great crusade in Ireland, and under his sensational influence the total abstinence movement for a time carried all before it. The accounts of Father Mathew 's mission from 1838 to 1842 read like a fable. He made teetotalers as the great Powers make soldiers, by the million, only much faster ; and if there had been any staying- 94 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION power in the business, the liquor question would have been settled out of hand. Wherever he went a veritable fury of sacrifice appears to have seized the people of Ireland, though the estimated number of converts must be discounted by the equal fury of exaggeration which seized the chroniclers of his progress. Thus in 1839 he is said to have adminis- tered 30,000 pledges in one day at Clonmel, and from 100,000 to 150,000 in two days at Limerick. Unless pledges were taken by acclamation it would be physically impossible to administer one quarter the number stated. In 1840 he is said to have added 748,000 to the ranks, or an average of over 2,000 per diem for every day in the year, and by 1841 the number of total abstainers in Ireland was reckoned at 4,647,000, or considerably more than the entire adult population. Any one may believe it who likes ; but whatever the exact truth may be, it is certain that this homely village priest did for a time meet with a success beside which the united efforts of all the other organisers of temperance, before and after him, fade into insignificance. In three years the consumption of spirits in Ireland was actually reduced from 10,815,000 gallons to 5,290,000 gallons, and drunkenness practically abolished. An elderly lady described to me the other day how she travelled through Ireland about that time without seeing a single drunken man, and how striking was the contrast between the perfect sobriety of Cork and the rolling intoxication of Bristol, which met her eyes on landing. THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 95 Father Mathew's statue stands to-day in Patrick Street, but his face is happily turned towards the bridge, so that he cannot see the numerous liquor- shops which now adorn that noble thoroughfare. His mission was a flash in the pan, a sudden outburst of Celtic zeal, which burnt too fiercely to last, and already the reaction set in when his back was turned in 1843. That year he came to England and made a considerable impression — a greater impression than any one else has ever done in the same cause — but nothing like his triumphal progress in Ireland. The people everywhere were growing tired of the violent teetotal propaganda, which had in turn killed the more moderate and promising policy of the early thirties. The whole cause declined and lan- guished. At the beginning of 1849 it could no longer support even a weekly journal, which had not failed for the previous twelve years, and in 1850 the British and Foreign Temperance Society perished of inanition on the resignation of Bishop Blomfield, while the National Temperance Society (the chief teetotal body) found its * sphere of operations greatly restricted from diminished subscriptions,' and had presently to be reorganised under another name. Then other organisations came to grief one after another and dissolved. From America came the same dismal tale. * The cause in this country,' wrote Mr. J. B. Gough in 1857, * is in a depressed state. The Maine law is a dead letter everywhere. More liquor is sold than I ever knew before in Massachusetts, and in other States it is about as 96 DRINK, TEIVrPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION bad ' (Dawson Burns) . In spite of this discourag- ing account of the Maine prohibition law, only- passed in 1851, from the pen of a zealous advocate of the cause, the United Kingdom Alliance, which had been formed in Manchester in 1853 for the purpose of getting a similar law passed in England, pursued its way with that enviable indifference to awkward facts which has characterised it up to the present day, and it was rewarded before long by a distinct revival of interest in the temperance cause. This, the third, period in the history of the societies began about 1860. It was marked by the introduction of several new elements. The religious motive, which was the mainspring of the original movement, as I have already said, still played a prominent part, and that has since become more important again through the strong lead taken by the Church of England Temperance Society; but it was accompanied, and at first overshadowed, by other interests, all borrowed from America. Besides the political element represented by the United Kingdom Alliance, there were the benefit societies — the Sons of Temperance, Rechabites,^ and Sons of the Phoenix — appealing especially to the class of artisans and small tradesmen, and somewhat later the Order of Good Templars introduced from the * The Order of Reehabites was founded in 1835, but did not become important until the later period. It is now a large and flourishing society with over 100,000 adult and juvenile mem- bers in the United Kingdom. The Sons of Temperance number 32,000 * adult * members. These and the figures given on page 08 were obtained in 1896. THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 97 United States in 1868. This appears to be a sort of masonic brotherhood, which aims generally at furthering the cause of temperance by investing it with the mysterious attractions of a secret society. They all throve more or less on the revival of the sixties, and there were other signs of renewed activity, such as the foundation of a Police Tem- perance Society, a Working Men's Teetotal League, and so forth. The Church of England Society was formed in 1862, and was followed a few years later by a movement among the Roman Catholics under the influence of Cardinal Manning. In short, the in- terest became pretty general, and not a little of it must be ascribed to the great popular success of Mrs. Henry Wood's prize story, * Danesbury House,' published in 1860. I have not read this cleverly written tale since boyhood, but, if I remember rightly, Mrs. Henry Wood made all her characters succeed or fail in life precisely in proportion to their indulgence in alcoholic liquors, and rather pointed the teetotal moral that any one who takes a single glass of wine or beer has already placed himself in the grasp of an inexorable power, and can only be saved from de- struction by a tremendous struggle. At any rate, uncompromising teetotalism held the field at that time, with the assistance of the various interests enumerated, and uncompromising teetotalism has remained the battle-cry of the societies, with one notable exception, ever since. The history of most of them for the last twenty years, so far as it can be made out from the scanty materials available, has 98 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION been uneventful. If they have never sunk to the point of collapse reached in the fifties, neither have they risen to anything like the numerical and moral success of Father Mathew's time. There have been unseemly quarrels in the ranks here and there, secessions and so forth, and some societies have undergone curious fluctuations. For instance, the Good Templars, who numbered over 200,000 mem- bers in England and Wales in 1873, appear to have sunk to 97,000 in 1879. I endeavoured a few years ago to obtain the data for something like an estimate of the total temperance roll-call at the present time, but without success. Accurate information is only forthcoming about a few of the organisa- tions; all the rest is guess-work. The following figures were kindly furnished me by the Secretary of the Church of England Temperance Society, which I take to be by far the largest and most flourishing body : General or Temperance Section . . 53,393 Total Abstaining 171,637 Juvenile 384,289 Total . . 609,319 The great preponderance of the juvenile section, which will strike the reader, holds good, and in a higher degree, of the temperance army generally. Its numerical strength is made up of children, who constitute four-fifths of the whole, according to Mr. Malins. This explains the discrepancy between its real electoral insignificance, as proved at the THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 99 general election of 1895, and the prodigious extent of membership claimed by its advocates. All the societies, including the friendly and other orders, appear to have large juvenile sections, and then there are the Bands of Hope, which run nominally into millions. But bearing this in mind, one must still believe that even so the numbers are enormously exaggerated. According to Mr. Malins, one person in eight out of the whole population is a teetotaler; other authorities, I understand, claim seven and a half million adherents to the cause, making the proportion about one in five. How does this agree with ordinary experience? For my own part, out of the many hundred men, women, and children I know in all classes of life, there are only two or three teetotalers. Where are the vast hordes of abstainers to be found? In what class of life? Certainly not among the poor, else what would become of the public-house? and just as certainly not among the upper and middle classes. I beg to suggest that a Parliamentary return on the subject would be useful in showing us where we are, and where the societies are, for at present nobody knows. In making these remarks I would by no means be understood to imply a sneer at the societies. Their development of the juvenile work is wholly in accord with their original aim, which was rather to prevent than to rescue from vice. From the tee- total point of view, which regards taking a glass of liquor as putting one's foot over the edge of a preci- pice, nothing can be more efficacious than the 100 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION policy of keeping the young at a safe distance. On the other hand, those who disbelieve in the precipice theory, and think self-control the manlier and more moral aim, wiU consider organised juvenile absti- nence as at best a doubtful gain. They will see in it merely a movement for making little prigs of the children of respectable parents, who are either in no real danger as it is of ever becoming drunkards, or, in so far as they are in danger, will not be prevented from succumbing, when they gain their liberty, by shackles artificially imposed in childhood. The question of juveniles is thus a matter of opinion; the gain may be denied or affirmed, but it cannot be proved either way. Putting them aside, therefore, and coming to the comparatively limited operations of the societies among adults, I cannot find any evidence that their direct influence on the habits of the people has been at all important, with the exception of two or three special classes. Father Mathew no doubt produced a great and tangible effect, which was not altogether so transient as it appeared, and the general fall of the drink barometer during the height of the first temperance period was no mere coincidence, though other causes, as I have already shown, co-operated with the movement. But during the last thirty years the failure of the teetotal propaganda to capture any large section of the population is sufficiently proved by the statistics of consumption. The people have drunk more or less, according to the state of their pockets at THE FORCES 0? TFJ^l^ERANCP • ' J t)l different times, but the net result has been to leave the general level of consumption almost unchanged. What has happened is that many of the grossest abuses of the traffic have been diminished or re- moved, and that there is more moderate and less excessive drinking than there was. If this had been the object of the societies they could claim a large share of the credit; but they chose to go upon total abstinence, and that has clearly failed in its immediate effects. In truth, they hardly touch the mass of the people at all. They are composed, for the most part, of earnest persons belonging to the middle and lower-middle classes, eminently respect- able, and never in any danger whatever of falling \dctims to drunkenness. They are animated — to use Dr. Dawson Burns 's words — ' by a desire not so much to benefit themselves as to do good to others ' ; and all honour to them for it. But the others refuse to listen to any appreciable extent, and the chief reason is that they resent the whole principle of total abstinence as a needless interference with one of the good things of life and an insult to their self-respect. The very name * temperance ' has long been a by-word among educated and uneducated alike by being usurped to cover a bigoted and self- righteous propaganda from which everything tem- perate was eliminated. The Church of England Society stands out as having recognised this fact, which is known to every one save teetotalers; and its great and growing influence must be attributed in a large measure to its moderate attitude. It is 10f2 DtliNE:, .TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION one of the youngest of the societies, having been formed on its present basis in 1873, but it is already the largest, I believe, and by far the most influential. When its really temperate character is better under- stood, and it has shaken itself free from the damaging associations unfortunately connected in the mind of the public with the name * Temperance Society,' a great extension of its activity may be confidently expected. True temperance should be, and indeed already is, a national cause; total abstinence neither is, nor seems likely to be. Liquor Legislation. — Those who are accustomed to hear the liquor question spoken of as a thing terribly neglected by the Legislature may be sur- prised to learn that during the first fifty years of the late reign at least twenty-five Acts of Parliament were passed for dealing with some aspect or other of the traffic, exclusive of Inland Revenue Acts. Is there any other question which can show an average record of one Act every two years? Considering also the number of Select Committees of both Houses and Royal Commissions that have sat upon it. Parliament cannot be fairly accused of neglect. But, it is said, the legislation has been a failure. That depends on what was expected of it; and if its promoters did expect too much, those who are most anxious for fresh measures are hardly in a position to bring that charge against them, to judge from their own utterances. The Liquor Laws did not abolish drunkenness, and, if they were expected to do so, they were so far a failure; but some of them did THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 103 a great deal more good than is generally supposed, and contributed most materially to the improvement I have previously described. I will enumerate, in chronological order, the most important Acts bearing on the present question, with special reference to those which have been attended with beneficial results. 1834. An Act designed to check the unfortunate results which had attended the Duke of Wellington's Beer Act of 1830. That measure had practically thrown the beer trade open to anybody who chose to start a pothouse. The object was to encourage the consumption of beer and cider in the hope of diminishing spirit-drinking; but the immediate result was to multiply the number of disorderly little beer-shops without in the least depressing the spirit traffic. The Act of 1834 made a magistrate's certifi- cate compulsory before a license could be obtained, and did something to check the growth of the evil. The point is interesting for the light it throws on free trade in liquor, which some people advocate to-day. 1839. An Act for closing public-houses in London from midnight on Saturday until 12 o'clock on Sunday morning. I have already drawn attention to it and its effects (p. 61), and need not repeat the evidence quoted from the House of Commons inquiry of 1834 on the abominable scenes which used to take place on Sunday morning. Saturday night and Sunday morning were the occasions of more drunkenness than the rest of the week put together; and this Act worked wonders. The 104 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION metropolitan ' drunks ' fell gradually from 21,237 in 1838 to 8,321 in 1844. That remarkable improve- ment was not all due to the law, as I have pointed out before, because the temperance crusade attained its zenith in the very same period and great distress prevailed simultaneously, but the beneficial effects of the measure on public order were conclusively established before the House of Commons Com- mittee of 1854, by the unanimous testimony of a crowd of witnesses, including publicans, police, working men, and temperance agents. The case seems to me most instructive, and a valuable proof of the efficacy of a reasonable restriction of hours. 1840. The Beer-house Act was further amended in the direction of greater stringency. Licenses were only to be granted to the real resident occupier of premises under a property qualification and other conditions. The object was to weed out the specu- lative and poverty-stricken pothouses, which have always been, and still are, the scene of the worst abuses. 1842. An Act providing greater facilities for the transfer of licenses. 1845. A Gaming Act, almost inoperative, as shown before the inquiry of 1854, because the police had no power of entry. 1854-55. Hours of Sunday-closing fixed generally. A valuable measure. The consumption of spirits fell by four million gallons. In Scotland the im- portant Forbes Mackenzie Act came into operation in 1854. It introduced various licensing reforms, THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 105 and total Sunday-closing. Up to 1828 there had been Sunday-closing under the common law, but after that there appears to have been no closing time, and the state of things was like that in London up to 1839. Sunday-closing has worked well in Scotland, though it gave some trouble at first. 1860. Mr. Gladstone's celebrated Wine and Refreshment Houses Act, authorising * grocers* li- censes,' which are not grocers' licenses at all. According to the Act, every person keeping a shop is entitled to take out a license to retail wine for off- consumption. Further, licenses were required for all refreshment houses, and eating-house keepers were entitled to take out wine licenses for consump- tion on the premises. All these provisions have been heartily abused, and the Act has occasioned much controversy. The real crime of the measure is that it encourages moderate drinking, as it was intended to do. Poor Mr. Gladstone was never sound on that point. 1861. A further plunge into crime in the shape of an Act permitting the retail sale of spirits by the bottle for off-consumption, and also the sale of very small beer (at not more than l^d. the quart) in any house or shop under a five-shilling license. These measures are more doubtful, especially the latter, which seems needless and foolish. 1862. A Scotch amending Act, intended among other things to check the illicit traffic which had been stimulated by Sunday-closing. It also imposed penalties for drunkenness. 1864. A Closing Act, forbidding public-houses to 106 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION be opened again after the legal hour until 4 a.m. This was a useful Act, and necessary to prevent evasion of the law. It was amended in the following year by provisions for suspending the regulation in special cases. Also a Beer-houses Act for Ireland, dealing chiefly with beer licenses for * off '-con- sumption. 1869. Wine and Beer-house Act — an important licensing measure. The principal provisions were; (1) Retail licenses not to be granted without a certificate given annually by justices; (2) Certificate might be refused on account of (a) failure of appli- cant to produce satisfactory evidence of good character; (h) house in question being disorderly; (c) previous forfeiture; (d) applicant or his house not being duly qualified by law. These measures had a most beneficial effect, which was further enhanced by the legislation of 1872 and 1874. They may therefore be taken together. 1872. Licensing Act — the most important meas- ure of the century. It contained ninety clauses, of which the most pertinent may be summarised as dealing with the following points: (1) Prohibition of sale of intoxicating liquors without license — penalty for first offence a fine of 50?. or one month's imprisonment; for second offence 1002. or three months, with forfeiture of license and disqualification for five years; for third offence lOOZ. or six months, and unlimited disqualifi- cation. (2) Prohibition of sale of spirits to persons under THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 107 sixteen years of age — penalty 205. for first and 405. for second offence. (3) Penalty for being found drunk in any high- way or other public place, or on any licensed premises, up to IO5. for first offence, 205. for second, and 405. for third. Penalty for riotous or dis- orderly behaviour while drunk, up to 405. (4) Penalty for permitting drunkenness or vio- lence on premises, or for selling liquor to a drunken person, 101. for first offence, and 201. for the second, with compulsory endorsement of license (altered in 1874 to optional endorsement). (5) Penalty for harbouring constables, and for permitting them to drink or supplying them with drink, 101. and 201. (6) Penalty for permitting gaming, 101. and 201. (7) Power given to publicans to exclude any one who is drunken, violent, quarrelsome, or disorderly. (8) Forfeiture of license on repeated conviction; on the third offence recorded disqualification of the man and the house. 1874. Licensing Act, of which the chief pro- visions related to the power of the police to enter licensed premises, the fixing of hours of closing as at present, the exemption of bona fide travellers, the mitigation of some of the 1872 regulations, and adulteration. These Acts were markedly successful. The report of the House of Lords Select Committee of 1876 stated that * recent legislation has had a bene- ficial effect throughout the country by producing 108 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION good order in the streets, by abolishing the class of beer-houses, and by improving the character of licensed houses generally/ Further, ' the process of weeding out the most disorderly beer-houses has taken effect throughout the country.' A large number of witnesses from various places gave evi- dence of the beneficial effects of legislation. For their opinions see Chapter VII., on ' The Principles of Liquor Legislation ' (p. 166). The numerous Acts which have been passed since 1874 relate chiefly to minor points, but a few must be mentioned. 1876-77. Scotch Acts, extending to Scotland some of the provisions of the 1872-74 English Acts. 1878. Sunday-closing in Ireland, except in Dub- lin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and Waterford; had a good effect. 1881. Sunday-closing in Wales. In the smaller places it appears to have been quite successful, but in Cardiff it caused much trouble by forcing illicit trade, in the shape of clubs and shebeens. The women of the working classes complained bitterly of it: * The men used to come home at ten o'clock, now they come at three or four in the morning.' This trouble has now been largely overcome, but there is still much opposition to the measure. 1882. An Act giving justices full discretion over * off ' beer licenses. 1883. An Act prohibiting the payment of work- men in public-houses — a useful measure, far too long delayed. THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 109 1885. An Act defining beer for Inland Revenue purposes as * any liquor which is made or sold as a description of beer, or as a substitute for beer, containing more than 2 per cent, of alcohol.' Beer may be made of almost anything under the Acts. But the analyses under the Local Government Board show that deleterious substitutes are not used, and that the only serious adulteration is by water with sugar, and possibly salt, but the latter is doubtful. 1886. An Act prohibiting the sale of liquor to persons under thirteen for consumption on the premises. 1887. A Scotch Act, giving local authorities power to close earlier (10 p.m.), except in towns of over 50,000 inhabitants. 1897. A further Scotch amending Act, relating to licenses to retail * sweets.' 1901. Child Messenger Act, prohibiting sale to chil- dren under fourteen for ' off '-consumption, except in sealed vessels. The reader who has waded through the foregoing list will admit, I think, that the Legislature has neither shirked the liquor question nor wholly failed in dealing with it, in spite of numerous blunders. Of the two agencies I have been discussing, the law seems to have more tangible results to its credit than the societies. But in truth it is only a superficial view which would regard these two things as repre- senting the forces of temperance. Many far wider and deeper influences have been at work during the 110 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION period under discussion. Great changes have passed over the country — changes religious, political, social, economical, intellectual, and scientific; and not one but has in some degree touched the liquor question. The activity of the Churches, and particularly the regeneration of the Church of England, has done much to raise the standard of morality. The pos- session of political power has quickened the sense of responsibility in the people, and taught them more self-respect. Conversely, the social and industrial upheaval has forced employers of labour, landowners, and the upper classes generally to recognise, as they never did before, their duty to those around them and dependent on them. The physical conditions of life have been improved among the working classes by the entirely new science of hygiene and by the cheapening of food. Their mental condition has been equally affected by facilities for locomotion, by education, and the development of the press and other cheap literature. In this connection, the testi- mony of a working man, given so far back as 1854, is worth quoting. He had spoken emphatically of the diminution of drunkenness in his own class, and was asked to what he attributed it. * There are a great many books published/ he said, ' periodicals and that like, which helps to open their understand- ing, and they get to know better. They have other pursuits, and they enjoy themselves more at home. Very many take in some little periodical or other. ' And there is something more than all these things, something which is partly formed by them, THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 111 but is yet distinct, which partly acts through them, and at the same time more directly. I mean what we call public opinion. It is an impalpable sort of thing, but very real, and by far the most powerful of all forces in a free country. The enactment, and still more the administration, of the law depend upon it. The societies depend upon it. As Dr. Dawson Burns says, * Temperance reform has suc- ceeded as far as the willingness of society to adopt it has permitted it to succeed. How much farther could it succeed? . . . Temperance history is a record of success so far as men have been ready to co-operate in that reform.* Now public opinion is the outcome of many influences, and that is true in this particular question no less than in others. There are the general influences mentioned above, and certain special ones, including the temperance societies themselves. Their indirect effects in helping to form public opinion have been most important. That has, in fact, been their real work far more than the enrolment of members and the administration of individual pledges. As the Bishop of Rochester said a few years ago at a diocesan meeting of the C.E.T.S., their task is to * educate public opinion.' It is, and always has been. They have pushed the question to the front, and insisted on attention being given to it. They have stimulated the public conscience. And possibly the extremists, by their very violence, have done this most effectively up to a certain point. The world is made up of all sorts, and in the day of stag- nation a handful of fanatics may do good service by 112 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION stimulating that progress which is the only alterna- tive to decay. If they had their way altogether they would probably do a great deal of harm. But as there is not the remotest chance of that, let us cheer- fully credit them with a fair measure of good. Much as the temperance organisations have done, however, to keep us all alive to the evils of intemperance, there has been another influence, I think, working more quietly but more surely, and with more practical effect. Drinking is largely a matter of social usage; the majority of people di'ink much or little according to the custom of the society in which they live. And in matters of social usage every class is apt to be strongly influenced by the class above, into which it is for ever aspiring to climb. Democratic as we may affect to be, the lower orders persistently imitate the higher so far as they know how; indeed, the more democratic they are, the more they imitate, to show their equality. Now, it is the fact that up to the early part of last century social custom not only permitted but en- couraged drunkenness among the upper classes, who regularly and publicly set the example to the lower; and that a complete revolution has since taken place in this respect.^ It began before the ' temperance movement,' and went on steadily, independent of * My mother, who is 83, tells me that in country houses when she was a young girl the gentlemen always came to the draw- ing-room intoxicated after dinner. No one thought anything of it. Of course the practice of ladies withdrawing after dinner (hence the term * drawing '-room) was originally necessitated by the masculine orgies. I think smoking has a good deal to do with modem dinner-table moderation. THE FORCES OF TEMPERANCE 113 that propaganda, and apparently uninfluenced by it. It has been a gradual change in the standard of con- duct, in favour of sobriety as part of the behaviour expected of a gentleman. Total abstinence had nothing to do with it; there was no question of abstaining ; but drunkenness has come to be regarded as discreditable and offensive, as * bad form * in short, instead of being quite the right and proper thing. It is idle to say that the lower classes are unaware of the fact, or uninfluenced by it. What do servants think of a drunken master? What do the people think of a drunken clergyman or Member of Parlia- ment, let alone a Cabinet Minister or a judge ? They think him a disgrace, however drunk they may get themselves, because a man in his position is expected to conform to a higher standard. And in proportion as they respect themselves, the lower classes are moved insensibly to make that standard their own. The influence is gradually permeating their ranks, and traces of it can be found very low down in the scale by those who care to look. The reader may not agree with me in attaching so much weight to this social factor, but no one can deny its existence, and I can call one unimpeachable witness to the im- portance of a social lead from the upper classes in re- gard to temperance. Dr. Dawson Burns, speaking of the decline of the movement in Ireland, remarks that * the causes are not far to seek. As early as 1841, almost at the culmination of the popular movement, it was noticed with regret and apprehension that the upper and upper-middle classes, both Protestant and 114 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Roman Catholic, had not joined the reform, and it was predicted that should this continue the want of moral support from such quarters would enfeeble and imperil the whole reform. The prediction was lamentably fulfilled.' In other words, a social move- ment, if it is to last, must begin from the top, which is just my point. Therefore, I regard the example of society as a most important factor in bringing about that organic change in tone which marks the last fifty or sixty years. And though the improvement in manners began quite early in the century, the chief credit for maintaining and developing it belongs to the steady influence of the Court of Queen Vic- toria. This is one of the many, ways in which Her late Majesty's wise and high-minded rule worked quietly and unostentatiously for the benefit of her people. A word in conclusion about the future. Most of the * Forces of Temperance ' discussed above will continue to work naturally and surely; but a good deal may be done actively to help on the improve- ment. The organisations have their work before them in pegging away at the further education of public opinion, and the more reasonable their tone, the greater will be the attention paid to them. Similarly with the Legislature. There is plenty of encouragement in the past for moderate and well- considered legislation, and as public opinion changes, measures of that kind may be brought forward with good prospects of success. Chapters VII. and VIII. are devoted to a more detailed consideration of this subject. 115 CHAPTER VI THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE The fundamental fact at the bottom of the drink question is the physiological action of alcoholic liquor on the animal organism. People like it and drink to please themselves. It is necessary to insist on this truism because — ^like a good many other truisms — it is perpetually forgotten. Most * schemes ' of liquor legislation are in fact based on the assump- tion that people drink to please some one else. They are said to be in the * murderous grip ' of the trade, from which they would fain escape if the opportunity were allowed them. The * murderous grip ' is the extreme view, expressed in that rhetorical manner which is generally associated with lack of matter. There are other views less extravagant but still inspired by the idea that the moving force of in- temperance is not so much the desire of the drinker as the greed of the purveyor, or, it may be, some external circumstance. The drunkard is ' enticed,' * led, ' ' tempted ' by various devices, or he is ' driven ' to drink by the squalor of his surroundings and the lack of other pleasures. Such is the theory. I do not say there is nothing in it. There is something 116 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION but not much. The essential and dominant factor is the desire, the determination, of the individual, and all attempts to ignore it, to exaggerate the importance of externals and to minimise the re- sponsibility of the drinker for his own excess tend only to a distorted view of the problem, and to futile or mischievous legislation. Man's liking for alcoholic liquor rests on a physiological basis which can no more be argued away than the physiological distinction between the sexes. Wine maketh glad the heart of man. We are so formed by Nature, and though there are always people who think they can defy or alter the decrees of Nature, she has her way in the end and bates not a jot. It is futile to ignore the decree, how- ever sure we may be that we could have arranged things better. It might, or might not, be to our ad- vantage if we had been differently constituted and alcoholic products had no such effect as they have. But the effect is there ; the wise man recognises and reckons with it. I am not going to enter on the weary question whether alcohol is good or bad, a food or a poison. All that is beside my point, more especially as no one drinks or wants to drink * alcohol,' but only certain liquids which contain alcohol along with many other things. The point on which I wish to insist is that these liquids are agreeable to the human organism — and, for the matter of that, to most if not to all animals. They exhilarate, they remove depression, they lighten pain, they make glad the heart; and doing so they foster conviviality THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 117 and good-fellowship, they make the individual pleased with himself and others ; they make life seem brighter and more enjoyable. Temporarily, of course, and only up to a certain point. Still they do it, and man desires them for that reason. It follows that he desires them most and is apt to indulge in them to excess in those circumstances in which he has most need of their exhilarating properties — in circumstances, that is to say, of gloom and depression. Hence the influence of climate and weather, which are the most important of all the standing conditions affecting intemperance. The most drunken countries in Europe are Scandinavia, Northern Russia, and Scotland; the most sober, excluding Orientals, are Portugal, Spain, and Italy. I speak from observation, which is borne out by police records. The statement may seem at variance with the returns showing the consumption in different countries issued by the Board of Trade, but the apparent discrepancy is easily explained. For one thing the data on which the Board of Trade returns are based are in the case of several foreign countries too imperfect to be trustworthy for purposes of precise comparison. But, apart from that, con- sumption and intemperance have no necessary relation at all, especially when different countries are compared. Italy, Spain, and Portugal are wine- growing countries. Wine is made almost every- where; it costs very little and everybody drinks it at aU meals. Consequently the national consump- tion is comparatively high, but the individual is 118 DRINK, TEIVIPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION very temperate. In these warm climates people are mofift sparing. A very little of the common, un- brandied red wine, diluted with water, is taken at each meal. That was also the practice in France, another wine-growing country, until the destruction of the vines by the phylloxera led the people to drink spirits as a beverage. This caused a most instructive increase of drunkenness, particularly among the mining and industrial population. But France is still a very temperate country compared with England. The police drunkennesfs is less than one fourth and almost confined to the North. In short the manner and distribution of drinking have to be taken into account when one country is compared with another. Otherwise the most erroneous conclusions will be drawn from statistics of consumption. For instance, Portugal appears to be as large a consumer as the United Kingdom, but drunkenness is really unknown there. The American Minister who had lived there for many years told me that he had never seen a drunken man, and my own observations entirely confirm his experience. I have looked for drunkenness in the large towns, in Lisbon and Oporto, but have never seen a single individual in the slightest degree the worse for liquor. In Sweden, on the other hand, and still more in Norway, the consumption per head is much lower; but drunkenness is rife in the towns. The fact is that alcoholic consumption is diffused in some countries and concentrated in others. It is particularly diffused in the wine-producing countries, THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 119 where wine is drunk merely as an ordinary article of diet and in a weak form, but by everybody, children included. It is particularly concentrated in the most northern countries, where drink is taken to stimulate. It is concentrated in three respects — (1) the form of liquor; (2) the number of persons using it, for children, who do not need exhilarating, consume as a whole very little alcohol in these countries; (3) the period of drinking, which is to a great extent compressed into a few hours in the even- ing, instead of being distributed over the whole day. These considerations explain the apparent dis- crepancy between the geographical distribution of in- temperance and the returns relating to consumption. Broadly speaking, the inhabitants of raw, dull, and damp climates are pre-eminently given to excessive indulgence, while those who live under warm and sunny skies are temperate in habit. The influence of climate is plainly discernible when different parts of the United Kingdom are compared. The northern counties of England are more drunken than the southern, Scotland is more drunken than England, and the west coast of Scotland more drunken than the east. A table prepared by the Home Office to show the geographical distribution by counties for the years 1890-94 brings out some interesting facts. It gives the average annual number of persons pro- ceeded against for drunkenness per 100,000 of the population. The mean for the whole is 620. The following are the figures for the twelve highest and the twelve lowest counties. The former are all in 120 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION the north and west, the latter all in south, east, or midlands. Highest Lowest Northumberland . 