DISSECTING “DRY” LAWS.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 February 1920, Page 4

DISSECTING “DRY” LAWS.

BRITISHER DETAILS VIEWS. VANCOUVER, Jan. 17. Making a study for the London “Daily ]\lail” of the effects of prohibition on the American Continent, Mr Ferdinand Tuohy, representative of Lord Nortlicliffe, arrived in Vancouver, and spent several days looking over the situation in Western Canada, Upon his return to England he will write a ser- i ies of articles giving his impressions. . “In broad outline there are two -types of people born into this world,” | said Mr Tuohy, outlining his views from the data lie has collected. “There are those who live, laugh, and love, and are quite efficient in their own way, and not infrequently produce a Shakespeare, a Napoleon ,a Velasquez, on an Allenby—and are what they are becalse their forefathers were what they were. And then there are the serious minded men and women who also contribute largely to the general scheme of things, as Ford, Rockfeller, and the Archbishop of Can- | terbury. The two types are quite distinct, and ought to be allowed to live their own lives. The forced grafting of one set of views on the other is j Bolshevism. | I ‘At the same time,” he continued, “those ‘terrible people’ called ‘wets’ in the United States and in Canada—l confess that like most ex-officers in the British Army, I am one myself—should realise that ten per cent, of the misery, poverty, and disease that drink causes in the world are evils for which ' they are partly responsible, and are dis'tinct from the 90 per cent, pleasure which they derive from it. If England can be got into her frame of nnnd that will make her realise this condition, and its temperate . drinking—and 1 not inefficient millions are permitted to become articulate above the battle- ! cries of “Pussy-foot” and the liquor trade. I have little doubt that prohibition will be defeated-or rather stillborn. , 1 “Lord Nortlicliffe sent me over to 1 Canada and the United States m order to make that British public articulate. | CALLS IT MENACE. . “Prohibition in England,” he observed “used to be considered as a joke, but we have now come to regard it as menace. I have discovered five arguments in favour of prohibition in the course of my trip. The first m that> p>> - hibition will lessen poverty ism It appears to me that this suit is caused more by the abolition of the bar and not so much from cuttn „ off the supply of alcoholic “Argument number two is that pio .hibition will dfecrease disease » ■ | ll “When I interviewed Sir Andrew Mcphail in Montreal he stated that piohibition was not a medical affair at all. Tt may lessen disease directly due to alcoholism, but there are other diseases causes by substitutes. , “The third argument I heard linn of in the United States, he continue!, was that prohibition would result in a decrease of industrial accidents. Lord ! Sha ughnessy told me when I sau him in Montreal that during the eonsti action of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the State of Maine, at that time under prohibition, they had more accidents among their workmen than on any other portion of their lme. He predicted that the system now in foree in Quebec Province (of allowing the sale of light wines, beers, etc.) would become the standard for the othei Canadian provinces and for the who e American Continent with certain modifications

GOMPEB’S opinion. “Argument number four was that prohibition would mean greater efficiency of the worker. President Com pers of the American Federation of Labour told me,” he went on to say, “that he was utterly opposed to prohibition in its present form, because it constituted .class legislation. It was always possible, lie told me, for the man with money to get a drink in any country, at any time, under any laws, but the ‘poor devil’ of the workingman had to take liis chance on poisonous mixture or going without. The absence of what. Mr Gompers termed the ■social hour’ over a glass of boor led, he asserted, ,to the development of ‘ex-

aggerated grievances.’ ” With reference to the other argument, that prohibition would lead to a. decrease in crime, Mr Tuohy said he had Statistics from New York and Chicago that there had been a remarkable increase in that direction. There were eleven murders in the latter city in the five days he was there, he observed. “While lesser offences such as drunkenness,” he remarked, “have decreased and most of the country gaols are empty in the United States, serious crime has increased. ’Hie State prisons of Rhode Island are full and there are now 31 prisoners charged with murder in New York prisons.”