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CHAPTER V
DRUNKENNESS AND BEER-DRINKING
ALIKE in Sweden, in Norway, and also in Great Britain, great
efforts have been made for years past by active supporters
of the Gothenburg System to prove that any increase in drunkenness
in the countries where that system is in operation is due,
not to the failure to control effectively the sale of spirits,
on the lines laid down, but to the increasing consumption
of beer; arid on this ground persistent demands are made
by the Bolag or Samlag parties that they should be granted
a monopoly of the sale of beer akin to the control they
now exercise over the sale of native spirits.
In support of these contentions and demands good use has
been made of the following figures, showing the average
annual consumption of beer in Sweden per head of the population
for the periods stated : 1851-1860,10-5 litres ; 1861-1870,
11-0 litres; 1871-1880, 16-8 litres; 1881-1890, 21-8 litres;
1891-1895, 27'6 litres; 1896-1900, 33'4 litres. One certainly
gets here evidence of a substantial increase in the consumption
of beer, but it would be still more interesting if one knew
to what extent that increase was directly due to the greater
restrictions put on the sale of spirits. If the one be the
effect of the other, and if the increased drunkenness be
due to the increased consumption of beer, then the Gothen-burg
System has merely caused a diversion from one set of drinks
to another, and its success as a temperance measure becomes
still more doubtful than before. My own view of the matter,
however, is that the talk about beer being a main cause
of drunkenness in Sweden and in Norway is very much exaggerated,
and is due mainly to an attempt on the part of supporters
of the company system to evade responsibility for the weaknesses
of their own particular scheme.
To begin with, while it is certainly true that the consumption
of beer has increased in Sweden (with which country I will
deal first), it has not attained to anything like abnormal
proportions as compared with the consumption per head in
other countries. This is shown by the following table, which
I take from the ' International Statistics' of Mr, Gustav
Sundbarg, an eminent Swedish authority:
ANNUAL CONSUMPTION OF BEER PER HEAD
OF THE POPULATION FOR 1896-1900.
I find, further, that the tendency of late years in Sweden
has been distinctly in the direction of brewing lighter
and still lighter beers. The Swedish Lager beer, which commands
a large proportion of the total sale, contains only about
4 per cent, (weight) of alcohol; and Pilsener, which shares
with it in popularity, ranges from 3-50 to 3-80 per cent,
of alcohol. Modifications of the same beers, known as Lagerdricka
and Pilsner-dricka, have, the former 3 to 3-4 per cent,
of alcohol, and the latter aboiit 27 or 2-8 per cent. Still
another malt beverage in common use is known as Svagdricka,
and this has only 1*80 per cent, of alcohol (weight). In
Sweden no duty is paid on beers containing less than 2^
per cent, volume, or 1-80 per cent, weight of alcohol, and
not brewed with more than 6 per cent, of extract. ( In England
the limit recognised by the Excise is 2 per cent, proof
spirit, which is equal to about 1 per cent. of alcohol.)
From the Swedish official statistics in respect to the production
of different kinds of beers I get the following figures:
PRODUCTION OF MALT LIQUORS IN SWEDEN,
1905.
Porter ... 54,853 hectolitres.
Ordinary beers of all descriptions ... 1,293,316 hectolitres.
Lagerdricka or Pilsnerdricka ... 183,892 hectolitres.
Svagdricka ... 1,675,506 hectolitres.
Now it is evident from these facts and figures that by far
the greater part of the malt liquors consumed in Sweden
have a very low alcoholic strength, and I must confess I
do not quite understand how the Bolag party in Sweden, engaged
in distributing among the people native brandy with an alcoholic
strength of over 40 per cent., can attack the distributors
of beers having a small percentage of alcohol, and accuse
them of being the cause of drunkenness, following up this
accusation by demands that the beer purveyors should be
brought under the control of the native brandy purveyors
in order to prevent them from doing any further harm !
What, I found, really happens, especially in Gothenburg
city, is that men first of all go to the dram-shops, where
(following up various drinks during the day) they get their
two glasses of raw spirit, swallow these off at a gulp each,
and then proceed to a beer-shop (there is always one in
the neighbourhood of a Bolag bar), where a few bottles of
beer may very well settle their case. The intoxication that
follows is thereupon attributed to the beer ! I gained a
good insight into the procedure one Friday evening in Gothenburg.
