Pro THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—/laving had seventeen years' practical experience in dealing with Liquor Trade problems, I have come by degrees to the conclusion that State Purchase of the whole business from start to finish on Carlisle lines is the only solution of the terrible tangle into which the liquor traffic has been forced. In my opinion, no proposal for national control of the sale of intoxicants can be effective until the breweries and distilleries, with their output, are State owned. At present any one who wishes to can start a brewery or distillery, and it is notorious that their present number is justas excessive asare the numbers of public-houses. It is useless to reduce public-houses to reason- able numbers if the breweries and distilleries are to be allowed to go on manufacturing as at present. Capital will expect a return, and the brains of the Trade will be con- stantly at work as in other businesses to find fresh outlets for their manufactures. I ask opponents of State Purchase, do they really believe a Government Department would use its brains, as the Trade does at present, to increase its sales P With some knowledge of Government Departments, I doubt it. Control coupled with high taxation will inevitably result in more or lees successful attempts to earn a return on the capital invested, with the resulting abuses with which we are only too familiar. Prohibitionists who think they can force the nation to go dry are living in a fool's paradise. I say this deliberately as an employer of labour, and as'having been in intimate toucn with working people for the last thirty-three years. I should like to see the country educated to the benefits of Prohibition, but it will come, if ever, only after years of education. At
present it is impossible.—I am, Sir, &c., GERALD Busts. Barnt Green, Birmingham.
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