transferred to the Trade Union Congress, Parliament might continue as a survival, like the Privy Council. Conceivably, the King might remain on his throne. But there would have arisen in Britain what to the Merovingians would be known as

majority is as near as the minority to the seat of power. The majority includes the army, the navy, and the air force. And it has shown itself to be capable of a rapid and powerful organization.

I

NDER the circumstances, I need not consider what would be left of the British Commonwealth if the strike were to succeed. The general strike has already failed.

But there remains a serious issue which will have to be faced. The entire body of strikers, outside the mines, has broken contract. Each wage-earner quitting work without notice has rendered himself liable to an action for

damages. Each union official so persuading the wage-earners is not less liable. And the damages run to hundreds of millions of dollars.

To recover these losses from Labor is impossible. But it may be taken as certain that the trade union will be subject in the future to a strict control. Its immunity from action in the civil courts will be challenged and possibly canceled. And it will be debarred absolutely from imposing on its members a political levy.

These are prophecies. I admit it. But no organization, however powerful, can make revolution and fail without paying the penalty for its reckless folly.

WILL not tire you with statistics. The population of England sixty years ago was enough for its small area. Since that time the number of inhabitants has doubled.

Belgium is generally believed to be the most densely populated country in Europe. That is a mistake. According to the World Almanac (1926), the population of England per square mile was 701 persons, while in Belgium there were only 648 persons.

Germany and Italy had about half that number, while France had only 184 people per square mile. China and India have much less than half the English population per square mile.

Now this being so, it follows that England must "watch her step" if she successfully supports her prodigious family.

The American farmers who read this can scratch their heads over what would happen if there were 700 people on every section of land in the Middle West. The State of Iowa now has 45 inhabitants per square mile, and is sitting up nights with her troubles.

Special Correspondence by

WILLIAM C. GREGG

Then England was a highly organized country, raising only half her food, but making things for all the world, furnishing ships for over half the world commerce, and financing world loans both public and private, the proceeds generally being spent in England. If she financed a railroad in Argentina, she held the majority of the bonds and the stock, and sold the railroad its equipment.

Up to the World War England had had sixty years of uninterrupted prosperity, accumulating a surprisingly large share of the world's wealth. This wealth was entirely in the hands of its political and financial aristocracy. The laboring classes only produced the actual goods which England shipped. They had no part in the great financial ventures which doubled England's capital every decade. For it must be understood that as London became more and more the world money center, the world was working more and more for the English moneyed classes, which operated all over the world, but always through London. Their stocks and bonds were in London safety vaults; so also were their shipping and bank shares.

During these prosperous sixty years the class lines between capital and labor were not softened. It is hard for an American to understand the class distinctions in England. If you are on a steamer sailing around the world and meet a globe-trotting Englishman on board, you find him a good fellow; he jokes with you and all but slaps you on the back at short acquaintance. But suppose you introduce him to another Eng

the other's social position at home there is no hope of cordiality, and if the information finally obtained does not rate them both to their social satisfaction they will never mix.

It is the same way with English labor; a skilled workman is not in the same class with the man who waits on him, and the family nursemaid will not sit down at the same table with the cook. I don't mean to say that such class distinctions are like the castes in India, but you would be surprised at the distinct social divisions in England.

The English labor element during the said sixty prosperous years worked hard on the organization of unions and the increase of wages. It succeeded in putting the price of employment higher in England than in any other European country. In 1906 I found that a mechanic was being paid per hour in England 20 cents, in Germany 15 cents, in Belgium 10 cents. On this basis, with the great prosperity of her capitalist class England was nearly holding her own in the export of manufactured goods. But there was little love lost between the manufacturers and the workmen. Very little corporation stock was owned by laborers and very little of their earnings went into homes or interestbearing bank deposits. Their wages, although the highest in Europe, did not permit them to accumulate much wealth, as they measured the wealth displayed by the capitalist class. They spent a substantial share of their possible savings in drink, in betting, and in careless living.

neck.

EXT came the World War, which for four years artificially employed every available man and woman at

the latter transaction a vast amount of British-owned foreign stocks and bonds were sold to America, the income of which we now enjoy.

It is not recorded that the British workman saved much of his war prosperity. The war ended with his unions strong, his wages high, and his class consciousness increased. But the capitalist class was a squeezed lemon. Its job was to reorganize and finance peace-time commerce under the handicap of high wages, high taxes, and a depreciated currency. It simply did not have the power to do it.