Going to a Bolag bar at 6.15, I stood watching the people
till 7, when no more branvin was served. How many hundreds
of workmen came up to the counter in that time, put down
their money, swallowed off their liquor* and then went out
again, I cannot say ; but hundreds there were, and, inasmuch
as it is an admitted fact that 5,000 glasses of branvin
will be served at one of these bars on a busy day, the reader
need not think I exaggerate. I noticed that many of the
men had a difficulty in walking even as they entered, and
at least 5 per cent, had evidently
already had as much liquor as was good for them, though
the attendants were far too busy to notice the exact condition
of each person able to stand erect at the bar as he put
down his money. The maximum allowance per head was two glasses
; but I noticed one man who was seated at a table with a
comrade put his own two glasses of branvin, and also one
of his companion's glasses, into a tumbler, add thereto
about a tablespoon-ful of mineral water, and pour the whole
lot down his throat. Having thus got their last drink of
branvin for the day, a considerable number of the Bolag
patrons swelled the crowd in the beer-shop near at hand,
with such results, in the case of a certain proportion,
as one can imagine; though to which particular type of liquor
their final possible insobriety should be really attributed
1 leave the reader to decide.
One further learns in regard to this question of beer consumption
in Sweden that it is a matter not only of the alcoholic
strength of the beer, but the conditions under which the
beverage itself is drunk. When the Swedish labourer has
a bottle of beer, and a large one by choice—a small
bottle he regards as scarcely worthy of his attention—he
raises the bottle to his mouth and pours out the contents
so that they will run straight down his throat, just as
though he was pouring from one vessel into another. A gentleman
in Gothenburg told me he had even seen a workman put two
small bottles to his mouth and empty them simultaneously,
the objection to a small bottle being thus overcome. A labourer
will think nothing of imbibing four full bottles, in the
way described, in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes,
and this might very well follow on such drams of branvin
as he had been able to get from the different Bolag bars
during the day. The Swede, in fact, is a great believer
in mixed drinks. It is quite common for him to order at
the bars either one or two glasses of branvin, and also
a drink of small beer, pouring them down his throat in rapid
succession—the briinvin first. Hardened topers^ who
want an especially strong drink, will mix together branvin,
cognac, and Riga balsam, and empty the glass straight off.
This is known in Swedish as ' sla'cka af,' which might be
translated into English as 'damping down the fire'!
The crusade against beer inspired by the Bolag party in
Sweden had the effect, in Gothenburg itself, of leading
to the new regulations under which a considerable reduction
was effected at the beginning of 1906 in the number of small
shopkeepers selling beer for consumption off the premises.
From inquiries I made 1 learned that at first these regulations
resulted in a decrease of about 10 per cent, in the consumption
of beer in Gothenburg, and it is assumed that people who
could no longer buy bottled beer bought more of the bottled
branvin, in the sale of which practically no restrictions
(except that not less than a litre can be bought) are practised.
But now that the people are finding out the other shops
where beer can still be purchased, the consumption, at the
time of my visit, in September, was rapidly reverting to
its normal proportions. The main effect of the regulations,
therefore, was in the prohibition of sale in houses which
the police regarded with suspicion, and the transfer of
custom to other houses in better neighbourhoods. In Norway
there is still less reason than in Sweden to attribute any
increased drunkenness to increased beer-drinking, the higher
duties— imposed in the interests of the revenue—having
made beer too expensive a drink for the ordinary worker.
In fact, the average consumption of beer per head of the
population in Norway was less in 1904 than it had been in
any year since 1872. It reached a maximum in the period
1896-1900, when the annual average was 20'3 litres per head,
and from that time it steadily declined to 20'0 litres per
head in 1901, IT'S in 1902, 14-0 in 1903, and 13-1 in 1904.
Concurrently, also, with this diminution in quantity, there
has been a steadily increasing tendency in Norway to brew
lighter beers, containing the smallest possible percentage
of alcohol, consistently with the need of assuring the maintenance
of good condition in a country where due regard must be
paid to the difficulties and delays of transport. ' The
human body,' Said one Norwegian brewer to me, in the course
of conversation on the subject, 'could not contain enough
of the beer brewed by my firm to make a man drunk.'
The conclusion at which I arrived as the result of my investigations
into this particular branch of the question was that, although
a certain amount of drunkenness may be directly due to beer-drinking—especially
as followed under Swedish conditions—the campaign now
being actively directed against beer by representatives
of the company system is largely inspired by what is nothing
less than trade jealousy towards a rival drink, and by the
desire of municipal monopolists to add to the profits they
already secure from the native brandy traffic those which
might also be obtainable from a control of the supply of
beer. The whole tendency is to form a huge Municipal Liquor
Trust, which, while professing to maintain the purely philanthropic
purposes with which the system originally started, is much
more concerned to-day in securing the right to handle the
profits. At present the independent sale of beer stands
in the way of complete monopoly. So the ' company ' leaders
raise their cry that the drunkenness which prevails is due,
not to the consumption of ardent spirits, but to the imbibing
of what are mostly light beers, and they have evidently
made up their minds not to rest content until they have
got the beer traffic also under their control.
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