The consumption of liquors in Ireland last year was as follows:
| Distilled spirits (gallons) | 2,391,595 |
| Beer (barrels) | 4,574,263 |
| Wine (gallons) | 92,465 |
| Other liquors (gallons) | 25,000 |
| Total | 7,083,323 |
| Average gallons per capita | 1,614 |
“The people of Ireland are drinking less spirits,” continued Mr. Wigham, “and more beer. Ten years ago, for example, they consumed 4,713,178 gallons of spirits, which has been reduced to 2,391,595. During the same time the consumption of beer has increased from 2,903,915 barrels to 4,574,263 barrels.
“Last year, by the official statistics, the Guinness brewery in Dublin produced 2,136,629 barrels of beer and other malt liquors, and paid £2,092,000 duty to the government, an average of £3,000 a day. Alsopps Company produced 1,125,178 barrels, another company 887,175 barrels, still another 827,997 barrels; so you see that the manufacture of malt liquors is very large and is increasing. Some people consider this a great improvement, but it is still very harmful, and it is a startling fact that the population of Ireland pay more money for whisky and beer than they pay for rents or for food or for clothing. The total income of the population of Ireland is given at £70,000,000, and, as you have seen from the table I have given you, they spent last year £13,991,314 for intoxicating drinks.”
The Guinness brewery is the largest establishment of the kind in the world. The buildings cover fifty acres of ground; 3,240 men are employed in them, and 10,000 people are dependent upon the wages paid. The brewery was founded in 1759 by an ancestor of the present owner, and did a purely local business until 1825, when the managers began to seek trade in England and Scotland. They undertook to secure a foreign market in 1860. At present the foreign trade is much larger than local consumption. Last year the total sales amounted to 76,540,000 gallons, which is an average of nearly two gallons per capita for every man, woman, and child in the kingdom. An average of 3,600 barrels of stout are produced daily in one brewery and a new brewery has a capacity of 2,100 barrels daily. The duty paid in 1907 was more than $10,000,000—one-fourteenth of the entire revenue collected on liquor in the United Kingdom. The cold storage capacity of the establishment is 200,000 hogsheads of beer of fifty-two gallons each. One vat will hold 1,700 hogsheads. The main warehouse contains an average of 1,000,000 bushels of malt and similar amounts of other supplies are required. From eight to ten thousand empty casks arrive at the wharf of Guinness & Co. daily, chiefly from London, where all the beer, ale, stout, and porter is sent by steamer in the wood to be bottled, and the fifteen hundred new casks, required each week, are supplied by cooper shops on the premises. The life of a cask averages ten years.
Although there is a deplorable amount of intemperance in Ireland, and according to the estimates of those who have made a study of that subject, at least one-fifth of the earnings of the people are spent for liquor, there is comparatively little crime. If the offenses growing out of the land troubles were deducted the criminal statistics would be very small and Ireland would rank, with Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark, among the most orderly and peaceful countries on the globe.
It may be said also that in comparison with the United States the criminal statistics are very much in favor of Ireland. For example, during the year 1906 there were only four murders in Ireland to eleven in the District of Columbia, and only eleven assaults with dangerous weapons in Ireland to fifty-three in the District of Columbia. During the year 1907 there were eight murders in Ireland and eighteen in the District of Columbia and only seventeen assaults with dangerous weapons in Ireland to fifty-one in the District of Columbia, notwithstanding the difference in population. The population of Ireland is 4,398,565, and that of the District of Columbia is 317,380.
During the year 1905 there were 9,728 persons indicted for crimes in Ireland; in 1906 the total was 9,465, and in 1907 it was 9,418, or 2.2 per 1,000 of the population. The same ratio is reported for 1897, and the average for the ten years was 2.5 per 1,000.
During the year 1906 there were 372 persons indicted for crime in the District of Columbia, or 1.17 per 1,000 of population, and in 1907 there were 381 indictments, or 1.20 per 1,000.
During the year 1906 there were 4,922 indictments found in Chicago (Cook County), with a population of 2,166,055, or less than one-half that of Ireland, the ratio to population being 2.27 per 1,000. For the year 1907 there were 4,699 indictments found in Chicago, which was 2.16 per 1,000 of the population.