Much of its old foreign trade was dead, and much was lost because of the

a realignment of labor and capital to meet the after-war problems; without such realignment and under such economic conditions, any country with a population of 700 to the square mile is population of 700 to the square mile is in a dangerous position.

D

URING the seven years succeeding the Armistice England has "muddled along," but this time without getting anywhere except perhaps a little more deeply into trouble.

England, you know, has built herself up under free trade; although preferring British goods, she has held fast to the idea that trade is free, and she will buy in the cheapest market. Three years ago I saw in a Belgian steel works some railroad-car axles marked to be shipped to an English railroad. The axles could have been made in England, employing

goat." In their present temper the English-buying public, including labor itself, will not give up free trade. So there you are, and the problem of successfully supporting a population of 700 human beings to the square mile is just where it was five years ago. It may take a revolution to make either side give way, but I hardly think they are as badly off as that yet.

England is living off the fat of former accumulations, and can do so a while longer. The death tax is taking its half of the large fortunes, as the owners die. It is always the best half that is taken; the balance is scattered and loses its power to maintain England's position in the world of finance. The Government spends the tax money, and it is lost for

ever.

employment appeared in England, to add to its worries and taxes. Wages came down, of course, but were always much higher than in Germany and Belgium, and England bought manufactured goods on the Continent because they were cheap. The lack of co-operation blocked

preferred to buy Belgian axles because they were cheaper.

It would seem that England has come to a fork in the road. One is marked "Reduction in wages," the other "Protective duties for the British Empire." English labor says, "We will not be the

HEN a man becomes old, he fails here and there, yet in other ways he retains his vigor. Sometimes we say, "The old man is failing rapidly." At another time we exclaim, "He is holding his own remarkably well." So it is with England. When you consider England's unemployed people, her dissensions, her

loss of world trade, her enormous debt both domestic and foreign, you say, "The old country is failing rapidly.' But when you see the reports of profits made by so many of her corporations large and small, the pleasure automobiles in London, probably greater in numbers than all the rest of Europe combined, when the aristocracy still has the means to employ armies of English servants and

fill the theaters, with jewels and costly raiment, you exclaim, "England is holding her own remarkably well."

One of the things hard for me to understand is how the capitalist class can bet five million dollars on one horse-race, and how the English laborers can bet more than that annually on professional football, which they largely support and attend.

If it were not for the 700 inhabitants per square mile you and I could dismiss England's troubles, as none of our concern. But, considering them, we must see that only the best economic and political management and only the best social team-work can save England from a permanent loss of her world power and her world position.

On board the S. S. Leviathan.

T

HE center of interest in the world-wide movement to reduce the evils of alcohol has shifted to Canada, where five of the nine provinces are experimenting with what is known as the government control system. Quebec province started the new system. five years ago. Four prohibition provinces west of the Great Lakes have followed Quebec's example, but introduced variants of their own contriving.

Ontario, the chief industrial province of the Dominion, and the most populous, still gives her adhesion to prohibition, as do the three Canadian provinces north of the New England States. A plebiscite taken in Ontario a year and a half ago on the question of permitting the sale of intoxicating beverages in sealed packages resulted in a negative decision by a majority of 33,000. In 1919 the prohibition majority was around the 400,000 mark. The reduction in the dry vote in 1924 was too great to be entirely explained away by the fact that the provincial Government threw its influence in favor of an affirmative verdict.

In August and September of the year 1924 I crossed Canada from Montreal to Vancouver Island for the purpose of gathering information about the various government control systems and passing it on to the readers of the Toronto "Star," to whose staff I have belonged for twenty-two years. Again, in January and February of this year I visited the provinces in which government control is being tried. These provinces are Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

By W. R. PLEWMAN

the difficulties of dealing with the liquor question are overcome. Actually, there are five different systems of government control, each with advantages and imperfections peculiar to itself. So when any one speaks of government control he should indicate to which form of it he has reference. Some forms of government control differ almost as widely from one another as they do from prohibition. In Saskatchewan, for instance, no beverage that by any stretch of the imagination could be considered intoxicating can be legally sold except by the Government. Nor is there any provision for the drinking of liquor in a public place unless it be at a banquet. In Quebec, on the other hand, wine and beer may be consumed in hundreds of hotels, taverns, and restaurants, as well as on certain trains and steamboats, and bottled beer may be bought in nearly a thousand

ing in the law to prevent a person buying from a Government store a thousand dollars' worth of whisky in a day if he has the price. He can stay in the beer parlors, drinking, until eleven o'clock at night. Wines can be bought from the Government in unlimited quantities. By local option balloting, beer parlors can be kept out of municipalities.

