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IN attempting in an earlier volume (The Temperance Problem
and Social Reform, 9th edition) to sum up the broad
conclusions to which their investigations had led, the present
writers endeavoured to concentrate attention upon a few
important points which they believe to be fundamental in
any effort to solve the problem of intemperance.
For the convenience of those who have not access to the
last edition of the earlier volume, and to prevent misunderstanding,
the summary there given is now appended:
1. Summary of leading propositions on which legislation
should be based
The propositions which we have attempted to establish are
chiefly these:
(a) That the present consumption of intoxicants in this
country is not only excessive, but also seriously subversive
of the economic and moral progress of the nation.
(6) That the enormous political influence wielded, directly
and indirectly, by those interested in the drink traffic,
threatens to introduce "an era of demoralisation in
British politics," and that this menace to the independence
of Parliament and to the purity of municipal life can only
be removed by taking the retail drink trade out of private
hands.
(c) That when the retail trade is taken out of private
hands, regulations for its conduct can be quickly adapted
to the special needs of each locality, and reforms now difficult
to attain, such as Sunday closing, reduction in the number
of licensed houses, the shortening of the hours of sale,
the non-serving of children and of recognised inebriates
will then become easy of accomplishment.
(d) That in the present state of public opinion the adoption
of prohibition in the large towns is to be regarded as impracticable,
although it is possible that local veto might be successfully
exercised in a suburb, or ward, of a town.
(e) That in no English-speaking country has the problem
of the intemperance of large towns been solved.
(/) That an examination of the causes of alcoholic intemperance
shows us that, whilst some of these are beyond our reach,
others that are of the utmost importance are distinctly
within the sphere of legislative influence.
(g) That we must recognise as among the chief causes of
intemperance the monotony and dulness—too often the
actual misery—of many lives, coupled with the absence
of adequate provision for social intercourse and healthful
recreation.
(h) That it is unreasonable to expect to withdraw men from
the public-house unless other facilities for cheerful social
intercourse are afforded. Such counteracting agencies, to
be effective, will cost a great sum—estimated by the
present writers at £4,000,000 per annum.
(i) That this sum can be easily obtained if the retail
trade is taken out of private hands, but that it is not
likely that the necessary funds will be furnished either
from municipal taxation or the national revenue.
2. The proposed lines of action and how to safeguard
them
A careful attempt has been made to frame practical proposals
in harmony with the foregoing propositions. The proposals
made frankly recognise : First, that reforms to be effective
must be constructive as well as restrictive. Secondly, that
they should reach as far as the progressive spirit of the
community will allow, and should be consistent with further
advance. Thirdly, that they should educate and set free
the latent progressive resources of each locality.
The present writers are well aware that objection has been
taken to schemes for the municipalisation of the drink traffic,
on the ground of the possible danger of the trade being
run for profit in order to reduce the rates. This danger
is, however, not merely remote from, but absolutely destroyed
by, the present proposals.
These proposals provide for a system of local restriction
and control from which all that is commonly objected to
in schemes for public management has been effectually and
of set purpose excluded.("I have argued for years
against every form of municipalisation. I have denounced
it in a hundred towns. But Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell's
scheme has met all the objections which I have ever urged,
and for the first time we are presented with a plan which
the sworn prohibitionist can adopt without compromise of
deep conviction and without fear of ultimate danger and
loss."—REV. C. F. AKED, Paper read at th«
National Council of Free Churches, March, 1900.)
It is provided:
(a) That localities shall have permissive powers to organise
and control the retail traffic in liquor either directly
through the municipal council or through a company (as in
Norway), but always under the direct supervision of the
central government and only within clearly defined statutory
limits.
(b) That the whole of the profits shall be handed over
to a central State Authority for disbursement, the first
charge upon such profits to be the provision and maintenance
of adequate counter-attractions to the public-house, the
balance of the profits being pni-.l into the national exchequer.(In
any scheme for the disbursement of profits regard would
of course be had to necessary appropriations for sinking-funds,
etc. )
(c) That the sole benefit which a locality shall receive
from the profits of the traffic shall be an annual grant
from the State Authority for the establishment and maintenance
of recreative centres, the primary object of which shall
be to counteract the influence of the drink traffic—
such grant to be a fixed sum in ratio to population and
not in ratio to profits earned.
(d) That similar grants shall be made to prohibition areas,
all inducement to continue the traffic for the sake of the
grants being thus effectually destroyed.
(e) That where municipal councils adopt the system and
elect to control the traffic, they shall, as in the case
of the present technical education committees, invite the
active co-operation of a fixed number of influential citizens,
other than members of the council, in the work of local
management. (That the scheme, in its provision of recreative
agencies, would require for its full success the active
co-operation in each locality of earnest citizens is certain.
But the experience of School Boards especially has shown
that there is no lack of high-minded and gifted men and
women willing to devote time and labour to well-devised
schemes of social service.)
(f) Finally, the right of prohibiting the traffic is placed
within the power of every locality.
