COUNTING THE COST.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 October 1925, Page 1

COUNTING THE COST.

A LAWLESS LI'S IN ESS. COH1! LKTION HAMI’ANT. (By lIENKY BO LUXE JOY. Director Packard Car Co., and formerly Director Federal Reserve Hank at. Chicago.) "The almost countless millions of dollars which have been appropriated anil s[K.mt in five years to accomplish the enforcement ‘>t hone dry Rrnliihition have failed in that. accomplisliinetit. Not only has this country failed. as natiinilly must be the case, to make itself hone dry til the vast ,-ost of the appropriations for the dry armies and dry navies, but also it lias boon forepinp during that period a revenue which il might readily have in its national treasury of approximately live hundred millions of dollars per annum, excise tax, and an amount of money approximating that sum habeen going to the purveyors of alrohol'ic beverages, whom some people , all boot-leggers and others call merchant princes. "Our courts arc consigning to jail, to associate with thugs. murderers, burglars and every sort, of villain, a large number ol decent young men who have taken a chance of making easy money hy purveying liquor across the" borders. Men have always taken such risks for easy money. .Men always will lake such risks for easy money. They arc not. cheating "ur customs nor defrauding the Oovernmeiit. of revenue, because there is no dtit v oil the goods imported. They lake till' risk for the easy money. Again human nature prevails. ‘lt is perfectly safe to state to-day that this country cannot survive with half of its people trying Lo put the oilier half of its population in the penitentiaries of our count ry for following Iho natural dictates of human in -Duets." - The North American Review." 1925.

A law which makes criminals of people who are no; criminals, and which would iranslorm this country into a kind ol penal settlement is not fit., law for New Zealand.--KL