Profits The receipts for one year amount to.. 42,435,220 amount to The difference between the receipts and If we add to this difference the increase We have the profit for the year 1910, 26 2 18 2 76 05 30,626,503 81 95 The profit for the year 1909 having been 29,832,443 We have an increase of.. ཚ3|8 794,059 86 Relation of the Department to the Treasury. On December 31, 1910, the department owed the Treasury: 1,369,770 14 1,443,564 14 Total1 But the department has still to pay on Its final debt to the Treasury is. 12,107,200 18 1,583,592 22 10,525,607 84 Many other details are found in the pages which follow, but there is no trace anywhere of what the English call "depreciation," that is to say, amortization, on either real estate or equipment. The monopoly buys matches abroad for 3,206,326 francs 04, upon which it pays 671,608 francs 07 cus'These figures, which do not agree, are copied from the official report. toms duties, together with 3,008 francs 64 in the way of incidental expenses, forming a total of 3,880,942 francs 75. The Minister of Finance collects theoretically 671,608 francs 07 from the customhouse upon this monopoly, and at least an equivalent sum as profit on the sale of the domestic product. Therefore, his accounts are just that much short at the end of the year. Here we have a bookkeeping artifice so much the more astonishing in that foreign matches are prohibited and cannot be brought into the country except by the government. 3. In the case of both tobacco and matches the term profit is applied to the difference existing between receipts and expenditures. But, from the standpoint of the consumer, this profit is neither more nor less than a reward of extortion, since consumers are unable to procure at the lowest price the goods which the monopoly forces upon them. The word profit is, therefore, altogether a misnomer. In 1891 a committee of the Chamber of Deputies suggested to the various ministers that government employees be allowed to share in the profits of state operation. At that time I had under my direction, as an industrial undertaking, the old government railway system. I answered that there were no profits and that consequently they could not be divided. But would it even have been possible to give to the employees and laborers connected with the prosperous tobacco and match industries a share in the "profits resulting from the sale of their products"? There are no real profits; there are fiscal advantages wrung from consumers. Many of those who demand "industrial accounts" do it with the hidden hope that the departments of tobacco and matches are going to become the property of the employees concerned in their operation, who will thereupon enter into contracts with the government and thereby ensure for themselves "a share of the profits." But such profits are, as has been already said, only the result of extortion, and, therefore, would inevitably disappear if unsupported by the laws at present in force. A fiscal profit should never be mistaken for an industrial profit. CHAPTER XX THE ALCOHOL MONOPOLY IN SWITZERLAND AND RUSSIA 1. Monopolistic Fictions of Emile Alglave.-Monopoly Rejected in Germany.-No Monopoly in Austria.-An Experiment in Italy. 2. In Switzerland, the Object of the Monopoly the Abolition of Ohmgeld Duties.-Neither the Distillation of Wines nor Stone and Kernel Fruits Affected by the Monopoly. Ten per Cent. of the Receipts to Combat Alcoholism.-A Surprise Vote.-Numa Droz.-The Electoral Premium on Potatoes.-Restrictions on Sale in Switzerland.-Fiscal Deception. 3. Russia.-Moujik Forbidden to Drink on Premises.— Characteristics of the Liquor Traffic.-Increase of Public Drunkenness.-Declaration of a Moral Purpose. -Fiscal Success. 1. About thirty years ago Émile Alglave was anxious to establish a monopoly on alcohol in France. Basing his appeal on authority he said, with magnificent assurance, that France would be the last country in Europe to adopt such a monopoly, and he reproached her with a lack of progressive spirit. He cited the example of Germany, where, as a matter of fact, a monopolistic project was submitted to the Reichstag on February 22, 1886. But despite the intervention of Bismarck, who pointed out the financial necessities of the empire and the need for reforming municipal taxation, the bill was rejected on the 27th of March, following, by a vote of 181 to 3. The great distillers supported the project because the government promised to buy their alcohol at 40 marks, or 10 marks more than it was worth at the time a proceeding which would have involved an outright gift to them of 35,000,000 marks. But, although these particular manufacturers might contemplate with satisfaction the immediate profit, the question naturally arose as to what would happen if, later, under various kinds of pressure, the government, instead of having at its head a man like Bismarck, himself a prominent distiller, should have statesmen anxious not to arouse any suspicion of favoring these special interests, and who, moreover, might be in need of revenues to balance the budget. It was the general opinion that such a monopoly would increase the power of the government, and convert the retailers into electoral agents. The questions of rectification and exportation were also debated. Since that hour the question of an alcohol monopoly has been dead so far as the Reichstag is concerned. Before the alcohol monopoly investigating committee of the French government, in 1887, M. Alglave expressly declared that Austria had adopted the policy of monopolizing alcohol. He even gave circumstantial details, such as that the price of a single glass was fixed at o franc 04; that the commission allowed the tavern keeper was 10 per cent., etc. He further declared that in Austria the measure was not |