Decrease in Drunkenness and Crime.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 318, 19 May 1894, Page 4

Decrease in Drunkenness and Crime.

I was allowed the privilpge of examining the regis er ot the gaol, and saw, by counting myself, that the arrests for drunkenness in 1890 numbered 95. In 1891 they were 73, iv 1892 47, and in 1893 (counting Decern ber ol 1892 to balance December of 1893) tuere were 30. As the gaoior remarked, at the rate they were going in the course of another three years, they would have no arrests for iutoxication at all. Ihe gaoler said that most cl these arrests for drunkenness were foreigners who worked in the quarries, aud who frequently brought their liquor from outside places with them Besides the 30 arrested the last twelve months ior gutting drunk, there were four arrested for selling. You oo not hear the expression here, " Selling without a licence." The offence consists in the telling, and there is no puch thin": as a licence to a man a white-washed respectability. I went to the pulice station. Had a time to find this. too. It was a in tie room upstairs, aud uot a si^n up n» tell where it was. 1 called in the foteLuun, and was told that the po liceinau was not on outy till a fter noon. 1 asked if there wa> only one, and lean ed that tlieie w re two, bur that one was on lor th - afternoon, and the other tor the evening. Their labours nre very light, md tho old song, *• A policeman's i( e p not a happy one," would have o. r«- lorce if the " not," was lett our About one arrest a week on an ay.. age is tbe usual thing her . Mr, E. M Irish is Poor Uverseer for Mo rpehVr. and the most important information I got from him was that th. re was much less drinking- this year than ever before, and a corresponding diminution of poverty Althou h not a believer in prohibition' he wa«: emphatic that drinkinir and poverty w»nt together, and th<\t the drink caused the poverty rather than the pov r«y causing the drink, a" our Si gle ax friends would have ur believe. I interviewed the Editor of the " Argus and Patriot," Mr Atkins He was in favour of a high licei cc system for dealing with the liquor traffic, because he thought that it could be better enforced than prohibition, nnd at the same time it wouid bring in a revenue to the town. He thought or at least said he thought, there would be no | more drinking under licence than there now was under prohibition This was also the opinion of several with whom I talked, and the town, among the business men, -eerue i to be pretty evenly di ided, as far as I interviewed them on this question. Everybody agr»ed that the amount of •'rinking now in ulged in was a mere fraction of what it was a few years ago. Mr. Joel Foster, who is overseer of the waterworks, said that he came to the city in 18_2 in the hardware trade, and an important part of his trade was in liquors. At that tine no business was free from connection with the traffic, and no stock-in-trade would be deemed to be complete without a good supply of various alcoholic liquors. It was a time when every body drank, and all business men sold it, for it was thought to be all right. ISow all this was changed,