PROHIBITION IN UNITED STATES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4510, 3 January 1923, Page 2

PROHIBITION IN UNITED STATES.

AN UNPOPULAR MEASURE. Afiter spending three months in the United States, Archbishop O’Shea, who returned to Wellington last week, is convinced that prohibition is not proving a success in America. , Seen by a Dominion reporter, on his Arrival, Dr. O'Shea said that his observations led him to the conviction that 7 prohibition, which had been brought in as ’ a war measure, had been made permanent by the big moneyed interests in Ameiica, in the hope that by its enforcement they would get more efficiency out of their workers. These wealthy employers had no intention of observing the law themselves, and were quite prepared to pay more for. their liquor,. The masses of the American people, realising that tihe men who had made the law were not going to observe it, decided that they would not observe it either. The result was that under prohibition there was drink everywhere, some of it good, and much of it very bad. “It. is,” declared Archbishop O’Shea, "now going into homes which it had never entered before. It is taken out every time people go for a motor ride, because they know they cannot procure it at the wayside inns. Even women and girls are drinking now.” The reason taht so many sensational motor-car accidents were reported from the States was due, he thought, to the fact that whisky was taken on the trip, and the bottle had to be finished before the party returned homeWorse than all, the prohibition law was tending to create in America disrespect for all laws. “I am very glad New Zealanders did not carry prohibition,” concluded Archbishop O’Shea, “for the reason that had they done so it might have driven them to drink.”