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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 her world position.

On board the S. S. Leviathan.

and

Canada's Experiments in Liquor Control

Here is a survey of Canadian liquor legislation that is at once authoritative and convincing. Nothing like it has appeared in any American periodical

TH

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 Janu

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

stores.

A broad definition of government control is that it is a system under which the retail sale of spirituous liquors is a government monopoly and the retail sale of beer and wine is carried on either by the government or private parties. In four provinces the sale of beer is in private hands; in one the government retains exclusive rights. In three provinces sale of beer by the glass is permitted; in two sale is restricted to sealed packages.

ary and February of this year I visited BR

the provinces in which government control is being tried. These provinces are Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

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RITISH COLUMBIA is a province devoted to mining, fishing, lumbering, and fruit growing. Its area is vast, yet its population is not equal to Baltimore's. Its chief center, Vancouver, is an important Pacific coast port. The province has 70 Government stores selling spirituous liquors and 250 beer parlors privately operated but receiving their supplies through the Government. There is noth

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.

S

ASKATCHEWAN is Canada's greatest 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

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, get ́ting 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 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.

grows wheat, and its chief city, Winni- B

peg, 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.

Q UEBEC is largely a French-speaking

province. One-third of its 2,300,000 people are in Greater Montreal. More than one-half of the province's population live in dry communities under local

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 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 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."

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PEN-MINDED temperance men in 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."

Τ Two years ago I counted forty drunk

en men on the streets of Montreal on 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 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, per"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.

The Autobiography of a Son of the City

By CHARLES STELZLE

IT was in the battle arena mentioned in his opening sentence this week that Charles Stelzle, fifty-seven years ago next month, was born. There, too, he was bred and trained. He has graphically told in preceding installments something of his

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early life in the tenements, the shops, the factory. He knows this region as the country-bred man knows his old farm. That explains the confidence with which he undertook to build up a house of religion not two blocks from Tammany Hall.

XII

Organizing the Labor Temple

OWER New York is the arena in

which the greatest battles of America's masses will be fought. Here every social, economic, and religious problem of the day is being faced by the people of the tenements, without regard for precedents and untrammeled by tradition.

For many years working people had been pouring into this district, creating a congestion unparalleled in the history of the world. Yet as the people moved in, the Protestant churches steadily moved out, deserting them, in spite of the fact that for generations the Church had been insisting that the Gospel which it preached was a universal Gospel; that it met the needs of all classes and conditions of men, and that it alone could solve the social problems of the times.

The churches thus practically confessed that they could live only when they followed the well-to-do to the uptown distritts and to the suburbs; that only Socialism and Anarchism could thrive in the soil produced by congested tenement life.

Missionary societies talked about "the problem of the downtown church," whereas the emphasis should have been placed on "the downtown problems of the Church." The situation confronting the Church downtown should have been the concern of the whole Church, and not simply of the downtown churches. If there is such a thing as Christian unity in the attack upon modern social and religious conditions, it should be manifested in the big cities, where the problems are so terrific that no one church can adequately meet them.

The attempt of religious enterprises to meet the conditions in lower New York was manifested in the organization of city missions. For a time these succeeded fairly well-while those among whom they labored were of nationalities which were Lutheran or Protestant of other denominations. But when lower New York was peopled by immigrants from southeastern Europe these religious

Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin

A distinguished supporter of the Labor Temple, now newly chosen President of Union Theological Seminary

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N the corner of Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue stood a brownstone church which had had a most glorious career. Its ministers through a half-century had rendered valiant service. But its membership had steadily moved out of the district, until a dozen or so years ago there was a mere handful left, only thirty or forty people to attend its Sunday service.

Something like twenty-five years ago Dwight L. Moody, the famous evangelist, was challenged to conduct a month's enterprises quickly failed. To-day they meetings in this old church. Characterisare practically all gone.

