Drink Control in the Modern State
THE average family in England spends about 13s. 6d. a week on drink, which represents a fourth or a fifth of the average total income. The poorer the family the more it spends on drink in proportion to its income. In Bermondsey, for instance, Dr. Salter is quoted as finding that in 1925 the average weekly expenditure on intoxicants was from 16s. to 20s. per family, while the average wage received by adult male workers was under £3.
Excessive drinking not only causes an immediate reduction in manual efficiency, as Dr. Vernon proves by a series of very thorough experiments, but it lowers the will to work so much that it is probably fair to say that our consumption of alcohol reduces our efficiency by at least ten per cent. Our author, however, is no prohibitionist. He knows the difficulties of enforcing a law which does not have practically unanimous approval, and would not care to see the experiment tried in England at present, preferring rather to watch the experiments being made in other countries and to adopt the best of them. He states (and of course strengthens) his case by absolute fairness and impartiality. In favour of alcohol, for instance, apparently Professors Stockard and Pearl hare both found that the alcoholization of guinea-pigs (poor creatures !) has a racially beneficent effect. No doubt this is because only those stocks that have withstood the most vigorous selection survive at all and so are superior in quality to the descendants of a group less severely selected. Among human beings, at any rate, we have the authority of the Registrar-General that the mortality of publicans is from r6 to twice as great as that of shopkeepers. Moreover, statistics from life insurance offices go to show that the taking of alcohol will reduce the expectation of life by two to four years. Moderate drinking very probably does not affect longevity : no valid statistics are obtainable on the subject to prove the case one way or the other, largely because moderation is impossible of definition. Certain it is, however, that the drinking of wine cannot be wholly bad. An indulgence which has been favoured by almost every race of man in every period of history must have benefits as well as drawbacks. Moreover, there are psychological as well as physiological perils in severe restrictive measures, such as those attempted in America and Finland. We can learn much from those countries, however, and even more perhaps from the measures taken in Canada. to Mr. Selley. And statistics of drunkenness do not reveal the whole truth. " Those who leave public-houses thoroughly full and fuddled easily outnumber those who figure in convictions," he says, and the most casual acquaintance with the life of England on a Saturday night will confirm this statement. We need not go many hundred yards from Charing Cross to see its truth. Many of these homes are purelc drink shops, dirty, unhealthy, incommodious places where the social instincts of the people are exploited in the interests of drink-sellers.
With State Ownership of the trade Lord D'Abernon, who writes a preface, will have nothing to do. " While possibly mildly advantageous in the first stage," he writes, " it would certainly be disastrous financially in the second stage and disastrous to temperance in the third stage." Yet disinterested management in some form or other must surely come. Already one per cent. of the total number of public- houses in Great Britain are so managed, and the Carlisle Experiment (very compactly, yet fairly, dealt with here in ten pages) is proof that radical reforms can be accomplished, to the great profit of all concerned. At the ' Blue Bell,' for instance, there is billiards and broadcasting : when the author paid a visit to this inn, he found thirty men there ; only two of them were drinking. Over the Scottish border, at Annan, where there are a putting green, a bowling green, a cinema, and a quoits alley, it is said that farmers who on market days used to spend the whole afternoon taking drink after drink now come to the inn with their wives and lunch there, ordering generally not more than one glass of beer. The Chief Constable at Carlisle is emphatic on the merits of the system, betting being much more easily controlled under it. Moreover, financially, as we have pointed out elsewhere, the scheme is eminently successful. In eleven years nearly £1,000,000 has been collected without calling on the taxpayer for a penny.
A very heavy tax is claimed by the Government on all intoxicants : it is only just, therefore, that, having condoned drinking by taxing it, we should see that the product is of good quality and is consumed in decent surroundings. Yet we do not do this at present and have allowed matters to come to an intolerable pass, as some of the leading brewers themselves have come to realize. If the public-house cannot be reformed by the Trade itself (and we are of the opinion that it is hopeless to expect those whose livelihood depends on the sale of alcoholic liquor to be quixotic enough to sell as little as possible), then the State must resume " dominion over its property and freedom of action," as Mr. Asquith said in 1908. Possibly the solution lies in the direction of municipal ownership with Treasury backing. There would then be no necessity for direction by any State department, each municipality taking over the breweries and licensed houses within its area ; these are questions, however, which cannot well be dealt with in a review.
We have already touched on the problem of alcohol and longevity and cannot within the limits of our space follow the author in his medical researches on the effect of alcohol taken with food and without, beyond saying that anyone who is " fond of a good glass of wine " would do well to study the conclusions here arrived at.
We are doubtful as to the wisdom of Dr. Vernon's suggestion of increasing the tax on light wines. Claret may be twice as strong as beer, but it is not a drunkard's tipple. The wine- drinking nations are temperate in their use of alcohol. There can be no doubt, however, that beer under three per cent. of alcohol by volume is non-intoxicating and that some taxation thereon might be remitted in the interests of sobriety.
These are details, however.. The main point is that this book is well balanced, sane, interesting, well documented. The author is anxious to limit the evil that alcohol does in England and his book will doubtless contribute to arouse public opinion on the long-overdue, reform of public houses.
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