The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-22

stubbed my toe on the temperance movement in every country | have visited since 1 crossed over to Flu rope. l found it in France, though the progress there is not great and the peasants are still more or less under the influence of liquor by their continuous drinking of wine and of brandy It exists also in Bel gium. but has yet to develop to any extent with the Dutch. Holland sticks to it's gin. and in Amsterdam 1 found a curious memento of our bibulouS past in a book of 400 recipes for American drinks published in Dutch I was in. Amsterdam the night of the Queens birthday and the streets were crowded with men gloriously drunk.
 Denmark, that country of the help full hen and the cooperative egg, has now 100000 members in it's tenn perance societies, but it still keeps on drinking high percentage liquor. singing the while songs like the chicken ditty of our prohibition days:
 T had a little hen and it had a
 wooden leg.
 And nearly every morning it used to
 lay an egg.
 It was the best little chicken we had
 on the farm
 And another little drink won't do us
 any harm.''
 tourists on account of it's law pro-
 Norway is suffering from a lack of hibiting the use of any liquors which contain more than If per cent of all cohol, and her trade with Portugal and Spain suffers because the latter countries have retaliated by putting q big Import duty on the split cod fish the NorW egianS make. Portugal has raised those duties 800 per cent. There is now d big fight in Norway between the vets and the drys, and the Aftenposten, one of the chief dailies of Christiania, planes the pro- hibition law for increasing the drink ing among the young. On the other hand. the Aftenblad says: We know that prohibition has decreased misde- meanors caused by drunkenness over 50 per cent. The result does honor to the power of resistance of the Nor wegian people"
 Liquor Selling In Sweden.
 Here in Sweden they have a new method of controlling the liquor traf- fife. They investigate each person and provide how much liquor he or she may have every month The country has had different kinds of temperance legislation in the past, and on straight vote fer or against prohibition last year, fifty-one per cent of the votes were cast wet and forty nine per cent dry. That vote has perpetuated the system which has, been in operation here for sev- era1 years and which many conser- vative Swedes consider preferable to our own. This is to give no drinks eNcept to the SC who have Mot books, by which is meant little books about the size sof savings bank book. These 4FeG given out by local liquor socie tiess appointed by law which decide just who may have the right to buy liquor, and how much he may buy. The most any one can have is four litres, or less than q gallCn per month, and he has to be beyond suspicion to get that.
 Must Sign Checks For Drinks.
 The Notebook is given out only upon application and investigation. The applicant must write down full information concerning his birth. ahtecedents, residence and the amount of his assessed income and the rent he pays. If he is short in his taxes. he will not get a book. and if he has been arrested for drupkenness, his chances are slim. If his application is granted, he fills out a card. with his signature and this is filed in the store where he luys his liquor. Each time sale is made. q detachable slip, upon which the owner signs his name, is left as q receipt for the goods re- eeived, and his signature must be verified with the card in the store bearing his name. His book shows the record of just how much liquor he has bought up to the time of each purchase, and there is no chauce fer him to run over the quota allotted to him. Only one of these Notebooks is given out to the head of a family, husband and wife, and none to anyone under 21 years of age The law also provides regu latiGns for the restaurants and cafes selling liquors, and there are sys- tcms of recording all cases of drunkenness and poverty arising from alcohol drinks Drunkenness Decreasing.
 am told that the drunkenness has greatly decreased since the in aI guration of the Notebook system and that the amount of alchoiic liquors sold off the premises has dwindled one-half. l have before me 2. card giving q diagram of the de- cline in drunkenness, hospital cases from the use of alcohol and chronic alcoholism in the city of Stockholm from 1913 to 1921. The estimate was made for each ten thousand inhabi- tants. The street drunkenness de- clined 67 per cent; the hospital cases an equal amount and chronic alcoholism was reduced by so per cent. The first figures were taken from the police records and the last two from hospital records.
 Beats The BootieSgers.
 A curious condition was produced here by the almost absolute prohi- bition caused by the blockade dur ing part of the war. Through 1917 and 1918 almost no liquor could be brought in and legally sold. This, the authorities claim, acted in much the same way as total prohibition in the United States. They say also it had the same condition as to drunkenness, which they assert, but which I doubt, now exists in the United States. As soon as the peo- ple here found they could not buy all the liquor they wanted at rea- s.rable price, private Illegal stlllS were instituted, and the private manufacturer, and bootlegSer flooded the market so that drunkehneSs went up like shot and kept going up until liquor was supplied after inc old methods, when the drunken ness began to decline, It is now far below what it was in 1918. The peo- Die can get liquor legally ana the bootleggers have vanished. pr. Ivan Bratt, the originator of this Mot hnok system. and at the head of the movement for the regulation or Iiouor legislation in sweden, tells me that he believes q strongly con trolled legalized trade in liquors IS better ethan prohibition lie says there are many factors that prevent nrohibltion from being prohibtive, and that no law can be enforced un- less there IS a general sentiment m favor of that law. Otherwise it will act in the opposite direction TOT