It is evident, therefore, that the conditions would be
such as to destroy the risk of municipal corruption. That
the scheme, by enlarging and enriching the idea of municipal
responsibility, would have an entirely opposite effect could,
with equal explicitness, be shown. As Lord Eosebery has
admirably put it: " The larger the sense of municipal
responsibility which prevails, the more it reacts on the
corporation or the municipality itself. By that I mean this,
that the men outside the municipality, or who have hitherto
held aloof from municipal government, when they see the
higher aims of which the municipality is capable, when they
see the wider work that lies before it, when they see the
incomparable practical purposes to which the municipality
may lend its great power, are not inclined any longer to
hold aloof." (Glasgow Herald, January 24th, 1898.
)
3. How the scheme could be carried out
But it may be asked, How is this scheme to be carried out
? What obstacles stand in the way of its adoption ? There
can be but one reply. It is the question of compensation
that blocks the way to all far-reaching temperance reforms.
Neither the proposals advocated in this chapter, nor local
veto, nor any other important scheme of reform, can be carried
out until the question of compensation has been settled.
The present writers believe that this settlement must be
effected upon the basis of a national time-notice. On this
ground, therefore, if on no other, it would seem eminently
wise for all practical temperance reformers to endeavour
to secure legislation upon the lines of Lord Peel's Report,
so that at the end of the time-notice " no compensation
of any kind would be given, and . . . the field would be
clear for any further legislation, experimental or otherwise,
which Parliament might be disposed to enact." (Minority
Report of the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws,
p. 270.)
Supposing, then, the time-notice to have expired, what
are the localities to do ?
The alternatives which would be open to them would, broadly
speaking, be as follow:
1. They might continue the present system of private licence,
either with or without high licence in some one of its forms.
2. They might adopt prohibition.
3. They might take the trade out of private hands and introduce
a system of local restriction and control, to be exercised
by either
(a) A disinterested company, or (b) The municipality.
It is with the third of these alternatives only that we
are at this point concerned.
(a) If it were proposed that local control should be exercised
through a company, as in Norway, a body of resident citizens
organised, or ready to be organised, as a company, would
make application to the licensing authority to take over
for a specified term of years (The period would coincide
with the period allowed by law for the recurrence of a prohibition
vote.) the whole of the retail licences in the place,
undertaking that the shareholders should not receive more
than the current rate of interest (as defined by law) and
further undertaking that all conditions attached by the
licensing authority to the licences should be carried out.
If more than one company applied, it would be for the licensing
authority to determine which body would be most likely to
carry on the work of effective control with disinterested
intelligence.
If the licensing authority declined all applications from
companies, then the inhabitants of the place could by a
popular vote compel the adoption of the Company system at
the first subsequent issue of licences.
(b) If a municipal council desired to work the controlling
system by taking the traffic into its own hands, it could
do so by formal resolution. But if a municipal council was
unwilling to take the initiative, or the licensing authority
to sanction the application, then the inhabitants of the
locality could by popular vote compel the adoption of the
system at the first subsequent issue of licences.
Local control, whether exercised by a company or by a municipality,
would of course be carried on in conformity with the requirements
of the central government, to whom all profits would be
handed over for disbursement.
4. The limited alternatives open to temperance reformers
It is well to remember that the alternatives open to temperance
reformers are very few. There is a growing feeling that
the enormous monoply profits which at present attach to
the Trade, and which must grow, rather than diminish, with
an increasing population and a diminishing number of licences,
ought not to be reaped by private individuals, but be used
for the benefit of the community. The question to be decided
is, How best may this be effected ? One method of effecting
it is by allotting the licences to those who tender the
highest licence fees, or—if this method be objected
to—by largely increasing the statutory fees; in other
words, by adopting, in one or other of its forms, a system
of High Licence.
But apart from the fact that this suggestion touches part
of the problem only, its defects, as we have seen, are obvious.
It not only fails to destroy the political influence of
the Trade, but it gives the licensee an even greater incentive
to push his sales. The increased cost of his licence must
be met by increased sales.
Where prohibition is impossible, the only alternative scheme
to private licence is to take the traffic out of private
hands. This can be done either as in Russia, by a system
of State monopoly, or by a system of local restriction and
control as proposed in this chapter. The former system is
clearly inadmissible. Its defects are too obvious to call
for further comment. We are therefore shut down to some
such scheme as is here proposed— a scheme of local
management carried out under strict statutory safeguards.
This being so, the only remaining question to be decided
is the appropriation of the profits. Here again the alternatives
are simple and clearly defined. The profits might be devoted
to (a) the relief of local rates; (b) the subvention of
local charities, as, until recently, in Norway ; (c) State
or Imperial purposes; or (d) the provision—as is here
suggested—of efficient counter-attractions. The first
of these alternatives is so inherently vicious, and would
encounter such overwhelming opposition, that it need not
be further considered. The second and third proposals, although
far less objectionable, are still open to serious criticism.