1813 Cambridge 119 Durham 1351 Oxford . 136 Glamorgan 1089 Wiltshire 137 Lancaster 1038 Suffolk . 140 Pembroke 877 Rutland 140 Shropshire 783 Huntingdon 144 Brecon 759 Norfolk . 184 Cumberland 756 Cornwall 207 Stafford 718 Essex 219 Monmouth 718 Bedford 226 Worcester 709 Middlesex 228 Chester . 671 Somerset 229 The differences are very striking and too great to be accidental. No doubt other factors than geographical position come into play. The sober counties have a generally rural character, the drunken ones are mining and agricultural; but we find Cum- berland, a northern rural county, high in the list, and Essex, which has a very large industrial popula- tion, equally low. If the counties are divided into two classes, having (1) over 400, and (2) under 400 cases of drunkenness per 100,000, and if a line is drawn across England from the Severn to the Wash, all the counties on the south side of it are found to be in the second class, and all those to the north, with three or four insignificant exceptions, in the first. London itself, which stands in a category of its own, only comes twelfth on the list, between Worces- tershire and Cheshire. The drunkenness of Northum- berland is conspicuous. It called forth some strong THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 121 comments by Mr. Justice Wills at the North-E astern assizes in March 1901, on account of the exceptional amount of crime that came before him from this cause. The police returns, therefore, for that county- reflect a real condition of things and cannot be ex- plained by any difference in procedure or activity. The causes are no doubt the climate and the mining occupation. As one travels north the climate becomes colder and wetter, and Scotland is more drunken even than Northumberland. Colonel McHardy, Chairman of the Prison Commissioners of Scotland, has pointed out that in the towns to the west of the main watershed the average number of offences is 35 per 1,000, in towns to the east it is only 22 per 1,000, and he attributes the difference in part at least to the greater dampness of the west coast, which conduces to more drinking. It is to be noted that a raw and damp climate tends particu- larly to the use of spirits. North Russia, Scandi- navia, and Scotland are pre-eminently spirit-drinking countries. All classes habitually consume this form of alcohol, which is the most concentrated and the most intoxicating; and the traveller who is not accustomed to take it in the same manner at home finds that the climate gives it a relish which it lacks elsewhere and enables him to drink it with comfort and satisfaction to an amount and at hours which would be exceedingly disagreeable to him in other climates. The sportsman in the Highlands, who gets his feet wet within five minutes of leaving the house, who wades through burns up to his waist and 122 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION is drenched by rain or mist, has no difficulty in understanding the native taste for raw whisky. In Sweden, which has a very similar climate, it is the custom even in good society to begin dinner with a glass or two of raw spirits. Ladies take their share with every one else, and it does not seem to hurt them. They are not given to inebriety, in spite of this practice, which would have a very sinister significance elsewhere. The glass of spirits seems suitable to the country. When I was there the idea of beginning dinner in this way was at first re- pugnant to me, and I watched others doing it with something like disgust. I particularly dislike drink- ing anything between or before meals, and care very little for spirits at any time in ordinary circumstances. But in a short time the repugnance died away, I began to fall in with the custom of the country and eventually quite enjoyed it. The Swedish working man habitually drinks raw spirits and will toss off a couple of large glasses one after another. I do not pretend to understand the physiology of the matter, but there is no doubt about the fact that a combina- tion of cold and damp predisposes to the consump- tion of the more concentrated alcoholic liquors. The same people drink more in winter than in summer and more in a cold winter than a mild one. The extraordinarily cold winter of 1895 caused such an exceptional consumption of rum in this country as to make an appreciable difference to the Budget. In a warm country, on the other hand, the healthy organism only fancies alcoholic liquors in a dilute THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 123 form, and raw spirits as consumed in northern climates are utterly distasteful. They are only used in minute quantities as a digestive after dinner. I believe the sunlight has a good deal to do with it. The physiological action of sunlight is not at all un- derstood, but we do know that its absence, under dull and gloomy skies, is * depressing,* whatever may be the precise meaning of that word ; and people seek to replace the natural sun by what has been called * bottled sunlight.' It is not by accident or fashion that the strong and heavy wines produced in the South find their market in the United Kingdom, Russia, and Scandinavia, and are eschewed in the sunny countries which produce them. In hotter countries still the natives are even more abstemious. In my own personal experience I always feel in a warm climate the converse effect to that noted in Scotland and Sweden : I dislike spirits. Climate and weather, then, have a distinct in- fluence in moderating or intensifying the appetite for intoxicating drink. It would be surprising if they had not, since they affect diet generally. The in- habitants of rigorous climes are greater eaters and more carnivorous, as well as greater drinkers, than those who live in warmer latitudes. Then I think race has something to do with it, though the evidence on this point is less clear. For instance the Hunga- rians are noticeably more drunken than the Austrians — ^that is, the Teutonic Austrians — notwithstanding the proximity of the two countries, which enjoy a very similar climate. Indeed, the meteorology of 124 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Hungary does not account for the habits of the people. It is cold in winter, no doubt, but not ex- cessively so, and the summers are long and hot. Moreover the dry, bracing air of the great plains is the very reverse of that atmospheric condition which we have noted as conducing to drink. Nor does difference of occupation account for the greater proneness of the Hungarians to alcoholic indulgence. They are a more pastoral and a less industrial people than the Austrians. Again, Hungary is a wine-growing country, and as a rule wine-producing countries are sober. But the Hungarians are spirit drinkers ; they make spirituous liquors from all kinds of things. For instance I have tasted there an excellent home-made spirit produced from walnuts and used as a liqueur at breakfast. That is a curious custom the like of which I have not seen elsewhere except at * hunt breakfasts ' in England. Perhaps this gives the key to the problem. The Hungarians are a lusty, jovial race, full of energy and vigour, fond of sport and an outdoor life, greatly given to hospitality and good-fellowship. These things are in their blood and they go with a liking for strong drink. Other evidence of racial influence is afforded by colonial settlements and countries populated by immigrants. Colonists of drinking blood, such as Britons, Scandinavians, Slavs, and Teutons, drink even in hot' countries, though less than at home. Our Australian colonies, with the exception of West Australia, consume considerably less alcohol per head than the mother country; but they drink more than THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 125 people of other races under similar climatic condi- tions. Then again we have the curious fact that drunkenness prevails more extensively in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales than in England. The pro- portional figure in 1890-94 was 611 for England against 774 for Wales, which is certainly not better policed. Irish and Scotch figures for the same period are lacking, but in 1898, when England and Wales together reached 698, Ireland stood at 1,920 and Scotland at 2,688. The superior capacity for disorder thus shown by all the Celtic countries is very suggestive. Climate explains it in part, no doubt, but race seems to come also into play. The only other condition which the three countries share in common as against England is Sunday-closing. Does this conduce to greater disorder by concentrating in one day, Saturday, the drinking capacity which in England is spread over two? Before leaving this interesting but rather specu- lative question of the influence of race, I should like to point out what I have mentioned incidentally in a previous chapter — namely, that all predominant races are given to strong drink. The abstemious nations are all decadent; the progressive ones all drink. Energy, vigour, initiative, enterprise belong in a pre- eminent degree, if not exclusively, to the drinking races. A striking example of this coincidence is furnished by the two yellow races. The Chinese are sober and decadent, the Japanese are conspicuously enterprising, alert, progressive, and given to indul- gence in liquor. The difference between the sailors 126 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION of the two nationalities ashore is very striking according to the East-end police. In England those northern counties which I have shown to be more drunken than the southern are the backbone of the country. The energy and enterprise of the Welsh are concentrated in drunken Glamorgan; drunken Scotland produces the most enduring, capable, and successful pioneers in the world; drunken Ireland is the mother of the quickest-witted race known to our age ; drunken Sweden sends out a splendid strain of colonists who are welcomed wherever they go. Compare these breeds with those of Portugal, Spain, South Italy, or Greece. I do not suggest that the former are capable because they drink, and still less that the more they drink the more capable they are ; but it is impossible to deny that racially drink and energy go together. Probably the meaning of it is that the conditions which foster vigour of mind and body tend also to alcoholic indulgence. The same people drink with vigour and do other things with vigour ; they have the qualities of their defects. A possible explanation of racial differences may be found in the Darwinian theory of evolution, accord- ing to which long exposure to the influence of alcohol would tend to national sobriety by weeding out the drunkards and leaving the more temperate, who live longer and transmit their moderate tendencies to their offspring. There is a good deal to be said for this theory, which has been well worked out by Dr. Arch- dall Reid. It is far more in consonance with established scientific generalisations than the opposite hypothesis THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 127 that heredity tends to make nations more drunken. It is also more in consonance with the facts of experi- ence noted in previous chapters. Heredity is most certainly not making us more drunken, since we have been getting more sober for 150 years. Nor is there any evidence that the children of inebriates are born with a * craving ' for liquor. That is a pure assumption. They are born with a tendency to self- indulgence, and as they grow up the parental habits commonly afford both example and opportunity which determine the direction their self-indulgence takes. On the other hand the influence of heredity in promoting national sobriety is very difficult to prove for lack of sufficient ethnographical and historical knowledge. It may account in part at least for the superior sobriety of the South over the North, of the English over the Celts, of the Austrians over the Hungarians ; but we are not in a position to say with any certainty how long any of these nations have respectively been exposed to the selective action of alcohol. It has been suggested that modern Greeks and Italians are sober because they are the se- lected descendants of the Hellenes and the Romans, out of whose blood the taste for alcoholic excess has gradually been weeded. In support of this argument there is some evidence that the ancient inhabitants of Greece and Rome were more given to indulgence in wine than the modern ones; but the racial con- nection between the two is by no means certain. We do not know to what extent the latter can be regarded as the lineal descendants of the former. 128 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION The history of drink in this country, again, hardly supports the theory. The influence of heredity did not sober the people for a great many centuries, and it is difficult to see why after a very long period of complete inactivity it should suddenly begin to take effect, and in a comparatively short time should produce a substantial change, which can moreover be accounted for by other influences. The strongest evidence in favour of the theory is furnished by the Jews, whose marked sobriety in the present day under all conditions is hard to explain in any other way. There is no doubt that they are racially con- tinuous with the ancient Jews, and numerous passages in the Bible suggest that the race was by no means so abstemious in those days. On the other hand the sobriety of Mahommedans and Hindoos cannot be explained by heredity. On the whole, though this question is very interesting, and ought always to be borne in mind, it is somewhat too speculative for the purposes of the present volume. Whatever the influence of heredity may be, it is only one factor among many in modifying the appetite for drink. It cannot possibly account for variations experienced by the same individual under different conditions, or explain why I like spirits in Scotland and dislike them in Italy. Nor does it account for the facts which follow. The next of the forces of intemperance to which I would draw attention is occupation, which has already been mentioned in passing. The Judicial THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 129 Statistics again furnish ns with some interesting information on this head. The following table gives the proportional drunkenness for 1894 in various districts selected according to their character and the occupation of the inhabitants. Drunkenness per 100,000 population Seaports .... . 1,260.78 Mining counties . 1,136.72 Metropolis .... 637.42 Manufacturing towns 470.08 Pleasure towns 289.30 Agricultural counties: (1) Home Counties 245.01 (2) South- Western Count -ies . 209.41 (3) Eastern Counties . . 109.92 Seaports stand apart. They are cosmopolitan in the first place, and, in the second, sailors live under peculiar conditions. They have a very hard life at sea, devoid of recreative and educational influences, but accompanied by long periods of compulsory absti- nence. When they get ashore they have money in their pockets, and do not know how to spend it on anything but the lowest of pleasures. In spite of much that has been done for them in this country, they are still an exceptionally drunken class. Next to seaports, and only a little behind them, come the mining districts. There is no doubt at all, apart from these statistics, that the miner's occupation conduces to drink. The darkness and confinement are depressing, the heat and toil exhausting. It is seen not only in this country, but in France and Belgium, where the miners are notably given to 130 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION drink, in comparison with other classes. In Aus- tralia also, the consumption of alcohol is much higher in the mining than in the more pastoral colonies. The pre-eminence of miners in alcoholic indulgence is not wholly due to their occupation, because good wages enable them to indulge their taste, but the life certainly tends to increase the taste. Then we come to the metropolis, which has not much more than half the drunkenness of other seaports; yet it is the greatest of them. As Mr. Troup has pointed out, the metropolis has a three- fold character: it is the greatest seaport, the great- est manufacturing town, and the greatest pleasure resort in the kingdom. Further, it is the seat of government and of the administration of justice, and contains a far larger proportion of the profes- sional and trading classes than other towns. These neutralise the more disorderly elements, and bring the metropolis out roughly at the mean of the other districts. The manufacturing towns, which follow the metropolis in the table, are lower than one would expect; but they are very much higher than the pleasure towns, and these again higher than the rural districts. The question is complicated in the case of the last by the presence of other factors, such as inferior wages, diminished opportunities, and sparser policing, which are merely accidental to the life; but occupation has something to do with it. According to my experience, Hodge is not a very self-indulgent person, and Mrs. Hodge is decidedly THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 131 abstemious. She does not frequent the village pub, which in itself makes a great deal of difference. Some further light is thrown on the question of occupation by the death-rates, which have a certain value for comparing one class with another in the same period. The following table gives the comparative mortality from * alcoholism and diseases of the liver * among males between twenty-five and sixty-five, in the three years 1890-92, all * occupied males * being taken at 100 : Coachman — cabman 153 Dock labourer 195 Costermonger 163 Chimney-sweep 200 Coalheaver . 166 Butcher 228 Fishmonger . 168 Brewer . 250 Musician 168 Inn-servant . 420 Hairdresser . 176 Inn-keeper 733 This table of the most alcoholic occupations is very interesting. The three highest classes are explained by unlimited opportunities. Three others — ^namely, coalheavers, dock labourers, and hair- dressers — represent the occupations into which disorderly characters and social failures especially drift; they are, in fact, refuge occupations. It is not generally known that hairdressing is a common resource for men of some education and decent appearance who can get nothing else to do. The remaining classes are all to be explained by exposure (musicians includes street musicians) and early morning work. I have frequently observed the effect of the latter. In England the men of the working classes are essentially beer drinkers, except 132 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION in the very far north. Excluding highly paid me- chanics, who ape the customs of the gentry, they never order spirits at the public-house, and do not take it when it is offered them, if they can have beer instead. But there are exceptions. Sailors, market porters, cabmen and 'bus- drivers are more or less spirit drinkers. The reason is obvious. These men are either greatly exposed to the weather, or they do night work, or they get up very early in the morning. The men employed at Smithfield are particularly hard drinkers as a class. Their work is excessively early and very trying, and there is something in the handling of a great deal of raw meat which causes depression, and engenders a desire for spirits. St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which is immediately opposite the market, knows these men well. They are constantly coming to the surgery with cuts and other injuries, caused by accident or fighting, and they make very * bad subjects.' The men of Billingsgate and Covent Garden, whose work begins at an extremely early hour, are also spirit drinkers. Among professional men doctors are most frequently given to intemperance. The cause is the same — night-work and exposure. They seek relief from the cardiac depression caused by interrupted sleep, irregular meals, fatigue, cold and wet; they find it most readily in stimulants, and with some the practice leads gradually to habitual excess. The most intemperate female occupations are cooking and laundry work ; heat and exhaustion cause a * sinking. * To continue the death-rates, occupied males stand THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 133 at thirteen, but in industrial districts the figure is nineteen, in agricultural ones only seven. Clergy- men come at the bottom of the list with two, a clear proof of the influence of moral self-control. They are only equalled by engine-drivers and stokers, who are compelled to be abstemious by the conditions of their employment. Fishermen are next with three. Self-preservation enforces sobriety at sea, and they are but little ashore. Then we have farm labourers and gardeners, who are undoubtedly a very sober class; there seems to be something about work on the soil which has a non-alcoholic tendency. The figure for farmers is six, which is also very low. Railwaymen other than those on locomotives stand at five, which again is explained by the work. Strict supervision and regularity are absolutely necessary for railway work. Of professional men the lowest, next to clergymen, are schoolmasters, with eight. Barristers and solicitors rise to twelve, which is nearly the average of occupied males. Doctors are above that average. The figure for unoccupied males is twenty-three, which is nearly double that of the occupied. Idleness is a powerful ally of intemperance. After this we come to the more drunken classes, which have already been dealt with. The foregoing observations on climate and occu- pation must be taken in a broad sense, and with due regard to other qualifying conditions. But these factors should always be borne in mind when argu- ments are drawn from one country or one section 134 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION of the population and applied to others differently situated, with different habits and different needs. I pass on to another class of conditions in- fluencing intemperance. It is often said that the working classes are driven to drink by their con- ditions of life and the absence of other pleasures. These are factors, no doubt, but not, in my opinion, of the first importance. They do not make people intemperate in non-drinking countries, and the most improved conditions do not keep them sober in drink- ing ones. The most squalid and miserable homes are the effect, not the cause, of drink, though of course the effect reacts upon the cause in a vicious circle. Why do men frequent the public-house ? The answer, given me by a working man in a public-house, cannot be improved. ' They come,' he said, * for the pipe, the company, and the glass of beer.' It is true, but the sting is in the tail. They like the combination, but the essential item is the glass of beer. They can and do get the pipe and the com- pany elsewhere, and more comfortably than in the public-house, which is the most uncomfortable place it is possible to enter. The sole advantage it enjoys is the glass of beer; but that is sufficient. Without it the other things do not satisfy. There- fore the public-house and the club flourish, but the coffee tavern languishes. Furthermore the pipe and the company are available in the public-house without the glass of beer, if that is your pleasure. You may order a glass of ginger beer oj just nothing at all. Experto crede. I speak of the urban public- THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 135 house frequented by working men; the village inn, where the company is sparser, known to the land- lord and personally looked after by him, has a somewhat different code. Lastly, the supreme claim of the glass of beer is shown by the fact that many customers come for that and nothing more. When they have had it they leave, to go elsewhere, or hang about outside, talking and smoking, until the time comes for another glass. The provision of other places of resort devoid of this attraction will not ruin the public-house. The effective rival is the club, where the indispensable glass can also be obtained. How indispensable it is may be made clear by observing the habits of working men in regard to their amusements. Means of recreation have multiplied very rapidly of late years ; there are theatres, music-halls, football matches, and so on in every town, and they are frequented to an astonishing extent. But an integral part of the entertainment is a periodical adjournment to the bar or the nearest public-house. Therefore I say that the absence of such amusements is not one of the most important ' forces of intemperance.' Nevertheless, improved conditions of life, recreations, reading- rooms, public libraries, and all institutions of this kind do help towards sobriety, as I have said in the last chapter. I should be sorry indeed to decry them, and only want to put them in their true perspective. They act in two ways: first, educa- tionally, by helping to form a higher standard of conduct; and secondly, by abstracting a certain 136 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION amount of time from the public-house. A good deal of intemperance occurs merely by accumulation, and anything which tends to diminish the time actually devoted to glasses of beer tends in some degree to lessen their number. Hospitality and conviviality used to be much greater allies of intemperance than they are now. The proverbial * flowing bowl * was the sign and seal of good-fellowship. People met together and the bottle went round as a matter of course. Drinking healths was invented to serve as an excuse for more liquor. The practice originated with the hard- drinking barbarians of the north. In polite society it has become a mere formality and an exceedingly dreary one, because it is associated with speeches; but some relics remain to indicate what it used to be. At some colleges in the old universities the head, or whoever presides at the high table, still takes a glass of wine with guests, and probably the custom lingers elsewhere. Once it was the duty of every host to take frequent glasses with his guests. In Sweden it is still the custom at a dinner party for every person to drink at least one glass with every other and exchange a shall ! In Hungary one simi- larly drinks Jo egeszsegere! or Eljen a Jiaza! and clinks glasses with great vigour. Festivals are con- vivial occasions, and, as I have remarked in a previous chapter, they have always been associated with drunkenness. Christmas and New Yearns Day are still the most drunken moments of the year in England and Scotland respectively. The close con- THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 137 nection between conviviality and intemperance is seen to perfection in Scotland on New Yearns Day or after the annual * Games * in the Highlands. Every man carries a whisky bottle and offers it to every one else, so that each drinks out of all the other bottles. Drink, again, is the essential feature of the Irish wake and the English East-end funeral, which are both great domestic festivals. Then there is the wedding ^ breakfast,' another vanishing relic of the past. Christenings also used to be celebrated by the consumption of much liquor, but the vogue seems to have died out. The modern tendency to moderation is seen in nothing more plainly than in the curtailment of convivial drinking, which is no longer carried to intoxication among the upper classes. Where in- temperance exists it is more often a solitary and secret vice. People still expect a glass of wine at dinner, and that is indeed a sorry feast from which it is banished; but they know when to stop. This undeniable fact contains the answer of self-respecting mankind to the teetotal doctrine. Good-fellowship is a great thing — a greater thing than sobriety — and it is markedly promoted by the moderate use of alcohol when men gather together for social inter- course and enjoyment, as at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee. In that example, which no con- troversialist has yet been able to explain away, the most conscientious may find a sanction for using this gift of God. The attempt to banish it from the social table is an implied insult. Professor 138 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Blackie once put the case in characteristic fashion. He took the chair, by request, at a temperance meeting, and caused no little consternation by roundly declaring that a man who asked him to dinner and did not give him a good glass of wine was, in his opinion, * neither a gentleman nor a Christian. ' The custom of using without abusing is gradually filtering down the social strata, and with it convi- viality is ceasing to be a force of intemperance; but it is still responsible for a rather serious form of abuse. I mean the habit of making a chance meeting of acquaintances or the conclusion of some mutual business the occasion for exchanging drinks, which neither party wants, as a mere con- ventional sign of friendship or good will. It is mainly responsible for the practice of drinkiUg between meals, which is apt to lead to chronic in- temperance, and is really much more injurious than an occasional orgy on high days and holidays. We pass on to the question of facilities and temptation, which is the great battlefield of temperance controversy. To some facilities are everything, to others nothing. The truth, as usual, lies in the middle. In drunken countries the un- limited multiplication of opportunities has always led to a disastrous state of things. Instances have been given from past experience in this country. In the eighteenth century, when drink was cheap, houses excessively numerous and always open, the THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 139 result was — Gin Alley. Sweden and Norway were in the same state before the passing of restrictive legislation. To use Dr. Sigfrid Wieselgren's some- what rhetorical language — * the very marrow of the nation was sapped; moral and physical degradation, insanity, poverty and crime, family ties broken up, brutal habits — all those grim legions that ever range themselves under the banner of intemperance — took possession of the land. It was bleeding at every pore, yet seemed unwilling to be healed.' The late Mr. Willerding, of Gothenburg, described to me in less high-flown, but much more convincing terms, the precise physical aspect of the people at the time when the sale of branvin was practically un- limited, and I recognised in his account an accurate description of persons sodden in spirits — swollen in body, with pallid, blotched, and bloated faces, trembling hands and feeble gait. With the diminished consumption of branvin under the new laws they had gradually disappeared. The effects of free licensing under the Duke of Wellington's Beer-house Act and of the all-night opening, in the days before hours of closing were fixed, have been already men- tioned. Then we have the experience of Liverpool, which tried free licensing during the four years 1862-65. Licenses were granted to all persons applying for them, provided they were of good character and had suitable premises. The number of fully licensed houses increased during the period by 370, or 23 per cent. The number of persons 140 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION proceeded against for drunkenness also increased thus: Persons proceeded Year against 1858 9,829 1859 11,037 1860 10,963 1861 9,832 Persons proceeded Year against 1862 12,076 1863 13,914 1864 14,002 1865 13,922 In 1866 the authorities abandoned the experi- ment. It is said that it did not have a fair trial, and perhaps it did not; but so far as it went the result was bad. The police, who are responsible for public order, are unanimous on the effect of exces- sive facilities. The numerous Blue-books in which their official evidence is recorded are strewn with the opinions of the most experienced men, who agree that when the number of public-houses is too great to permit of effective supervision disorder ensues. The question, indeed, does not admit of argument. Eestriction and regulation were originally intro- duced in this country and elsewhere because of the rampant disorder connected with unlimited facilities, and the benefit of successive restrictions has been attested over and over again. The wholly dispro- portionate death-rates among inn-keepers and inn- servants point to the same conclusion. It is, however, a very serious mistake to infer that intemperance is directly proportionate to the number of public-houses, and that the fewer there are of the latter the less there will be of the former. This opinion is held by a great many temperance workers, to whom it seems self-evident; but it is quite falla- THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 141 cious. If they studied the habits of the people more at first hand, they would find out the mistake. It arises from attaching too much importance to the influence of temptation. Drunkards constantly put forward the plea of temptation as an excuse, and a moving picture has hence been drawn of some poor fellow battling against his weakness and resolutely passing five public-houses only to break down at the sixth. I am afraid the battling of this person and his painful surrender to the last assault of the devil are quite imaginary. He may pass five houses and go into the sixth, but it is because he knows there is a sixth. If there were only one he would go into that. The geographical distribution of licenses and police drunkenness shows that there is no propor- tional relation between them. The Report of the Peel Commission gives some facts on this head. Fifteen counties are taken and divided into two groups, A and B, the former containing the largest number of licenses in proportion to the population and the latter the smallest number. The counties are — (A) Buckingham, Bedford, Cambridge, Isle of Ely, Hertford, Huntingdon, Shropshire, and Stafford- shire; (B) Cheshire, Cornwall, Devonshire, Dur- ham, Northumberland, Lancashire, Glamorgan. The distribution of licenses and drunkenness is as follows : Per 100,000 J Average licenses 609 j Average drunkenness 492 J Average licenses 362 j Average drunkenness 892 142 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION It is suggested that the remarkable discrepancy here shown may be explained away by differences of police procedure. I have already (p. 58) dealt with that extremely convenient way of disposing of awk- ward facts, and have given reasons for attaching much more value to the police returns, as a real index of the prevalence of drunkenness, than is allowed by the somewhat disingenuous argument alluded to. In any case it does not dispose of this question, for we have the evidence of the Chief Constable of Lan- cashire, who found that the same discrepancy exists in his own district, which is all under the same police procedure. ' I took the trouble to go into the details in Lancashire on that point and I found out that where the most houses are there is less drunken- ness ' (vol. i, p. 394). An examination of the re- turns for Scottish towns shows a similar state of things (vol. vi, p. 398) . So, too in France. The prov- ince of Finisterre has always had fewer houses and more drunkenness than the rest of France (Leroy). The broad meaning of all this is, no doubt, that other factors are more important in determining the habits of the people than temptation in the form of public-houses. Personal observation corroborates that conclusion. If a man does not want to drink, fifty public-houses do not tempt him; if he does, one is enough. Some reformers take this view and draw the conclusion that the complete abolition of temptation by the suppression of all public-houses will alone meet the case. Perhaps it would if temp- tation were an important factor, but I cannot insist THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 143 too often and too strongly that it is not. People do not drink because the publican spreads his wares before them, but because they like drink and mean to get it. All experience proves that in drinking coun- tries deficiency of regular opportunities is a still greater force of intemperance than excess, because it drives people to make for themselves irregular oppor- tunities, which are not subject to supervision and control. This point is reached far short of suppres- sion, as we see at the present time in the multipli- cation of drinking clubs. There is abundant evidence on the subject in the minutes of the Peel Commis- sion; but I may quote a more recent investigation. In his book on ' Poverty ' Mr. B. Seebohm Rown- tree tells us that in the city of York there is one * on '-license to every 330 persons, which is consider- ably above the average proportion in the large and medium-sized towns, and therefore * excessive.