NO-LICENSE REFORM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 411, 4 November 1911, Page 7

NO-LICENSE REFORM.

MRS BARTONS' VISIT. A very large audience assembled after church last Sunday evening in the Town Hall to hear the views of Mrs oarton, the Quean of Scottish oraturs, upon the great national ar.d mor-'-.l question of the suppression of the liquor traffic. The Rev. A. Armstrong president of the Nn-icrnse League, occupied the chair, and in a few elective words, introduced Mrs Barton to the people. Hearty applause greeted the speaker as she rose and soon the people realised that they were listening to the expressions of one who was a veritable expert in the subject of No-License Reform. From the very first roll of the rich Scotch "bur-r-r,'" to the closing eloquent appeal; Mrs Barton held the intense interest of her audience, i tier remarks were marked by great strength and saneness and according to the frequent rounds of applause proved very convincing to those present. A great deal of "pawky" humour relieved the lecture and added point and popularity to the various arguments marshalled against, the liquor traffic. During the evening Mrs Barton co.nmented very strongly upon the efforts of the Trade to gain control of the press of New Zealand, and the evil effects of the corrupting misstatements with which they are flooding the papers of the Dominion. She believed in the high destiny of the press and stood for it 3 purity. The press—like the Parliament of this land —does not give expression as it should to the distinct will of the people. It would be a grand day when the press would be free as well as the people, from the tyranny of the liquor traffic. As one wtih wide experience in dealing with the unemployed she was pained to find that any such thing existed, as it certainly did, in some parts of New Zealand. This was largely caused, however, by incompetency arising from drinking habits, and she said that with the money expended annually in drink the workers of the Dominion could purchase all the industries and run them in the interests of the people. That if the £6,000,000 spent in liquor was released for profitable industries, instead of employing only nine thousand people as now, it would open up employment for sixty thousand in this Dominion, and so the unemployed would largely cease. Dealing largely with temperance reform in the Old Country, Mrs Barton stated that the Licensing Bill lately rejected by the Lords, had the people of Groat Britain behind it. The Church of England, the Free Churches, the Labour Unions all stood united in advocacy of a Bill for vesting the control of the liquor traffic, with the people in the veto. Scotland was rapidly becoming an abstaining country, over OS per cent, of her people being to-day total aostainers. Of the people of Great Britain only had the vote as New Zea land, they would speedily end what they know fully to ba their greatest curse. Mrs Barton combatted the prevailing errors over the position in Maine showing that Maine had rejected the proposal to alter the Constitution, according to the recount by a majority of 748 votes. So the supposed "collapse" of prohibition ir Maine was a fiction of the liquor party's creation. The lecture proved on the whole to be one of the most convincing, instructive and entertaining yet rendered in the interests of the reform in Te Kuiti. Questions were called for, but the opportunity was not accepted by an\ present, so that with vote 3 of thanks and the enthusiastic singing of the Doxology the meeting closed.