The Federal Liquor Service

Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1910.
First Edition. Inscribed by Author

18.5cm x 12.5cm. 91, [5] pages. Original blue cloth, gilt lettering.

Adelaide opal merchant Tullie Wollaston here turns to social reform amid the intense Federation-era debate over alcohol regulation, as the temperance movement pressed for change, proposing a Commonwealth monopoly over the liquor trade. He opens with a tale of a berry on a Pacific island, drawing the conclusion that Australians were “worse lunatics over the sale of ALCOHOL than the islanders over their berry.” Wollaston reviews and rejects the principal liquor-control systems then under discussion internationally, including prohibition, government monopoly schemes, the Public House Trust movement, and the Gothenburg system. Finding each inadequate (though sympathetic to prohibition, he acknowledges that its adoption in Australia would be “insuperably difficult at this late stage”), he advances his own solution: a “Federal Liquor Service” that would replace private licence holders with a centrally administered national authority. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author to the Reverend A. E. Gifford, dated 31/3/10.

Minor bumping and soiling. Free endpapers tanned. Some foxing to top edge, else minor. Very Good Condition.

AU$150