(Published by Arrangement.) LABOUR LEADER SPEAKS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4891, 16 October 1925, Page 4

(Published by Arrangement.) LABOUR LEADER SPEAKS.

AN ABSOLUTE AND DISMAL FAILURE. (By JAMES J. HOLLAND, President of the New York State Federation of Labours) “The virtue of temperance in all things needs no. particular elucidation. But- five years of National Prohibition give us the proof that the ideal of temperance cannot be achieved through coercion, assumption, fanaticism, or governmental tyranny. In fact, Prohibition has proved an absolute and dismal failure In no case have isuch laws ever gained voluntary obedience, and never has it been possible to enforce obedience. “The Prohibition Amendment is an unreasonable and unnatural law. There is no use at all in discussing the question, whether or not it can be enforced. It cannot.

“Being against the laws of Nature, the maintenance of the Prohibition Amendment and, its enforcement Act, the Volstead Law, is a physical, impossibility. Force creates force. The more force you use against another resisting force, the more resisting force you create First enforcement and defiance of enforcement. Then stronger enforcement and stronger defiance of enforcement. In fact, it seems that defiance always .keeps a little ahead of the next step in more rigid enforcement. Prohibition enforcement in the United States during the last,five years is a practical illustration of Government by force, of the. philosophic saying: ‘lt is the curse of an evil deed that it continuously breeds evil.’ ” —“North American Review,” 1925.

You do not want this law in New Zealand : it is within your power to keep it out. Strike out .the two bottom lines on your ballot paper* 7