Their inherent defect is that they would deflect and absorb,
for quite other purposes, resources that are needed for
directly combating the evils of the traffic. The fourth
alternative is free from these defects. It starts from the
position, which few will question, that the public-house
problem is largely—by no means entirely— an "
entertainment of the people " problem ; that it has
its roots in ordinary social instincts as well as in depraved
and unenlightened tastes; and that it can only be effectively
solved when provision is made for adequate counter - attractions.
It is claimed for the present proposals that they make such
provision possible in a form that would powerfully contribute
to the highest interests of the individual and the truest
progress of the State.
(An objection is sometimes taken against municipal or
company control on the ground that it would involve the
community in complicity with a demoralising traffic. The
responsibility, however, is one that already exists. At
the present time both our national and local exchequers
are directly and substantially recruited from the proceeds
of the sale of intoxicants. Not only is a vast sum, amounting
to thirty-four millions sterling (or nearly one-third of
our entire national revenue), annually appropriated to national
purposes from Customs and Excise duties on alcoholic liquors,
but a further sum of two millions, annually raised from
licence fees, is applied to local purposes in direct relief
of rates ; while a still further sum of one and a half million,
derived from additional taxes on liquor, is allotted to
local councils, chiefly in support of technical instruction.
To add to these vast sums (or any remnant of them) the further
sums represented by the profits on such sales as must for
the present continue, is not therefore to introduce a new
principle, or to create a complicity which does not already
exist. To take a single illustration: Leeds already receives
from its liquor licences, in direct relief of local taxation,
an annual sum of £15,000, together with a further
sum of £7,000 representing its share of the special
duties on beer and spirits imposed by Mr. (}oschon in 1890
and subsequently allotted to local councils in support
of technical instruction, etc. The use which Leeds has made
of this latter sum in the last two years is shown in the
following table:
To the extent of £22,000 per annum, therefore,
Leeds has at the present time a direct complicity in the
liquor traffic in its midst.
To allot to Leeds, as is here proposed, an annual grant
out of the aggregate national profits of the liquor traffic,
for the maintenance of effective counter-attractions to
the public-house, is not, therefore, to create a complicity.
The complicity exists already. Moreover, it must continue
to exist under any conceivable licensing system. The only
way to eradicate complicity in the liquor traffic would
be to abolish all licences and all Customs and Excise duties
on liquor, and to throw open the traffic to anyone who chose
to engage in it—a proposal that is manifestly utterly
impracticable.
But the question is really a practical one. We are all
agreed that for some time to come a considerable volume
of trade in alcoholic liquors will continue. Is it better
that it should continue under a system which aggravates
the evils of the traffic and produces the maximum amount
of social demoralisation and loss, or under conditions of
restriction and control which reduce the evil effects of
the traffic to a minimum ?
As Lady Henry Somerset, in discussing the present proposals
(Contemporary Review, October, 1899), pertinently asks:
"Are we to be regarded as ' having complicity' with
a trade for the reason that when we cannot suppress it altogether
we desire so to change its form and character that we deprive
it of three-fourths of its power to harm, but permit a fourth
of that evil to continue for a time 1 I hold that it is
our duty to restrict the evil as far as we can, and I hold
that we are responsible only for the amount of harm which
we could prevent, but allow to continue." )
5. Final appeal
The final appeal may be made in the eloquent words with
which, twenty years ago, the Lords' Committee on Intemperance
summed up the argument for local management and control.
Referring to the objections urged against both the Gothenburg
system and the system of direct municipal control, the Committee
say : " We do not wish to undervalue the force of these
objections; but if the risks be considerable, so are the
expected advantages. And when great communities, deeply
sensible of the miseries caused by intemperance, witnesses
of the crime and pauperism which directly spring from it,
conscious of the contamination to which their younger citizens
are exposed, watching with grave anxiety the growth of female
intemperance on a scale so vast and at a rate of progression
so rapid as to constitute a new reproach and danger, believing
that not only the morality of their citizens, but their
commercial prosperity, is dependent upon the diminution
of these evils, seeing also that all that general legislation
has been hitherto able to effect has been some improvement
in public order, while it has been powerless to produce
any perceptible decrease of intemperance, it would seem
somewhat hard, when such communities are willing, at their
own cost and hazard, to grapple with the difficulty and
undertake their own purification, that the Legislature should
refuse to create for them the necessary machinery, or to
entrust them with the requisite powers." (Report
of the Lords' Committee on Intemperance, 1879, p. 25. )
The reasonableness of this appeal will probably be generally
accepted, and its force may justly be claimed in behalf
of the present proposals. That these proposals would solve,
absolutely and definitively, the entire problem of intemperance,
is neither claimed nor believed. This no single scheme can
effect. But that they offer a reasonable basis for co-operation
to all who are concerned to achieve such a result, and would
powerfully contribute to bring it about, is fully and earnestly
believed. If the proposals fall short of the full aim of
the idealist, they in no way conflict with his ideal; they
simply lay the foundations upon which he and others may
build.
NOTE.—The wide acceptance of the leading principles
and practical proposals outlined above is indicated by the
opinions which follow - Some Personal
Opinions.
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