The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-01-21
THE woRLD,s DRINK STATISTICS.
EngIishmen Are Greater Beer Drink
ers than Germans.

Englishmen Are Greater Beer Drink
ers than Germans.
Pail Mall Gazette.
The country owes thanks to Sir Court
enay Boyle Most blue books are dry and
but few of us care to master their con-
tents. Sir Courtenay Boyle has succeeded,
however, in producing one that might al
most be described IS fascinating-the drink
statistics Of the civilized world, or, to give
1t its official and rather long-winded title,
The Production and Consumption of Alco-
holtc Beverages (wine, beer, spirits.)
A study of the paper leads to one con-
clusion, namely-that not only will people
drink as long as they can afford to pay for
1t, but that they will drink France pro-
duces ten times as much wine as Ger
many, it also exports ten times as much,
and yet more German wine is imported into
the United States than French wine. The
answer is obvious; there are in the States
many successful German settlers and they,
having the money will have the hook OF
the fatherland, no matter what they pay
for 1t. Thus also in prosperous Belgium
people put scarcely any limit on them
selves in the matter of drink, and whether
the head in the matter of consumption per
head, while even as regards wine, although
it is not a Wine-producing country, the in
habitants consume as much as do the Ger
mans, whose country is wine producing.
One point that is brought out very clear
ly in these tables is the fact that the
drink trade is almost everywhere home
industry, i. e., that by far the greater pro-
portion of the drink consumed is made in
import so much wine and brandy from the
continent that we are perhaps not alto
gether in a position to realize the fact, and
yet even in England by far the greater por-
tion of the drink consumed is home made.
This is proved by the relative proportions
of the customs receipts from imported liq-
uorS. The customs receipts amount to five
and a half millions sterling, and the ex-
else receipts to twenty-Seven millions, or
in the proportion of II per cent. to SO per
cent. in favor of the homemade. Perhaps
very few realize to how great an extent
France is the great wine producing, and
also the great wine consuming country or
the world. The statement that the guam
tity of wine annually drunk in the United
Kingdom Germany and the United States,
which, taken together, have a population
of $50 million of souls, barely exceeds
tenth part of what is consumed in France
with it's thirty-eight millions of inhabitants
Many, moreover, will be surprised to find
that the consumption per head of beer in
this country exceeds that of Germany, for
while the German drinks twenty-five gal
Ions per .annum, the Englishman drinks
thirty gallons. In both countries the con-
sumption of beer is distinctly on the in
crease
The following is an interesting fact TAX
en- at hazard. Seventy-Seven gallons of
beer are consumed in this country for
every gallon of wine that is drunk; could
any clearer proof be wanting that 1t is
the masses who drink, not the classes?
Scarcely the seventh part of a bottle OF
champagne per head is drunk per annum
by the inhabitants of this country; in the
United States scarcely the twentieth part.