ABSURDITY OF REDUCTION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1614, 29 November 1905, Page 1

ABSURDITY OF REDUCTION.

If is a rank absurdity to imagine that the cause of temperance reform will be extended by the ourtailmeut of the number of licenses in operation iu a oity. Shopkeepers know that a certain amount of trade has to be done in all communities. Any inoreaee. in the number of traders would lesson the volume of each Individual trader, but it would not rednoe the total trade done. The converse is likewise trae. Let the trade to be done be of a certain volume, and let the curtailment or reduc-

tion of those to do it be effeoted, and those remaining would do the greater amount of, business. Let this, be applied to the trade in alcoholic drinks, and the absurdity of reduction is apparent. Let it be supposed that there aro forty licenses in Wellington: Reduction; if carried at the' poll, might mean the withdrawal of tßn licensee. 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'hot deter him from his purpose. Reduotion is neither a temperance reform nor a means of restraining an alleged monopoly in liquor-selling, By reduotion a few houses would be doßed, but the trade of thoßO left would proportionately increase. Then why should the community, agree to destroy the property of one man in order that bis neighbor a few doors away might absorb his trade ? Reduction does not appeal, any more than nd-license or prohibition, to the love of fair dealing, and tho more reasonable of our prohibition friends canoot surely agree to vote for tho, running of a few men so that their fellows in the same line might secure an inoreaee in trade and wealth. The two bottom lines of the vot-ing-paper, ought therefore to be obliterated.—Wellington Poet.