Purchases of spirits require the use of individual permits on which the quantities bought are recorded. Yearly permits cost $2 and permits for single purchases 50 cents. Wine and beer may be served at banquets. Five hundred banquet permits were granted last year. Eighty clubs have the right to serve the members' own liquor. There are no canteen licenses. The province spends from $10,000,000 to $12,000,000 on intoxicants. The Government control system has been in force five years.

A

LBERTA has about 600,000 people.. Its area is five times that of New York State. It grows cattle and wheat. Coal is mined in some parts. Its largest cities are Calgary and Edmonton, with under 75,000 people. This province has 29 Government stores for the sale of spirits and wines in unlimited quantities. Purchases may be taken away from the stores in sealed packages. The permit system is almost identical with that of British Columbia. Beer parlors, numbering 290, are supplied direct from the brewery, the Government not being an intermediary, as in British Columbia. Permits were granted last year for the use of beer at 604 banquets and 22 picnics. Forty-six clubs were authorized to sell malt liquor, but not for gain. Thirteen canteen licenses were granted. The system in Alberta is two years old.

ASKATCHEWAN is Canada's greatest

SASE

wheat-growing province. Its population is about 800,000. Its chief centers are Regina, Saskatoon, and Moosejaw, none of which has a population exceeding 45,000. It has 26 Government whisky stores and 72 Government beer stores. Last year 234 banquet permits were issued, but no club or canteen licenses. The system here is only a year old. The province has no beer parlors or sale of liquor by the glass.

Although the Saskatchewan system of Government control has been heralded as the best in existence, it provides so generously for the drinking element that the bootleggers rely upon the Government stores for the supplies they sell illicitly. The quantities each citizen or visitor may buy from the Government without more questioning or trouble than if he were buying soap or bread are two gallons of beer, one gallon of wine, and one quart of whisky per day. In the event of these quantities not being considered sufficient for purchase at one time, a purchaser may, by paying $2 each year, obtain a special quantity permit which entitles him to buy in bulk, every two weeks, ten gallons of beer, ten gallons of wine, and two gallons of whisky.

Manitoba has 650,000 people. It grows wheat, and its chief city, Winnipeg, is a distributing center for the prairies.

Its Government control system does not display liquor for sale as the Government stores in British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec do. The Saskatchewan stores also keep their wares out of sight. But Manitoba has no stores. It simply maintains nine order offices, at which citizens can make their desires known in the confidence that their orders, no matter what percentage of alcohol they prefer, will be filled within twentyfour hours. The Government delivers to residences only. The permit system is more elaborate than elsewhere and requires a citizen to vouch for the bona fides of the applicant. The Government limits purchases to twelve quart bottles of spirits and forty-eight pint bottles of beer per week. No limit appears to be placed on the quantity of wine that may be bought. The local breweries do not have to do business through the Government, and are not under effective control. All were convicted of violations of the law last year, twenty-three convictions. being recorded. Six of the seven were convicted in January of this year.

option. The money spent on liquor in the province exceeds $30,000,000 a year. Under Government control the total number of places of all sorts selling liquor increased from 1,861 in 1922 to 2,506 in 1925. In Montreal the places authorized to sell number 1,091 and are made up of 51 hotels, 306 taverns, 40 restaurants, 612 beer stores (groceries), 3 breweries, 6 steamboats, 10 diningcars, and 2 trading posts.

The habitant province permits one bottle of whisky to be bought at a time. A person can go the rounds of the Government stores and buy a quart bottle at each. Or he can save himself trouble by going in and out of the same store, getting a bottle each time, until he is content. President Cordeau, of the Quebec Liquor Commission, volunteers the statement that he himself, when caught short in his own supply for an impromptu in his own supply for an impromptu party, bought liquor in three stores on the same day. Friends of my own in Ontario have motored from store to store in Montreal until their bags were full of quart bottles. Whole truck-loads have been secured in a similar way, sometimes from a single store, for shipment across the interprovincial or international border.