* Nevertheless the working-class population supports five political clubs, where drink is sold, and nine others which ' exist primarily for the purpose of pro- viding drinking facilities.' Two of the latter are in a very poor part of the city and are largely frequented by Irish labourers. * The police state that beer is taken into the clubs in quantities of several barrels at a time, and that much drunkenness occurs in them. Drunken men have been seen through the windows of one of these clubs lying on the wooden forms, but the members are careful not to allow any one to leave the club until he is sober enough to escape the risk of a summons for being drunk in the streets. Often members will 144 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION remain in the club through the night and even from Saturday until Monday. * ^ The balance-sheet of one of the other clubs showed an expenditure of 1,6121. on intoxicating drink in the year. The number of men entering the club during the hours it was open on Sunday, August 12, 1900, was counted. There were 601, of whom 248 brought out drink in jugs and bottles. This little glimpse into what happens under the present comparatively mild restrictions, and in a place provided with * excessive ' facilities, is pro- foundly instructive. The multiplication of clubs is probably due to the fact that in the newer parts of the town, where the industrial classes chiefly reside, very few licenses have been granted. The people have evaded an irksome social law, as they always do and always will, and have created their own facilities, which are much more harmful than those which the law has refused them. Nor is it possible ever to prevent natural appetites from having their way. If clubs are regulated in such a manner that regulation is too irksome, evasion will merely take some other and probably still more objectionable form. In the last resort people would supply them- selves with drink, for alcohol can be manufactured from anything containing sugar or starch. The general conclusion on this branch of the subject is that both numerical excess and deficiency of opportunities promote intemperance in drinking * Poverty, by B. Seebohm Rowntree: supplementary chapter, p. 327. THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 145 countries, the one by rendering supervision inefficient, the other by fostering clandestine traffic, which es- capes supervision altogether. As to what constitutes excess the police are the proper judges. They have to supervise the traffic in the interests of public order, and they know when the task is beyond them. I should be guided by the chief constable of a town or district. If he found that the number of licensed houses was too great for effective supervision, I should reduce them. On the other hand numerical deficiency is disclosed by the appearance and multi- plication of drinking clubs or by still more clandes- tine methods of evasion. So much for numerical opportunities. The same principles apply broadly to time opportunities, but the grounds are somewhat different. I attach the utmost importance to hours of closing, and am con- vinced that no controllable factor has so great an influence on intemperance. That conclusion is the result of observation, corroborated by abundant his- torical evidence. Unlimited hours used to have a disastrous effect in this country, and successive re- strictions have been uniformly successful, with the exception of total closing on Sunday, which has given rise to considerable, though perhaps temporary, trouble in large towns. The complete control of hours is the most practical and solid advantage per- taining to the Gothenburg system. I know a public- house in London, much frequented by a disorderly class of customers, which is voluntarily closed early in the afternoon on bank holidays, because the 146 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION publican finds it impossible to maintain order if the house remains open all day. The reason why long and late hours conduce to intemperance is that some customers go on drinking after they have had enough, merely to pass the time. The last hour before closing is the drunkard's hour. Much stress is often laid on certain other features of the public-house as the cause or occasion of ex- cessive drinking. The gas-lights in the window, swing doors, opaque glass, the arrangement of the premises — such as several entrances, the division into compartments, ' long bars ' and ' snugs ' — are all credited with an important influence. Numerous witnesses gave evidence to that effect before the Peel Commission. Such opinions are based on a limited experience. People see a great deal of drink- ing carried on in the town or district where they live, and naturally enough attribute it to the conditions there prevailing. If their observations were more extended they would find that the habits of the people are just the same under entirely different conditions. I have made a study of these things for several years in all parts of this country and in other countries, and I cannot find that the form of the premises makes any difference whatever, with the exception of back doors opening into yards and other similar arrangements, which make supervision difficult and facilitate evasion of the law with regard to prohibited hours and serving drunken persons. People do not frequent the public-house for the sake of the lights in the window, or because the doors swing THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 147 and there are several of them, but to get something to drink; and they seek it just as readily in those establishments which have an inconspicuous exterior, no lights in the window, only one door and that not a swinging one, as in the * flaring gin-palace/ The Company houses under the Gothenburg system are carefully denuded of all adventitious attractions, but they are nevertheless far more thronged with cus- tomers in the busy hours than the rival free beer- houses, simply because the men want spirits, which they can only get at the Company's houses, and they will go anywhere to get what they want. Surely the history of the bona fide traveller is a sufficient proof of that. The decoration of public-houses is not a new thing, as I have shown. It merely keeps pace with the general movement towards greater size, elabora- tion, and display in shops, offices, and other buildings. It is chiefly confined to the main thoroughfares of places much frequented by visitors and chance cus- tomers, and consequently it makes a show out of all proportion to its importance. The great bulk of the liquor trade depends not on chance but on regular customers, who know where to go and care nothing for exteriors. This is especially true of hard drinkers. In the most drunken parts of the country — Scotland, Ireland, and the North of England — public-houses are nearly always plain and inconspicuous; and those which conduce most to intemperance elsewhere are of the same character. As for the interior it is absolutely immaterial whether there are * long bars ' or ' snugs ' — which are the exact opposites of 148 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION each other — compartments or bar parlours, ' perpen- dicular ' drinking or seats. Then there is the question of providing food and non-intoxicants, which is also considered of great importance. It may be disposed of very briefly. Publicans provide what their customers ask for. When and where food and non-intoxicants are demanded they are supplied. I have obtained tea and food at pothouses where they have never been asked for before. After all, the publican's object is to make money, not to sell beer, and if he can make it by selling anything else he will. The demand for other things has markedly increased in recent years, and the supply is keeping pace. Obviously it is no use suppljdng things that no one wants. The belief that the working man would find his way to the coffee tavern if his eyes were not dazzled by the lights of the ' gin palace, ' and that when allured into that abode of misery he would fain have a cup of tea or a bottle of lemonade if the publican did not force beer down his reluctant throat, is an amiable delusion arising out of the temptation fallacy and based on total ignorance of the working man's habits and tastes and of the conduct of the retail liquor trade. The working man knows exactly what he wants, and he goes to a certain place to get it. I have just mentioned the bona fide traveller. He was invented on the temptation theory. It was believed that persons would not travel six miles — three out and three back — merely to get a drink. We know now that numbers habitually walk that distance for no THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 149 other purpose; and if it were doubled they would still go. Until reformers and legislators make some attempt to rid their minds of cant, and realise the deep devotion of our people to beer, they will continue to prepare disappointment for themselves and vain trouble for the police. Opportunity in the form of purchasing power has an important influence on the volume of intemper- ance. I have mentioned the effect of trade so often that I must apologise for returning to it once more, but my list of forces would be very incomplete without it. The typical period of prosperity was 1868-74. Exports of British produce rose in value from 180 to 256 millions sterling. The chart on the next page shows graphically the effect on consumption and police drunkenness. The diagram must be read broadly. The drunkenness curve is not proportionally comparable to those of consumption, because it gives the absolute number of persons without reference to increase of population, whereas the consumption is reckoned per head. Moreover a disturbing factor was introduced in 1872 by the Licensing Act, which created new offences and so caused a sudden increase in the returns. Broadly, however, it shows well enough the influence of great prosperity as a force of intemperance. Any nujnber of diagrams might be given to illustrate the same thing. Declining trade is faithfully reflected by downward curves. For instance the years 1885-7 were years of great depression. In the winter, it may be remembered, 150 DRINT?:, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1673 1874 GALLONS 34 33 /^ ^ 32 / ^ — 31 CONSUMPTIO SI OF / 30 BEER PER H r/ f 29 y / s V 28 y / GALLONS 1.2 CONS SPIRI UMPTIC T PER >N OF 4EAD ^^ -^ 1.0 .99 98 .97 .96 95 ^ ' rertoni procedBd against for drunkennew 180.000 r^ ^ 170.000 r 160.000 / 1 150.000 DRU NKENh ESS / 140.000 y y 130.000 / y 120.000 / f 110.000 y / THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 151 the unemployed used to parade the streets. The consumption of beer, which had been 34 gallons a head in 1874, fell to 26.9 gallons, and that of spirits from 1.26 gallon to .93 gallon; at the same time police drunkenness dropped from 812 to 636 per 100,000. These facts corroborate the view that the expenditure on drink is, broadly speaking, voluntary and deliberate. When people can afford it they gratify their tastes in this way; when they cannot they go without. The converse aspect of this law is the depend- ence of consumption on the price of liquor, which is very clearly shown by the effect of the various changes in the spirit duty. In 1825 the duty in England was lowered from lis. S^d, to 75. and the consumption rose from 7 million to nearly 13 million gallons. In 1830 the duty was raised Qd. throughout the United Kingdom and consumption fell a million gallons. In 1854 the duty was again raised l5. 4:d. in Scotland and 8d. in Ireland; con- sumption dropped 4 J million gallons, but this was partly due to new closing regulations. In 1860 a rise of 25. all round caused consumption to fall by 3 million gallons. At the same time the lowering of the duty on wine increased the consumption from 6} million to lOf million gallons. These cases will suffice to show the bearing of direct fiscal changes on the drink question. It is a point that is fre- quently lost sight of in reckoning the consumption of alcohol and the conditions that influence it. No doubt drink would not stand an unlimited amount 152 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION of taxation, and too heavy an impost would merely force illicit traffic; but short of that it is possible indirectly to exercise considerable control over con- sumption. The acquisition of drinking habits by children is a force of intemperance which has attracted much attention. Legislative attempts have been made to check it by prohibiting the sale of drink to persons under a certain age; and these measures are benefi- cial with the exception of the latest enactment, which prohibits children under fourteen from acting as messengers. The sequel of this law is an instructive comment on legislation without knowledge. Its promoters were severely disappointed by the action of the House of Commons in preserving the right to sell liquor to child messengers in sealed bottles. This was regarded as a concession to the trade emas- culating the measure and depriving it of all value. What has happened? The trade itself has negatived the concession and decided not to supply children under fourteen at all. The reason is obvious. It will save the publican trouble and draw more profitable customers to the house. Of all persons who visit it child messengers get the least harm, and the younger they are the less harm they get. The place has no attraction for them; they only go because they are sent, and they leave it as quickly as possible. To older persons it is attractive and they linger there. The assumption that children learn to drink from being sent to the public-house is supported by no evidence, and from my own observation I believe it THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 153 to be quite erroneous. The real evil, which is very great and peculiar to this country, lies in the practice of taking children to the public-house, keeping them there, and giving them drink. It ' arises from that mistaken kindness, so characteristic of uneducated parents, which prompts them to share with their children whatever they have themselves. Thus the young ones are taught to drink at an age when if left alone they would not touch liquor. Naturally children do not like beer and detest spirits; what they really love is sweets, which do not go with liquor. Some publicans have been in the habit of giving sweets to child messengers, and the practice has been solemnly held up to reprobation, apparently in the belief that children, attracted by the bait, go off to fetch beer on their own responsibility. Of course they do nothing of the kind, and the effect of sweets was merely to determine the choice between the Red Lion and the Blue Boar; but inci- dentally they formed a perfect safeguard against sipping from the jug on the way home, for no child with sweets in its mouth would have a thought left for beer. It would have served temperance better to have let things alone. Now adults or older boys and girls at the most dangerous age will go to the public- house instead of children, and will often stop there, or else a new traffic will be created by the systematic delivery of liquor at home. And meantime the real source of juvenile intemperance is left untouched. Fortunately it is being cured by education. The practice of taking children to the public-house and 154 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION giving them drink is much less common than it was. I have now reviewed the main conditions that make for intemperance, but behind them is that intangible force called public opinion and discussed in the last chapter. As there is a public opinion which makes for temperance, so there is one which makes for intemperance. Indulgence to excess flourishes where it is regarded with indulgence, as it is in this country. That may seem a hard saying to some readers, but I think if they will re- flect they will admit its truth. The law reproves drunkenness in a mild way, but a certain kind of public sentiment rather encourages it. The drunkard is never made to feel that he has committed a serious offence. In fact his offence is not considered serious. He is pitied a great deal and punished very little. Everybody, except the publican who chucks him mercilessly into the street, is in a conspiracy to pro- tect him from the consequences of his own conduct. A man lies drunk where he runs a risk of being run over, or he is lurching about and likely to fall into water or into some dangerous spot. Everybody lends him a helping hand out of danger and even assists him to get home. He is an object of sym- pathy mingled with some contempt; but the con- tempt does not hurt him, while the sympathy is prac- tical. It is practical encouragement. He lives to get drunk another day, and with a well-founded con- viction that when next * overcome ' some friendly hand will take care that he comes to no hurt. If he THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 155 commits a crime or misdemeanour, drunkenness is confidently pleaded as an excuse. It is frequently accepted in mitigation by the Bench, and rarely fails to touch the sympathy of the public. The * poor fellow * did not know what he was doing; he meant no harm; he bears an excellent character when sober, and so on. As the subject of jokes drunken- ness is the chief stock-in-trade of many humorists; some comic papers live on it. They hold it up to ridicule, but always with an indulgent smile. The more hypocritical criminals habitually allege that they * fell through drink ' in order to commend themselves to the philanthropic, who accept this miserable and generally false excuse and burn with zeal against the iniquitous liquor traffic. Not long ago a wretched youth who finished a career of habitual self-indul- gence by murdering an old woman for money wrote a farewell letter to his family, embodying with sin- gular naivete the current doctrine of irresponsibility. * It looks to me as I am born unlucky, for I have never been able to get on. I have had good chances in my life, but that cursed drink has been my down- fall, and I hope the other boys will not make it a practice to spend their time in the public-house, but do as you bid them to.' It is not his fault, observe; he is not to blame. He was * born unlucky ' yet had * good chances. ' He did not throw them away : it was the * cursed drink ' that was his * downfall.' In the mind of this youth we see the working of the theory of temptation. The ' cursed drink ' is his excuse. That stereotyped 156 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION phrase relieves Mm of all responsibility for a life admittedly spent in self-indulgence and crime. When brought to the gallows he is sorry, but clears himself by denouncing the inanimate instrument of his vice. As well may the glutton denounce food, the extravagant woman blame silk and velvet, or the spendthrift attribute his ruin to the trades which have supplied him with costly luxuries. The plea is not made in their case, and if made would be ridiculed. The drunkard has learned to make it from the con- fused teachings of those ' temperance ' reformers who do not see that to minimise the moral responsibility of the vicious is to encourage vice. Let me quote a healthier sentiment from those who know the drunkard as he is. * At a meeting of the Medico-Psychological Asso- ciation of Great Britain in Edinburgh, Dr. Wilson, superintendent of the Mavisbank Asylum, Midlothian, read a paper on ** The Mismanagement of Drunk- ards.'' He said he would like to see a clause in the Habitual Drunkards Bill, then before Parliament, which would provide for the flogging of drunkards, under appropriate and necessary supervision. The notion of heredity did nothing to help the drunkard, but everything to injure him. The latter felt he was compelled to give way to drink. A young man so influenced should be flogged within an inch of his life, every time he took drink. Another excuse used with great effect by the drunkard was the myth of a crave for alcohol. The crave was a very excep- tional thing. The appropriate treatment for the alcoholic crave was a good blistering and the ap- plication of plasters, and he would guarantee that there would be no craving in Scotland for the next THE FORCES OF INTEMPERANCE 157 five years. Drunkards were inveterate idlers, who had to be taught to work ; they were untruthful, slan- derers, and intensely selfish. * Dr. Clouston, superintendent of the Morningside Asylum, Edinburgh, said they had too long been sub- jected to mawkish sentimentalism. Every man who became a disgraceful inebriate had passed through a stage at which he might have been saved by the appli- cation of such treatment as Dr. Wilson advocated. * I have some more observations to make on the drunkard in the chapters on * The Public-house ' and * Habitual Inebriates, * and will here merely commend the views of these able and experienced observers to the reader as a set-off against the doctrines of tempta- tion and craving which have been preached so long to the encouragement of the self-indulgent. We have the drunkards we deserve. 158 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION CHAPTER VII THE PRINCIPLES OP LIQUOR LEGISLATION We are now in a position to focus the facts and considerations contained in the previous chapters into some lessons bearing on the practical question of legislation. We have seen that intemperance has always prevailed in this country; that it has been much worse in the past than it is now; that various forces, of which legislation is one, have gone towards improvement; and that various others remain which oppose it. What, then, can be done to further the process of improvement already in progress? What part should legislation play in it ? There are two extreme schools of thought, whose views may be noticed to clear the ground before answering these questions. The one maintains that legislation has no right to interfere with personal liberty at all in this matter, and that all liquor laws are merely mischievous; the other that our existing laws have all failed completely because they do not interfere enough, that the evil is getting rapidly worse, and that far more drastic remedies must be applied. Having failed to prevent excessive drinking, they propose to prevent drinking altogether. THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 159 The argument of individual liberty would be valid, if it were not for the drunkard. I have the most absolute right to interfere with him, because he interferes with me. It is the same right that entitles the community to interfere with the criminal. Both are nuisances, and for my own part I prefer the criminal. I can protect myself against him in various ways, but from the drunkard there is no escape. He lurches up against me in the street, he wants to embrace or fight me in the train, he terrifies my wife and children, while I am taxed to pay for his. His conduct gives the community a right to make any laws which are likely to repress him without unduly interfering with the liberty of other and un- offending individuals. Such regulation of the liquor traffic as falls within this definition is both lawful and expedient. The answer to the other school is that the drastic legislation they advocate does not fall within the definition, and that their premises are erroneous. Other measures have not wholly failed, and the evil is not getting worse. But failure to carry out comparatively mild laws is a curious argument for enacting severe ones; for in a free country laws are carried out just in so far as they accord with public sentiment. When mild ones are evaded or slackly administered, what chance is there for severe ones which would infringe the rights of unoffending in- dividuals ? Turning from this counsel of despair, reformers, I think, may find both encouragement and enlighten- 160 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION ment in the lessons of the past. Some measures have failed, but others have succeeded, in part at least. It is possible to succeed again; but how? Obviously when fresh legislation is contemplated in such a thorny and intricate business as this, some guide is wanted to steer a way through the pitfalls on every side. Some test is needed to distinguish between the courses offered to the Legislature in order to avoid futile and mischievous steps and to ensure real advance. In other words, it is necessary to lay down some principles. It is a surprising thing that hitherto no attempt has been made to formulate any such principles. No question, except finance, has so long, so generally, and so persistently engaged the attention of legis- latures; none has been the subject of more experiments; none has been more discussed and investigated. One would have expected some generalisations to have been made about it ere this; but the very latest official investigation, devised upon the largest scale and entrusted with an inquiry of the broadest scope, spent some three years on it without even betraying the slightest consciousness that there might be any such thing as a principle in- volved. It is not for lack of material. We have in this country an experience of several centuries, during which the Legislature has repeatedly tackled the liquor question, and hammered and tinkered at it, mainly in one direction. In other countries we have every conceivable experiment in other directions spread out for our edification. Surely some general THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 161 lessons can be drawn from all this mass of material which would raise the question a little out of the chaotic confusion surrounding it and keep it from being so often the sport of theory, assumption, sentiment, passion, prejudice, and self-interest. The Peel Commission gave no help. It merely took up one point after another, without any plan or order, found them all in an unsatisfactory state, and proposed a long and promiscuous list of amendments, based on no principle and sometimes inconsistent. There is nothing to show that these proposals would not repeat past blunders or would produce any more satisfactory results. What we want to know is : How far and why measures have succeeded or failed; what makes the difference between good and bad legislation; what law can do and what it can not. I venture to offer some suggestions towards the elucidation of these questions. What are the essential functions of the law? To preserve order, to maintain justice, and to protect the community. Magistrates are * Justices of the Peace.' It is not the function of the law to make people good. Whenever it tries to do that it fails. The attempt has often been made to deal with various forms of vicious self-indulgence; to abolish ex- travagance, for instance, by sumptuary laws; to suppress idleness, prostitution, gambling, and betting ; and the sole result has been to bring the law into contempt. Moral evils can only be effectually com- bated by moral agencies. The law can properly deal with them in so far as they constitute a public fl 162 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION nuisance and a cause of disorder. It does so, in fact, with a certain amount of success. That is the principle on which gambling and prostitution are dealt with in western communities. The imperfect success attending this modest aim significantly marks the limit of practicable interference with natural appetites. When pushed beyond it the result is failure, and worse than failure, through the dis- inclination and corruption of the executive. Some forms of vice, such as gluttony, avarice, and idleness, cannot be touched at all, because they do not infringe public order and decency. Indirectly, indeed, the law can sometimes encourage or discourage vicious courses, but its direct interference is limited to the point at which public * tranquillity,* as the French code has it, is threatened. In other words the com- munity can only interfere with the individual when the individual's conduct interferes unpleasantly with the community. The reason is plain. The com- munity itself is on the side of the inoffensive individual, through fellow-feeling, and in self-protec- tion it frustrates the administration of laws which are out of sympathy with its sense of justice and freedom. It is sometimes argued that the objection of failure or inefficiency may be equally urged against criminal law, which often fails in practice. The argument betrays confusion of mind. Criminal law is directed against the criminal for the protection of the community, and against no one else; its enact- ment cannot increase crime, and its administrative THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 163 failure entails no ill consequences, except a corre- sponding degree of impunity for the criminal. Sumptuary law is directed against the community in general; when it is defied the law is brought into general contempt; when it is evaded by resort to clandestine methods, it defeats its own object by perpetuating the evil in a worse form. Total pro- hibition of a trade which exists to satisfy a natural appetite of the community, because some are tempted to vicious excess, is not analogous to criminal law, but to one which would prohibit shop- keeping because some are thereby tempted to extravagance or theft. ' To legislate against natural appetites,* says Dr. Vivian Poore in his * Medical Jurisprudence, * ' is absurd. * Now intemperance in drink is a vice standing in the same relation to the law as the other forms of self-indulgence mentioned, and only amenable to the same treatment. It causes more disorder than they do, and is therefore more liable to compulsory inter- ference, but the principle is the same. And if we examine the effects of liquor legislation we find that principle abundantly illustrated. Several measures passed from time to time in this country have been mentioned in previous chapters as having produced markedly beneficial results. There were the Metro- politan Police Act of 1839, the Closing Acts of 1848 and 1854-5 and 1864, the Wine and Beer-house Act of 1869, and the Licensing Acts of 1872 and 1874. I do not mean to imply that there were not others, 164 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION but I mention these because there is no doubt what- ever about the good effect produced. I have already quoted some of the evidence, and need not repeat it. The object of all these successful enactments or of the successful portions of them was the suppression of disorder. They were directed against particular and proved causes and occasions of disorder. Take the 1839 Act. It was intended to stop the intoler- able scandals, described at length above (p. 36), in the streets of London on Sunday, and particularly Sunday morning. The cause of that nuisance was the continuous drinking in public-houses from Saturday night till Sunday, and throughout the day. The Act closed the houses for twelve hours from midnight on Saturday, and the disorder ceased. The people who got drunk on Saturday night had time to get sober before they turned out on Sunday. When I originally published the greater part of the chapter on ' Drink in the Past ' in the form of a separate essay, a gentleman who could remember the state of things described, and had himself sat on the Essex Bench at Stratford for nearly fifty years, wrote to me giving his experience and the reasons for the * decline of the dreadful state of things mentioned in the article.' ' He could remember,* he said, * black Mondays when working men were kept under the influence of the public-house until they had spent all their wages.' * This was cured by the forty-second clause of the Metropolitan Police Act, 1839. The twelve hours that all licensed houses were kept closed till midday THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 165 on Sunday obliged the man to go home, and he be- came sober and hungry and the money left found food for himself and family, and he was able to begin work on Monday morning. In 1848 this clause for Sunday closing became part of a general Act, which began by mentioning the good effect produced by it in the London district/ It may be said that nearly all the closing regula- tions passed from time to time have been based on the same ground — namely, that particular trouble ensued from having public-houses open at the hours in question ; and they have been markedly successful. The only point on which some difference of opinion exists is with regard to total closing on Sunday ; and the exception is significant, for that step goes beyond the needs of public order. It is designed to prevent people from drinking at all on Sunday and is a measure of compulsory virtue. Hence it has pro- duced friction and trouble in large towns, has stimulated illicit traffic and evasion of the law. It is said by believers in compulsory virtue that the police have now got over those difficulties. It may be so, but they have a way of breaking out afresh; and the police have most certainly not got over all of them. At any rate it cannot be denied that they occurred, and the conclusion suggested is that a less drastic restriction, framed to preserve order, not to promote virtue, would have produced all the benefits derived from Sunday closing without any of the drawbacks. Is it a mere coincidence that the average police drunkenness — that is, disorder — is 166 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION greater, as I have already pointed out, in all the three portions of the kingdom where total Sunday closing obtains, than in England where it does not? The Act of 1869 was directed against the multipli- cation and maintenance of disorderly beer-houses, and is an excellent example of the legitimate and success- ful application of the law. The most important provisions of the Acts of 1872 and 1874 were directly aimed at further purify- ing the liquor traffic of its disorderly elements. The drunkard himself and the publican who encouraged him were both more severely dealt with than before ; the powers of the police were enlarged and the hours of sale once more regulated. The Act of 1872 clearly went as far as was safe at the time in dealing with the traffic, for the severity of the penalties for some offences interfered with administration through the reluctance of magistrates to enforce them, and they were consequently mitigated in 1874. The success of these Acts was attested by numerous witnesses before the House of Lords Committee in 1876. Father Nugent, who knew disorderly Liver- pool as few men knew it, said that the Act of 1872 * worked wonders ' there. The chief constable of Manchester declared that the Acts had had ' a wonderful effect in improving the state of the firtreets,* and similar evidence was given of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Salford, Newcastle, Preston, Cardiff, and Bristol. ' This improvement,* says the Committee, * is at- tributed mainly to the new closing regulations, but THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 167 it is also due to the abolition of a large number of the worst class of beer-houses under the Act of 1869, and to the improved character of licensed houses generally. ' The foregoing are examples of successful legisla- tion illustrating my point. I will now turn to some cases of unsuccessful legislation. One of the greatest failures on record was the Gin Act of 1736, to which reference has already been made. The spirit which prompted it is disclosed in the preamble : * Whereas the drinking of spirituous liquors or strong waters is become very common, especially among the people of lower and inferior rank, the constant and excessive use whereof tends greatly to the destruction of their health, rendering them unfit for useful labour and business, debauching their mo- rals, and inciting them to perpetrate all manner of vices, and the ill consequences of such liquors are not confined to the present generation, but extend to future ages and tend to the devastation and ruin of this kingdom.* The Legislature is here clearly contemplating the current intemperance as a moral evil and is under- taking the task of compelling the people to be virtu- ous. It did exactly what any other legislature would do, and what many have done, in the same frame of mind — it endeavoured to suppress the noxious traffic altogether. The result was to make things so much worse that the Act had to be hastily repealed a few years later, just as the various legislative attempts to suppress prostitution enacted in Europe, and inspired 168 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION by equally good motives, always had to be repealed in a few years. It was not until the English Parlia- ment returned to the policy of improving the traffic by purging it of its more disorderly elements that any advance was made against intemperance. Another notorious failure was the Beer-house Act of 1830. It may be called a piece of theoretical legislation. Its object was not to carry out the plain duty of the law, but to make people better by wean- ing them from spirits and withdrawing them from the pernicious influence of the tied-house system. Its result is an emphatic warning against legislating on theory for moral ends. ' Never,' says the Peel Commission, * was an Act passed which more disastrously failed to fulfil the expectations of its authors.' This is somewhat of an overstatement, as the policy was not fully reversed for nearly forty years, whereas other measures in various countries have had to be much more hastily repealed; but the Act was undoubtedly a false step, and the condemna- tion quoted is interesting as coming from those who recommend speculative legislation on the same principles though in different directions. The Act of 1860 which gave rise to * grocers' licenses ' was on the same lines and has been equally condemned. It was intended to wean people from the public-house by encouraging home consumption. It did encourage home consumption, but did not wean people from the public-house, just as the 1830 Act encouraged beer-drinking without diminishing the popularity of spirits. Opinions may differ as to THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 169 the harm done by grocers* licenses, but there is no point on which temperance reformers insist more strongly, and I am not aware that any one claims success for the Act in diminishing drunkenness or drinking. It is no part of my purpose to go through all the enactments that have been placed on the Statute- book in this country; I merely wish to put before the reader sufficient examples to make my meaning clear. They may be supplemented by a few refer- ences to foreign legislation. One of the most instructive examples is the Gothenburg system, which has succeeded or failed precisely in accordance with the view taken of its intention. Its opponents point out the undeniable fact that it has not made the people sober, and say that it has failed; its more enthusiastic advocates here maintain that it would make them sober if the system embraced the control of beer as well as that of spirits. Now in Gothenburg I was taught to regard both these arguments as wide of the mark. Mr. Willerding, who had assisted in the movement from its birth and who certainly understood the principle and the objects with which it was adopted better than any man in the place, insisted with the greatest earnestness that it was not understood in England. He had shortly before gone all the way to London for the purpose of explaining it at a public meeting, but the object of the meeting was apparently advertisement rather than instruction, and the one man present who understood the subject had to 170 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION make way for prominent persons who did not. The point which he repeatedly impressed on my mind was that the system was not inaugurated to make people sober, but to do away with the gross and scandalous abuses connected with the existing spirit traffic, which were the cause of intolerable disorder. In that aim it succeeded very well indeed. The Scandinavian liquor legislation in general teaches the same lesson. It is not a question of one system versus another, of * disinterested manage- ment ' versus local veto, as controversialists will have it, but of the object in view and the limits of compulsion. During the first half of the nineteenth century both Norway and Sweden were drowned in spirits. Anybody could distil and sell the stuff, which was made everywhere. In 1829 there were in Sweden 173,124 stills, and in 1833 the number in Norway was 9,727. There was, in fact, free trade in the manufacture and sale of spirits. It produced the same effects as in England a century before. The cause was obvious, and eventually the legislature had to grapple with it. Norway took the lead in 1845-8 by restricting the sale and manufacture. This is a clear case of sound legislation. Free trade caused gross disorder; the law stopped it without any oppressive interference and consequently with success. In 1850 the distilleries had been reduced to 40. But the usual counsels of impossible perfec- tion were heard and nearly prevailed. ' It nearly happened,' says Mr. Berner, of Christiania, * that a resolution prohibiting the sale of liquors became THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 171 law.* Fortunately the Norwegian Parliament had sufficient sense to avoid this snare. * It was real- ised/ he continues, ' that in view of the then exist- ing customs of the people, such a step would be chimerical.* Accordingly there was restriction but no prohibition. The same capacity to recognise what is possible and what is not was shown in Sweden, when the problem was handled there in 1855. Manufacture and sale were restricted and a very sensible distinction was drawn between town and country. In both a certain power over the sale of spirits — a form of limited local option — ^was granted, but in the rural districts it was more complete. The bar sale of spirits for ' on '-consump- tion could be locally prohibited altogether, but not in the towns. * As long,' says Dr. Sigfrid Wiesel- gren, * as brandy was considered a legitimate article of commerce, the towns, being centres of the trade, could not exclude it; an attempt to do so would have thrown the traffic into unlawful channels, to the great detriment of morality, temperance, and order.' The towns, however, could place the sale of spirits entirely in the hands of a disinterested com- pany. This was done in Gothenburg in 1865. Hence the name of the system, which was before long adopted all over Sweden and Norway. The practical wisdom of the distinction is shown by the fact that in Norway the qualified local veto enjoyed by the country districts was in 1894 extended to the towns, and several availed themselves of the chance; but the change has been accompanied by a marked 172 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION increase in disorder, and each year the vote in its favour has diminished. It is evident that the towns are a safety-valve to the rural districts, and that the limit of effective restriction has already been reached, particularly in Norway, where the recent increase in drunkenness is attributed to the sale of noxious spirituous concoctions under the name of wine. The sale of beer for consumption off the premises is free in both countries. The words ' prohibition ' and * local veto,' therefore, can only be applied to Scan- dinavia in a qualified sense. The favoured home of compulsory virtue is the United States, where local legislatures, untram- meled by experience or authority and secure in their own wisdom, are free to embark on the most despotic experiments in sumptuary law. In some States liberty appears to be preserved only by general permission to ignore the law. The liquor question in particular presents a museum of legis- lative and administrative curiosities, which could not fail to be instructive if reliable information about them were forthcoming. Unfortunately it has everywhere become a matter of party politics, and consequently those most familiar with the facts are often concerned to obscure the truth for ends of their own. Some disinterested investigations, however, have been made, among which an inquiry instituted by a committee of New York gentlemen appears to have been conceived and carried out in the most judicial and penetrating spirit.