Licensing and temperance in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark / by Edwin A. Pratt.

  • Pratt, Edwin A., 1854-1922.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Licensing and temperance in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark / by Edwin A. Pratt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    not visited Scandinavia at all—to accept blindly the official statistics, to draw absolutely erroneous conclusions therefrom, and to make little or no attempt to get to the ‘ bed-rock ’ of actual facts. One authority in Gothenburg informed me that out of fifty visitors from England — writers, politicians, and others—who had called upon him to make inquiries into the system, many had spent only a few hours in the city, and others had stopped a full day, or even two, while the fact that one ‘ investigator ’ had remained a week constituted a record. That record, I may say, I took the liberty of breaking, in regard alike to Gothenburg and Christiania. In the latter city I not only obtained all the official information I could, but I visited the artisan and slum districts, under the escort of a capable and trustworthy interpreter, well acquainted therewith, and ascertained for myself what effect the restrictions enforced are actually having upon the people. On completing my inquiries in Norway and Sweden, I went on to Denmark, and I would call the special attention of my readers to the account I give of the conditions in that country, and, more particularly, to the remarkable work which is being carried on by the Danish temper- ance societies on the basis of allowing their members to regard beer of low alcoholic strength as a temperance beverage. With the policy thus