The Indianapolis times., 1928-09-05
BY WILLIAM PHILIP SIMMS

STOCKHOLM, Sept. 5.-Com-
nencing with the idea that the
liquor problem is essentially a hu-
man problem and that you can't
change human nature merely by
passing a law, Sweden is working
OUT the worlds most successful ex-
pertinent in temperance and public
morals.
1 came to Sweden frankly skep-
tical. SwedeS, history relates,
around the 1S50's, were among the
worlds champion drinkers. Their
national tipple was aqua Wit, as they
call it, schnaps, liquid fire distilled
from potatoes.
They averaged something like 200
quarts a year of this stuff per
family.
If the Swedes could find way
to regulate booze and become a tenn
perate people, thought, there is
some hope for America.
Abolish Age-OId Evils
Well, they've done it. They've
abolished the saloon, the blind pig,
the bootlegger and the moonshiner.
IN a few years they have cut liquor
consumption to half, lessened all
kinds of crime by more than half,
reduced drunkenness among the
youth of the land to comparatively
negligible figures, until today Sweden
seems the very picture Of social
health and economic expansion.
The Bratt system of liquor control
is what has done it. The system
gets it's name from DR.. Ivan Bratt,
the young physician, social reform
er, and temperance advocate who
worked it out.
The most popular drink in Sweden
today is a sort of near-beer, & brew
with only trifle more alcohol in it
than is to be found in ours. 1t is
illegal to have it run above 80 al
cohol by weight, but the average is
much lower.
This beer and light wines, with
a small and strictly rationed amount
of spirits, obtainable on a carefully
worked out card system, represent
the spurious beverage of present.
day Sweden.
Made Nation Wide
The Bratt system was tried out
tentatively in Stockholm in 1913. So
excellent were the results of the
Stockholm experiment" that in
1919 the system became nationwide.
Even then it was several years
before the necessary enforcement
laws could be passed, SO the Swed-
ish system has been in vogue ma
tionally only four or five years. Yet
remarkable progress in the direction
of temperance, law and order has
been made.
The total amount of spirits con-
sumed in all Sweden has fallen about
40 per cent and in Stockholm about
so per cent. Crimes of violence
have fallen off from an index of
100 to So in the nation as whole,
and to 40 here in the capital and
largest city.
Arrests for drunkenness have
slumped from 100 to 48 for all Swe-
den and to 80 in Stockholm, the
best results being achieved among
the Young folks-from IS to 20 years
of age.
These figures show reduction
from 100 to II, no lessl
Sweden is not attempting to drive
her citizens into sobriety. She is
leading them.
No Crime to Have Alcohol
Sweden does not make it a crime
to have a limited amount Of alcohol,
but she does say that making hog
of ones self is a social crime pun
ishable in various ways.
Here you may have little, but
you may not have much, the oppo-
site of practice in prohibition coun-
tries.
Today Sweden has almost abso-
lutte control of her drink problem
BY rationing her citizens down to a
point beyond which there would be
a popular demand for more, result
ing in bootleggers and the vast un-
derworld of the rum trade so no.
torious in our own country, she has
brought the nation to such a hign
state Of temperance and public
morals as to amaze present-day
Americans