^ The * Th£ Liquor Problem in its Legislative Aspects (Houghton, MifSin, & CompaDy). THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 173 summary conclusions, which are signed by Mr. Charles W. Eliot, Mr. Seth Low, and Mr. James C. Carter, fully bear out the lessons that have been drawn from European experience. With regard to the promotion of temperance by law those gentle- men note that ' the influences of race or nationality are apparently more important than legislation, ' and recognise that outward improvement secured by legislation does not necessarily imply a real diminu- tion of drinking. In other words, they recognise the limits of the law in promoting moral improve- ment. And they clearly indicate what the aims should be in legislating. * The wise course for the community at large is to strive after all external visible improvement, even if it be impossible to prove that internal, fundamental improvement accompanies it.' That is to say, look after public order and leave morality to moral influences. Further — ' That law is best which is best ad- ministered; ' and the law which is shown to be the worst administered is that which most oversteps its proper sphere and aims direct at compulsory virtue. * All restrictions on the licensed saloons have a tendency to develop illicit selling; but much experi- ence has proved that illicit selling cannot get a large development by the side of licensed selling, if the police administration be at all effective. It is only in regions where prohibition prevails that illicit sell- ing assumes large proportions. * There have been concomitant evils of prohibitory legislation. The efforts to enforce it during forty 174 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION years past have had some unlooked-for effects on public respect for courts, judicial procedure, oaths and law in general, and for officers of the law, legis- lators, and public servants. The public have seen law defied, a whole generation of habitual law- breakers schooled in evasion and shamelessness, courts ineffective through fluctuations of policy, delays, per- juries, negligences, and other miscarriages of justice, officers of the law double-faced and mercenary, legis- lators timid and insincere, candidates for office hypo- critical and truckling, and office-holders unfaithful to pledges and to reasonable public expectation. Through an agitation which has always had a moral end these immoralities have been developed and made conspicuous.' Restriction by local option is more favourably regarded, because it has public opinion more behind it and is less compulsory. American experience appears to corroborate Scandinavian that suppression of bars may be successfully carried out in rural districts and in those not far from towns where liquor can be obtained. Villages and suburban districts in our own country which are without any public-house point to the same conclusion. For towns and industrial centres a lawful but reasonably restricted trade is found most suitable in America as elsewhere. The restrictions recommended, by the New York Committee are those which the * experience of many years and many places has shown to be desirable.* They are, briefly, the prohibition of sale to minors, intoxicated persons, or habitual drunkards ; on Sundays, holidays, and days of public excitement, THE PRINCIPLES OF LIQUOR LEGISLATION 175 but * where such a restriction is openly disregarded, as in St. Louis, it is injurious to have it in the law; ' saloons not to become places of entertain- ment and play or to be connected with theatres, concerts, and sporting exhibitions; saloons to be open to inspection from the highway; a limit to the hours of selling, ' and the shorter the hours the better.' It has also been * found necessary to prevent the display of obscene pictures and the em- ployment of women.* All these restrictions, with one exception, are directly concerned with the maintenance of public order and decency. The exception is the prohibition of sale to minors, which is partly in the interest of public order, for young persons are more quickly intoxicated than adults, and partly to prevent their demoralisation. The last is also a legitimate func- tion of the State, which is properly entrusted with the protection of those who by age or infirmity are unfit to protect themselves. I trust that enough has now been said to show that the a posteriori teachings of experience gathered over a wide area are quite in conformity with the a priori dictates of common sense. And when once the principle is grasped it is easily applied to the exami- nation of legislative reforms. It draws a dividing line between the spheres of legal and moral action and gives each its proper work to do. They are mutually interdependent; moral influences must be backed up, as they advance step by step, by the laWy which in turn draws its effective sanction from 176 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION them. But they are distinct. To confound them is to court failure and disappointment. Many are tempted by the evils they see to seek a shorter cut to the desired goal, and because moral influences are too slow would fain invoke the law to do their work. The short cut only leads to a quagmire. Nor is that the worst of it. I beg those who hold by the moral law and its importance in national life to think this matter over. There is a strong drift in the present day towards the total elimination of individual responsibility for all delinquencies and, by implication, for all merits. It sets in two directions. One is the physical theory, which makes congenital tendencies and environment all-impor- tant; the other is the social theory, which attri- butes all evils to existing laws and systems and promises to abolish the former by changing the latter, without any regard to individuals, as if the said laws and systems had first made themselves and then dictated the conduct of individuals. The confusion between the moral and legal spheres in temperance reform is an example of this muddled thinking. It belittles the moral element in conduct by exaggerating the responsibility of externals, and can only lead to moral deterioration. 177 CHAPTER VIII ^ THEIR APPLICATION The problem of liquor legislation has been obscured and complicated by a multiplicity of phrases and formulas, to which controversy has given an import- ance they do not possess. Conditions which are alleged to give rise to evils are mistaken for those evils, and schemes which are only means to an end have become the end itself to enthusiastic partisans. If these things are set aside, and the real object kept steadily in view, the problem is at once simplified. The law we want is that which will best secure good order and remove the abuses connected with the consumption of an article, the use of which may be voluntarily abandoned, but cannot be forcibly sup- pressed. In pursuance of that aim we can attack in three directions: (1) the disorderly person; (2) the disorderly place; (3) the disorderly time — using the word * disorderly ' in a general sense. There are difficulties in connection with each, but the worst difficulties arise from the state of public sentiment, * Since this chapter was written several of the suggestions made have been embodied in the Government Bill. 178 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION which governs the administration more surely than the enactment of the law, and is totally beyond control. I. THE DISORDERLY PERSON The disorderly person, by whom I mean the person who gets drunk, is already dealt with every- where, but nowhere adequately, nor likely to be. He is too much of a pet, as I have pointed out before. If male drunkards were flogged, and female shut up indefinitely, there would be none left in six months. But of course such treatment is quite impossible. The truth is that the community does not seriously wish to rid itself of this nuisance. Even those who are most assiduous in calling for legislation care more for the suppression of the public-house than for the abolition of drunkenness. Yet, I cannot help thinking that public sentiment would support a little strength- ening of the measures meted out to those very objectionable persons who reduce themselves to help- less imbecility or raving lunacy in public, and in pri- vate inflict all violence, cruelty, and misery on those about them. If it will not, we need expect no im- provement from any * schemes ' or * systems, ' for the drunkard, with public opinion at his back, will easily circumvent them all. I do not think we are in such a hopeless case as that. The recent Act providing for the prolonged incarceration of certain regular drunkards met with general approval, and I suggest that a more summary method of dealing with casual drunkards, even if they have committed no other THEIR APPLICATION 179 offence, would be quite as well received and much more effective. The disposal of diseased inebriates is a very difficult subject, with which I deal more at length in a separate chapter. I will only say here that disappointment awaits those who expect much from homes, unless detention is made perpetual, and that no provision of the kind will touch the mass of male drunkenness in England. The ordinary deliberate able-bodied drunkard, who is in no wise a dipsomaniac, or in need of medical treatment, will remain at large, and will continue to enjoy himself in his own fashion so long as he can find any one to keep him in countenance. But it is well within the power of the law to make him feel that his mode of enjoyment is offensive to other people. Two things might be done. The police might deal more summarily with him when he is merely a nuisance; and when he commits an offence under the influence of drink, his condition might be regarded as an aggravation, and entail a heavier penalty. This seems to me both justice and common sense, for such a man deliberately puts himself in the way of committing a crime by getting drunk. Better protection against drunken husbands or wives should be afforded to their victims, and the law for dealing with drunkenness should be uniform throughout the kingdom. n. THE DISORDERLY PLACE The disorderly place is any establishment — whether pothouse, club, refreshment bar, or shop — 180 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION which connives at drunkenness. The club and the shop at present escape control altogether. With regard to the last, which practically means grocers' licenses, there should be some power of punishing those who misuse their opportunities to encourage intemperate customers. They do not appear to be many, but it is impossible to resist the evidence brought before the Peel Commission that there are some, and that their malpractices can be proved. There should be power to take away their licenses on proof. But if grocers' licenses are placed wholly under magisterial control, some will be granted and some refused for arbitrary reasons; an unfair com- petition will thus be raised between persons engaged in the same harmless and indispensable trade, a new monopoly and a new vested interest will be created. The original grant of a license should therefore be free as at present, but its renewal should be subject to refusal on proved misconduct. The threat would probably be quite sufficient to ensure the good con- duct of a trade which is already, with but few exceptions, perfectly respectable and orderly, and a great convenience to a large class of perfectly respectable people. With regard to clubs, they have become the source of much trouble and disorder, and one which is capable of indefinite expansion. It is worse than useless to treat licensed houses more stringently until unlicensed ones are brought under control, and the history of the public-house shows that control is a farce unless the police have power of entry. THEIR APPLICATION 181 It would be no more oppressive to decent clubs than it is to decent hotels ; the members of the one would see and hear no more of the police inspector than the inmates of the other, and that is just nothing at all. Proprietary clubs would have to be converted into members' clubs, of course, but that presents no serious difficulty. The present sale of liquor in them is totally illegal, and the Inland Revenue Department is only prevented from prosecuting by the difficulty of obtaining evidence. Opposition to control offered by workmen's clubs amounts to self- indictment, for only those with something to conceal have anything to fear. Hostility to the police is always suspect; it ranges those who entertain it with the criminal classes, who alone fear the police. The fact that such opposition has been offered is one of the strongest arguments for the need of control. Then we come to the public-house — a difficult subject, but less complicated than it is made to appear. There are disorderly and ill-conducted houses; the object is to get rid of them. Two com- prehensive plans, which are a departure from our present system, are proposed, and may be considered first. One is local option, and the other disinterested management. In principle I can see no fundamental objection to either. With regard to local option, the case depends on the conditions. If a community really desires to abolish any institution which it finds offensive, it clearly has a natural right to do so, provided that this entails no interference with the prior rights of others, and no hardship on 182 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION unoffending individuals. Thus, if the suppression of public-houses in a place is desired by every one, except drunkards and the publicans who live on them, it is quite justifiable. I do not know if there are any such places, but there may be. If it means, on the other hand, that A and B are to control the tastes and habits of C, who does not interfere with them, it is merely a revival in modem form of the old religious intolerance, which had an equally good motive. This kind of thing might be carried to any lengths. A and B might as well have the right to prohibit butchers* shops, because they are vegetarians and disapprove of meat, or C might conspire with D and E to retaliate. Tyranny is no less tyranny because it is decreed by votes. The belief that local option would in practice generally be tyranny explains the deep and wide antipathy to it felt in a country where liberty is still prized. Intolerant reformers who wish to thrust their views on others feel the objection themselves when it is proposed to use the same sacred machinery to introduce a change of which they happen to dis- approve, though it would not interfere with their personal habits. Thus local option has become local veto ; the people are only to have the chance of prohibiting public-houses. The proposal that they shall have the choice of the Gothenburg system or of more public-houses, to be decided by votes, is vehemently opposed. I am afraid the catchword * Trust the people ' is a piece of pure humbug. THEIR APPLICATION 183 Politicians only want to trust the people when they think the people agree with them. Putting all this aside, however, we have to note that local option has only a very limited application even where it is most successful, and leaves the disorderly traffic, which is in populous centres, un- touched. In America, the home of local prohibition, its successful application is confined to rural districts and residential suburbs. In this country the field would undoubtedly be the same, and in all prob- ability much less extensive. In other words, local veto would hardly touch the disorderly traffic at all. I can only explain the passionate attachment of a section of reformers to this plan by their lack of acquaintance with the feelings and habits of the great mass of our people. Disinterested management — otherwise the Gothen- burg system — is a more hopeful plan. I have a good deal to say about it later on and will pass briefly over it here. The great advantage it has is the combined control over the disorderly house and the disorderly hours. It eliminates both at once, so far as that is possible, without the inter- vention of Acts of Parliament or cumbrous admin- istrative machinery. But to do this it must be completely applied; that is to say, there must be a monopoly of all the houses in a place. The objection that it would bar the way to entire suppression of the traffic has no weight. Suppres- sion is at present below the horizon; when it looms up within sight Parliament will have much less y 184 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION difficulty in dealing with companies on the Gothen- burg plan than with private owners. They might be installed on that distinct understanding. The real obstacle is the dispossession of the present owners. They cannot be dispossessed without compensation, and the speculation is likely to tempt neither municipalities nor trusts. If, however, any town is willing to try, it should have the chance. In any case this plan, though more generally applicable than local veto, would leave a vast amount of the traffic under the present system of control. How, then, are disorderly houses to be suppressed? The law provides ample machinery, and it works fairly well in England and Scotland, though not in Ireland. The gradual elimination of houses and improvement in the conduct of the traffic have been going on for the last thirty years. It is not at all a bad record. The method is slow, but it is much more sure and steady than those exotic schemes which so dazzle the fancy of impatient reformers. It is sure because it is founded on sound principles. The more showy and ambitious methods which some would like to substitute for it are capricious in their action and apt to develop quite unexpected results ; for two or three years they may apparently perform wonders and then take an unforeseen turn which only special pleading can explain away. The uneasy chopping and changing of systems by other legislatures does not suggest any superiority to our own method of a gradually tightening restriction as the standard of public opinion rises. At the same THEIR APPLICATION 185 time I quite agree with those who think the process might be accelerated with advantage. I know personally establishments which are centres of disorder and a common nuisance. They ought to be suppressed or summarily reformed, but they are not; and I do not see any immediate prospect of it, though theoretically the law should suffice. Let us examine its defects in order. There are three factors in our system of dealing with the liquor trade — (1) the police, (2) the ordinary magisterial bench, (3) the licensing bench. All are human, but there is no evidence to support a railing accusation against any of them, except perhaps the licensing bench in Ireland; and I believe their laxity is due more to native kindness of heart than to anything else. Some atrabilious persons love to dwell on little individual instances of police or magisterial misdoing here and there, and to hint that the whole of the police force and the magistracy throughout the country, with the exception of teetotal members, is honeycombed with corruption and virtually in the pay of the liquor trade. No doubt they judge others by themselves, but as this terrible state of things can only be cured by having none but teetotalers in the force or on the bench, we must continue to put up with it for lack of teetotalers. No; we have no reason to be ashamed of the police or the magistrates. They might do their work better, and so might every one else — even those who are so immaculate that they can devote 186 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION the whole of their time to looking after their neighbours' morals. The efficiency of the police is impaired by two standing conditions which are susceptible of reform — one constitutional, the other administrative. The first is the dependence of the force on the local authority. (This does not apply to Ireland.) Chief constables in English boroughs are too liable to be hampered and thwarted by the watch committees under whose control they are. Abundant evidence of this was brought before the Peel Commission. Watch committees are composed of popularly elected persons, and the less the administration of the law has to do with votes the better. Chief constables should be able to do their duty without fear of dismissal by an interested authority, and they should have legal assistance. The second condition is the system of supervising public-houses. It is a very important matter. The efficiency of supervision varies greatly, and I am convinced that in many places it is capable of much improvement. The experience of Liverpool in this respect is highly instructive.^ For several years prior to 1890 super- vision was entrusted to a special public-house staff told off for the purpose. The chief constable found that it did not work satisfactorily, and being aided by a public agitation changed it for a new system, of which the following were the chief features. Each * Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, iii. pp. 2, 10, 552. THEIR APPLICATION 187 superintendent was held responsible for the good conduct of the houses in his own division. Every month he detailed one sergeant and one constable in plain clothes to visit all the licensed houses in his division, report fully on them, and lay informations if necessary. These special officers were changed every month. At the same time the sergeant on each section was held responsible for the houses in his own area, and informed that if any were shown to be irregularly conducted and had not been previously reported the fact would be taken as evidence of his unfitness for the position. The divisional inspectors were also instructed to visit all licensed houses in their divisions, and were held responsible to the superintendent for seeing that the inspection of the sergeants was real and not merely superficial. When a house was reported to the chief constable, it became the duty of the superintendent, after notice had been served on the licensee and the owner, to take measures to have the premises regularly watched by special officers. Here we have a model system, securing thorough supervision and personal responsibility, with double and treble checks. A valuable provision is the special inspection by a sergeant and a constable in company, changed every month. The new system at the same time stimulated and enabled the licens- ing bench to adopt closer inquiry and more stringent action in regard to ill-conducted houses. The effect on public order was most striking, as shown by the 188 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION following table, which gives the six years before and six after the change: Number of persons drunk when apprehended Old System 1884 17,297 1885 15,700 1886 13,159 1887 16,323 1888 15,979 1889 16,617 New System 1890 16,054 1891 11,903 1892 10,088 1893 9,265 1894 6,327 1895 6,223 When it is remembered that the earlier six years were a time of great depression and low consump- tion, and the later six years one of reviving pros- perity and increased consumption, and when it is further stated that the police rather increased than diminished their activity in dealing with drunken- ness, it must be admitted that the improvement in public order and in the conduct of the traffic indi- cated by the table is a convincing proof both of the power of the existing law and of the importance of police administration. I do not know of a parallel case of improvement effected by any foreign system. If the Liverpool plan were generally adopted in large towns it would have a far-reaching effect on the bench, which would be supplied with cogent reasons for firm action. It is interesting to note that the discredited system abandoned in 1890 was originally adopted at the instance of the temperance party, and was long retained in spite of the chief constable for fear of offending them. Among the places which need better supervision THEIR APPLICATION 189 I would draw special attention to the refreshment bars of railway stations, and particularly the large terminus stations in London of lines having much suburban traflSc. In these places visibly and audibly intoxicated persons, who are an unspeakable nuisance to the travelling public, are habitually treated with an amiable blindness to their condition which no East End publican would dare to practise. We pass on to the ordinary magisterial bench. There is little doubt that magistrates are sometimes, perhaps generally, inclined to deal rather tenderly with offences against the liquor laws. They are slow to convict publicans, which discourages the police, and reluctant to endorse convictions on the licenses. This attitude is to some extent a set-off, a tacit protest against the persecuting spirit of extreme temperance reformers. If they were more moderate magistrates would be less tender. But there are real difficulties in proving certain offences, and I do not think they can be altogether overcome. It is quite impossible, as I have repeatedly convinced myself, for a liquor seller, even for one who has the strongest inducements to prevent drunkenness, to recognise that condition in some customers, and injustice would be done by making him responsible under heavy penalties for every case. On the other hand, the heaviest penalty should be imposed without hesitation on those who habitually connive at drunkenness. The houses which the law should aim at are those which are standing centres of disorder, and cumulative evidence of disorder in 190 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION connection with a house should be sufficient proof of misconduct. It may be less the fault of the publican than of his customers — rough gangs will frequent a particular house and become uncontrol- lable. But that is just the kind of house that ought not to exist, and the risk of taking it should be too great for any decent man. For the same reason a bad record should certainly stand against the house" as well as against the publican. Such records should be kept with full details and produced before the licensing authority. Magistrates* clerks should have no connection with the liquor trade and no interest in it. There remains the licensing bench, to which a vast amount of attention has been directed. Much of it appears to me quite irrelevant and to rest on the assumption that it is the business of magistrates to exercise a paternal control over the tastes and habits of their neighbours, and under the guise of interpreting their needs to decide how much they shall drink or whether they shall di'ink at all. My contention is that their business is to keep the peace, as their title implies, and so far as licensing is con- cerned not to give permission for the sale of liquor where it is or is likely to be a cause of disorder. If they would stick to that plain duty and carry it out resolutely, we should derive far more benefit than we are likely to do from the adoption of the paternal principle, which is an attempt to slip a sumptuary character into the law by way of administration. Its effect is to divide the bench into two parties and THEIR APPLICATION 191 to make licensing a battle-ground between them; sometimes one comes out victor, sometimes the other, but in the ardour of the fray the real busi- ness is apt to drop out of sight. This largely accounts for the failure of the justices to suppress houses which ought to be suppressed. Temperance zeal on a local bench excites reprisals at quarter sessions, and licenses refused by the former are granted by the latter on appeal. The introduction of a popularly elected element into the licensing and the appellate body has been proposed as a remedy. It could not fail to make things worse. The temperance organisations and the trade would strive their utmost to get sympathisers on to the bench, which would become still more partisan. Eventually licensing business would be the sport of party politics. We should have excessive rigour here and excessive laxity there, both equally detrimental to the public interest. There can be no more fatal mistake than to make the administration of law dependent on popular elections. When large pecuniary interests are at stake corruption is certain to follow. It is amazing that such a proposal should come from those who recognise that watch com- mittees, who are nominated from popularly elected representatives of the people, cannot be trusted in licensing matters, and that the greatest evil in Ireland is the susceptibility of licensing magistrates to popular pressure. Here we have two substantial pieces of evidence from experience, that local and popular influence is a dangerous element to bring to 192 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION bear on licensing administration. In favour of it we have nothing but the general democratic theory and an idea that if the * needs of the neighbourhood ' were considered — to be determined by some purely arbitrary calculation — ^the efficacy of the licensing bench would be increased. This is just the frame of mind which has led to legislative blunders in the past. We are advised to take a step in the dark, on the- oretical grounds and in the vague hope of promoting morality. The suggestion is supported by a con- fused use of the word * administrative.' The licensing justices are credited with * administrative ' functions which are somehow non-judicial or extra- legal. But what they administer is the law, and in that sense all judicial functions are administrative. Judges exist to administer the law. Licensing magistrates have a certain discretion, it is true, but so have all judges; it is necessary to give sufficient elasticity to statutory law, which cannot foresee and provide for all circumstances. The real defect of the licensing courts is that they are not judicial enough. If they were we should get rid of more objectionable houses. The experience of Ireland is again instructive on the converse side. By far the most satisfactory licensing courts in the United Kingdom are the quarter sessions courts in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, London- derry, and Gal way ; and they are the most judicial, the sole authority being the Recorder in each city.* The * Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, vol. vii., and Final Report, p. 236. THEIR APPLICATION 193 general satisfaction which they give is in striking contrast with the condemnation of the petty-sessional magistrates, who are subject to popular influence. The reform proposed for Ireland by general consent and accepted by both sections of the Peel Com- mission is that all the licensing courts should be made more judicial and less popular; that the licensing business should, in fact, be in the hands of judges and stipendiaries. This is the exact opposite of the recommendation for England, and irreconcilable with the * trust-the-people ' principle on which the latter is based; but since the one is backed by actual experience, the other by a mere fancy which is inconsistent with the conclusions about watch committees, and with the objections urged against municipal liquor traffic, there is no doubt which is the sounder proposal. Indeed it seems to need no argument that when law has to be administered, the higher the character and intelligence of the persons appointed to administer it and the greater their independence the better. ' Local ' knowledge, which often means prejudice or personal interest, should be supplied to the court by the police and other witnesses, not by the court. The court should demand it, and the more judicial the court the more pains it would take to be fully and fairly informed. A competent stipendiary or county court judge would be careful to do all those things which licensing justices are accused of neglecting. He would look to the map, require details as to premises, insist on the production of 194 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION the record, scrutinise agreements, demand explana- tions, and bring misconduct home to the real offender. Experience and common sense alike suggest that if the constitution of the licensing authority is to be changed it should be in this direction. The question of disqualification would thus be settled and a number of minor points in licensing procedure rendered of no importance. With such a court, a police system like that in Liverpool, an independent chief constable, and a record kept of offences, we should get all that can be got from the law in the way of controlling the number and the conduct of licensed houses. I am well aware that this will by no means satisfy many who would like to see a large and immediate reduction of ' superfluous * public-houses, the abolition of the tied-house system, and so on. I have no objection, but think they are very unlikely to get these things done and still more unlikely to be pleased with the results when they have got them. The word * superfluous * may be interpreted in two ways. If it means that the houses are too numerous for effective supervision or for respectable trade, and therefore causes of disorder, they would be reduced without any trouble or difficulty by the effective administration I suggest. If it means that they exceed some numerical pro- portion to the population, arbitrarily fixed, and must therefore be reduced, although they are orderly and respectable, then you at once raise the thorniest of all the liquor questions — compensation — and you THEIR APPLICATION 195 go outside the proper province of the law. Is this wise or feasible or necessary? I think not. Let us at any rate get rid of the disorderly places first, wherein we are on safe ground. The same reasoning applies to the tied-house system. It is neither possible nor necessary to abolish it. Far too much fuss has been made about the system, as such. Some tied-houses are the very best conducted houses there are, conducted according to my observation much more carefully than disinterested company houses. Such are those in Liverpool, as the chief constable has testified. Other tied-houses are just the reverse and perhaps the worst conducted of all. It depends on the individuals and the control exercised over them, not on the system. Abolish the bad ones by all means; but to abolish the system on abstract grounds, whether its results are good or bad, is more than the law can do or ought to attempt. So much, then, for the person and the house. The upshot of it is: Deal more severely with the offender, with the drunkard and the publican who encourages him. Herein I entirely agree with Mr. Daly, chief clerk of the Dublin police courts, a gentleman of very great experience, who gave some admirable evidence before the Royal Com- mission. The Irish witnesses were as a body by far the best, and Mr. Daly was one of the best of them. * I do heartily believe,' he said, * that if the legislative attack were more directed on the wrong- doer, including the habitual inebriate and the dis- 196 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION reputable trader, and less spread over the whole community, a great deal would be done for tem- perance that is not done now/ m. THE DISORDERLY TIME There remains the third point which requires separate mention. In accordance with the principle that the law can properly and successfully interfere with any condition which is a proved cause of disorder, it ought to deal with the disorderly hours. If there is any one thing which has had a decided and immediate effect in the past and would have it again, it is a reduction of time. Closing in towns an hour earlier at night, and particularly on Satur- day night, would make an enormous difference. Per- haps it is impracticable because so many people want something to eat and drink on coming out from theatres and other places of entertainment. But only bars need be closed; places of refreshment might be kept open later, as is done under the Gothenburg system. What we really want is a different classification of licenses, which should be five in number: (1) hotel, (2) restaurant, (3) bar, (4) off-sale, (5) club. This was one of the best suggestions made to the Royal Commission. It would enable many things to be done for the public convenience and the promotion of good order, and one of them is the early closing of bars. Public- houses close at ten in the country, which largely accounts for the superior sobriety of rural districts; THEIR APPLICATION 197 I can see no reason why all bars should not close at ten. Restaurants could remain open till eleven or twelve. This is the only way in which curtail- ment of the drunkards' hour could be effected. Closing for a considerable number of hours on days of public excitement, such as elections, is a practical step which would have a real effect on public order in many places; and I think the hours of sale on Sundays might be reduced in England with advantage, but total Sunday closing I believe to be quite impracticable. It would not only create an illicit traffic too general to be controlled, but would raise a storm sufficient to turn out any government. Those who advocate it underrate the attachment of the uncellared classes to the public- house, or over-estimate the docility of the English people. Curtailment of hours is one thing; total deprivation for a whole day, and that a holiday, is another. I recall an incident which illustrates the feelings of an average working man on the subject. He was in the hospital — I forget for what, but it was a surgical case — and he underwent some severe pain without an anaesthetic, perhaps a small operation or the examination of an injury. He bore it very well, but on being asked how it felt he replied that ' it was like waiting for the public-house to open on Sunday. ' He could think of nothing more trying. The argu- ment for Sunday closing drawn from other countries and even from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales is deceptive. They are all far more rural than England, and it is in the rural districts that Sunday closing 198 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION has been well borne. In Ireland five principal towns are exempted, and the representatives of the working classes have strongly protested against the proposed inclusion of these towns. In Scotland the people are very strong Sabbatarians, and previous to 1828 they were accustomed to Sunday closing under the common law; yet the measure gave great trouble in Glasgow for many years. In Wales, also far more Sabbatarian than England, it has given much trouble in Cardiff and is still strongly resented by a section of the people. A sanguine mind may overlook these facts in contemplating the general success of Sunday closing, but they have a serious significance for the chances of its accept- ance in England, with her great industrial districts and vast urban populations, whose views, habits, and temper differentiate them strongly from the Celtic sections of the kingdom. The English are drinkers of draught beer and they like to have it fresh. They have been accustomed to have it so for centuries, and the privilege is dear to them, especially on Sundays. The Scotsman and the Irishman can have a bottle of whisky to tide them over the day, and the Welshman has his own way of spending Sunday; but the Englishman wants the pot of beer that his soul loves. Now he is law-abiding so long as he has what he considers his rights, but touch them and he becomes the most rebellious, stubborn, and intractable creature in existence. He has freedom in his bones, as no other man has. The Celt is different; he is more used to submit THEIR APPLICATION 199 and comparatively docile, outwardly at least in the presence of force; he will stand compulsion in personal matters, and so will other races; but the Englishman will not. It merely arouses an infi- nite determination to resist. If you can per- suade him that he is better without his Sunday beer, he will give it up; but so long as he sees no harm in it, the attempt to take it from him against his will would be a most hazardous experiment. I do not know how those who advocate it have arrived at the opinion that the step would be acceptable. They may be right, but that was not the opinion of several witnesses before the Royal Commission who were familiar with the habits of the people, and my own observation coincides with theirs. At any rate it will be generally conceded that total Sunday closing would be a more violent and risky interference with long-established habits than earlier closing at night in the week, and less effective in preventing drunkenness. The foregoing suggestions do not pretend to exhaust the subject; there are other details which might be dealt with on the same lines. Nor are they put forward as a comprehensive programme, but rather to illustrate the spirit in which practical and effective legislation should be approached. The main thing is to aim at a definite and attainable object — pick out a bird within range and eschew speculative shots in the hope of hitting something. The only thing they hit is a beater. 