CORRESPONDENCE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1648, 2 June 1879, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Globe. Sib, —In your leader of Saturday you suggest that our “ Good Templar friends ” ought to oome forward and assist in the promotion of working mens’ clubs, such as in Dunedin and other places. In your description of these places you wind up with an “ <tc.,” which “ &o.” is exactly the reason why Good Templars do not, and cannot, support such institutions. I wrote to Dunedin once to get the rules, &c., of the Dunedin Club, and found that intoxicating drinks were sold and consumed on the premises. I mention this fact to put the saddle on the right hone. The Good Templars do not want such clubs. They have their lodge meetings weekly, and most of the evenings in the week can be spent at homo in a much more profitable manner, both to the individual and the home than at such clubs. You also remark that the Mayor of Sydenham “ spoke severely, but no doubt with some degree of truth,” as to the money spent on drink. If arithmetic is true, and the Government statistics are to be at all relied on, he spoke with a very large degree of truth. Mr Jack Lee stated at a public meeting that he had patronised publicans for thirty years, and always got value for his money. Where is it? A little arithmetic will show us that taking Mr Lee’s patronage at the low rate of 6d per diem, he ought to be worth some £BSO now, or as the interest obtainable here is very high, he might have had £ISOO. Where is h's value for this, and if he has, why is ho among the unemployed? I too “deeply deplore” the present state of things, but present help is useless if a different system is not to be followed for the future, and I would in all seriousness beg of the working men both “employed” and “unemployed,” to consider the words of the Mayor of Sydenham. Yours, &c., A TEMPLAR, Ohriitchurch, June 2nd, 1879.