B

OOTLEGGING is still rampant in provinces that have turned from prohibition to Government control, but it varies in form and extent with the restrictions. Last year between May 1 and December 3 the drunks in the Regina police court showed an increase of 127 per cent, as compared with the number for the same period in 1924, when prohibition was in force. The increase in the violations of Government control throughout Saskatchewan in the first eight and a half months of the new system worked out to 111 per cent. The fourth year of Government control in British Columbia Government control in British Columbia showed an increase in the one year of 53 per cent in violations of the liquor act, 9 per cent in the number jailed for such offenses, 80 per cent in the number fined, 65 per cent in the number forfeiting bail, and 108 per cent in the amount of cash penalties. In Vancouver the violations of prohibition in that system's worst year totaled 896; the violations of Government control after three years numbered 2,063, and in 1925, with sale of beer by the glass added to the system, 2,505. The increase in violations, as compared with prohibition days, was 179 per

cent.

The Quebec Liquor Commission's report for the Montreal district showed 4,806 violations receiving police attention in 1925, as compared with 3,823 in 1924. The Commission, in the 1924 an

nual statement, said: "We are well aware that these illicit resorts still exist and that we shall never succeed in permanently closing up such places. Our experience clearly demonstrates that as soon as investigations and arrests are made in one of these resorts, business starts up again almost immediately afterwards. . . . Many clubs are nothing else but illicit resorts on a big scale."

in PEN-MINDED temperance men Canada feel that government control is not being tried out on the best principles. The only condition on which they could indorse the system would be that the government, while providing a legal supply for those determined to get liquor, would deprecate the drinking habit. As it is, these temperance men complain that the idea of profit bulks too large in the minds of those behind the government control system, and that most of the liquor commissioners set out not merely to provide ample facilities for drinkers but to cater to their every whim.

There appears to be considerable weight to these objections. Every government control board sells hundreds of varieties of hard liquors. While most of the government control commissioners sincerely desire to reduce the evils of alcohol to a minimum and are first-class citizens, Manitoba is the only province in which I was impressed by the earnestness of the effort to keep down the amount of drinking. Even in that province the work of the board is handicapped by the fact that the government control law, which was drawn up by the opponents of prohibition and adopted, holus-bolus, by popular vote, does not give the commission control over the sale of beer. Hundreds of eating-houses and groceries in Winnipeg bootleg beer and an incessant clamor goes on for the sale of beer by the glass. But this bootlegging of beer, while something of a scandal, does little harm. Men drop into a restaurant or store, get their glass of beer, and pass on. If beer parlors were opened, some of these men and others too, including youths who have never tasted liquor, would sit down to tables and drink beer by the hour. Not a few would go home befuddled, with their small change gone.

I am under the impression that any province that goes into the business of selling liquor in sealed packages will be compelled within a few years to authorize the sale of beer by the glass. I quizzed Liquor Controller Dinning, of Alberta, as to the value of beer parlors, and he said, "I think that under any system of government sale there must be widespread provision for the sale of beer by the glass." British Columbia started

with sealed packages only, but after several years the Government submitted a referendum on the question of selling beer by the glass. But it took power to set up beer parlors in election ridings that wanted beer, even though the province as a whole might give an adverse decision. The popular majority was not favorable to beer parlors, so the politicians permitted beer to be sold by the glass on the local option principle. Vancouver's 200,000 residents gave a negative vote, but when the absentee voters' ballots were counted a majority of seventy was discovered. That was sufficient for the opening of dozens of beer parlors.

Alberta provided beer parlors from the inception of its system. Saskatchewan made no such provision, but the agitation for sale of beer by the glass is making itself felt after a year's operation of Government control.

My opinion is that beer parlors increase drinking and drunkenness, effect a very small reduction in the amount of spirituous liquors consumed, but reduce the turnover of bootleggers. Government control in all its forms tends to displace a highly organized bootlegging business and set up a large number of small bootleggers. Where the government sells liquor but forbids public drinking, it fosters bootlegging downtown, for men are not going to run home to get a bottle every time they meet a friend. AttorneyGeneral Craig, of Manitoba, said to me: "The government control law removed more than one-half the difficulty of bootlegging. Formerly, the bootlegger had trouble getting supplies and trouble selling to customers. Now the difficulty about supplies is non-existent."

