The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1914-07-14
Big REVENUE FROM
TRAFFIC IN VODKA
GAR OF RUSSIA HANDICAPPED
IN EFFORTS TO PROMOTE
TOTAL ABSTINENCE.
PROFITS RUN TO S5OO,OOO,OOO
Ruler Says He Has Often Been Dis
tressed by Miserable Results of
Alcoholism Among Peasants, and
Champions Cause of SObriety.

tressed by Miserable Results of
Alcoholism Among Peasants, and
Champions Cause of SObriety.
ST. PETERSBURG the past
couple of months it has become the
fashion to extol the virtues of absti-
nence from strong drink. The car
himself set the vogue by mentioning
in his rescript appointing the new
finance minister, P. L. Bark, that
in his travels in Russia his eyes had
sometimes been distressed by the
miserable results of alcoholism
among his beloved peasantry, and
he desired his minister, as controller
of the state alcohol monopoly, to
champion the cause of sobriety.
1t is an absolute certainty that the
political police never allowed a
drunken peasant to be within the
sight of the car, or allowed the czar
to see a home ruined by drink; but
the imperial announcement is, all
the same, an important step on the
road along which Russia is drifting.
Different Tendencies.
1t is the coincidence of different
tendencies coming sharply to head
at the same time that has brought
the drink problem to the front in
Russia. For the past twenty-five
years-ever since the central gov
eminent took over the monopoly in
the sale of a1cohol-vodka has be-
come each year a more and more
important factor in the imperial rev.
enue. This past year-the last bud
get of the Kokovtzeff financial re-
gime-the revenue from vodka
reached $5OO,00O,000. The figures
scandalized the respectable sense of
serious people. But Kokovtzeff was
entirely a laissez faire man. His
predecessor and enemy, Witte, had
made alcohol a government source
of wealth to pay for his ambitious
railroad and industrial finance, and
Kokovtzeff was quite content to use
the proceeds to keep up the price of
government securities and to keep
the revenue side of the budget
abreast of the vast new expenditures
on army and navy.
Whites Plan Rejected.
Into this quarrel between financial
experts the decent outside public
broke in with the demand that the
drink question be handled not as a
mere matter of immediate revenue
but as the biggest of social and eco
nomic troubles in Russia. White
came some way toward meeting this
clamor, and proposed that the rev.
enue from alcohol received into the
imperial treasury should be steadily
reduced by reducing the sale Of vod-
ka until $95O,0OO,0OO should be the
maximum taken in one year. His
proposal was rejected in the council
of empire by the territorial mag
mates, who own the distilleries which
sell their output to the government,
but the discussion of the subject led
to the overthrow of KokovtZeff.
Aside from the political phase of
the question there is the phenome-
non that drinking has increased
enormously in the last half-dozen
vears-in the period when there has
been a great increase in the circula-
ton of money among the peasantry.
In the breaking up of the communes
entailed by the new land act, setting
I'D freehold farmers as the prevail
ing agricultural type in Russia, peas
ants who sold out but did not wish
the work of building up homesteads
for themselves were paid in cash
from the State Peasants Bank, an
institution subsidized by the treas
urv for the operation of land trans
fers. Thrifty peasants husbanded
their little capital for their new live
lihood most Of the others took it of
to the "monopolka, the government
monopoly drinkshop of the district.
Base Ball Fans Chased Officers.