New Cabinet

Sweden joggled politically to the Right last week as the bourgeois parties combined to overthrow the Socialist Cabinet of Premier Sandler when he attempted to jam through the Diet a measure granting unemployment doles even to men wilfully unemployed or on strike.

King Gustaf promptly called to the Premiership Herr C. G. Ekman, onetime blacksmith, leader of the People's Prohibition Party, the most ardently Dry wing of the old Liberal party.

Significance. Interest promptly centered upon whether the new regime would attempt to enact strong arm prohibition in place of the highly successful "Stockholm system" of liquor control inaugurated in 1916 by Dr. Ivan Bratt, which was extended throughout Sweden in 1919 as the "Bratt system."*

Dr. Bratt, a practicing physician and an authority on social hygiene, secured the establishment of a liquor monopoly financed by private capital, empowered to dispense all alcoholic fluids except light beers, and permitted to dispose of such fluids only under a permit system based upon the status of each purchaser--the head of a family to be sold not more than a gallon of "hard liquors" a month, single women not more than a gallon a year, restaurants an amount proportionate to their proven sales of food. To the Swede who dines in restaurants there may be brought unlimited "hard liquors" if the diner orders and pays for an additional meal with each round.

At present the "Bratt Monopoly" pays a fixed return of 5% to shareholders, and to the Government all surplus profits--totaling some 112,000,000 kroner ($30,000,000) annually. Because of the easygoing temper of the people, the "Bratt system" has occasioned little friction, has reduced the consumption of alcohol 50% in such cities as Stockholm, and appears to ration out alcohol in just sufficient quantities to make smuggling unprofitable. This "golden mean" of Swedish "regulation" contrasts sharply with Norwegian "prohibition" of all liquors of more than 45% alcoholic content. In Norway, though wines and beers are at everyone's disposal, the smuggling in of hard liquor by German speedboats* has become an industry.

Die-hard Drys in both Sweden and Norway continue to clamor for prohibition `a l'Americaine.

*Superseding the earlier and somewhat similar "Gothenburg system."

*Adroitly fitted with a device by which the entire liquor cargo can be ejected into the sea through an under water trap door in the stern, if a dry enforcement cutter is sighted.