New York thus became a wilderness of humanity, puzzling and heartbreaking to many sincere workers who would have given their lives to win in the battle given their lives to win in the battle against the elements which they felt against the elements which they felt were steadily pulling down the morale of the people. Yet that conception was not altogether true, because the recent dealtogether true, because the recent developments in the social and economic world had given the masses of the people a new idea of their rights and privileges. It was largely this growing spirit of democracy among the people which so seriously affected the old-fashioned mission enterprise. The managers of those institutions simply failed to keep abreast of the times. They lost their grip when the masses of the people became imbued with the modern spirit of self-reliance and independence. The methods of working people trying out their own initiative may not always be right; but the

tically, he plunged in, with his singer, Ira D. Sankey, and together they held forth. But, to Mr. Moody's utter amazement, not once during the entire series of meetings was the church full. On the first night of the meetings there were about two hundred people in the audience. Mr. Moody had been preaching to audiences of five and six thousand in the upper part of the city. Walking onto the platform, upon which were seated the ministers of the district, Mr. Moody gave one quick glance at the audience. Then, turning to the preachers, he said, "Where are the people?"

The chairman facetiously remarked, "Out on the streets."

"Well, why don't you go out and get them?" quickly responded the evangelist.

There was nothing else for the preachers to do but rather sheepishly leave the platform and try to "bring in the multi

tudes." The chairman and another preacher went to a corner saloon which was crowded with workingmen, most of whom were playing cards or drinking at the bar.

"Don't you want to come up to the church on the corner of Second Avenue and hear Dwight L. Moody preach?" the chairman said to four men who sat at a card-table near the door.

"Who the hell is Moody?" one of them replied. And that was all there was to that.

Mr. Moody admitted complete defeat in this attempt to preach the "pure Gospel" to the East Side.

It was not strange, therefore, that when the question of selling the property came up before the remnant of the congregation they felt justified in disposing of it for something like $250,000 and agreeing to combine with another Presbyterian church on the West Side of the city. Before the plan was consummated, however, I made a proposal to the officers of the church that they give me the use of the church building three nights in the week to conduct services in whatever

way I thought best, but not without their entire approval; simply to see what could be done by a new method of attack.

After considering the proposal for some time, the officers voted that my plans be accepted, on condition that I

Paul Thompson

pay the church five thousand dollars a year in addition to furnishing all the money for carrying on the work itself. Frankly, I was stunned, particularly as I had agreed to take on this work as an extra task. I was already responsible for three or four other enterprises. I realized, however, that it was because these men were simply tired out with the situation under which they had been working so long with complete failure.

Then I submitted the same general proposal to the Church Extension Committee of the New York Presbytery, to whom I spoke even more strongly about the responsibility of the Church toward this downtown district. Finally, the Committee voted to purchase the property outright with part of two million dollars left by John L. Kennedy to the Board of Home Missions, with the understanding that I should conduct this work for two years as an experiment; that I was to have complete charge of every department of the work without interference by any committee or individual.

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Open-air meeting of Socialists at Union Square watched by mounted policemenin the immediate neighborhood of the Labor Temple

every particular. Avowedly it was to be run by workingmen, the men who actually lived in the community. So I called it the "Labor Temple," a name which as a religious enterprise became famous the world over even before I had completed my two years' experimentation.

To the amusement of the sub-committee representing the Church Extension Committee, I took them into the cellar of the old building, where I had found that the floor of the main auditorium was supported by wooden posts, and insisted that these be removed and that iron pillars take their place. For I assured them the church would soon be so crowded that the floors would not stand the weight of the people. I was thoroughly sincere. I was quite positive that the crowds would come. And come they did. Within a couple of weeks we were compelled to turn them away. During all of these discussions and while the work was being organized I had the whole-hearted and constant support of Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and a prominent member of the Board of Home Missions, under whose immediate direction the work was carried on during its initial stages.

The Labor Temple bordered the most congested area in New York, although at one time it was one of the most fashionable districts in the city. Fourteenth Street was the dividing line between the masses living in the big tenements to the south and the more favored ones who could afford the greater exclusiveness of the club and the "private house." At certain times of the day there passed by the corner of the Temple, on the sidewalk and in street cars, fully one thousand persons in a minute. Within a block was the great downtown amusement district of the people.

Until long after midnight Fourteenth Street was a blaze of light, rivaling the day for brilliancy. The saloons, several of them run by famous sporting men, were crowded to the doors. Here, too, was one of New York's "red light" districts. There were dance-halls and vulgar motion-picture shows, often hotbeds of vice and obscenity. There was a cheap Bohemia throughout the section which was very attractive to the young people in the community who had been engaged all day at hard work in stores and factories. Yet this was not a "slum." The residents in the tenements near by were honest, hard-working men and women, as human as the rest of the world, but with all the frailties of mankind surrounded by strong constant temptation.

In the midst of this street, where elec

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