200 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION CHAPTER IX THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE The publican's is not a nice trade, and the average public-house is not a nice place; at the worst it is horrible. But to do the publican justice, the fault is less often on his than on the other side of the bar. It is the customers that make the place so detest- able; they would make any place detestable. I am sure that many publicans would never have gone into the business if they had known what they would have to contend with. I have been in public- houses in bad parts of London, and have seen the landlord in a state of obvious terror, vainly endeav- ouring with all his might to keep order among his customers, who were not drunk, merely brutal. I know other large public-houses, enormously fre- quented, where perfect order is maintained, but only by sheer force, instantly and ruthlessly applied. Such large houses can afford to keep a strong force on hand. The customers know it and very rarely give occasion for its exercise; but though quiet and orderly, the place is repellent by reason of the demeanour of the people, who do not show to advantage when enjoying themselves together. THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 201 Taken alone I have not the slightest doubt that each individual would appear very different ; all sorts of good qualities — qualities that make one ashamed of oneself — are often hidden under the most degraded exterior — extraordinary kindness and self-sacrifice, for instance; but company has the singular effect of making many persons put their worst foot forward, so to speak. The weakness is not confined to any class, but since the lowest and the roughest take their pleasure at the public-house, it is there that everything most brutal in our populace is concen- trated and made prominent. I am not concerned to make a hero or a martyr of the publican, who is very much like other trades- men. His object is to make money. Sometimes he takes a pride in the respectable conduct of his trade and in the good name of his house; but sometimes it is only fear of the law that keeps him straight, and when he gets a chance of transgressing with impunity he grasps it. The combination of the vile landlord with vile customers produces an abominable result. Some brewers, who own public-houses, un- doubtedly connive at it. They treat the publican who gets caught without mercy, but they practically force him to run the risk, just as some shipowners force their captains to overload. It is idle to deny that these things are done. Every one who is behind the scenes at all knows that they are. But my own observation leads me to agree with the police, who testify generally that the great majority of the licensed houses are conducted with care. 202 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION That is, perhaps, more often recognised than it used to be quite a few years ago. There seems to be, at any rate, less violent denunciation of the trade as a whole; but I do not think the conditions under which the traffic is carried on are fully realised. There is still a great tendency to place all the responsibility on the shoulders of those who supply a commodity demanded by the mass of our people and to exonerate those whose demand creates and maintains the traffic. The publican is charged, in effect, with creating the demand as well as the supply, and, more explicitly, with promoting the ex- cesses of those who exceed. I am sure that this is less true of the publican than of other tradesmen. None makes so little effort to beguile customers into buying what they do not want. He treats them, indeed, with a curious indifference which would ruin any other business. In drink-shops frequented by the common people I have repeatedly been struck by the singular relation between buyer and seller, which is the reverse of that seen in other shops. It is all cold business, without the semblance of friendly interest. The customer receives no invitation or welcome, but is regarded with an air of suppressed and watchful hostility as a potential enemy who may give trouble by creating a disturbance or cheating the landlord. Let us go down into a working-class district in the East of London. The population includes general labourers, dockers, lightermen, stevedores, sail and block makers, iron workers, cabinet makers, carmen, tramway hands, and others — in short, a large THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 203 variety of skilled and unskilled labour — and there is, of course, as there is almost everywhere, a certain proportion of people belonging to a superior class, such as tradesmen, dock officials, and small employers of labour. Public-houses are thick on the ground, both beer-shops and ale-houses, as the fully licensed establishments are technically called; you may count more than a dozen, large and small, in 300 yards of street. In the daytime they are neither very conspicuous nor very attractive, but at night the gas-light in the window shows them up when the shops are shut or where there are no shops. The Exterior. — A great deal is made of this point, and no doubt many people honestly believe that the * flaring lights ' of the * gin-palace ' do exercise an appreciable influence on the habits of the poor, who are supposed to find them irresistibly alluring. It sounds plausible, and the picturesque contrast between the cheerfully lighted house and its squalid customers kindles a sympathetic imagination to flights of fancy, but a nearer view will show that there is very little in it except words. In the first place, you will notice that the public-house lights are no more flaring than any others. A large establishment makes a show because it is large, but it makes less show than a shop of the same size, and that is equally true of the small one. Here, for instance, are the windows of a newsvendor, a tobacconist, an eating-house, and a grocer, all far more showily lighted than the drink-shops hard by. In the second place you will notice that the most 204 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION brilliant establishments do not by any means attract the most customers. Here, for example, is a really showy exterior, bright with mahogany mouldings and stained glass quite in the most modern West End style. If you look in you will see that it is pretty nearly empty, while the comparatively obscure and dingy place over the way is crowded. Ask any of the men present why they prefer the second, and they will say * Better stuff here. ' Again, you may notice that the majority of the customers are hahitues and more or less known to the people behind the bar; in other words, their patronage is deliberately bestowed on the establishment which suits them best, and that is the one where they get the best value for their money according to their taste. They will go considerable distances and pass many public-houses in order to reach the one of their choice, and its external appearance is a matter of absolute indifference. But I have already discussed this point (p. 146), and will say no more about it here. The Interior. — ^Let us choose a typical house and go inside. Call it the Blue Boar, and say the hour is 9 P.M. The house has a long frontage towards the main road and extends round the corner into a by-street. It is entered by several doors, and each opens into a separate compartment of the bar-room, which but for the dividing partitions would be an extensive saloon fully seventy feet in length. This arrangement in compartments is peculiar to the British urban public-house, and is designed partly THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 205 for the sake of greater privacy, partly to diminish the chances of disorder and to assist the landlord in quelling it when it arises. The second is the chief object in places frequented by the lower classes, while privacy gratifies, or is understood to gratify, customers of superior station. The Blue Boar entertains both, having two or three compartments at one end rather more comfortable than the rest, and further protected from the public gaze by a glass screen, running along the counter, but raised sufficiently above it to allow glasses to be passed underneath. This screening off of customers may, perhaps, be taken for a sign of grace indicating recognition of the growth of public opinion against bar-loafing, and especially in women, who seem to desire privacy the most. The opposite notion that it represents the falling away of a previously virtuous class through the arts of the publican rests on the erroneous belief — already disproved — that women used not to frequent the public-house. Absence of screens does not deter ; it makes them bold. The rest of the Blue Boar bar is quite open, and the sons of toil stand at it without fear and without reproach. Some bare wooden benches adorn most of the compartments, but they are little used. The floor is sawdusted, filthy with spilt liquor and expectoration, the counter sloppy with beer marks, which are periodically wiped down by a barmaid wielding a wet cloth. On the other side all is bright, clean, spick-and-span; the attendants, who include the * governor, ' the * missus, ' and three or four girls, are 206 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION tidy, quiet, and active. This is one of the roughest houses in a very rough neighbourhood, but no fault can be found with the management. At the present moment the customers are equally quiet. They number about fifty, and are scattered along the bar in the different compartments, some sitting down, more standing up, smoking and talking quietly. Itinerant vendors of matches and penny songs come and go. A tall young fellow, perfectly sober, tries very hard to engage the barmaids in conversation, but without much success. The Liquor. — What are they drinking? At the superior end some Scotch whiskies may be seen, a young sailor orders a rum hot, and a woman of the pavement at my elbow asks for a two of gin cold, which she sits down to enjoy at her leisure; but for the rest it is all beer. Pewter pots line the counter from end to end. Several kinds of beer are sold at these houses, but the working man confines himself mainly to the two cheapest, which are technically called ' beer ' and * ale.' The former is a very dark opaque liquid of the same colour as porter, but much weaker, and it costs 3d. the pot (i.e. quart), or Id. the glass. * Ale,* otherwise called * four ale,' or * mild,' is clear, but rather dark in colour, and costs 4d. the pot, or Id. the glass. Both are very weak. The stronger beers are ' stout,' ' bitter,' and the variety known as ' old,' * strong,' or * Burton ' ale; all of which are the same as those sold at refresh- ment bars and superior public-houses in other parts of the town. They cost 2d. the glass and Id. or 8d. THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 207 the quart. German beer may also be had, but is not much patronised, and the same may be said of bot- tled ales. Half glasses of bitter are sold, but the favourite articles, constituting 90 per cent, of the orders, are the cheap * ale ' and * beer.' The house is * tied,' and to a famous firm. Attracting the notice of an attendant with some difficulty, I order a glass of * ale,' and find it a perfectly clean, honest liquor, but watery. Better stuff may be had in the neighbourhood for the same money, but this is, nevertheless, beyond the suspicion of injurious adulteration, and, to my taste, both a more honest and a more palatable beer than the renowned ' bitter ' brewed by Messrs. Blank's great firm, and dispensed at a thousand luxurious bars. No charge has been more often brought against the brewer and the pub- lican than that of contributing to drunkenness and crime by poisoning the working man with bad stuff. None is more easily tested by personal observation, and I venture to say that no man who takes the trouble so to test it to-day in our urban centres of population will find any evidence to support it. Once it was true. The House of Commons inquiry in 1854 brought out some amusing old recipes for adulteration, which appear to have done duty ever since. The evil was attributed, as by the House of Lords Committee in 1850 (it is extraor- dinary what a number of these Select Committees there have been), to the tied-house system, but it really dates from a far earlier period. There is evidence that sophistication of liquor was practised 208 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION as far back as the time of Edward III., and that it continued down to a comparatively recent period. In the eighteenth century we get some curious information about the * honest malt and hops ' of the * good old days.' In 1790 Samuel Child, a brewer, published a pamphlet on the * art and mystery of brewing porter, ale, twopenny, and table beer,* with the laudable intention of enabling people to brew their own beer * of the same quality as in a brewery. ' The directions for porter are explicit: * Take 1 quarter of malt, 8 lbs. of hops, 6 lbs. of treacle, 8 lbs. of liquorice root, 8 lbs. of essentia bina (moist sugar), 8 lbs. of '' colour, *' ^ oz. capsicum, 2 oz. Spanish liquorice, 1 oz. cocculus indicus, 2 drachms salt of tartar, ^ oz. ** heading *' (alum and copperas), 3 oz. ginger, 4 oz. slaked lime, 1 oz. linseed, 2 oz. cinnamon water.' These ingredients, he continues, ' however perni- cious they may appear, must invariably be used by those who wish to continue the taste, flavour, and appearance which they have been accustomed to.' For ale other things of a * vehemently poisonous and stupefying quality ' are given. Another writer in 1795 mentions cocculus indicus, aloes, Bohemian rosemary, opium, tobacco, henbane, and wormwood, as used to brew London porter. The gentleman who gave expert evidence in 1854 mentioned some of these drugs, but did not venture to assert that they were still used at that time. It is quite certain that they are not used now. The object has disappeared with THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 209 the changed conditions of the traffic. When there were no hours of closing and no penalties for permitting drunkenness it was obviously to the pub- lican's advantage to stupefy his customers so that they remained on the premises and began drinking again, on coming to, so long as they had any money. Now he has to turn them out at closing time and is liable to get into trouble if they are in a very bad state; so that, apart from adulteration Acts, he has every inducement not to drug them. No doubt other ingredients besides malt and hops are used in brewing; the law allows it, and to some extent seasonal difficulties render it necessary; but that stupefying or thirst-creating drugs are used in such quantities as to produce those effects is proved to be a complete fable by the regular analyses of the Inland Revenue Board, and by the evidence of one's own senses. A slight excess of salt in some cases is the only charge of any importance sustained by analysis, and that only in such measure as may be accounted for by the amount of salt naturally present in the water used for brewing. No one with a sensitive palate can fail to notice that draught beer is very often watered, and that some kinds — par- ticularly porter and bitter — generally contain other things besides malt, hops, and sugar; but the town vorking man's small-beer, if more open to the former charge, is less guilty of the latter than more pretentious beers, and in any case the foreign sub- stances are not injurious to health, still less conducive to intoxication, which is the very thing the publican 210 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION wishes to avoid. As for spirits, analysis has for some years practically failed to find any adulteration except water, and * the old practice of adding various chemicals to conceal the loss of strength seems to have been abandoned ' (Report 1890-1) . The vision of the honest toiler stupefied by narcotics in his beer, or raving under the influence of vitriolic spirits, has no bodily counterpart in the public-house. What power, by the by, there is in a word! Vitriol sounds capable of anything, but, as a matter of fact, in such a diluted form as alone is swallowable it is a capital stomachic and general tonic, having no effect on the brain whatever. Taste is another matter, and personally I think the modern substitute-brewed bitter beer and patent-still spirits very nasty. But the spirits are highly rectified and contain little or no * fusel oil ; ' and the beer is very light. * Four ale ' is at least as weak as lager; it takes gallons to make a man drunk, but then, they drink gallons. Drunkards. — ^We are still at the Blue Boar, watching the working man slowly consume his beer, the while he converses with his mates. A glass lasts him perhaps half an hour, and if he wants another he has to call for it. Customers come and go, but not one exhibits a sign of intoxication. In his * Seven Curses of London,' Mr. James Greenwood draws attention to the small proportion of drunkenness to be seen in the public-house compared with the amount of drinking; and he suggests that 100 men should be set to watch 100 houses, and note the sobriety of those leaving them. This is the only piece of direct THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 211 observation and the only plea for that method of studying the facts that I have been able to discover in the entire mass of literature on the subject. My own experience entirely corroborates his, but I should say that moderate drinkers are in a far stronger majority to-day than even when he wrote. I am confident that out of 100 persons whom you see drinking on any given night you will not find more than one drinking to excess; and I believe that the average proportion of moderate to excessive drinkers is very much greater than 100 to 1. On the other hand the visible good behaviour is in some, and per- haps a good many, cases only skin deep. And, as luck will have it, here, in this quiet public-house, a dra- matic incident suddenly occurs under our very noses, which throws a strong light on the subject. Two workmen come in perfectly sober, and one of them stands treat for two glasses of ale. His mate is in the act of drinking when the door opens, and two terrible- looking women rush in. The elder is a wretched hag, who has already * had a drop ; * the other, a big heavily built woman, is perfectly sober and in deadly tragic earnest, her eyes blazing with excitement out of her broad, flat, livid face. She is ragged and filthy, and carries a baby, six or eight months old, more dirty and ragged than herself. * So IVe caught you, have I, ye scoundrel? Drinking again? And where did you get the money from? ' she shrieks. * This gentleman gave me a glass of beer, that's all, sheepishly answers the man, indicating his friend. 212 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION * Then he's as bad as you, ye scoundrel. YouVe left me and the children to starve — me and the four bits of children. Ay,' she continues, raising her voice and shouting at him for every one to hear, ^ you had two pounds on Friday, and what did you bring home for me and the children? Not one farthing — not that much! You took it all, and us with nothing in the house. And when you come home drunk and I rummaged in your pockets like a thief what did I find? Seven and threepence. Two pounds on Friday night and spent it all but seven and threepence among the , ye scoundrel! And me a stranger here all alone without father or mother or sister or brother! I'm going into the workhouse at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, me and the four bits of kids, so help me God ! But out you go out of here, or I'll twist your head off. I'm your lawful wedded wife, ain't I? ' * Yes,' from the man, though she wears no wedding-ring — pawned, no doubt. * And you leave me and the children to starve with two pounds in your pocket. You left us once before without that much,' showing the tip of her little finger, * and then there were three children. Now there are four. Out ye go! ' He has not a word to say. She drags him to the door, thrusts him through, and as he disappears bangs him savagely between the shoulders. Not a word has been spoken by any bystander. The woman has raised a tremendous din and used THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 213 mticli language which cannot be written down, but no one behind the bar has interfered; her voice has the ring of truth, and it is felt that she is in the right. Now this incident brings us face to face with the central crux of the drink question. Drunkards may be broadly divided into three classes: (1) the accidental, (2) the deliberate, and (3) the inveterate or dipsomaniac. The first class is of little importance, excepting so far as it leads to the second. The victim is generally young, always sick and sorry after the event, and easily amenable to good influences. The third class, again, belongs almost entirely to the higher ranks of life, so far as the men are concerned. I speak of England; in Scot- land the case is different. The English working man is very seldom a dipsomaniac, that is, a creature possessed by a morbid longing for drink; for two reasons: he works off the effects of liquor by the physical exertion involved in his occupation, but still more because he is essentially a beer-drinker, and beer rarely causes that degeneration of the nerves to which dipsomania is due. Drunken women, on the other hand, are generally gin-drinkers and dipsomaniacs. For dipsomaniacs there is only one treatment: complete and forced abstinence from drink. There remains the second class, the deliberate drunkard, and by that I mean a man who gets drunk often, even regularly, and intentionally. He is the centre of the problem as a social evil: his habits are the cause of most of the misery, pauperism, cruelty, and 214 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION crime attributed to drink. Take him away and the evil shrinks to comparatively smaU proportions. The man we have just seen turned out belongs to this class, and he is worth some attention. Is he a miserable, degraded, sodden creature, the degenerate offspring of degenerate parents? Not the least in the world. He is a fine healthy man of about thirty-six, with an open countenance, a wholesome complexion, and a clear eye. A rivetter by trade, he earns good wages, as his wife has just told us. If he chose he could keep a comfortable and happy home, but the appearance of the woman and child shows that it is wretched, dirty, and poverty-stricken. The explanation is that he is just a self-indulgent fellow fond of pleasure, and that he finds it in company and drink. He has no * craving ' for alcohol, and can keep sober as easily as you or I, if he chooses; but he does not choose. He deliberately prefers to drink and to spend his money on what he considers a joUy evening.* There are worse than he, because at least he earns the money himself, but he represents the type morally, and in ten years may have become one of the * unemployed,' living on his wife and children. What is to be done with this ' victim ' of the liquor traffic? For my part I should hold him responsible for his own conduct and make * I have quoted Defoe on this head in a previous chapter. Captain Marryatt has a character, illustrating a minor degree of the same thing, in the person of a Thames bargeman who indignantly denies that he is a * drunkard,' but every now and then gets deliberately drunk and freely announces his intention beforehand. * 'Cos why?' he says. "Cos I chooses.' That is perfectly true to life. THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 215 him smart for it, if I were asked how to cure him. At present everything is made easy for him, as I have pointed out before. We encourage him by taking care of his family, helping him home when he is drunk, seeing that he does not get run over or break his neck, and in a word protecting him from the consequences of his own acts. The temperance people further encourage him by telling him that he is the victim of the public-house (at which he grins in his sleeve), and that they are going to protect him by shutting it up. Let us ask an expert witness what he thinks of it. A working man at my side has watched the whole scene, and now gives me the opportunity by opening conversation on his own account. * You haven't seen a bit like that, sir, for a long time, I'll be bound. Lord, she give it him straight, and no mistake, didn't she? ' * She did. When one sees a thing like that one does not wonder that people talk so much about the evils of the liquor traffic, and want to do something to stop it. Now, public-houses are very thick about here; do you think it would have any effect if half of them were shut up ? ' * It would have just this effect, that the rest would get the custom of the ones shut up. ' * But suppose they were all shut up ? ' * Well, I can tell you what would happen tJien.' ' What? ' * They would drink in private houses. What's to prevent 'em? Three or four chaps would just club 216 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION together and get in a cask. You see, what they want is the company, the pipe, and the glass of beer; but if they had it in a private house they would drink more. In course they would, it stands to reason, 'cos there 'd be no one to look after 'em. ' He knows nothing of prohibition laws, being an ignorant man, but he has accurately stated their known effects, because he thoroughly understands the drinker. The Publican and Drunkenness. — The company, the pipe, and the glass of beer! Moderate temper- ance reformers would be quite satisfied with that programme, but under present conditions, they say, the glass of beer is multiplied indefinitely to the point of intoxication, and they are quite right. For this they blame the publican, who is alleged to encourage intemperance by ' pushing the sale ' of drink, and serving those who have already had too much. The first charge is so absolutely contrary to my own experience that I have often tried to ascertain from those who used the argument on what evidence it rests, and the only answer I have ever been able to get is that it stands to reason. It may stand to reason, but does it stand to fact? What is our experience this evening? Here am I, a customer obviously with money, standing for forty minutes at the bar of this public-house, and not once have I even been asked if they can serve me with anything. One glass of beer I obtained by calling for it. The working men along the counter have been even more neglected. A new-comer is occasionally asked THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 217 what he will take, but far more often he has to call. As for pressing anything upon anybody, there is not the slightest attempt at such a thing. Let us leave the Blue Boar and walk up the street, looking in for a moment at the other publics in passing. Everywhere the same scene, except that the attendants are more often men or lads than women — the same sort of customers standing at the bar, talking and smoking, with the same pots of beer before them, the at- tendants answering calls with greater or less alacrity. They are fairly, not especially, busy, but if you step up to the bar several minutes at least will elapse before any offer is made to serve you, and unless you render yourself pretty conspicuous the chances are that none will be made at all. The difficulty in all these places is not to avoid drink but to get served. In any case the invitation is nothing more pressing than * What can I get you? ' In truth, the theory of pushing the sale does not stand to reason. The number of articles on sale in a public-house is very limited, they are all of the same class, and customers know exactly what they want. The publican exercises no influence over them whatever, and would only be laughed at if he attempted it. I have asked a prominent temperance reformer, who spoke of pushing the sale, how it was done. The table stood between us, and I said, * Here is the bar, I am a customer, you the publican; show me how you would push the sale ; begin ! * He was taken completely aback, and could only reply that it had never been put to him like that before. Again, it 218 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION is thought that the publican is reluctant to sell temperance drinks, and that a good deal might be done by exchanging him for some one having an interest in selling them. We will go into the Rose and Crown and see. I ask the landlord for a bottle of lemonade and he gives it me at once. * You don't mind selling this then? ' I ask. ' Not at all. It's all one to me, or rather, to tell the truth, I prefer selling temperance drinks, as I make more profit on them. I keep all sorts, lemonade, gingerade, ginger-beer, and mineral waters. People have whatever they ask for. I have about one hundred teetotalers in during the week, and they are served with their lemonade or anything they like the same as anybody else.' But there is one thing, at any rate, the publican can do for temperance, and that is, refuse to serve a person who has already had too much. Moreover, he is bound to do it by the Act of 1872, under a penalty of 101. for the first offence, and 20Z. for the second. His enemies have a real handle against him here, for the record of convictions, which can only represent a fraction of the offences, proves that too many publicans are lax upon this point. Un- doubtedly there is room for improvement, especially in villages and small places; but in large, well- policed centres of population, the possibilities of improvement are fewer than they may seem at first sight. An incident in this very public-house throws a light on the question. A woman of the poorest class, with bare head and shawl — probably Irish — is THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 219 sitting quietly on the bench having a glass of * four ale.* Presently she begins to talk to herself. * I was drunk o* Palm Sunday/ she says meditatively; * drunk o' Palm Sunday.' Then rising to her feet and flinging up her right hand dramatically, she shouts, * And may the Lord bless him as give me the job to earn the money — and that's Mr. Levi. May the Lord bless 'm anschildnschildn — and proshperm! ' She is drunk, not badly, but still un- deniably drunk. She wants another glass. * No, missis, that's enough for you — you had better be oflc home.' And she goes. * Why did you serve her at all? ' I ask. * She had no appearance of being drunk when she came in.' And indeed she had not when I first saw her. * You see,' continues the landlord, * it's impossible to tell sometimes. Suppose I'm at the other end of the bar; some one comes in here, steadies himself up against the counter, and calls for a drink. I haven't seen him come in, his voice is all right, and he is standing steady with his hand on the counter. I can't possibly know he's drunk. We never serve them if we do know; it's not to our interest, as they are likely to annoy other customers.' The experience of the Scandinavian * managed ' houses fully confirms this; with the best will in the world to prevent it, drunken people are still served. Women and Children in the Public-house. — The foregoing incident suggests a reference to the most deplorable feature of our liquor traffic, and one 220 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION peculiar to ourselves. We have not exactly a monopoly of female drunkenness, but we have far more than any of our neighbours, and in no other country is it the custom for women and children to frequent the public-house as it is with us. The women are dreadful beyond all description. When once they take to it, they are more often drunk than the men, more violent, shameless, degraded, and incurable. In other words, they become real dipsomaniacs, and the habit of gin-drinking is the cause. So long as they confine themselves to beer they can retain some self-control, and no great harm is done; but women take very readily to spirits, because this concentrated form of alcohol heartens them up in the moments of weakness, pain, and depression entailed by their sex and want of physical strength. It is difficult to see, however, why our women should be so peculiarly given to the vice, except that public opinion in their own class attaches less shame to it than elsewhere. Appar- ently the infection caught them when first the wave of spirit-drinking, introduced from Holland and Germany, spread over this country at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the tradition has remained ever since. Happily it is now much less prevalent than formerly. We have certainly improved since the days of 1830, when seventy-two cases were brought to Bow Street on a Monday * for absolute and beastly drunkenness, and what was worse, they were mostly women wJio had been picked up in the THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 221 streets, where they had fallen dead drunk; * and the following little scene emphasises this more cheerful view of the question. A woman stands at the half- open door of a public-house as we pass, and calls to a man inside to come out. * Come in, mate,' he shouts back, * don't be a fool.' * No,' she says, * I shan't; I'm nearly tipsy already. Come on home.' And he comes. Children in the public-house are, I believe, quite peculiar to this country. You see them of all ages, from extreme infancy upwards. Here, for instance, are two girls having glasses of stout, not in a hurry, but sitting down for a good long stay, and one of them suckles a baby not more than a fortnight old. In all cases the parents are wholly responsible. You never see children frequenting the public-house on their own account; they are either brought by their parents or sent to fetch beer. I have never seen any reason to suppose that the law about serving children is broken. Boys who find their way into the public-house to sell things are turned out promptly. The parents, however, not only bring them in, but teach them to drink. I lately saw a respectable-looking couple take four young children, the youngest in arms, into a public-house, and when they came out they were all wiping their mouths. I ventured to ask them if they thought it the right thing to do, and the man, to do him justice, did seem ashamed of himself. The woman, having nothing to say in defence of her conduct, took refuge in 222 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION abusing me. It is done, as I have already pointed out, in ignorance and thoughtlessness from a mistaken idea of kindness. It could only be prevented by pro- hibiting children under a certain age from entering licensed premises at all; and that is impossible so long as the law makes no distinction between hotels and pothouses. Betting in Puhlic-Jiouses. — This is the greatest blot on the liquor trade, because it is deliberately countenanced, encouraged, and even carried on by some publicans; but it is confined to particular houses in particular quarters, and therefore a brief reference will suffice. Of course it is illegal, and the police know all about it, because they receive innumerable complaints from the relatives of those who squander their money in this fatuous way, but convictions are hard to obtain. The disappearance or reform of the public-house would not diminish the practice in the very slightest degree, as it would be carried on in shops and clubs, which are already more extensively used for the purpose than licensed premises. To conclude this little study from the life, let me add that neither the occasion nor the locality was specially selected, and that the scenes and incidents presented themselves exactly as described in the course of a single evening. Similar scenes may be witnessed at any time in any working-class neighbourhood. The chief lesson to be drawn is the one with which I began. The public-house is not a nice place, but the fault lies mainly with the THE ENGLISH PUBLIC-HOUSE 223 customers. It can only become a nice place through an organic social change in which they share. The notion that its character can be revolutionised by any * system * by providing meals or investing lemonade with * prestige ' — whatever that curious ex- pression may mean — is quite illusory. I notice that at one of the model public-houses the average daily takings in 1901 were 101. 13s. 6d. for liquor, and 85. Id. for food. That corresponds exactly with the ex- pectations formed from observation. The people buy what they want, which is liquor; and they will go on buying it. But we can insist that they shall buy in a decent and orderly manner. It should be understood that I have only been describing the liquor traffic as it exists in populous places. In rural districts the conditions differ con- siderably. They will be discussed in the next chapter. 