Drink, Temperance and Legislation

An explanation of my interest in the drink question seems due to the reader, and desirable in order to make clear the point of view maintained in what follows; but it is not essential, and this chapter may be skipped. It contains my credentials, so to speak, and cannot avoid being uncomfortably egotistic.

Some years ago I was much engaged in the investigation of strikes and other labour questions. In order to get at the minds of the rank and file of the men-which is indispensable to a real understanding of such matters, though generally neglected —I sought them where they most congregate and most readily enter into conversation, namely, in the public-house. I was thus led to spend a great deal of time in public-houses frequented by working men, conversing with them and joining in their proceedings on a friendly footing, which included the consumption of vast quantities of four ale.' I soon

became interested in what went on apart from the immediate question in hand, and fell into the habit of observing the manners and customs of the place and of the people frequenting it. Many things struck my attention which were quite at variance with statements I had often seen, and still see, made in public by persons interested in the liquor question but possessing only a second-hand knowledge of its actualities. I pursued the subject further and made a regular study of it, not only in all parts of this country but abroad; and I have since kept it up. It has, in fact, been my practice for several years past to observe the habits of the people and the conduct of the liquor traffic on the spot, wherever I go, at home or abroad. Every part of London and every class of house is familiar to me, from the fashionable restaurant to the sailors' dancing saloons (now abolished) in what used to be Ratcliff Highway, the foreign clubs about Soho and the so-called ' opium dens' frequented by Chinese firemen in Limehouse Causeway. I have made similar observations in most of the large centres of population in these islands, in mining villages and purely agricultural districts; I have explored the lowest drinkshops in Paris by day and by night, alone and with the police, and have carried on my researches in nearly every country in Europe and in Canada. In short I may fairly say that my acquaintance with the pothouse and its ways is extensive and peculiar.'

These observations have been supplemented, as

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