L.H.H.
SPIRITS IN SCANDINAVIA.
Although it is generally known that there have been of late great and peculiar changes in the laws which regulate the sale of intoxicating drinks in the Scandinavian peninsula, there is not among foreigners an accurate idea of these changes. It may not therefore be uninteresting to state them a little in detail, as well as to glance at the results as gathered from personal experience and observation in different parts of Sweden and Norway. It should be premised that the peculiar "vanity" of both the Swedes and the Norwegians is spirits, and that the recent licensing laws in Scandinavia have been largely levelled against the sale of these drinks. For about a century prior to 1854, Sweden was so given to drunkenness that one who has had special opportunities of judging described it as "the most drunken country in the world." Free trade in spirits was practically in force: every small land-owner could distil on payment of a nominal license fee, and in towns every burgher had the right of sale. The whole country may be said "to have been deluged with spirits;" but, profiting by the exertions of the apostles of temperance, a public opinion was created which twenty-four years ago produced a bill on which the existing general law is based. It abolished the small stills and imposed a comparatively heavy duty on the popular drink, branvin. It established a sort of threefold control over the issue of new licenses for the sale of spirits, under which the communal committee, the commune and the governor of a province have power to restrict or lessen the number of such licenses, while each seller of spirits was required to pay to the local rates a tax on the amount of spirits sold. The licenses were issued for periods of three years, and sold by auction to the highest bidders. To such an extent has the sale of spirits been swept under this law from the rural parts of Sweden that in 1871 there were only four hundred and sixty places for the sale of spirits in the country, the towns excepted. From observation and from the report of others the writer is able to say that the effect of this has been most beneficial in the rural parts, materially contributing to the sobriety and the moral welfare of the people. The general law, it may be noticed, had some of the clauses which are commonly supposed to attach to the later local laws that have been put into operation. It contained a permissive clause which allowed of the formation of companies to control the spirit-sale in towns. One company may take the whole of the licenses allotted to any town, guaranteeing a certain income to the town from such sale of spirits. In Gothenburg, the chief port of Sweden, such a company was formed at the suggestion of a committee appointed in 1865 to inquire into the cause of the constant increase of pauperism and insanity there, which it charged largely on the sale of spirits, especially in dark, unhealthy places. This company, which was called the "Goteborg Utskankings Bolag," began operations in October, 1865, with forty licenses, and acquired by 1868 the whole of the public-house licenses for the sale of spirits, with the exception of about a dozen, the owners of which had life-licenses. The Bolag, or company, had, with these exceptions, a monopoly of the sale of spirits in the town in places for consumption on the premises, and a monopoly to that extent only. It weeded out some of the worst of these public-houses: it improved the condition of the rest, appointing salaried managers, who had in addition the profit on the sale of food and all drinks except spirits, the sale of the latter being under very stringent regulations for the profit only of the Bolag. The managers were compelled to sell food, "cooked and hot" if needed; to give no credit; to keep orderly, clean and well-ventilated houses; to allow no drunkenness; and not to sell spirits to those "overloaded." In the first ten years of its existence the Bolag met with opposition, not only from spirit-sellers who sold for non-consumption on the premises, but also from the many sellers of ale and porter, who were permitted to sell those drinks unnoticed by the law. It is claimed that in spite of this competition the working of the company materially contributed to the sobriety of the town; and it may be worth while to test this by the facts.
When the Bolag began in 1865 there were, for the police year, 2070 cases of drunkenness; in 1866 there were only 1424; and there was a decrease in the next year, and again in 1868, when the number was 1320, which has proved the minimum. From that period there has been an increase, until in 1876—the latest year for which the facts are procurable—the number of cases was 2357. But during the whole of that time the population has been increasing: it was 46,557 in 1866, and in 1876 it was over 66,000; so that the apparent increase in these years is a proportionate though very small decrease—a decrease of about one per cent. There has been also a large decrease in the more serious crimes reported to the police of the town. As to pauperism, there is a decrease in the number of persons receiving entire relief from the community, but an increase in the number of those receiving partial relief. The sales of spirits by the company's agents have materially increased, but it is urged that this is due to the fact that in its earlier years it had more opposition to encounter, while in 1875 it had acquired a full monopoly over the sale of spirits, except in the instances of the life-licenses, which had been reduced in number. Its gross profits have materially increased, rising from £7200 in English money in 1865 to £52,850 in 1876, and the amount of the net profit it paid into the town treasury had increased from £2800 to £40,100! The authorities of the town are satisfied with these results; and there is an almost universal belief that the state of Gothenburg in regard to drunkenness is incomparably better than it would have been without the operation of the Bolag: at the same time it is fair to state that some are of opinion that the benefits have not been so great as they should have been, and that the company has to some extent been worked rather with a view to money-making for the community than to the repression of drunkenness. As to the general opinion, it is indicated by the fact that every large town in Sweden has now followed in the wake of Gothenburg. In 1871 the Norwegian Storthing passed a law to enable their towns to follow suit; and about a score have adopted a similar scheme, modified by allowing the profits of the Norwegian "associations" to be paid by the members to objects of public utility.
As to personal impressions of the working of the system, it may be first said that attention having been so fully directed to the provision made for sale of food in these public-houses, this was tested in many with satisfactory results—food cheap, plentiful and wholesome being procurable. The public-houses were found to be generally neat and orderly, but not equal in comfort or appearance to the public-houses in other lands, several of them being underground vaults merely. The company has in Gothenburg twenty-five public-houses now; it leases the right of sale of spirits to eleven eating-houses and clubs; it has seven spirit-shops and thirteen wholesale places of sale; so that it makes ample provision for the satisfying of the thirsty throats of the Swedes. Unquestionably, Gothenburg has still a larger amount of drunkenness than is known in towns of equal size elsewhere, and a few minutes' observation near one of these "model public-houses" shows that there is a very great sale of drink; but it is also evident that much of the sale on market-days is to country-people from districts where there are no public-houses. Finally, the result of some time given to observation and to the consideration of the question on the spot convinced us that the stricter regulation and supervision of the sale of spirits in this method has reduced the proportionate drunkenness so far as it is brought before police notice; that the public-houses are improved in appearance and in order; that the grosser evils are to some extent done away with, and the community pecuniarily benefited; but that the working of this "experiment" has not succeeded in lessening the exceedingly large local demand for spirits.
J.W.S.
RUSSIAN RECRUITING.
It is a common observation in the mouths of men who are estimating Russia's military strength that, although short of money, she has at least a boundless supply of men; but this idea, though plausible at first sight, is utterly erroneous. A few years ago the confidence of the Russian optimists in their "inexhaustible numbers" was rudely shaken by the discovery that in a single year, out of eighty-four thousand conscripts sent up to the various recruiting centres, no fewer than forty-four thousand were rejected as unfitted for service by disease or other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. The government took the alarm, and gave orders for the immediate formation of a medical commission and the thorough investigation of the sanitary condition of the population at large. This was promptly done, and the result startled all Russia with the announcement that her strength was barely one-half what it had previously been supposed to be.