224 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION CHAPTER X THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE The interesting scheme initiated by Lord Grey for the systematic establishment of model public- bouses on the Scandinavian company principle has deservedly attracted much favourable attention. The scheme is the formation of trusts, by counties, for running public-houses under disinterested man- agement, the surplus profits after payment of 5 per cent, being devoted to public and philanthropic purposes. This is the Scandinavian principle, but not, it must be understood, applied as in Scan- dinavia. There all the licenses for retailing spirits in a town are taken over by the company, which consequently has a monopoly and complete control as to number of houses, hours of sale, price of liquor, &c. This is the Scandinavian system, of which more details are given in the next chapter. The county trust scheme, on the other hand, only affects isolated houses as opportunity arises, either by obtaining a new license or taking over an old one, and is not likely to enjoy a monopoly except in small places. Elsewhere it must enter into compe- tition with the ordinary trade, and it is of course THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE 225 subject to the same legal and administrative control. It is not altogether a new thing, but is rather an organised extension of a movement begun some years ago by individual owners of public-houses, and it has therefore some experience to go upon. The earliest pioneer was the Rev. Osbert Mordaunt, rector of Hampton Lucy, in Warwickshire, where he has conducted the village inn at the sign of the Boar's Head for more than twenty-five years. What- ever credit is due for initiating model public-houses in England on the Scandinavian principle belongs to Mr. Mordaunt, whose personally conducted ex- periment forms a genuine object-lesson and at the same time throws an incidental light on some points in connection with the general conduct of the liquor traffic. The many who are sympathetically or prac- tically interested in the trust scheme will find both instruction and encouragement in the story of the original model. Hampton Lucy is a typical English village with a population of about 460 and a single public- house. It lies just outside Charlecote Park, midway between Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon, and several miles from a railway station. The conditions of life, therefore, are essentially rural and exactly like those to be found in innumerable villages throughout every part of the country. The circumstances of the public-house, however, are peculiar. It belongs to the parish. The late rector bought it from the former owner, and left it in his will to the parish under the sole trusteeship of the incumbent for the 226 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION time being. The rent was to go to pay the village organist's salary in perpetuum, but no other stipula- tion was made. Accordingly Mr. Mordaunt, on succeeding to the living, found himself sole trustee of the property, and at liberty to administer it as he thought fit for the benefit of the place. At that time it was let in the usual way to a tenant and carried on as an ordinary public-house; and the new rector at first made no attempt to alter the arrange- ment. Finding, however, that the house was conducted in a very unsatisfactory manner by the landlady in possession, the widow of the former publican, and that remonstrance was of no avail, he gave her six months' notice and got rid of her. The choice then lay between closing the house altogether and conducting it upon different lines. Some reformers would, of course, have no hesitation in such a case; they would close the accursed thing amid bonfires and other signs of public rejoicing, and then have the satisfaction of seeing another establishment, over which they would have no control, opened over the way in the course of a few months. Ejiowing this perfectly well, Mr. Mordaunt boldly resolved, on the suggestion of a friend, to run the place himself. The squire of the parish fell in with his views, and promised not to allow a rival estab- lishment to be started. A trustworthy manager was found in one of Mr. Mordaunt 's own servants, who gladly undertook to discharge the duties with the help of his wife in return for a small salary and the use of the house rent free. And so the Boar's Head was started as a model public-house in the year 1876. THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE 227 To-day, after twenty-five years, Mr. Mordaunt can look back on the results with complete satisfaction. The most important change introduced into the conduct of the house, next to the appointment of a salaried manager in lieu of a publican, was the withdrawal of spirits from the bar. This step caused a considerable outcry at first, especially, be it noted, on the part of the women, which confirms what I have previously said about the tendency of women to spirit-drinking. They declared that life would be endangered if they could not send out for a drop of brandy or gin upon occasion. The objection was met by adding spirits to the stock of simple medicines kept for the use of the villagers at the rectory, which almost adjoins the public-house, and, as it happened, no death occurred in the place for sixteen months after the change had been made, so the objection died away. No hardship is inflicted by withdrawing spirits from the village bar, because ample opportunity of buying it by the bottle is afforded to those who really need it, or think they need it, by the travelling grocers' carts. Mr. Mor- daunt, however, believes that much less is consumed when it has to be bought by the bottle than when a few pennyworths can be procured at a time over the counter. The next point that engaged his attention was the supply of good beer, and for some years it gave him no little trouble. * We tried several brewers,' he says, * with varying success. Some of them served us well at first; then, after a time, we have 228 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION been compelled to make a change, because either the quality of the beer deteriorated, or the casks were not properly filled.' Deterioration in quality was at once made known by the complaints of customers, and diminution in quantity by the inadequate receipts per cask. That the charges were not fanciful is sufficiently proved by the fact that for several years now complete satisfaction has been given by one brewery, and no change has been found necessary. The beer is appreciated by the villagers, and has acquired a good name in the neighbourhood as superior to that sold in many other public-houses. The only other points to notice in connection with the conduct of the traffic are that credit was abol- ished, and serving drunken people of course strictly prohibited. No alteration was made in the house itself, or in the hours of closing. Profits from eatables and stabling horses go to the manager, but this item does not amount to much. The financial aspects of the venture are shown by the following table, which gives an average year's accounts : £ s. d. Receipts . ' 315 Expenditure — Cost of Beer 216 License 3 18 6 Taxes and Insurance . 4 10 Repairs 4 18 Fuel, Light, &e 14 10 Rent 26 Expenses of Management . 16 Charities 30 Balance 3 6 315 THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE 229 The community benefits by the organist's salary, which is a first charge on the profits (represented by * Rent ' in the table), and by about 301. a year either distributed among the parishioners in charity, or otherwise applied according to the discretion of the rector, who retains the right to dispose of the money in the way he thinks most conducive to the public advantage. Thus, two years' profits were once devoted to improving the water-supply by sinking wells and erecting pumps — an ingenious method of harnessing the liquor traffic to the temperance car which ought to satisfy Sir Wilfrid Lawson himself. Another year, a windfall of 52i. dropped in one week by a Volunteer camp hard by in Charlecote Park was applied to some other equally unexceptionable public purpose. As a rule, however, parish charities absorb the surplus profits. Before going on to discuss some of the points raised by the story of this model public-house, let us take one look at it. Neither within nor without does it differ appreciably from the ordinary rural pothouse. Of a plain and unpretentious exterior, it stands near the centre of the village, hard by the church and the rectory. The sign of the Boar's Head, nailed against the wall over the door, indicates the character of the establishment just as in its unregenerate days. Neither parade nor concealment has been attempted. Inside you have the ordinary tap-room, furnished with wooden seats and a small bar, and a larger parlour adjacent. During the major part of the day little business is done, and what 230 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION there is can be easily attended to by the manager's wife, a tidy woman who can keep the accounts. With the exception of occasional passers-by, the customers are an almost constant quantity and regular in their habits. The same men come day by day and drink just about the same amount of beer, although no attempt is made to limit them, except, of course, by the condition of sobriety. They have their pint after dinner and their pint and a half or so again in the evening, when they come to sit and smoke, and discuss the weather and the crops. The liquor dispensed is light, but clean and palatable stuff. Drunkenness seldom occurs, and then only in persons who have come in from other places already the worse for liquor, and have been acci- dentally served with more. In short, the Hampton Lucy villager may fairly say in the words of the poet: * I takes my pipe, I tajces my pot, And drunk I'm never seen to be: I'm no teetotaler or sot And as I am I means to be.* And a very good motto too, most people will think. Now the Boar's Head gives us a complete type of the village ale-house, and in considering its history the first thing to notice is that the conditions differ in many important respects from those of the town public-house, which I discussed in the last chapter. The alleged abuses which are imaginary or exceptional in the big town do really exist in the country. The Boar's Head was an establishment conducted in a THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE 231 disorderly manner, selling very queer liquor, con- stantly harbouring intoxicated persons, and evading the law as to hours of sale. According to my experience these things are more or less true of the majority of country publics, and the reasons are obvious enough: the publican has many inducements to go wrong and very few to go right. In the first place he is a poor man and has considerable diffi- culty in making both ends meet. If you turn back to the Boar's Head balance-sheet, you will see that after the beer and the license are paid for, the profits amount to 951., out of which 251. goes for rent and 24i. for other expenses, leaving 46Z. to live upon. Put in another way, the gross takings are 61. or say 71. a week, out of which the net profit is less than 21., while rent and other expenses come to about 205., leaving less than 11. a week for living. This standing condition of poverty exercises an unfortunate influ- ence upon the conduct of the business. If the tenant is an industrious man he will combine the public- house with some other occupation, which practically turns his wife into the real landlord, and she being housekeeper, with the cares of the exchequer upon her, naturally troubles herself very little about any other consideration so long as she can make a bit more money. In the evening when his other work is done, her husband becomes virtually one of her customers, sitting companionably with the rest and encouraging them to drink by his example; for in the village public everybody sits and there is no bar between customers and publican as in the town 232 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION house. If, on the other hand, the landlord is not an industrious man, he will to a dead certainty spend his time loafing and boozing, which deprives him of the authority even if he had the wish — which he has not — to deal as he ought with other boozers. The house of such a man becomes the rendezvous of hard drinkers. Further, in a village they are all neighbours and friends — or enemies; and the unfor- tunate publican with his small business, on which he can only just rub along at the best of times, cannot afford to offend his neighbours by refusing them drink, for instance. I have known half the regular customers of a village inn forsake it and take to spending their evenings in the cobbler's shop because they had some quarrel with the landlord ; and if I remember right he had to throw up the busi- ness. The same reasons tend to make the poor man lax about closing ; those who know the ropes can gen- erally get served during prohibited hours in a village public by judicious application made at a convenient side door. These positive inducements to go wrong do not exist in anything like the same degree for the town publican, and even if they did they would be checked by strong counter-inducements, which in their turn hardly affect the country publican. He has so little to lose that he does not mind incurring some risk of being turned out, whereas the other has generally a great deal to lose, having either invested a large sum of money of his own in the goodwill of the house or having run heavily into debt for the purpose. THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE 233 This necessarily tends to make him more careful about getting into trouble, and then the police look after him much more sharply than they can possibly do in the country. I do not suppose rural constables are any more * corrupt ' than their urban colleagues, but they are more likely to be on terms of friendly intimacy with the publican, they are fewer in number, and in all respects less smart. Life runs down the country road with an altogether easier, looser rein than on the city pavement. I have accompanied a village constable on his night patrol, and the good fellow produced a jug of beer left by the publican in a handy place of concealment, and hospitably shared its contents without a thought of reserve. The town bobby may sometimes know where to find a similar jug, but he would certainly keep the secret to himself, lest it should reach the ears of his inspector. And besides the comparative slackness of the police, the village landlord has another excuse for turning a blinder eye on his inebriated cus- tomers than the keeper of a town ' gin-palace ' can afford to do. The reckless blackguards frequent- ing the latter may break out into alarming violence at any moment, whereas the simple-minded rustics are seldom given to serious disorder even in their cups. A glass too much means stumbling home quietly without even * going large ' and still less ' raising Cain,' to use the classic phrases of modern literature. For all these reasons, then, the village pothouse is apt to be conducted with more or less deliberate 234 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION disregard of sobriety and good order. And in the next place, the liquor is often of inferior quality. I have previously defended the liquor sold in town public-houses from the charge of injurious adultera- tion, and I have no doubt whatever that one of the main conditions which keep it up to the mark is the keen competition carried on in populous places. The working man knows good from bad when he gets the choice, just as well as anybody else — perhaps better, because his taste is not perverted by the vagaries of fashion or medical advice — and where many establishments compete for his patronage they are bound to maintain a good standard or find themselves deserted for their rivals. Country public-houses lack this salutary stimulus even when there are more than one in the same place, and the smallness of their profits constantly tempts to some tampering with the liquor. Mr. Mordaunt's ex- perience has led him to form strong opinions on the subject. * If it is not common,' he says, * to add tobacco or salt or worse ingredients to the beer sold in some of our small public-houses, it must be often brewed from low-class materials for the sake of extra profit, which goes into the pockets of unscru- pulous brewers or publicans, or both.' He found in his own dealings, as I have already described, that attempts were made to tamper with both quality and quantity, and under the circumstances it looks as if the brewer must have been to blame. The excellence of the supply obtained at first from a new source and its subsequent deterioration are THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE 235 painfully familiar experiences to all of us in the case of other purveyors. Who does not know the grocer, the butcher, or the milkman, who, after treating us well for a time, has begun to * try it on * with an inferior article? And yet some of the firms with whom Mr. Mordaunt dealt were of such renown and doing so vast a trade that it could not possibly be worth their while to descend to base tricks for the sake of a few shillings. The fault may be neither with the publican nor with the brewer, but with a third individual who is often concerned, and that is the brewer's local agent. Partly filled casks particularly suggest this gentleman *s intervention, and in one case Mr. Mordaunt had his suspicions very strongly pointed in that direction, though he never could prove it. In connection with bad liquor the question of * tied ' houses occupies a good deal of attention; but probably the only man who really knows what influence the system exercises is the publican of varied experience, and it is just possible that he might not tell the exact truth about it. In the country, houses are not so much tied as owned by brewers, and if the firm is a large and prosperous one with a good name to lose, the probabilities are that for its own sake it will take care to maintain that good name. But that is not always the case. I have known a very large brewery supply one of its public-houses, where there was no competition, with the most offensive stuff, obviously consisting to a large extent of the rinsings and spillings which go back to the brewery and are sent out again to 236 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION such lonely places. The men would not drink it and the unfortunate publican was at his wits' end. Houses in the hands of small or speculative brewers are often served with inferior stuff. In London comparatively few houses are owned by brewers, but a great many are tied in the sense of owing money advanced by way of loan to enable the publican to start business. In these cases, however, the terms of the bond only include malt liquors, and if the brewer serves him with bad stuff, the publican can go to another and obtain money from him to pay off the original loan. On the whole it is prob- able that the more the business passes into the hands of large and reputable firms the better. That is the universal experience in other concerns. But, however this may be, both systems are as old as the trade itself, and the story of the Boar's Head shows that the most perfect freedom from brewery control does not necessarily ensure excellence of liquor. Be- fore quitting this part of the subject it is only fair to add that Mr. Mordaunt has of late years modified his opinion about adulteration, which he does not think so bad as it used to be. It is clear, however, from his experience that trusts or private owners of model houses will have to keep a very watchful eye on their brewer and their manager. In addition to lax control and inferior liquor the country public-house differs in one other respect, namely, the maintenance of the credit system, which certainly makes for improvidence and intemperance. In spite of the Tippling Act, ale-house scores still THE MODEL PUBLIC-HOUSE 237 appear to be paid, presumably as debts of honour; or it may be that the publican prefers the risk of losing his money to offending a neighbour. In town the thirsty but impecunious customer of the labouring class may whistle for his half-pint, except in times of strike or lock-out, when much indulgence is shown by kind-hearted publicans. It follows from the foregoing considerations that though drink is a much less serious evil in the country than in town, the conduct of the rural public-house is, speaking generally, far more open to improvement than that of the urban * gin-palace,' which shows incidentally that the conduct of the house is only one among a number of factors in the problem. And the success of the Boar's Head proves that under certain circumstances all the improvement that any reasonable person can desire may be effected without injuring anybody and to the general advantage of the community. Years ago Mr. Mordaunt suggested that what had been done at Hampton Lucy might be done in many other places. * There are,' he said, ' many villages and country towns in which property is not divided, where the public-house or houses belong to one squire or landlord. Why should not such proprietors take the matter into their own hands — this could be done with very little trouble to themselves — and so promote health and sobriety among their people t By all means let respect be paid to the vested interests of really respectable publicans: it would be unfair to evict them. But in cases where the 238 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION management is bad or drunkenness encouraged, or of leases falling in, let the landlord find a trust- worthy person or family (a man and wife are best) who shall be content to dispense pure beer for a fixed salary, keep accounts which shall be submitted to periodical inspection, and return the profits to the proprietor, who can dispose of them for the benefit of the parish. Or if he prefers to farm the public- house for his own benefit, let him do so. He will receive the rent and the profits and will probably discover in these days of agricultural depression that the balance in his favour is very acceptable. Either way the people will soon learn to prefer such a system and be grateful for it.' Some private owners took the advice here and there; then the People's Refreshment House Asso- ciation was formed for carrying on public-houses in the same way, and now the trust movement prom- ises a vigorous extension. I consider it all to the good and wish it every success. It will work no wonders, and will certainly not do all that its more sanguine promoters expect; but it will set a good example and will tend to raise the standard of char- acter and conduct in the liquor trade. Forebodings of ill effects, prompted by prejudice and unsupported by experience, may be disregarded with equanimity. What some of its opponents really fear is that it may be too successful and may pave the way for the optional introduction of the Scandinavian sys- tem in full. That result is neither unlikely nor un- desirable. CHAPTER XI GOTHENBURG AND THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM The Scandinavian system of disinterested manage- ment is very attractive. It gets rid of so many trou- blesome questions at once — licensing, number of houses, hours of sale, suitability of premises, encour- agement of malpractices, &c., &c. And then there is something especially fascinating in the appropria- tion of surplus profits to public purposes; it is such \ an ingenious mixture of business and philanthropy. The Norwegian plan of applying them to good works V or charitable objects is no doubt preferable to the Swedish system of handing them over to the mu- nicipal authority to relieve the rates, and is on the whole the most satisfactory way of running the liquor traffic that has yet been invented. It is not surpris- ing that the system should find ardent advocates who think it would effect a revolution in Great Britain, and equally ardent opponents who believe that it would make the liquor traffic too popular and so stand in the way of eventual suppression. The former prove that it has turned the most drunken into the most sober of countries, the latter that it \ 240 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION has been worse than a failure. For my part I can accept neither of these views. There are two ways of studying the question. One is to deal historically and statistically with the whole country, the other to take a typical town and care- fully examine the actual conditions. Numerous writers have taken the first way and some have done the thing very thoroughly. Their labours leave me free to adopt the second, which is more in keeping with the plan of this book and with the prin- ciple of study by observation urged at the beginning. It is also, perhaps, less tedious and may help the reader to realise the Scandinavian practice and to compare it with our own more clearly than a gen- eral survey. At any rate it may serve as a comple- mentary study. The town I choose as the most instructive example is Gothenburg. I do so partly because it strongly resembles many English and Scotch towns and is therefore a good basis of comparison, but chiefly be- cause it has had the longest and most equable experi- ence of the system. The fact that the profits go to the municipality and not to philanthropic objects — the plan I have admitted to be the better of the two — is no objection to the choice of Gothenburg, because the system has been admirably administered there and has not been tainted by those infiuences which have brought reproach upon the Swedish plan in some other towns. Gothenburg is a seaport and manufacturing town, containing at the present time about 130,000 in- THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 241 habitants. On Wednesdays and Saturdays the popu- lation is swollen by a large influx of country people, who come to market, and it is important to remem- ber that these buy all their strong liquor in the town, as none whatever is sold in the surrounding country districts. In several respects Gothenburg strongly resembles Cardiff, not in appearance, but socially and economically. As the largest port in Scandinavia and the chief business centre of Sweden, it is a prosperous, intelligent, and go-ahead commu- nity, consisting of a large industrial class in receipt of good wages, and a numerous middle class rising from well-to-do to wealthy. The signs of prosperity and intelligence abound. The principal streets are broad and well kept, the smaller ones narrow and in dull weather dark and dingy, but nowhere seriously squalid. Electric light, telephones, and other modern appliances exist in profusion and in the most modern forms. Popular education is brought probably to a higher pitch than in any other country, and the healthy, well-kept appearance of the board school children indicates a high standard of home comfort. I have seen no beggars and only one tramp. Workmen's wages vary from I65. to 27s. a week, but money goes a good deal further in Sweden than with us. The chief industries are those connected with the shipping. There are no docks, but vessels up to 2,000 tons burden ascend the river Gotha, on which the town is situated, and lie at the open quays that extend along the river front 'for a mile or more, so that men 242 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION engaged at work on the waterside have only to step across the quay to reach the public-house. These observations will, perhaps, sufficiently indicate the local conditions, which must be taken into consid- eration in forming an intelligent opinion upon the liquor question. The alcoholic needs of this town, with its 150,000 inhabitants (including the rural contingent), are supplied by about 850 establishments which sell liquor of one sort or another — that is, beer, wine, or spirits. The exact number is not known; it may be rather less or possibly a few more, but at any rate it is over 800. Any one acquainted with licensing in England, and perhaps some others, will be amazed at this fact; so let me hasten to say that it rests on the unimpeachable authority of the Chief Constable of Gothenburg, who gave me the figures. I will explain them in a moment, but will first observe that the remarkable profusion of liquor shops which they indicate is not part of * the Gothenburg system.' On the contrary, I have chosen this way of putting it in order to bring home to English readers in the most forcible manner the existing limitations of the system. Out of a total of between 800 and 900 establishments, selling liquor for consumption on or off the premises, only 69 are under the operation of the system; the remaining 780 or so fall altogether outside it. They sell only beer and wine, about 200 of them being public-houses licensed for consumption on the premises, and the rest merely shops where bottled beer is sold without THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 243 any license. In Gothenburg any shop may sell bot- tled beer, and nearly 600 actually do so. The 69 establishments that come under the system sell spirits — that is, liquor containing over 25 per cent, of alcohol — as well as beer ; but for the sake of accuracy five more places, having special privileges, should be added, making a total of 74 spirit-houses, against 780 purely beer-houses. This simple numerical state- ment places the relation between the two great branches of the liquor traffic in the clearest light, and shows the profound difference that exists between the conditions in Sweden and in England. In face of the facts, it is obviously in the highest degree disingenu- ous to speak of the * complete success ' or * total failure * of the Scandinavian system as a method of dealing with the drink question. There cannot be anything complete or total about it either way, for it has hitherto only attempted to deal with part of the question, the most important part from their point of view, but the least important from ours. To these points, however, we shall return later on, after dealing with the actual conduct of the public- houses, and the manner in which drinking is carried on. Let us first take that part of it which is con- trolled by the system and see how it works in prac- tice. The object is to regulate the spirit traffic, more particularly as it affects the working classes, so as to prevent its worst abuses without undue inter- ference with individual liberty. For this purpose the spirit licenses granted by the local authority / 244 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION are not handed over to private individuals, but to a limited liability company, managed by a board of five directors, who are all men of standing in the town, and receive a merely nominal remuneration for their services. The essence of the plan is the elimination of personal gain in the conduct of the trade, and accordingly all the profits are applied to public purposes after the company has received 6 per cent, interest on the paid-up capital, which is a very small sum. Seven-tenths of the remaining profits are paid into the town chest, and the rest divided between the Crown and the district agri- cultural society. This is * the Gothenburg system * in brief. It means the disinterested control of the spirit traffic, not by the municipality or the State, but by a company, to whom the monopoly is granted on condition that they exercise it for the public wel- fare. The Swedish word for company is bolag (pro- nounced pretty nearly * boulog ^), and as this has a distinctive sound to English ears, it is a good one to use. In Gothenburg no one speaks of the * sys- tem ' but of thjB * Bolag.' The administration of the Bolag, then, is as follows : it uses, as we have already seen, 69 spirit licenses, of which 23 are sublet to spirit merchants for retail trade. But it is a mis- take to say that the Bolag loses control of this part of the traffic, for it imposes on the licensee such conditions as seem calculated to further the general object, and can withdraw the license if they are not fulfilled. The merchants, for instance, are only allowed to sell * superior spirits,' and at a certain THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 245 fixed minimum price — namely, Is. lOd. the litre — in order to keep this traffic out of the reach of the poorer classes; but I shall refer to this point again in the proper place. Further, 17 licenses are granted to hotels and restaurants not frequented by working men, and therefore not considered to come strictly within the scope of the system. This disposes of 40 out of 69. There remain 29 directly administered by the Bolag itself, and these constitute the heart of the Gothenburg system in operation. They are thus divided : 18 public-houses with bars, 7 shops sell- ing only for consumption off the premises, and 4 eating-houses at which liquor is served only with meals. I have been into most of them at different times in the day, and will endeavour to take the reader into one or two, so that he may compare them with our native gin-palaces, as some people are pleased to call them. The Bolag public-house has an unpretentious exte- rior both by day and night. You would pass it by as a private house if you did not happen to notice the particularly rough-looking men who are tum- bling in and out more or less at all hours from 9 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M. Only a black signboard above the door, with the company's name written in small gold letters, reveals its character. It is situated in a frequented thoroughfare or open place in accord- ance with a provision of the Swedish law, designed to subject all such establishments to the wholesome influence of publicity and to prevent hole-and-corner iniquities. On opening a door you step into a per- 246 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION fectly plain but roomy saloon, light, airy, and well kept. The sawdusted floor is clean, for the habit / of promiscuous spitting, which has developed into a public curse in London, is not practised in Sweden. Round three sides of the room little square tables, at which two, or at most three, men can sit, are ranged against the wall. In the middle of the day, or after 6 p.m., all these will be occupied, at other times only a few of them. A door at one end opens into a smaller apartment labelled * eating- room * and similarly furnished. The bar is a low counter some 15 feet or 18 feet long, standing out towards the centre of the large room and open at both ends. On the wall behind it there is a row of shelves, on which bottles of the so-called * supe- rior ' spirits are arrayed, proclaiming themselves to be * cognac,* &c., with the usual effrontery. A large spirit cask and three or four small ones, marked G.U., stand at the side. The bar counter is covered with zinc, and two metal trays, each with a small square decanter and a few dozen spirit glasses, stand upon it, together with a little bowl or saucer containing fragments of the black aniseed biscuit universally eaten as an appetiser in Sweden. Otherwise there is nothing on the bar. A bill of fare for the day hangs on the wall and conceals a printed placard setting forth the exact pecuniary ^ advantages which accrue from the renunciation of a glass of spirits. Let us say it is between 5 and 6 o'clock in the evening, the hour before the bar-sale closes, and a THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 247 Friday. A throng of men, not one whit less rough- looking than our own lowest class of labourers, comes and goes with astonishing rapidity. It is difficult to reconcile the appearance of these men with that of the children up at the school. They press up to the bar, order and swallow at a single gulp a glass of neat spirits, pay for it and go. At one minute there are two dozen thronging at the little counter, the next they are gone, only to be replaced in a few moments by another lot. Some order two glasses and drink them immediately one after the other in two successive gulps. It is all drunk neat, no one takes any water, there is none to be seen on the premises. The barkeeper and an assistant are kept so busy filling glasses and refilling decanters at each end of the bar that they have no time to look at the customers and notice their condition. If you try to count the glasses sold it is impossible, but, so far as you can calculate, they are disappearing at the rate of thirty a minute. The glasses are peculiar, shaped like a medicine glass, and holding exactly five centilitres, or IJ oz. Thus some of these men swallow in about 15 seconds 3^ oz., or nearly half-a-tumbler, of neat spirits containing 44 per cent, of alcohol. The spirit is branvin, commonly, but most erroneously, called brandy, to which it has no resemblance. It is a * plain ' spirit, quite colourless, made in patent stills, chiefly from potatoes, and highly rectified. Chemi- cally, it is a pure spirit, which means that it consists almost entirely of ethylic alcohol, but the man who will pronounce it wholesome is either very bold or 248 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION possessed of private physiological knowledge. If it is wholesome, then the much-abused * cheap and fiery ' spirit of the British publican is also whole- some, for the cheap ' whisky ' of the ordinary public- house is just branvin with a little colouring matter. The chief difference is the price ; the Bolag glass costs a fraction over Id., and contains fully twice as much as they give you in England for 3d., or some- times 4d. Such is the liquor and such the manner of drink- ing in Gothenburg under the Bolag. But lest any one should suppose that this is meant as a reproach, let me add that the scene just described, giving as it does a glimpse of the immeasurable capacity of the Swede for swallowing spirits, is the most con- vincing proof that I have met with of the absolute necessity of the system. What would go on with- out the control of the Bolag is * a thing imagination boggles at.' Nor do I wish to imply that drinking proceeds on the same heroic scale all day long, or even at the busiest hours every day in the week. But it does go on. I have described what I have seen, and the occasion was not selected. When the bars are opened in the morning the men rush in and drink neat spirit or porter and spirit together. Be- sides the bar trade, which is conducted without loiter- ing, a certain number of men are seen sitting at the little tables, some with a plate of food before them, others with (empty) spirit glasses. I have seen three men with seven glasses on the table before them. At meal times food is served in considerable quan- THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 249 titles. It is both cheap and good and appears to be appreciated. A day's bill of fare is as follows: Roast meat and potatoes, 3Jd.; meat balls and potatoes, 2}d.; salt fish and potatoes, 2d.; porridge, IJd. Beer is also served in these houses, but not in large quantities. They open at 9 a.m. and close at 6 P.M. in winter and 7 p.m. in summer, so far as the bar trade is concerned, remaining open until 8 p.m. for the sale of liquor only with food. No women or children are ever seen in them. The managers, who are tidy and respectable-looking men, though not more so than a vast number of English publicans, are engaged under strict conditions defined by con- tract, and may be dismissed at two months' notice. They receive a salary varying from 601. to 300^ a year, according to the size of the house and the num- ber of assistants kept. In addition, they make what they can out of the sale of food and non-alcoholic drinks. They have no interest in the sale of spirits, beer, or wine, and are forbidden to sell these to customers already intoxicated or under eighteen years of age. In addition they must sell for cash only, and may not serve the same person with several glasses in succession. So much for the eighteen * dram-shops ' run by the Bolag. Their other establishments may be briefly dismissed. The eating-houses, which are four in number, do not differ from the foregoing in appearance, except that there is no bar trade. Spirits are only served with meals, and on this head it is to be observed that a glass or two of branvin 250 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION before meals is the universal custom throughout Sweden from the highest to the lowest class. These houses are well kept, the kitchens clean and spacious, the food good. A real trade in eatables is done, but it is carried on at a loss which falls on the Bolag, and is made good out of the profits derived from their other business. Finally, we have the seven retail shops where cheap spirit is sold for consump- tion off the premises. They are kept in the same style as the others, but are naturally smaller and less comfortable. They contain nothing but a counter and the usual casks. Business is conducted very promptly and without loitering. The customers include both the labouring and the better classes, and they buy chiefly branvin. It is sold in quantities of not less than one litre, or Ij pint, which is equivalent to about a bottle and a half of our standard, and costs 15d. The spirit is drawn from the cask in a measure and poured into a large bottle which holds just a litre, and the customer walks off with it. I have seen numbers of men and women of the labouring class buy these bottles on a Saturday. When you come to think of it, fifteen- pence is easily forthcoming on pay-day, and a bottle and a half of whisky contains the promise of a very fair carouse. A jolly Sunday is cheap in Gothenburg. A few words will suffice for the rest of the liquor traffic lying outside the influence of the system. The beer-houses licensed for consumption on the premises are very thick on the ground in some THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 251 streets and easily recognised from the outside, though hardly conspicuous. A good many are situated in basements. Inside they are arranged very much like the Bolag houses, but are for the most part smaller and less tidy. Drinking is carried on at the bar, but more at the little tables, in a leisurely fashion. The price of beer comes to much the same as in England, but grade for grade it is weaker. The cheapest quality, costing Jd. a small glass, is a very watery liquid; the strongest is Carnegie's porter, which contains about 8 per cent, of alcohol, and costs S^d. a. bottle. Most of the bottled beers, of which there are several kinds, contain about 6 per cent, or 7 per cent, of alcohol. The * wines ' sold here are manufactured articles, compounded of spirit and sugar, with a little colouring and fla- vouring matter. They are very cheap, and contain from 15 per cent, to 18 per cent, of alcohol. All these houses are under the surveillance and control of the police just as with us, and none of them are * tied.