I visited six beer parlors in Edmonton at closing time one Saturday in January. About 500 persons, including 26 women, were drinking beer. I saw 25 drunken persons leaving these places, but no arrests. The time at which I made my visits was the most unfavorable in the week. Statistics for Edmonton, however, do not show that conditions have become worse. Figures for Calgary, while indicating a decrease of 29 per cent in ordinary drunkenness since the new system became operative, record an increase of 170 and 173 per cent, respectively, in the number of cases of "drunk and disorderly" and "disorderly."

Two years ago I counted forty drunk

on

en men on the streets of Montreal a Sunday when the taverns were closed. The inebriates were confined to a comparatively small district of ill repute. I saw twenty drunks in Quebec City on a Sunday in February of this year when a snowshoe carnival was in progress. Clergymen told me that there was much

illicit selling in their working-class districts with liquor bought from the Government. President Cordeau, of the Liquor Board, informed me that there was no mystery about people buying from blind pigs when liquor could be readily secured in a legal way. He said some men preferred to drink in a place where there was a woman; some dropped around to "speak-easies" after the theaters closed the taverns and liquor stores being also closed; and some thought it to be more fun buying illegaily.

From a temperance standpoint, the most serious feature of beer parlors is that, being conducted under Government auspices, they attain a respectability and prestige they would not otherwise enjoy, and cause a multitude of young persons to acquire a taste for alcoholic beverages. Friends of mine on the prairies vouched for the statement that many middle-aged farmers, also, who did not touch liquor under license or prohibition are learning to drink in beer parlors. In Vancouver I saw quite a number of young women, some stylishly dressed, drinking beer. Premier Brownlee, of Alberta, informed me that he was concerned about the number of women who patronize the parlors, and that he knew some of them went there to solicit.

W

ESTERN Canada did not turn against prohibition because it had failed to reduce drunkenness, improve home life, and increase the efficiency of the workers. In the west, as in the cities of Ontario, prohibition had to its credit a decline of about sixty per cent in public drunkenness. But in the place of old evils grew new ones different in character. Dissatisfaction with prohibition arose because of the extent of bootlegging in residential areas, of the knowledge that individuals regarded as foreigners were making fortunes out of the illegal sale of liquor, and of stories about the dry law creating the flask habit and disrespect for law of all kinds. Above all was the desire of the community for social peace. The intransigency of the "wets," their ceaseless propaganda, persuaded the community that it was faced with an evil that could not be eradicated

and that had to be dealt with from the standpoint of expediency. The people decided, therefore, to see whether government control, a system under which the government would compete with the bootlegger and eliminate some of the incentive of private gain from liquor selling, might not retain much of the benefit that had come with prohibition.

Government control has not brought peace, or even a truce. The "drys," for the most part, are disposed to give the

system a thorough trial. But the extreme "wets" carry on an implacable agitation against the restrictions the system imposes and coerce the politicians into making concession after concession. These "wets" deny that the government has any more right to tell them where and when they shall drink than it has to tell them what they shall drink. Manitoba they outdo extreme prohibitionists in declaring that conditions under government control are undermining the whole social fabric. But when they are asked to suggest a remedy they propose a relaxation of the law.

In

The future of government control in western Canada is uncertain. I doubt that the electorate would end the experiment at this stage, when the system has been on trial from one to five years. A condition approaching moral lethargy may prevent Quebec from tightening up its system. But the provinces west of Ontario will either check tendencies now showing themselves that threaten to drag them back towards the conditions that prevailed under the license system or they will return to prohibition with renewed determination, in the conviction that no choice is open to them between bone-dry prohibition and the most liberal provision for drinking.

I

HAVE heard experienced social workers in downtown and workingmen's districts say with intense conviction that the open bar was no worse than government control. With that view, having regard to province-wide conditions and to conditions as they are and not as they may become, I cannot agree. Government control, because it makes no provision for the public drinking of spirituous liquors and because it has established a government monopoly of the sale of such beverages, has preserved one great good that came with the abolition of the bar. It is possible, on the other hand, that beer parlors, as "dry" leaders assert, will prove to be kindergartens in which a growing multitude will acquire a taste for stronger liquors, and thus make it necessary to start in again from the beginning with the work of temperance reform. Government control is worthy of close study as a worth-while social experiment; the degree of success it has met with thus far does not warrant its hasty adoption by communities outside of the five Canadian provinces.

As to prohibition communities authorizing an increase in the percentage of alcohol in permitted beverages, Ontario's experience with 4.4 per cent beer suggests that drinking sentiment cannot be placated by any increase in the strength of beer that stops short of the inebriating point.