LIQUOR AND THE U.S.A

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 173, 18 April 1921, Page 3

LIQUOR AND THE U.S.A

WOMEN WILL ALWAYS KEEP IT OUT A VISITOR’S OPINIONS That the women of America will never allow the liquor traffic to return is the opinion of Mrs. Lilian F. Fitch, of the ITnited1 T nited States, who is at present in New Zealand. With her father, Mr. Charles Francis, Mrs. Fitch is engaged in touring the world. She is preparing for the United States authorities a report on certain aspects of education in different parts of the globe. "The statements which foreign countries are given with regard to prohibition in the United States are not usually correct,’’ said. Mrs. Fitoh when interviewed by «. Dominion reporter in Wellington. "As yon know, America wet vent, dry by States, and every time a fresh State went dry the representatives of the liquor interest*’ went into the wet S ates declaring that more liquor was being sold in the newly dry State dhan 1i ad ever been sold there before. But if going (tex made no difference, why did the liquor people spend millions of dollars to spread such propaganda? Now they are saying that national prohibition has done no good. That is not true. It is doing a great deal of good. The deposits of labouring men in our banks have almost doubled since we have had prohibition, and the efficiency of our men has increased greatly. I feel sure that the civilised nations of the world will turn to prohibition before so many years have passed, because they will have observed the efficiency flhat it produces in our country. "Prohibition became a fact before the women of the United States had the federal franchise. Since if, has come into operation, the federal franchise has been granted to tlhe women, and there ie not n ghost of n chance of the return of liquor to the country.’’ Mrs. Fitch had something to say on the necessity for women to avoid "lowering themselves to the standards of the men.’’ "If our women ate going to lower themselves to the standards X>f the men,” she said, "our civilisation is going to fall. A striking observation was made to me by Marquis Okuma when I was pleading with him for the advancement of feminine education in Japan. Tn Japan no woman may, in the ordinary •ense, go to a university for education. The most she may do- is to go and sitin a classroom while certain subjects are being taught. After a while, no doubt, •he will be noticed and examined, but at present she ie just allowed to sit there. When I pleaded wiili Marquis Okuma for equal educational facilities for men and women he said that he had always had the highest respect for our womanhood, its education and its advancement, but he had recently discovered that some of our advancement applied equality for women in men’s vices. That never could spell the rising of the notion, and the fact had made him hesitate about the higher education of women. _ "T told him that the women he had in mind was not the representative woman of our country, and I showed him what a hand the women had had in bringing about prohibition. I also told him that the women were at work at present on the moral question, and the nicotine question.”