THE GREAT REFORM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1077, 2 December 1911, Page 4

THE GREAT REFORM.

[Published by Arrangement.]

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR BOYS? This is a question often asked by anxious parents. But as the boys grow up they settle the matter for themselves. They all enter upon some useful occupation or other, with the exception of a few who go to the bad.

The Permanent Force takes some of the boys for soldiers. The lawyers, bank managers, and merchants are looking for boys to till the junior positions in their offices. Farmers want boys to learn to milk and drive and plough. Captains of vessels need apprentices. Factory managers and shopkeepers constantly advertise for boys. This legitimate demand for boys makes for prosperity. But mark another aspect of the demand for boys. The licensees of the hotels want boys to provide customers for the future. They want vour boy, and they will get him, if they can, by-and-bye, when he is old enough to be legally supplied with drink', and by the time they are through with him your heart will be broken with grief and shame and disappointment. Do they really need boys for their business? Of course they do, for they are steadily losing their old customers at the other end, and they must live, you know. Some of Their old Customers urc useless, because they are being reduced to rags and beggary ; others arc daily landed in gaol or lunatic asylum or hospital, or are sent to Roto Roa; many die of alcoholic poisoning; some kill themselves in despair. How are the licensees to be compensated for this steady tailing off at the other end ? By a supply of your boys. What matters it that boys who join the ranks of the licensees’ customers become diseased and blear-eyed and foul and ugly and useless ? As long as they have a sixpence to spend the licensees will supply them with drink, but when they have spent all their money the same licensees will pitch them out of the bar door into the street. What matters the ruin of a few thousand young men so long as the licensees and the brewers and the merchants make money ?

The ruin of the boys does not matter to these men.

But it matters to you, for the boys are your boys. What are you going to do to save your boys from the late of the drunkard ?

Many a time when your boy was a little fellow, full of fun, impulsive, mischievous, yet trusting and affectionate, did you picture to yourself the time when he would grow up to be a man, a credit to his family, a comfort to your declining years. But you never, for one moment, pictured him to yourself as a drunkard. Yet you may have carefully prepared the way for your boy’s downfall. You may have voted for drink-traps. The traps set at every street corner are

Just as Legal as the Sunday School; more legal, in fact, for a Sunday School does not require a license, and on its behalf there is no thoughtful legal provision, as in the case of a hotel, that the manager shall be a thoroughly respectable man. You may have prepared the way for your boy’s downfall by voting that the sale of drink be licensed. It may be that the hotel-bar, in the end, entraps your boy. If you voted that the door of that bar should remain open Who is Responsible for your boy’s downfall ? Why, you, in a great measure. Now, face the question honestly. Why have you looked after your boy since he was a helpless baby? Why did you cany him at night when he cried, pick him up when he fell, pull him back from that open well, watch him all night that time he so nearly went away through the gates of Death, deny yourself to send him to school, get him a good opening in life ?

You did all this because He was your Boy,

and you wished to do the best you could for your own flesh and blood. Well, are you going to finish up your work by voting that the liquor bar shall remain open ?—that bar that may possibly blister and blight, degrade, deprave, and damn your boy? if so, you are a fool, and worse than a fool —you are a potential murderer 1

Stick to your boy ; help him to fight his way through life. He will find it a hard enough struggle without the temptation of the bar. Do your best for him, and doing your best includes Voting out the Liquor Traffic.