* They close at 8 p.m. In conclusion, the only thing that need be said about the retail trade in bottled beer is that it pervades the entire town, and is subject to no control whatever. Such is the system in actual working. What are its effects? Before proceeding to describe them I would remind the reader that the Bolag unquestion- ably discharges its trust with great faithfulness and ability. It would be impossible to find in any mu- nicipal or other public body a more competent and disinterested set of men than the board of directors. 252 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Whatever can be done to regulate the spirit traffic by this means has been done in Gothenburg. And I would also remind him that the Bolag entered into a terribly neglected heritage. All accounts agree that the spirit-shops were abominably conducted and the home of every kind of abuse. From the exceed- ingly lax manner in which the beer-houses are car- ried on still, it is easy to see that in pre-Bolag days a state of things existed which once prevailed here, but so long ago that it has been forgotten. Let us first enumerate the principal directions in which its activity has been exercised, once more re- minding the reader that the consumption of spirits alone is concerned. It has (1) reduced the number of public-houses; (2) improved their condition and conduct; (3) shortened the hours of sale; (4) stopped public-house drinking by persons under eighteen years of age; (5) raised the price and lowered the strength of cheap spirits; (6) insured a standard quality and measure; (7) stopped drinking on credit; (8) provided good food in the public-houses; (9) eliminated the element of personal gain behind the bar, and abolished competition. I do not think any of these statements are open to contradiction or even to serious criticism, though of course there is a good deal to be said about the precise value of the va- rious measures enumerated. Some of them sound more important than they are in reality, but to examine them closely would be beside my immediate purpose, which is to state rather than to weigh the changes effected by the Bolag in the direction of THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 253 reform. I have not included among them the refusal of liquor to persons already intoxicated, for, though this is strictly enjoined on public-house managers, and doubtless with considerable effect, it is, never- theless, not strictly carried out, as Dr. Wieselgren admits and as I have myself noticed. One cannot say, therefore, that the practice of serving intoxi- cated persons has been stopped by the Bolag, though it has been diminished. To proceed, however, to the main question, what effect have the foregoing reforms had on the consumption of liquor, the preva- lence of drunkenness, and the well-being of the work- ing classes? For the sake of clearness we will take these questions in order. With regard to the consumption of liquor, it is necessary to have recourse to the following well-worn table of statistics. They begin with 1875, because that is the first year in which the Bolag obtained control of all the spirit licenses: Year Consumption per head Litres j^ Year Consumption per head ^ LltVe. 1875 27.4 1888 16.7 1876 28.4 1889 16.1 1877 26.9 1890 15.9 1878 24.8 1891 14.8 1879 21.9 1892 13.5 1880 20.2 1893 13.2 1881 19.1 1894 13.0 1882 17.7 1895 13.1 1883 18.1 1896 13.2 1884 18.2 1897 13.6 1885 18.0 1898 14.5 1886 17.8 1899 16.0 1887 16.9 / 254 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION In considering this table it should be borne in mind that the consumption per head is reckoned on the population of Gothenburg, but inasmuch as the whole rural population for many miles around buys its spirits in the town, the consumption should really be distributed over a much larger number of persons — about half as many again, so far as the best judges could estimate it. Consequently the true consumption per head should be about two- thirds of that indicated. The correction, however, does not affect the comparison of one year with another. It will be seen that a large and steadily progressive diminution took place for twenty years. Since 1894 there has been some recovery, but the amount is still far below the earlier figures. The steady character of the fall shows that it was not due to fluctuations in the state of trade or to scarcity of wages, which affect consumption in Sweden not less than they do here. On the contrary, it went on in spite of such fluctuations, and it cannot be attributed to any cause but the operations of the Bolag. The facts are clear and instructive. They afford statistical evidence both of the efficacy of the system and of its limitations. When we turn to the question of drunkenness we find the limitations very much more strongly marked than the efficacy. Gothenburg is a very drunken place. Personal observation, the opinion of residents, police and medical evidence, all point to the same conclusion. I have seen more drunkenness in a Scotch town on Saturday night, but never in an English THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 255 one. In the course of an hour's stroll through the streets, large and small, between 7 and 8 p.m. I have counted twelve drunken men, and never went out in the evening without seeing some, though the streets are not thronged with people at that time as in England, but curiously empty. I have seen working men half drunk in the streets at midday and met them staggering home at 11 p.m., hours after every bar was closed. I took the greatest pains to correct my observations on this head, and in order to do so I stayed so long in Gothenburg that my friends there could not understand what I was doing, as no one who had come to study the system had stopped there half the time. I was checking my impressions, and the longer I stayed the worse they grew. I began by thinking it a drunken place; I Number of persons fined for drunkenness per 1,000 Year Persons per 1,000 Year Persons per 1,000 1865 .. 46 1882 .. 29 1866 . . 30 1883 .. 30 1867 .. 29 1884 . . 29 1868 .. 26 1885 . . 29 1869 .. 28 1886 . . 31 1870 . . 26 1887 .. 32 1871 .. 28 1888 .. 31 1872 . . 28 1889 .. 34 1873 . . 32 1890 . . 40 1874 . . 38 1891 .. 44 1876 . . 42 1892 .. 42 1876 . . 39 1893 . . 37 1877 .. 40 1894 . . 33 1878 . . 32 1895 . . 31 1879 .. 31 1896 .. 35 1880 . . 31 1897 .. 44 1881 .. 32 I 1898 .. 67 256 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION ended by thinking it one of the most drunken places I ever saw. That impression is fully corroborated by the police statistics given on the previous page. For the sake of comparison I will add a few corre- sponding figures for 1898: — England, 7; Newcastle (the most drunken town in England), 17; Scotland, 26; Ireland, 19; Glasgow, 57. That is to say, the police drunkenness of Gothenburg is about eight times the average for England, thrice that of the most drunken town in England, double the average of Scotland, and equal to that of Glasgow. Of course it is argued that these comparisons are fallacious. I have already said something about that in a pre- vious chapter, and I have something more to say about it later on. My own opinion is that they reflect the relative state of things with remarkable accuracy. But, however defective police statistics may be for comparison between different towns and countries, this table holds good for comparing one year with another in Gothenburg itself. The law has been the same as to arrests ever since the system was started, and it has been administered in the same spirit by the same men. There has been no * turn of the screw * either way, and consequently the returns give us a trustworthy bird*s-eye view of the amount of drunkenness from year to year. At first there was a marked and rapid fall, and the improvement continued fairly steady until the pros- perous period of the seventies, when the numbers rose again nearly to their old level relatively to the population. Then they gradually fell again, reaching THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 257 a second low-water mark in 1882, after which they once more rose, slowly at first, but then rapidly, until in 1891 they stood as high as in 1865. All the good effected by the system in respect to drunkenness had vanished. Then followed another fall, to be succeeded by a much greater rise. The last state is far worse than the first. I might give some further statistics from the (General Hospital, which also go to prove that drunkenness has been increasing, but it is unnecessary. Nobody in Sweden denies the fact for a moment. Dr. Wieselgren has repeatedly admitted it in the most straightforward manner, and indeed it is so fully recognised as to have become the lever of a new movement. The revival of drunkenness is generally, and no doubt correctly, attributed to the increasing use of beer. \ i The Swedes, like the Scotch and the Russians, are naturally spirit-drinkers, but under the restrictions imposed on the spirit traffic they have gradually de- veloped a taste for beer. According to the official returns, the annual consumption per head for the whole country increased pretty steadily from 11.1 litres in 1861-65 to 45 litres in 1897 ; but the figures are not reliable, and the exact increase cannot be stated. It is, however, certainly very great. In Gothenburg it is believed that after the spirit bars are closed drinkers betake themselves to the beer- houses, where they are served for an hour or two later, and I can corroborate the statement. I have seen men come already drunk into a beer-house after 6 o'clock — the closing time for spirits — and get 258 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION beer. But there is also a great deal of home drinking, which is proved by the increasing prevalence of drunkenness among women and children. This is the most deplorable feature of the present situation, and it conveys a serious warning to enthusiastic but short-sighted reformers who see only the evil before their faces and, in trying to evade it, run into others, and perhaps worse ones. Formerly drunkenness was practically unknown among women, and only two or three cases would appear in the police-courts in a year; but for some time a marked increase has taken place, and in 1893 144 were fined for this offence, some of them several times, making a total of 201 convictions. The observations at the hospital corroborate this fact, and Dr. Koster, the chief physi- cian, informed me that porter is the form of alcohol principally affected by the women. I also understand that the school teachers complain seriously of a grow- ing tendency to drink among young lads. It is clear that the restrictions imposed on spirits and public- houses have driven the people to beer and home drink- ing, and that in this way the women and children have caught the infection. The reader can now understand how it is that the Gothenburg system is called sometimes a great success and sometimes a great failure, according to the taste and fancy of the speaker. But there remains the third question — to which an answer should be given — ^what effect has it had on the gen- eral welfare of the working classes! For that is, after all, the real and fundamental object with which THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 259 the system was started. Without any doubt it has had a very beneficial effect, and for a perfectly defi- nite reason. The substitution of beer for spirits as an intoxicating agent has been physically very bene- ficial. To the elect one kind of intoxication is prob- ably as baleful as another, but to ordinary mortals it is not, and though there may be as much drunk- enness in Gothenburg to-day as there was in 1865, it is much less injurious to health. The Chief Con- stable explained to me that the drunkards who now pass through the hands of the police are not the miserable, sodden, diseased, and broken-down wretches that they used to be. Physically, he said, there is a great difference, which he attributed to the fact that they are better fed, and so better able to resist the effects of liquor. The explanation is, no doubt, correct; for the beer-drinker is not affected by the same intense loathing for food which accompanies spirit alcoholism, and therefore suffers less in health. The truth is that the drunkenness of Gothenburg in old days was perfectly appalling and only equalled by our own in the eighteenth century. The law of 1855 did a great deal of good, but it is clear from the 1864 report on the causes of industrial poverty and degradation that things still remained very bad, and it is equally clear that under the system which was adopted in consequence of that report they have vastly improved for the reason given. The conclu- sion to be drawn from the revival of drunkenness in Gothenburg is that if a man wants to drink he will drink, and if you make it difficult for him in 260 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION one way he will find another. That is the opinion of the Chief Constable, who knows as much about the question as any man living, and expressed himself, if I remember right, in those very words. He is a staunch friend of the system, but has too much experience of human nature to give way to any rosewater delusions. Placing the beer traffic under the same control as the spirits would, no doubt, have an effect, but it might not be in the direction of sobriety. Already the thirsty Swede has found other means of evading the control of the Bolag besides the beer-house. There is * clubbing,* for in- stance. A gentleman, whose office overlooks an arch- way not far from one of the Bolag 's retail spirit- shops, told me that he often sees two or three working men, who have clubbed together for a bottle of branvin, repair to this convenient spot and do their best to consume the lot then and there. An- other still more ominous method of evasion is the resort to cheap commercial intoxicants. Dr. Koster, a very able observer and also a friend of the system, informed me that he has noticed a tendency to take methylated spirits on the part of those who find it difficult to obtain branvin under the present re- strictions. These observations and the like merely confirm an oft-told tale which warns us not to ex- pect too much from measures of reform. There is no short cut to sobriety, whether by way of Gothen- burg or any other place, and, to do them justice, the Swedes generally recognise this. They only pretend to be working in the right direction, and the clearest- THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 261 headed men among them indulge in no extravagant hopes of the advantages likely to accrue from an ex- tension of their system. Now, if it is difficult to forecast the results of placing the whole of the liquor traffic under com- pany control in Gothenburg, where there is some solid experience to go upon, how much more doubt- ful does the question become when we pass to England, where the conditions differ to an extent which can only be realised by actual and careful ob- servation! Speaking generally, we stand already upon a higher plane as regards sobriety. I have given some evidence in support of that opinion, and will carry it a little further. I have previously com- pared Gothenburg with Cardiff in general terms as places of similar size and character, and, as the latter is in many respects a typical British industrial town, a more detailed comparison may not be unin- structive. Cardiff has its slums, its Irish population, its seafaring men of all nations, and its contingent (often a very rough one) of visitors from the sur- rounding districts. No one can call it a show place or a model of morality. The following table shows the population (estimated), number of establishments selling liquor, police force, number of convictions for drunkenness, and number of cases of illness di- rectly due to drink admitted to hospital in the year 1S93 for Gothenburg and Cardiff respectively: - Popalatlon Liquor- shops Police force Convictions Hospital cases Gothenburg Cardiff 107,000 150,0t)0 850 339 211 201 4.066 482 104 16 262 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION I do not wish to lay more weight on these figures than they will bear, and no one knows their weak points better than myself, but I submit that, when all allowance has been made, they do go to show a marked superiority in favour of the English town with respect to excessive drinking. If the discrepancy between the number of convictions were less, it might be explained away by a possible difference of police procedure, but it is too large for that, and in my opinon there is really very little difference in the police procedure, though the Gothenburg force has the advantage in numbers. I know Cardiff well, and have kept my eyes very wide open with respect to this point in Gothenburg, and the conclusion forced upon me is that the Swedish police act on very much the same principle as a well-conducted force in our own country, and that the returns fairly repre- sent the relative amount of public drunkenness in the two places. The Gothenburg constables appear to be an admirable body of men, of stalwart frame and calm demeanour, and they are fairly in evidence in the streets, but they certainly do not interfere with every tipsy man. The law under which they act runs to this effect: * Any person who takes strong drink in such quantities that from his behaviour and demeanour he appears to be visibly intoxicated and is found in such state in a road, or street, or other public place, will be punished for drunkenness by a fine.' In practice it corresponds exactly with * drunk and incapable ' — that is to say, it applies to any one who staggers so as to be a definite nuisance to others, THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 263 or who cannot get along at all. Disorder is a different count, but Swedish drunkards are much less disorderly than English ones, and consequently a good many more escape the legal consequences of excess by stumbling quietly home. On the other hand, the vicarious stability of a friend's arm is not allowed to exonerate the incapable inebriate; the constable does not turn an indulgent eye on this touching spectacle, like his English colleague, but marks his man down and summons him next day, so that these two points may be set against each other. On the whole, I have convinced myself that if the two forces were to exchange beats there would be no great alteration in the charge-sheet. More- over the police returns are corroborated in a remark- able way by the medical evidence. Out of 1,273 admissions to the Gothenburg Hospital there were 104 cases of chronic or acute alcoholism of different kinds; out of 1,303 admissions to the Cardiff Infir- mary there were only 15. The discrepancy should really be greater, for while the Swedish cases were all of well-marked primary alcoholic disease, I have, in order to be on the right side, included in the Cardiff list some more doubtful cases, such as peripheral neuritis and granular kidney. Surely this medical evidence would suffice by itself to establish my contention; in combination with the rest it ap- pears to me as conclusive as any such evidence can possibly be. But probably no Englishman who has had good oppOTlunities of seeing Swedes drink will need any 264 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION further proof that they are more given to the vice than ourselves. It is largely a matter of climate and perhaps also of race, but certainly of climate, as I have pointed out in an earlier chapter. All classes, including ladies, consume alcohol in a concentrated form with an ease which only habitual topers can command under a warmer or drier sky. The moderately drinking Englishman, who begins by repudiating the proffered dram, soon finds that he can stand it, and then grows to like it. Whether for this or for other reasons, public opinion sanctions a greater laxity than with us, and that is reflected in the conduct of the public-houses. I have repeatedly seen men served in a beer-shop who would be turned out of almost any public-house in London, and the difference was forcibly borne in upon me on one particular occasion. I visited a music-hall frequented, not by the lowest class of working men, but by the class just above them and by the inferior bourgeois. As luck would have it I sat down next a drunken man. He was in the affectionate mood, which is only one degree less trying than the quarrelsome, and he gave me the full benefit of his friendly emotions. The fellow told me that he had a pocket- ful of money, which accounted for his high good humour, and insisted on ordering relays of bottled beer. At the same time he kept up a tremendous noise, shouting at the top of his voice and repeatedly drawing the attention of the whole place. In an English house he would have been sternly warned and then summarily ejected, but here the attendant THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 265 merely beamed on him with a mild and ineffectual remonstrance, and brought him more beer. One reason why inebriated Swedes receive more lenient treatment in public places may be that, as a rule, they are far less given to violent disorder than English blackguards in a like case. At any rate, custom in Sweden certainly does regard the failing with a more lenient eye. Now, these considerations explain both the neces- sity and the efficacy of the Gothenburg system in the land of its birth, but they add to the difficulty of estimating its chances of success in England. In- deed, no confident opinion can be formed on the sub- ject a posteriori; the evidence from fact is inade- quate. That such opinions have been repeatedly formed in diametrically opposite senses sufficiently proves their untrustworthiness. Of a priori opinions we have, of course, an abundance, but they are not worth discussing. Perhaps, however, some additional light may be gained from the Gothenburg experience by considering for a moment the detailed measures of reform instituted under the company system. Some may be briefly dismissed as being either non- contentious or unimportant. Among the former is the provision prohibiting the sale of spirits to young persons. The Swedish law fixes the minimum age at 15, but the Bolag has raised it to 18, and there can be no two honest opinions about the advantages of this measure. The prohibition of sales on credit is another good move, but of more importance in Sweden than in urban England, where public-house credit 266 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION is not a very common commodity. Supplying a stand- ard measure and quality of liquor, on the other hand, has a doubtful value from the temperance point of view, however admirable in a commercial sense. It would mean with us, on the whole, that a given sum of money would go rather further towards the pur- chase of intoxication than it does at present, for the great adulterant is water, and the dishonest glass errs on the side of smallness. Raising the price and lowering the strength sound very drastic measures, and no doubt they might be made so, but the Goth- enburg Bolag has only ventured on changes so small as to be inappreciable. Spirits would still be very cheap if the price were doubled, but perhaps there are practical objections to this course. The ex- periment, however, would be very interesting, and could not fail to have a great effect. Probably it would lead to illicit distilling. With us there is no such margin for alteration. Reduction in the number of public-houses is an old controversial point, on which the experience of Gothenburg throws no clear light, though public opinion there attaches considerable importance to the measure. Altering the aspect and arrangement of the public-houses is another point on which the advocates of the system both in Sweden and England lay great stress, but nothing that I have seen has convinced me that there is anything in it whatever. The Bolag public- house is less showy outside and more comfortable inside than the average English pothouse, but why this should be supposed to make for temperance I THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 267 entirely fail to understand, and I am perfectly certain that as a matter of fact it does not. If the idea is to turn the pothouse into a sort of caje, I can understand and heartily sympathise with the object; but the caje is made by and conforms to the habits of the customers; to expect the reverse to happen is to ask the cart to pull the horse. The Bolag public- house might very well be a ca^^ and if it were in France or Italy it would be, but being where it is it remains a pothouse, where the people just drink as hard as they are allowed to. Would not the same thing happen in England? Supplying meals is an- other measure intended to serve the same end, and not much more effective in practice. It rests appar- ently on the supposition that a customer does not know whether he wants food or drink, and that the opportunity of the one may induce him to forego the other. It is faithfully carried out in Gothenburg, but the bar still enjoys undiminished patronage. We come now to what is generally considered the cardinal point of the system — namely, the elimina- tion of personal profit on liquor in the conduct of the public-house. In Gothenburg, I have no doubt, it has a real value; the Bolag manager is more par- ticular and careful than his extremely lax colleague the beer-house publican, and probably the difference between him and his predecessor at the spirit bar is still greater. With us too it would have an effect. It would abolish the badly conducted house and level up the whole traffic to the standard of the best. Un- doubtedly an improvement; but what it would rep- 268 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION resent in actual results is a matter of opinion. Some think the difference would be enormous. I cannot I agree with them. One thing is certain. No system j will prevent people getting drunk on the premises. The Bolag, with ample powers and the best will in the world, certainly does not. I have seen a man tumble out of one of their shops and go staggering down the street; I have seen others served who had obviously had too much already, and, though not * drunk and incapable ' at the moment, would un- doubtedly be so within five minutes of their getting outside. And was not one of our model public-houses convicted of serving a drunken man a few days after it was opened? On the whole, I should say a decent English publican is stricter than a Bolag manager, because a drunken man is more likely to get him into trouble by stopping and making a noise. As for * pushing the sale, ' I have already discussed that dear delusion, and will merely observe that the Bolag \ \ manager attends more promptly to his customers than any English publican I ever saw. Finally, there is the question of early closing, and this appears to me by far the most important and efficient difference between the English and the Gothenburg public-house. \ The strongest argument for the Scandinavian system ^ is that it is the easiest and most complete way of controlling the hours. On this head it should be observed that the Swedish law places great power in the hands of the local authority apart from the system altogether. The legal hour for closing is ten, but it may be advanced or retarded by the town THE SCANDINAVIAN SYSTEM 269 authorities at pleasure. Thus in Gothenburg all public-houses close at eight, hotels and restaurants at twelve, while the Bolag shuts its bars at six or seven. Of course, this obviously means one law for the rich and another for the poor, and results in some curious anomalies. For instance, in one of the Bolag establishments the poor man on the ground floor cannot drink at the bar after six and is turned out at eight, while his social superior can have what he pleases up till eleven in a room above. The contrast was forcibly impressed upon me once by a young gentleman who with great gravity and a glazed eye explained to me the advantages of the Gothenburg system as well as a thickened utterance would permit. To my description of some drunken men I had seen that evening he replied sympathetically * Bajjob ! ' which is not Swedish but drunkenese for * Bad job ! ' I left him at 11,30 p.m. still opening fresh bottles in the restaurant of an hotel which is nominally under the control of the Bolag. The docile and sub- missive Swedish working man does not kick against the invidious distinction, but how wouJd the free-bom Briton take it? However, so great a discrepancy would not be necessary. Bars might very well be closed an hour earlier than restaurants and hotels without exciting class prejudices. Of course this could also be done by statutory legislation, but the pros- pect is not very promising. Under the company sys- tem it would be a matter of course. It only remains to add that the lessons derived from other considerable towns in Sweden and Norway 270 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION » are substantially the same. The profits of the traffic are somewhat differently distributed, a much larger share going to the State in Norway, but the net results may be summarised as general improvement in the traffic, diminished consumption of spirits, and a large amount of drunkenness with a tendency to increase. The average annual figures for drunken- ness (that is, number of convictions per 1,000) in recent years are — Stockholm, 33 ; Bergen, 26 ; Chris- tiania, 56. Christiania is quite as drunken as Goth- enburg or Glasgow, and even Bergen is far more drunken than the worst town in England. 271 CHAPTER XII : HABITUAL INEBRIATES The Legislature has wisely proceeded by slow steps in trying to deal with this painful class. They present a most perplexing problem — so perplexing that one's mind involuntarily reverts to the Old Eccles system of hastening the end by providing opportunities for unlimited indulgence ; but, however diverting or sensible that treatment may be in a play, it cannot be advocated in seriousness. Neither the individual nor the State can shirk the duty of doing what they can for these wrecks of humanity. What can they do ? It is now generally recognised that the first essential is to keep them entirely from drink, and all those who have had any experience of inebriates know that this cannot be done under the ordinary conditions of life even when the patient is most willing to co-operate. Hence the invention of homes, retreats, and reformatories, which are intended to make abstinence effective for a given period. Homes or retreats are for voluntary patients; reformatories for persons committed by magistrates on conviction in court. The former were established on a legal 272 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION footing under license by the Act of 1879 ; the latter by the Act of 1898. Or, more correctly, legal machinery for establishing them was provided by those Acts. We have, therefore, more than twenty years' experience of licensed retreats, but public reformatories have existed for a very short time, and only on a small scale, as local authorities have not been in a hurry to avail themselves of the power to set up such institutions given by the Act of 1898. According to the Government inspector's last report there were at the end of 1900 twenty licensed retreats with 357 beds, and five reformatories with 416 beds. Both have since increased and will no doubt continue to increase, for the desire to make use of them and the consequent demand for accommodation seem to be growing steadily. A good deal of disappointment at the small results of the Act of 1898 has been expressed by advocates of reformatory treatment, and local authori- ties have been blamed for not utilising their powers on a larger scale. It is said that the Act has made no perceptible difference. That is true; it has not; but the local authorities are not to blame. I read in the Government report that at the end of July 1901 there were 428 beds available for committed cases, of which 285 were occupied. The accommodation, though not very large, was then in excess of the demand. This does not mean that there were in England and Wales only 285 persons proper subjects for reformatory treatment, because more than two-thirds of the local authorities — county HABITUAL INEBRIATES 278 councils, county and non-county boroughs — were unprovided with accommodation; but it does mean that the number of persons committed in those places which have accommodation is much smaller than was anticipated by many people. The fact is urged as an argument for extending the existing powers of compulsory detention to classes of drunkards who at present escape ; and I am not prepared to condemn the proposal. But I am certain that whatever may be done in this direction the result will prove very disappointing unless the question is more clearly understood than it appears to be at present. It is necessary to define our aims and examine the prospect of realising them with some attempt at precision. There are three classes of persons to be dealt with — (1) voluntary patients; (2) persons compul- sorily committed on account of offences, to wit criminal or repeated public drunkenness; (3) in- ebriates who neither submit to voluntary restraint nor come within the grasp of the existing law. The two first classes are covered by the Acts already mentioned; roughly speaking, the one furnishes the inmates of the existing retreats, the other those of the reformatories. I say * roughly speaking ' because a good deal of domestic compulsion is sometimes applied to the first class, while individuals committed by a court may acquiesce willingly in the sentence. The object of both retreats and reformatories is the same, namely, the cure of inebriety; and the means are the same, namely, restraint along with such 274 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION other influences as may be brought to bear. Other- wise the two are on a totally different footing. Retreats are either philanthropic or business concerns, or a mixture. That is to say, they are supported by charity or (more frequently) by the payment of the patients. They are, in either case, wholly voluntary. There can, therefore, be no objection to their multiplication and no hesitation in encouraging them. Even if the result is small it is all to the good. For my own part I believe that more could be done in the way of efficient reclamation by philanthropic homes for poor voluntary patients, especially young women, than by any other means. I would not have them purely charitable; the patients should earn their keep or pay something. But this is by the way. The point I wished to make was that when we come to public institutions the case is entirely different. The State and the local authorities are trustees for the public, and cannot afford to indulge in philanthropic investments unless there is a reasonable prospect of getting a fair return for the money. They are, therefore, quite justified in going slowly to work. They have no right to embark on large and costly experiments at the ratepayers* expense unless there are very good gi'ounds for believing that the results will be com- mensurate. It cannot be said that there are such grounds in the present case. The experience of other countries, which is often cited, is of very little value. In the first place they are other countries, and in the second HABITUAL INEBRIATES 275 the results have never been critically examined. The official reports of institutions for the cure of anything are always rose-coloured, and the enormous discount which has to be taken off in the case of other foreign experiments in dealing with drink is a warning against too ready credence in this matter. Of more value to us is the experience of our voluntary retreats. The most promising fact about these establish- ments — familiarly known to the initiated as * dip- shops/ from the word dipsomania — is the gradual increase in the number of patients making use of them. It indicates an increasing number of persons willing to submit to restraint for their own good. In twenty years they have risen from 31 to 422 or more per annum. But even the higher figure is very small. It represents the total number received during the year, not the number under treatment at once. That is very much less — but little more than half, so far as can be estimated from the returns. The total accommodation provided in 1900 for males and females under the Act and other- wise was 476; but several of the homes are never, and others are rarely, full, so that the existing provi- sion is not fully utilised. The number under treat- ment at the end of the year was only 237. As this cannot, on the most optimistic estimate, represent more than a fraction of the persons needing treatment and able to pay for it, the inference may be fairly drawn that the majority of inebriates are not as yet anxious to avail themselves of the advantages of 276 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION retreat.