THE AESTHETICS OF ALCOHOL
'THE obvious and concerted movement throughout the world to abate drunkenness and the waste of national energy that it entails has begun to influence " the Trade " as well as the social reformer. A notable example is set by Messrs. Barclay, Perkins and Co. in Southwark and South London. The slatternly public house and the garish gin " palace " are being replaced by " taverns "—at the worst a charming word—where good food is supplied, where the graces of life are cultivated, where music, drama and dancing are encouraged. Dancing halls are now being built in Croydon which will hold as many as 1,500 persons ; and these are no isolated exceptions. Such a response from the Trade demands the attention of all sorts of Temperance reformers, whether they regard it as a defence against Government control and local option, or as an example of social development.
It was quite clear to anyone who was present in the United States on the eve of Prohibition that the scandal of the saloons was the most potent weapon of the re- formers. The pictures drawn by the Reverend Billy Sunday in his acrobatic orations were scarcely exaggerated in spite of his genius for hyperbole. Chicago, as the writer saw and heard, rose like a man to his jeremiad. We have no parallel to the American saloon. In England the temptation to drink in a swinish degree has been en- hanced by nothing so much as the lack of other employ- ment. A man who has music to listen to drinks slowly and deliberately ; and if the drink is bad he is aware of it. A man who is part of a crowd in a comfortless place " swills," and not seldom desires to be drunk as soon as may be. The flagon holds his lethe, not his epicurean pleasure. When in the United States Prohibition was substituted for the saloon the furtive absorption of bad liquor pro- duced much the same results as the low-class saloon, where drinks were drugged or embittered. " One block whiskey " was more than a slang phrase. Men drank spirits, walked " a block," and fell down dead. Such rapid fatalities in fact occurred when men absorbed poisonous fluids with undue celerity. The same thing happened in Norway and Finland, and for a short while in Sweden. One evil succeeded another.
A generation ago in England one group of Temperance reformers, convinced that some middle way must be found, opened a campaign, based on the belief that re- formation ought to begin, if not at the source, at the tap. They held that if the poor man could find in the public house something of the leisure and comfort of the rich 'man in his club, he would not suffer from any temptation to excess. Such was the faith at the back of the Trust Houses, which originated in Hertfordshire and Cheshire as county experiments, though later different companies were formed both locally and on a wide scale. Individual brewers—in the Eastern counties, for example, and in Dorset—have made a good many experiments in " en- nobling " the inn, in associating less drinking with higher thinking, and in surrounding the bar with comforts proper to a refined civilization.
Now the reformed taverns of the Trust House organizers and these new luxurious taverns resemble one another a good deal in fact as well as in appearance. At both food may be bought as well as alcoholic liquor, and it may be consumed in pleasant surroundings. Both are equally insistent that nothing bad in quality is supplied. It is probable that even the intentions may be similar ; and enlightened brewers may as strongly favour moderation in drinking as any Temperance reformer. We may plausibly quote : " Blessings on his head, he brews good beer," without any interfering suggestion that the benefactor desires us to drink to excess. Even in Sweden, where Government monopoly is thorough, beer up to 31 per cent. of alcoholic content is left free of control, and temperance is preserved. So much most of us will grant, but we must, like Rob Roy, observe certain " distinctions that are plain and few." A brewer's business is to brew and sell beer. The Southwark and Croydon Palaces, the Fellowship Inn and all the Anchor Taverns certainly decrease the consumption of alcohol by any one person on any single occasion, but probably increase the total consumption over a twelvemonth. The brewers arc doubtless taking action that is wise and judi- cious merely from the point of business. This obvious fact has armed a good deal of criticism against the re- formed public house ; and it may be true that by adding sober grace to the consumption of alcohol the new taverns rob the Prohibitionists of one of their weapons--the weapon that won Prohibition its victory in the United States. But the best Temperance reformers wish tem- perance to win or lose on its own merits, not on adventi- tious abuses in the opposed system. It is, moreover, entirely false to argue that what is good for business is bad for the public, that the interest of producer and con- sumer clash. Whatever the effect on drinking, it is to the general good that the London County Council, who have been followed by the licensing magistrates, should have permitted music and dancing in what are called public houses. It is to the good that the chief author of the Trust Houses should have been given a certain control over the new experiment of Messrs. Barclay, Perkins & Co. His adhesion is important. We understand that, like the People's Refreshment House Association (founded on the initiative of the late Bishop of Chester), he has adopted one most definite method of directly encouraging temperance —" the inn managers receive no profits on alcoholic sales, but arc given . . . a substantial interest in the sales of food."
Such a regulation, if faithfully pursued, puts the reform of the public house definitely in the stream of general temperance reform. Both movements can help our social progress. At the least the brewers' taverns, following the Public House Trust, strip drinking of its excesses and its grossness, and add a decent social attraction to places most in want of the graces of life. The most prohibitory Prohibitionist must acknowledge so much, even while he regrets the effect of it on his own particular campaign. Progress does not cease to be progress because its orators are thereby deprived of that useful rhetorical butt, the Awful Example.
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