LIQUOR REFORM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 125, 25 January 1909, Page 5

LIQUOR REFORM.

Recent developments in connection with the local option poll have evidently had the effect of stirring the representatives of the trade to action. At a meeting of those interested in the trade at Auckland on Saturday last various reforms were proposed, including the gradual abolition of barmaids. In the course of an interview on Tuesday, the Rev. W. Thomson, agent for the Licensed Vituallers' Association at Dunedin, expressed the opinion that the reforms proposed by the trade in Auckland were very good, so far as they go. He had held for several years that, provided the present barmaids were justly dealt with, say, allowed four or five years' notice, the work could be much better done by men, and after that time he would employ ho barmaids. He thought the.'age at which youths could be served with liquor in hotels should be raised to 21 years,rand remaked that the Otago Association asked that when the 1904 Act was passed. The fault of youthful drunkenness lay largely with home life. He thought the proposal that no women should be served with drink, for. consumption in hotels, unless she was ; -a lodger, much top arbitrary and severe.