CHARGING FOR BOTTLES

In the report of this committee submitted at Atlantic City reference was made to the advisability of the adoption by all of our members of a system of charging for bottles, both to the middleman and the consumer, and the adoption of uniform bottles, plain and interchangeable.

This practice has been developing in some sections of the country and its results are so beneficial that the committee feels that it is its duty to present to our members some figures it has obtained, relative to the saving which can be effected thereby, in the hope that the members may be so impressed that the system will be generally adopted.

Some of the most striking figures that have come into the possession of your committee were furnished by a Massachusetts company which adopted the method of charging for bottles, only a few years ago.

These figures, running over a period of years, offer a comparison of years during which the company did not charge and the years during which charges were made.

In the year 1910 the company referred to bottled 30,530 barrels and purchased 1,163,952 bottles or 38.125 bottles per barrel. In the year 1914 that company bottled 31,025 barrels and purchased only 429,696 bottles, or 13.85 bottles per barrel.

At the rate of $3.00 per gross this shows a saving of $15,297 for the year, which amounts to about fifty cents per barrel on all the beer bottled by that company for the year.

We have figures for another Massachusetts brewery which is charging for its bottles, showing the average number of bottles per barrel purchased for the years 1912, 1913 and 1914 to be 18, 26 and 23, while during the same years an eastern brewery that was not charging for bottles showed purchases of 54, 60 and 56 bottles per barrel for the years mentioned.

We are advised by the Bottling Brewers' Protective Association of New York and Brooklyn that the result of the deposit system adopted by that organization February 1, 1915, has been most satisfactory, the number of bottles received through the Association from the public dumps being materially reduced.

Comparative figures show that the number of bottles received in the exchange the first eight months the deposit system was in operation was reduced fifty-six per cent from the figures of the corresponding eight months of the previous year.

The figures for August and September, 1915, compared with the corresponding months of 1914, show a reduction of sixty-eight per cent. These results are so satisfactory and the possible saving is so enormous, that the Advisory Committee urges upon the members the adoption of the use of plain unlettered bottles and of the system of charging therefor.

On behalf of the Advisory Committee: JAMES R. NICHOLSON, Chairman

GUSTAV W. LEMBECK

WILLIAM HOFFMANN

Louis B. SCHRAM

N. W. KENDALL

HUGH F. Fox, Secretary

REPORT OF VIGILANCE COMMITTEE

PROHIBITION AND PUBLIC FINANCES

One of the most alluring promises held out by the prohibitionists in general and the Anti-Saloon League in particular was that the adoption of prohibition would both immediately and progressively reduce taxation and hence very materially lighten the burdens of the taxpayer. This prospect was based largely upon the assertion reiterated by prohibitionists that the revenue from liquor licenses was much more than offset by the expenditures necessary to provide for police, courts, charities and correctional institutions, much of the work of which (so the prohibitionists claimed) came from crime and poverty caused by saloons. What foundation they had for this assertion the prohibitionists never have been able adequately to explain, but still, despite entirely contrary results shown by Government, State and private investigations, they have persisted in repeating it.

In the first place, it is worthy of note that after more than half a century of prohibition the State of Maine has an abnormally high number of paupers. The 1914 Statistical Abstract of the United States, published by the Department of Commerce, states that in 1910 the percentage of paupers in Maine per 100,000 popu

lation was 127.3 enumerated in almshouses. This was almost as high as New York State's 132.0 per 100,000 population, the poverty problem in which State has long been intensified by the enormous inpouring immigration, much of which remained to congest the cities still further. Maine's 127.3 of paupers per 100,000 population was considerably higher than the proportion in many of the license states. It was higher than Indiana's 115.3; it exceeded Pennsylvania's 125.3 and Michigan's 105.7 per cent; it was manifestly far higher than Illinois' 96.1 and even still higher than the number of paupers per 100,000 population in many other nonprohibition states.

It need not be said that pauperism is the result of varied social, industrial and personal causes recognized by all students of the question, and that it has existed in every successive phase of society. But if the threadbare assertion of the prohibitionists that drink and the saloon are the main causes has any weight, a classic example of proving that prohibition would remove it was afforded in the State of Maine, where statute and constitutional prohibition has been written in law for decades. And if, moreover, results are tests, then the prohibitionists have completely disproved their own pet contention. This fact is additionally illustrated in considering the case of Kansas, which has been under constitutional prohibition since 1880. The 1914 Statistical Abstract of the United States shows that the number of paupers per 100,000 population enumerated in Kansas almshouses in 1910 was 43.5 as compared with 41.6 per 100,000 population in that State in 1890; after twenty years of prohibition in Kansas there was more pauperism there, whereas, if the contention of the prohibitionists is sound, there should have been strikingly less.

As for persons confined in penal institutions, the number in Maine increased from 77.4 per 100,000 population in 1890 to 98.3 per 100,000 population in 1910. In this respect, despite the extravagant promises of the prohibitionists that the adoption of prohibition would at once hugely reduce the number of prison. inmates, Kansas in twenty years showed only a very slight reduction from 98.4 per 100,000 population in 1890 to 91.1 per 100,000 population in 1910. But North Dakota, under prohibition since 1890, shows a very decided increase in prisoners-the number in