^ That may be and is used as an argument for their compulsory committal, but it is a somewhat dangerous one to use, for it goes to show that they will resist compulsion if possible, and being commit- ted against their own wish will not be in a favourable condition to profit by the discipline. This is a very important consideration, to which I shall return presently. It is strengthened by the fact that, small as is the number of persons now applying for treat- ment, the majority even of these willing patients pre- fer to enter for very short — and quite useless — terms, and that upon a private footing which gives their keeper no legal hold over them. Perhaps I ought to explain that patients may enter a home either on a private footing or on a legal one — ' under the Acts,' as the phrase usually runs. In the former case no formalities are required and inmates are still their own masters. In the latter, certain documents must be signed. The applicant must sign a request for admission, for a stated period, before two justices of the peace or a stipendiary magistrate; and two other persons — friends or relatives — must sign a statutory declara- tion that the applicant is an habitual drunkard within the meaning of the Act. A patient so entered is liable to prosecution and penalties for breaking bounds, obtaining liquor, or otherwise violating the rules of the establishment. These formalities, which are mainly intended to safeguard the liberty ' The annual report of one home states that * in nine cases out of ten the friends are unable to persuade the inebriate.' HABITUAL INEBRIATES 277 of patients, are said to act as a deterrent on account of the publicity involved, about which inebriates are often very sensitive; but it may be doubted if the real motive for avoiding them is not rather the dis- like of submitting to legal restraint. At any rate, about half do not submit themselves to it, and of those who do a large proportion consent only to short terms. Out of the whole number admitted in 1900 only 131 entered for twelve months and upwards under the Acts, against 203 who entered as private patients for an average period of eighteen weeks, which is a mere make-believe. At the Rickmans- worth home, out of 606 patients discharged since it was opened 282 entered under the Acts, and 324 as private patients; the average period of detention was six and a half months; 119 entered for twelve months or more, and 253 for three months or less. From these facts I draw the conclusion that out of the comparatively small number of inebriates who are sufficiently desirous of reform to undergo the discipline of a retreat, only a much smaller number enter upon the experiment with a sincere determina- tion to do their best. In point of fact, a good many are there mainly because their relations, on whom they are dependent, cannot put up with them any longer, and insist upon their trying the experiment. They have a sort of feeble wish to rehabilitate them- selves, but it is as nothing against the habit of gratifying the desire of the moment, fixed by a life- time of steady self-indulgence. What do they do? In the first place, they regard their period of enforced 278 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION abstinence with intense loathing, as a martyrdom. That is their standing frame of mind. Then they not infrequently kick over the traces. I do not wish to suggest any charge against the management of existing * dip-shops.' Some are better and some are worse conducted, but they are either commercial speculations or more or less struggling charities, and adequate surveillance is very expensive. Besides, servants can be bribed. Drunkards are very cun- ning, and superintendents cannot know all that goes on. It may be more difficult to obtain liquor in one place than another, but it is possible in all, at any rate in the male homes. In one which enjoys, and I believe deservedly, a very high reputation, and is always recommended by the most eminent specialists in alcoholism, I know that liquor has been systemat- ically obtained by a confederate outside slinging a bottle over the wall in a basket ; and I myself possess a bottle of whisky which was procured and presented to me in another home by a patient. It stands in my cupboard alongside a companion curiosity in the shape of a bottle of potheen presented to me by an Irish priest in the far west of Ireland. I can see him now — ^the best fellow in the world — running down the steps of his house, his coat-tails flying, and the bottle in his hand as a parting gift. It would be difficult to say which trophy contains the more nauseous liquid ; but while the clerical one stands for pure hospitality and patriotic pride, my friend in the dip-shop produced his in order to prove how easily he could obtain the forbidden fruit and how cour- HABITUAL INEBRIATES 279 ageously he abstained from it himself — which I am afraid he did not. No such proof was needed. If a man makes up his mind to get liquor, and can command either money or credit, there is no place outside a gaol or an asylum in which he cannot gratify his desire. I do not say that this is done in all homes, or done regularly in any, but it is done, and some- times a regular outbreak of drunkenness results. My belief is that it would occur oftener if more patients were committed for a long period. They can get through a short spell fairly well by thinking over past delights, and promising themselves a delicious recompense — ^just one — for their present pangs when the sentence is up. If they had a longer time to serve, more would break out. The tone and atmosphere of the place are dead against good resolves. It is nobody's fault, but an inherent defect in the system, and an extremely serious one. Here are a lot of persons addicted to a particular vice — sometimes with concomitant vices — and they are all herded together, cut off from the rest of mankind, solely on account of that vice. What is their conversation about? Well, what is the conversation of criminals about in a similar situa- tion? Invariably about crime — the crimes they have committed and the crimes they are going to commit. So the conversation in a dip -shop is all about drink, the drinks of the past and the drinks of the future. That is to say, in the male homes; of the female ones I have no personal knowledge though from what I know of women generally, and 280 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION inebriates in particular, I should expect it to be still more true of them, as they are much more loquacious and confidential. But of the male homes I can speak, having known several patients who have been in several homes, and having mixed in their society in one. The conversation is of drink and women and other dip-shops, and it is not edifying. What else can be expected? Some at least, and generally the majority, are youngish men who have led idle, self-indulgent lives, devoted to amusement. They are cut off from their usual occupations and have no other interests to fall back upon. They lead a pathetically joyless existence, intensified by the consciousness that the world regards them as a species of social outcast, and they inevitably seek consolation in the demoralising contemplation of those who are worse than themselves. The sense of degradation is made supportable by the spectacle of an equal or a lower degradation, which tends insensibly downwards. A few days spent in this atmosphere seem like a nightmare: months of it must reduce to despair. The moral influence is exactly the opposite to that which inebriates require. The thing they need is the gradual restoration of their self-respect by the companionship of people who are not inebriates and whose example stimulates upwards. This is the fundamental dilemma of the problem, which has been entirely overlooked. The physical benefit of restraint in a home is neutralised by the moral evil of its associations. The more reckless and degraded spirits set the tone, which HABITUAL INEBRIATES 281 tends to weaken the best resolutions. To use the words of a patient, * You go in more or less of a gentleman and you come out a roaring, seething cad/ A man may be ashamed of himself when he enters, but his companions soon reassure him. There will be some one to keep him in countenance in his worst moments. He finds himself the member of a sort of fraternity — the noble Order of Dips. Its lodges are the various dip -shops, which are freely discussed by the brethren, just as doss-houses and other haunts are discussed by tramps. Some inmates spend their time going in and out from one home to another, and the recruit soon learns all about them, the strictness of the management, the comfort, the food supplied, the character of the * doctor,* and so forth. At the same time he hears of notable dips and their exploits in the way of drinking. In short, he gets to know the ropes and lives in an atmosphere of dipsomania. What is the result? Let me again quote the words of a patient : ' If he be weak, then any resolu- tion he may have formed as to turning himself out a permanent cure is cast to the four winds.' And most inebriates are weak, or they would not be inebriates. The upshot is that, whatever their original intentions may have been, the majority become callous to their condition, and only look forward to the hour of release. As the same authority puts it, * Their enforced abstinence from stimulants only whets their appetite, and when they have finished the period for which they entered they embark 282 DRINK, TE]MPEIIANCE, AND LEGISLATION on a terrific burst, which ends in their condition being worse than when they entered the home.' I am afraid there is only too much truth in this account, which further depicts the proceedings of the average patient on leaving at the completion of his term: * It is more than probable that he stops on his way home at the nearest pub to drink success to himself and perdition to all retreats and those connected with them.' They do not all cherish this idiotic frame of mind, or indulge in these idiotic proceedings. A considerable number derive tem- porary benefit at any rate, and some, it is hoped, are permanently cured, but, of course, no one can say with any certainty, because relapses may occur at any time. The record of the Dalrymple Home, Rickmansworth, is 247 patients either * doing well ' or * improved ' out of 606. The terms are vague, and no information is given with regard to the time elapsed since discharge. How many have remained sober G.\e years after treatment? Are there 5 per cent. ? If, however, even a small percentage of cases derive substantial benefit, that is no doubt a sufficient justification for the existence and encouragement of retreats which are self-supporting or maintained by private charity. But, as I have said, public in- stitutions at the public cost stand on a different foot- ing. The question is not whether a few chosen brands can be plucked from the burning, but whether the aggregate benefit to the community is likely to justify the outlay. Now if the results of restraint are such as I have HABITUAL INEBRIATES 283 described in the majority or even a minority of patients belonging to class (1), who are so far desirous of reformation as at least to submit them- selves voluntarily to the discipline, what can be expected of class (2), who only submit under com- pulsion? It is true that they are got out of the way for a time, to the great relief of their friends; but the establishment of State reformatories on a large scale could hardly be justified on those grounds. I take it that reclamation is the object in view, and I ask, What chance is there of any commensurate result? It will be argued that the disappointing results in voluntary homes are largely due to the short terms of detention, and that if the minimum period were twelve months there would be more successes. There might be, but there would also be another result — namely, fewer patients. I entirely agree that the longer the period of enforced absti- nence the more complete the physical regeneration. That is a conclusion, based upon experience, in which I believe every one agrees. I^atients who enter for twelve months turn out far better than those who enter for only three or six ; but to argue that compul- sory restraint for twelve months would necessarily bring the three and six months' cases up to the same standard of success is to ignore one half of the whole question. Twelve months' cases do better, not merely because they are under restraint for twelve months, but also because they are better disposed to profit by it. The fact that they have voluntarily submitted to the longer period proves that they are 284 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION more truly alive to their condition and more firmly- resolved to make a serious effort. The compulsory twelve-monthers would be in no such frame of mind. On the contrary, they would be more exasperated and more refractory than if their sentence were shorter. This point brings me to an important misconcep- tion which tends to obscure the whole question at present. We have so developed the physical side of the problem that we are apt to forget the moral one, and even that there is a moral one. I quite agree tliat inebriety or dipsomania is a disease with a certain physical basis, though what that is nobody knows. We only know by experience that whatever may be the nature of the disease it must be treated by total abstinence. Otherwise there can be no cure. In establishing that principle medical science has done great service. But to lose sight of the other side, to regard inebriety as merely a physical disease and to suppose that physical treatment alone will do lasting good, is to make a great mistake, and a very common one. ^ Perhaps nobody would admit taking that view in so many words, but it underlies the reasoning of those who expect much from compul- sory abstinence. The theory is that inebriates are the victims of a physical malady which takes the form of an ' irresistible craving,' and renders them powerless to withstand temptation; and that when the poison is eliminated the craving will be gone with it. There is some truth in it, but only half the truth. The primary malady is not physical but moral, if we admit a moral element at all, and it HABITUAL INEBRIATES 285 remains after the other has been removed. It is aggravated by the physical condition and lessened by the latter 's improvement, I allow, but as it existed before, so it continues after. This is what is so often overlooked. * Irresistible craving * is one of those phrases with which people intoxicate them- selves. It covers a multitude of fallacies, for those who use it do not see that either there is no such thing or else it involves the denial of all moral responsibility. Every desire which any individual fails to resist is to that individual an irresistible craving, and in no other sense is the drunkard's craving irresistible. He does not resist it because he does not want to with sufficient energy. He would like to be free from the disadvantages of being a drunkard, but he does not want to stop drinking. If he did he would stop. When he has a sufficiently strong motive he does stop. Let me give you two or three examples, some of them classical ones. Dr. Johnson found at one time in his life that if he began to drink he invariably went on until he got drunk, and being a man of great self-respect he promptly ceased drinking at all. He had the * irresistible craving ' of the physical malady; only he resisted it because he possessed the moral strength to do so. De Quincey emancipated himself from the opium inebriety, which is far more difficult to cure than the alcoholic, not by his moral strength, but simply and solely because the results of taking opium became more painful than absten- tion, painful as that was. His case is an admirable 286 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION lesson in the real principles involved. The * irresist- ible craving ' became resistible in the presence of a stronger motive. I can parallel these classical examples from my own knowledge. A confirmed dipsomaniac who had tried pretty nearly everything was at last given up by all his friends and relations ; when lo! his pride came to his assistance. He said to himself, * Everybody has given me up. Well, hang it! I won't give myself up.' And without any further assistance he turned over a new leaf and abstained for a long time. In the second case, an Irish priest in the first stage of delirium tremens, and absolutely mad for drink, became quite manage- able on learning that the bishop had been sent for. His * irresistible craving ' — and it was the extremest form — ^was resisted at once with the assistance of fear. I could give more examples from an intimate experi- ence of inebriates, but perhaps these will suffice to illustrate the point. I maintain, therefore, that a physical craving which is absolutely irresistible does not exist. Irresistibility has always a moral element, and any theory which does not take that into account only leads to error. This seems to me to be the case with the reformatory theory, as ordinarily held. I agree with it so far as this — that the inebriate's power of self-control is impaired and can only be restored by abstinence; but the theory goes further and assumes that abstinence also gives the desire to use the repaired self-control. That is the mistake. Self- control and desire to reform are different things. HABITUAL INEBRIATES 287 Abstinence helps the one, but not the other. The utmost that treatment in a home can do — and I am sure every doctor who has conducted one will agree here — is to give a patient a fresh start, and, if any lasting benefit is to result, the treatment must be preceded and accompanied by a strong and earnest desire to amend. Otherwise the patient merely be- gins again with the same moral defect that originally led to the downfall, intensified, it may be, by demoralising companionship. In that case the issue is a foregone conclusion. Physical treatment does not mean a moral cure, and in every case the disease is primarily moral. Drunkards make all sorts of excuses, which impose upon soft-hearted people and theorists, but no one becomes a helpless inebriate without a prolonged course of conscious self-indul- gence. The habit may be broken off, but if the self- indulgence which led to it remains, then the same thing infallibly happens again. The craving still remains irresistible. In truth, it is fallacious to speak of * curing ' inebriety. The inebriate must cure himself, and all that can be done for him is to assist his endeavour by placing self-indulgence out of his reach. What chance, then, is there of curing those who are so little anxious to reform that they will not voluntarily submit to restraint? And what differ- ence will it make whether they are incarcerated for six months or six years? Just about the same difference that it makes to other hardened offenders. The fear of getting into trouble again may make 288 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION them somewhat more wary, but they set about gratifying their instincts from the first moment of release. We must expect drunkards to do the same. My object in saying so much is not to depre- cate effort in this direction, but to prevent illusion and the discouragement and reaction which come from disappointed hopes. We have got to do the best we can for these specimens of the unfit, and the less self-deception we indulge in the more likely we are to succeed. We must be content with small results and not fall into the mistake of supposing that large and imposing operations will succeed in a matter of this kind when lesser ones fail. There is a general tendency to think so at the present time. It is seen that the retreats and reformatories established for my two first classes of drunkards make, and are likely to make, little or no perceptible difference in the mass of drunkenness, and a cry arises for means to deal with the third class, which neither submits to voluntary imprisonment nor comes within reach of the law by the commission of drunken crime or by repeated convictions for drunk- enness in the police-court. This is a far more difficult step and one promising even less results than the existing systems which have proved so disap- pointing. To frame an Act of Parliament dealing with the class to some extent is not beyond the wit of man, but to make it work effectively is another matter. It may be taken as certain that public opinion HABITUAL INEBRIATES 289 will not tolerate any procedure with regard to alleged inebriates which safeguards their liberty less carefully than that of lunatics. No other attitude is ad- missible, for, however obnoxious inebriates may be, they are less dangerous to themselves and other people than lunatics, and therefore society has a less incontestable right to place them under summary constraint. Now, it is not always easy to bring a lunatic under the law, as may be seen from the constant occurrence of tragedies committed by maniacs at large, and from the conduct of those ladies who haunt the Law Courts to the terror of His Majesty's judges. Certificates have to be signed by several independent persons stating specific proofs of insanity within the personal knowledge of each witness. These are sometimes very hard to obtain, but it would obviously be extremely difficult, and often quite impossible, to obtain such independent evidence proving inebriety. It is notoriously difficult to prove a single act of simple drunkenness. In the ordinary five-shilling police-court case there is often a conflict of evidence, and in more serious ones, even when public misconduct affords solid ground for the charge, it is successfully resisted. Illness, fits, sunstroke, what not, are pleaded, and expert witnesses brought to support the plea. How incom- parably more difficult to prove inebriety! You can- not call in an independent medical man to certify inebriety on a single occasion as you can with lunacy. Long acquaintance with the patient's habits would be necessary, such as only the friends and relatives 290 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION possess; and their testimony, which, is not allowed to suffice for lunacy, could not be allowed to suffice in the other case. Then the inebriate must have the right of appeal to a jury no less than the lunatic, and the only result would be that every one would shrink from certifying inebriety. Remember that when a drunkard is sober he can answer for himself as well as any one else in court, and that, coupled with the medical difficulty of proving drunkenness, would make the conviction of such a client, well defended, almost impossible. If a jury could pro- nounce Mrs. SEine, then there is hardly an inebriate in existence whom they would convict. In short, the condition of inebriety is far too ill defined, too hazy, and too little susceptible of demonstration to stand the searching test of a court of law. And if it is objected that such tests are quite unnecessary, I would reply that, in view of the abuses to which laxity would open the door, it is more necessary to protect an alleged inebriate with aU possible care than an alleged lunatic, for this reason: a lunatic's sentence (if I may use the term) is indefinite. A certificate only runs for a fort- night, and at any time subsequently he may — and does — regain his freedom on regaining his senses, which is a matter of observation and susceptible of proof. But the inebriate is to be sentenced to a fixed term, which all experts are agreed should not be less than one or two years, or even more, if it is to do any real good. The prisoner has to serve his time out. He cannot prove that he has HABITUAL INEBRIATES 291 recovered, because he is sane and sober from the outset. And it would surely be a dangerous thing if the law were so framed as to permit the incar- ceration of anybody, even for six months, without due care. A few drugs adroitly administered, and an obnoxious person goes to the * reformatory ' for a lengthy period without the chance of release. He or she is an * inebriate,' and cannot prove the con- trary as a pretended lunatic can. The doctor, in perfect good faith, smiles at the denial, for all inebriates firmly believe themselves cured in every interval of sobriety. In short, proof of inebriety cannot be lightly accepted by the law because subsequent disproof is quite impossible. We should have all the old lunacy scandals over again. In practice the difficulty might be found less formidable than I have represented, but it is sufficiently serious to show that effective legislation is not the simple matter it appears to the ardent reformer. What would probably happen is that the law would get hold of those advanced inebriates who are incapable of managing their affairs and whose condition can be easily proved — persons, that is to say, who are the least hopeful subjects for treatment. It would hardly be possible to get hold of the beginners, of whom some good might be hoped just because they are beginners. But what I want more particularly to point out is that no such legislation — ^nor any reformatory scheme — will touch the male drunkards who cause the great mass of misery and suffering in this country. The 292 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION contrary hope is based on a prevalent error suggested by the term * habitual drunkard, ' which confuses the inebriate, or diseased and more or less insane drunkard, with the man who gets habitually drunk. It is the latter whom you expect and want to get hold of, and in the upper classes, with which medical specialists in inebriety are chiefly conversant, he is identical with the inebriate, because no one else gets habitually drunk. In the lower classes it is not so. The English working man — I do not speak of social wrecks — who gets drunk every Saturday, who squanders the bulk of his wages in the public- house, neglects and ill-uses his wife and children or drives them to the workhouse, is very rarely an inebriate in the medical sense — not once in a hundred cases. He exhibits neither the physical degeneration nor the enfeebled will of the inebriate. He acts deliberately and has no lack of self-control. He is not a fit subject for the reformatory even if it were possible to get him there. He does not come within the definition of * inebriate ' in the Act of Parliament, because he is quite capable of managing his own affairs and is very often an exceptionally skilful workman; nor is he caught by the provision re- specting repeated convictions, because he generally takes care to stop short of incapacity to get home. The town clerk of Bristol, in giving evidence before the Peel Commission, made a statement which excited some surprise and incredulity. He said they had only six or seven men in Bristol who were habitual drunkards. He was quite right in the HABITUAL INEBRIATES 293 sense indicated, but they have scores who habitually get drunk. This does not apply to women of the same class for reasons which I have mentioned more than once. In 1900 the number of cases committed to reforma- tories under the Act of 1898 was 16 males to 128 females. As more use is made of the Act I should expect this disparity to be more strongly marked, and I have no doubt that it will eventually make a considerable impression on the mass of female drunkenness. An extension of the law to class (3) would also be more likely to take effect among women than among men. Unfortunately a large proportion of female inebriates are the least hopeful subjects of reformatory treatment, and that fact must be faced. It has already caused some discouragement. The Government inspector attributes it to the picking out at first of the worst cases by magistrates for experimental treatment. * There is evidence,' he says, ' of discouragement on the part of managers of reformatories who are called upon, in the early stages of their work, to deal with a worse class than they anticipated, and are proportionately disap- pointed in not obtaining evidence of the large per- centage of good results they might under other circumstances have reasonably hoped for.' And he suggests that later on a more promising class will come into their hands. I hope that will be the case. There is a promising class of women. Indeed, women who are reformable at all are much more easily reformed than men. Their condition is more often due to some 294 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION quite temporary trouble, physical or mental, and they can more readily displace the alcoholic, excite- ment by some emotional influence. But I am afraid that these will always form a minority. The conclusion I draw is that the reformatory system will fail to touch the bulk of the male drunk- ards and will not reform the bulk of the female. This will seem very pessimistic to some, but it is not. It only means that this agent is limited in its action like the rest. But it is none the less worth using, like the rest; and the more clearly its limitations are realised the more purposeful will its application be, and the less subject to disturbance by that dis- couragement of which the inspector has so soon found evidence. Perhaps I ought to say something about drugs. They have a proper use in the treatment of inebriates, as of any other patients, but on general lines. As for specific * cures, ' I am open to conviction, but want good evidence. All that I have seen is quite worth- less, and bears the stamp of quackery on its face. It could only impose on the ignorant. BIBLIOGRAPHY The literature of drink and temperance is very voluminous, but most of it is vehemently controversial, one-sided, and uninforming. The following is a list of publications selected because they either contain solid information or possess some other interest. Historical Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England. R. V. FRENCH. History of Drink. J. Samuelson. History and Science of Drunkenness. W. ACKROTD. Temperance History. Dawson Burns. .- Legal Intoxicating Liquor Licensing Latos. J. Paterson. "^ The Licensing Laws. G. C. Whiteley. *^ The Licensing Laws, so far as they relate to the Sale of Intoxicating Liquor. R. M. Montgomery, vr The Need and Practicability of Licensing Reform. F. E. Slee. ^ — (A critical examination of the recommendations of the Peel Commis- sion. Aleo contain? a enmmary of the existing law, very conven- iently arranged.) Scientific Alcoholism: A Study in Heredity. G. Archdall Reid, M.B. ^^ (An application of the Darwinian theory to alcoholism. Dr. Reid argnes with much force that alcoholism tends to die oat in a race throngh the elimination of the more alcoholic; but he pushes the theory too far and ignores other factors.) UAlcool et VAlcooUsme. H. Triboulet et F. Mathieu. w- Drunkenness. G. R. Wilson, M.D. ^ General The Liquor Problem in its Legislative Aspects. Committee of New York. (A critical and dispassionate study of the most important legislative experiments in the. United States.) 296 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION The Temperance Problem and Social Reform. J. RowntbeB and A. Shebwell. (A detailed examination of the American and Scandinavian experi- ments. Is a strong plea for the Norwegian method of disinterested management, and should be read in conjunction with Mr. T. P. Whittaker's Memorandum (see below) on the opposite side. The authors fall into all the fallacies with regard to consumption pointed out above (pp. 70, 117), and base their argument on the mistaken belief that Norway is the most sober country in Europe.) Liquor Legislation in the United States and Canada. E. L. ^ Fanshawe. (An examination of these experiments by an English barrister.) The Gothenburg System of Liquor Traffic. E. R. L. Gould. (Prepared for the United States Commissioner of Labour. Is a full / and accurate statement of facts in regard to the legislation of Nor- way and Sweden.) Official Special Reports: Select Committee (House of Commons) on Intoxica- tion, 1834. Select Committee (House of Commons) on Public- houses, 1854. Select Committee (House of Commons) on Habitual Drunkards, 1872. Select Committee (House of Lords) on Intemperance, 1876. Select Committee (House of Commons) on British and Foreign Spirits, 1890. Royal Commission on Sunday Closing, 1890. Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, 1896. (Mr. T. P. Whittaker's Memorandum, attached to the Final Report, -v^^ / states the case for Local Veto against the Scandinavian system ; V should be read with Messrs. Rowutree and Sherwell's book. They answer each other.) Return of Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages, Ac, in the United Kingdom 1861-1893, 1894. Annuxil Returns: Judicial Statistics. Statistical Tables (consumption). Registrar-General's Report. Alcoholic Beverages in Europe and U.S.A. Report of Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Report of Inspector of Reformatories. INDEX Aberdeen, 64 Abstainers, number of, 92, 99 Abstinence, total, 12, 34, 93, 101, 113 Acts of Parliament, list of, 103-109 Adulteration, 23, 33, 46, 207, 234 Alcohol, use of, 13, 137; action of, 115, 116 Alcoholism, death-rates from, 78, 131 America, 91, 95, 172 Ancient Britons, 15 Ancient Romans, 15, 127 Anselm, 17 Arsenical poisoning, 82 Australia, 124 Austria, 123 Bacon on drunkenness, 20 Bands of Hope, 99 Beer, in 1130, 18; effects of, 31, 213; consumption of, 24, 29, 71; definition of, 109; adulteration of, 46, 207, 234; change in qual- ity, 74, 210; kinds of, 206 Beer-house Act of 1830, 34, 103, 139, 168 of 1869,106 Beer-houses, reduction of, 48, 68, 108; increase of, 61, 68 Belfast, 34, 56, 91, 192 Bergen, 270 Berwickshire, 54 Betting, 10, 11; in public- houses, 104, 107, 222 Birmingham, 48, 50 Bishop Blomfield, 92, 95 Bishop of Rochester, 111 Bona-fide traveller, 147, 148 Bradford, 34, 51, 92 Branvin, 139, 247 Brewers, r' , 131, 201, 227, 235 Bridge, Sir John, 49, 77, 86 Bristol, 48, 51, 94, 166, 292 British and Foreign Temper- ance Society, 43 Burns, Dr. Dawson, 91, 96, 111, 113 Burton on drinking in 1621, 21 Bus-drivers, 132 Butchers, 131, 132 Cabmen, 131 Camden on drunkenness, 19 Cardiff, 48, 108, 198, 241, 261 Celts, 125, 198 Charles I., 21 Chester, 51, 120 Chief Constables, 145, 186 Child-messengers, 109, 152 Chinese, 125 Church of England Temper- ance Society, 90, 98, 101 Clergy, in sixth century, 16; in seventeenth century, 22; sobriety of, 133 Climate, influence of, 69, 117 Clouston, Dr., on drunkards, 157 Clubs, 143, 180 Clydebank, 65 Coal-heavers, 131 298 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Commission, Royal (Peel), 1896-99, 3, 7, 49, 61, 77, 89, 141, 146, 161, 186, 192, 292 Committee, Select, of 1834, 35-41 of 1850, 207 of 1854, 45, 89, 207 of 1876, 47, 89, 107 Committee of New York, 172 Consumption, statistics of, in seventeenth century, 24; in eighteenth century, 29 ; from 1867 to 1875, 47, 150; from 1831 to 1890, 71; from 1891 to 1899, 73; fallacies of, 70, 117; in Gothenburg, 253; of beer in Sweden, 257 Conviviality, 136 Cooks, intemperance of, 132 Cork, 56, 94 Costermongers, 131 Crime and drink, 10 Daly, Me., 195 Danes, 17 *Danesbury House,' 97 Darwinian theory and drink, 126, 296 Defoe on the working man, 24 Delirium tremens, 80 De Quincey, 285 Dipsomania, 31, 86, 213, 284 Doctors, 132 Doctor Johnson, 285 Drink, evils of, 9, 41; and crime, 10; and poverty, 134, 212 Drinking healths, 15, 136 Drinking to pegs, 17 Drunkards classified, 213; treatment of, 164, 156, 178, 214 Drunkenness of ancient Brit- ons, 15; Saxons, 16; Danes and Normans, 17; in six- teenth century, 19; in seventeenth century, 21-24; in eighteenth century, 24- 33; in 1824, 33; in 1834, 35-41; decline of, 44; among upper classes, 32, 112, 213; among women, see Female drimkenness ; among children, see Ju- venile drunkenness; statis- tics of, 57; in London, 49, 60; in Liverpoool, 50, 62, 188; in Glasgow, 63, 256; in England and Wales, 49, 64, 119; in Ireland, 55, 65, 125, 256; in Scotland, 53, 119, 125, 256; in France, 118; in English counties, 120; in Wales, 125; in Newcastle, 256; in Gothen- burg, 255, 261; in Him- gary, 123; in wine-grow- ing countries, 117; in Portugal, 118; in Stock- holm, Christiania, and Ber- gen, 270 ; geographical dis- tribution of, 119; influence of climate on, 121; of race, 123; of heredity, 42, 126; of occupation, 129; of home conditions, 134; of festivals, 15, 136; of num- ber of public-houses, 66, 138, 141; of wages, 149; of publicans, 216, 231, 268; of police supervision, 186; at railway bars, 189; de- liberate among working men, 24, 214 Dublin, 56, 192 Dumbarton, 55 Dundee, 54, 87 Dunstan, 17 INDEX 299 Eablt olosino, in 1285, 18; effect of, 145; recommend- ed, 196; under Gothen- burg system, 268 Edgar, Rev. Dr., 91 Edinburgh, 54 Edward VI., 18 Engine-drivers, 133 FAdLlTiES, excessive, 138; deficient, 143; not propor- tionate to drunkenness, 141 Farre, Dr., 40 Father Mathew, 61, 93 Female drunkenness in seven- teenth century, 23 ; in eight- eenth, 25; in nineteenth, 35, 38, 89; alleged increase, 63, 75: in upper classes, 75; in lower, 77; statistics of, 83; causes of, 76, 86, 132, 220; treatment of, 293; in other countries, 220, 258 Fielding, 30 Finisterre, 142 France, 118, 129, 142 French, Dr. Valpy, 15, 19, 22, 25 Gentleman's Magazine, 30, 33 Gin, 20, 29, 31 Gin Act, 26, 167 Glamorgan, 120, 126, 141 Glasgow, 34, 54, 63, 256 Gloucestershire, 52 Good Templars, 69 Gothenburg, 139; town de- scribed, 240; liquor traffic in, 242; the Bolag, 244, 251; consumption of brRn- vin, 253; drunkenness in, 254, 259; compared with Cardiff, 261 ; the police, 262 Gothenburg system, 147, 171, 183, 224, 238; described. 243; its effects, 252; on consumption, 253; on drunkenness, 256; on wel- fare of the people, 268; application to England, 265 ; cardinal point of, 267 ; its most effective action, 268 Greece, 126 Greenock, 34, 64 Grocers* licenses, 77, 106, 168, 180 Habitual inebriates, 12, 86, 156, 179, 213; duty of the State, 271, 274, 282; Acts of Parliament, 272, 276; re- treats and reformatories, 272; classification of cases, 275; their state of mind, 276; inherent defect of re- treats, 280; effects of re- straint, 282; moral side of inebriety, 284; difficulty of dealing compulsorily with non-criminal cases, 288 ; working-men drunkards, 292; women, 293 Hairdressers, 131 Heredity, 42, 126 Hindoos, 128 Hogarth, 25 Holland, 19, 20, 220 Horsley, Rev. J. W., on bet- ting, 11 Hours of closing, 38, 61, 103, 107, 145, 165, 197 Hull, 51 Hungary, 123, 136 Iago, 20 Idleness and drink, 133 Illicit trade, 26, 72, 108, 143, 165, 173 Inebriety, 75; see Habitual inebriates 300 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION Inn-keepers and inn-servants, 131 Innocent II., 18 Intemperance, see Drunken- Ireland, 55, 65, 68, 91, 125, 192, 266 Italy, 117, 126 James I., 20 Japanese, 125 Jews, 128 Juvenile drunkenness, 38, 55, 152, 221; under Gothen- burg system, 258 Kerb, Dr. Norman, 53, 78, 85 Kethe, Rev. William (1570), 20 Kilkenny, 56 King Edgar, 17 Knight, Charles, 33 Lancashire, 38, 52, 142 Lecky, Mr., 15, 24, 31 Leeds, 34, 50 Licenses introdiiced, 18; sug- gested classification, 196 Licensing Act, of 1828, 34; of 1872 and 1874, 65, 106, 163 Licensing Bench, 190 Limerick, 94 Lincoln, 62 Lisbon, 118 Liverpoool, 48, 50, 62, 78, 87, 139, 166 Local option, 170, 174, 181 London in the thirteenth cen- tury, 18; in the seventeenth century, 23; in the eight- eenth century, 25, 28, 32; in 1824, 33; in 1834, 35; in 1896, 49; statistics of drunkenness, 59, 120, 130; public-houses in East-end, 202 Londonderry, 56, 192 Magistrates, 185, 189 Mahommedans, 128 Maine liquor law, 95 Maitland, William, History of London, 27 Manchester, 38, 48, 50, 89 Manning, Cardinal, 97 Massachusetts, 95 Metropolitan Police Act (1839), 61, 103, 164 Middlesex magistrates, 25, 26. 34 Miners, 129 Model public-houses, 223, 224, 238, 268 Mordaunt, Rev. Osbert, 225 Musicians, 131 Netherlands, see Holland Newcastle, 48, 51, 256 Normans, 17 Northumberland, 120, 141 Norway, 26, 118, 139, 170, 239, 270 Nottingham, 51 Occupation and drink, 129 Oporto, 118 Opportunities, see Facilities Peei. Commission, see Com- mission, Royal Penzance, 52 Pepys, 22 Periin, Stephen, 19 Permitting drunkenness, 107, 218, 268 Plymouth, 51 Police, procedure, 58; power of entry, 104, 107; judges of number of licenses, 145; and clubs, 181; defects of, 185; Liverpool system, 186; in country, 233; in Gothen- burg, 262 Police statistics, their value, 57; for London, 59; Liver- INDEX 301 pool, 62,87, 140, 188; Glas- gow, 63; England and Wales, 64, 150; Ireland, 65; of female drunkenness, 83; by counties, 120; by char- acter of districts, 129; in Gothenburg, 255, 261; other Scandinavian towns, 270 Portugal, 117, 118 Poverty and drink, 9, 134 Price of liquor, influence on consumption, 151 Prohibition, 96, 167, 173 Prostitutes, 38, 86 Publicans, number in Eng- land and Wales, 1831-91, 67; statutory powers and penalties, 107; mortality from alcoholism, 131; pro- vide what is demanded, 148; attitude to children, 153, 221; treatment by magistrates, 189; 'punish the wrong-doer,* 195; diffi- culties of, 200, 219; atti- tude to customers, 202; to drunkenness, 216; permit betting, 222; in the coun- try, 231; laxity in Sweden, 264 Public-houses, complaints of, in thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies, 18; in seventeenth century, 22; in eighteenth century, 28, 32; in 1830, 34; number of customers in 1834, 35; improvement of, 45, 48, 50; numbers and re- duction of, 48, 67; in Scot- land, 68; in Ireland, 68; excess of, 138; number of, and drunkenness, 140; de- ficiency of, 143; disorderly houses, 181 ; supervision of, 186; record should be kept, 190; 'superfluous* houses, 194; tied houses, 195; the customers to blame, 200; the exterior of, 203 ; the in- terior of, 204; liquor sold in, 206; non-intoxicants, 218; women and children in, 219; betting in, 222; country houses, 230; model houses, 238 Puritans, 22 ' Pushing the sale,* 216, 268 Queen Victobia, 43, 114 Race, influence of, 123, 173 Rechabites, 96 Recreation, 135 Religious ceremonies and drinking, 15, 136 Renfrewshire, 64 Restoration, The, 23 Restriction, necessity of, 18, 138; limits of, 140 Retreats and reformatories, see Habitual inebriates Romans, 15 Russia, 117 Sailors, 129 Salisbury, Lord, 6 Saxons, 16, 17 Scandinavia, see Norway, Sweden, Gothenburg Scotch whisky, 77 Scotland, 39, 53, 68, 104, 117, 119, 121, 125, 256 Seaports, 129 Serving drunken persons, 218, 230, 253, 268 Shakespeare, 20 Sheffield, 48 Smith, Mr. Horace, on bet- ting, 11 Somersetshire, 52 Spain, 117 Spirits, 20, 24, 29, 31, 87, 121, 259; consumption of, in 302 DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND LEGISLATION United Kingdom, 71, 73; in Gothenburg, 253 Staffordshire, 62 Stubbes, Philip (1583), 20 Sunday, in 1570, 20; in 1834, 36; in 1854, 45 Sunday closing, in Scotland, 104, 105; in Ireland, 108; in Wales, 108; doubtful ef- fects of, 125, 145, 165; ap- plication to England, 197 Sweden, 26, 118, 122, 136, 139, 170, 239; consumption of beer, 257; see also Gothen- burg Teetotalism, 34, 93, 97, 101 Temperance movement, 34 ; origin of, 91; in England, 92; zenith of, 93; decline of, 95; revival of, 96; pres- ent position, 98; influence of, 100; see also Father Mathew Tied houses, 168, 195, 207, 235 Trade, influence on intemper- ance, 47, 61, 73, 149 Ulster Temperance Society, 91 United Kingdom Alliance, 96 Usquebaugh, 20 Wales, 108, 125, 198 Watch Committees, 186, 191 Waterford, 56 West Bromwich, 53 Whyte, Mr., 53 Wieselgren, Dr., 139, 257 Willerding, Mr., 139, 169 Wilson, Dr., on drunkards, 156 Wine, consumption of, 71, 73, 151; change from heavy to light, 74; how drunk in wine-growing countries, 117 York, 51, 78 UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA LIBRARY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW r. 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