ABSURDITY OF REDUCTION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1612, 27 November 1905, Page 2

ABSURDITY OF REDUCTION.

It is a rank absurdity to imagine that the oauso of temperance reform will be extended by the curtailment of the number of licenses in operation in a city. Shopkeepers know that a certain amount of trade has to be done in all communities. Any increase in the number of traders would lessen the volume of each individual trader, but it would not reduce the total trade done. The converse is likewise true. Let the trade to be done be of a certain volume, and let the curtailment or reduction of those to do it be effeoted, and those remaining would do the greater amount of business. Let this be applied to tbe trade in alcoholio drinks, and the absurdity of reduotion is apparent. Let it be supposed that there are forty lioenses in Wellington: Reduction, if carried at the poll, might mean the withdrawal of ten licences. But no intelligent person for a moment would imagine that the consumption of alcoholio liquors would be diminished by that means. If a man wants a drink, a hundred yards or a quarter of a mile to walk to get it will not deter him from his purpose. Reduction is neither a temperance reform nor a means of restraining an alleged monopoly in liquor-seliing. By reduotion a few houses would bo closed, but tbe trade of those le!t would proportionately increase. Then wby should the community agree to destroy the property of one man iu order that bis neighbor a few doors away might absorb his trade ? Reduction does not appeal, any more than no-license or prohibitum, to tbe Brit’shers’ love of fair dealing, and the more reasonable of our prohibition friends oannot surely agree to vote for tbe running of a few men so that their fellows in tbe same line might secure an increase in trade and wealth. Tbe two bottom lines of the vot iog-paper ought therefore to be obliter ated