Why Do Hotels Exist ?

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 36, 10 November 1911, Page 9

Why Do Hotels Exist ?

Do They Supply a Legi-

timfae Iftieed?

TWO IMPORTANT QUESTIONS.

The hotel has been licensed as far back as 1395, and the State -instituted the licensing system in the interests of temperance and for the good of the people. The people have not out-lived their needs. The hotel exists because it is required and is perfectly legitimate; and because, as one writer has it, it supplies "a humane demand for solace in this world of woe, into which man was forced without consultation." But to the rabid prohibitionist the best hotel is a curse. (He does not know much if this is his only curse.) But he would abolish the hotel and the licensed trade, because when liquor is abused or misused it induces intoxication, and drunkenness is an evil. But ■why not abolish money, railways, mines, firearms, and other means of evil in the hands of men? Because they are legitimate necessities, and liot curses. There are no curses in the world, but there are things which when abused, make for crime and misery, and every person is a user of such things, and must use them if he must "live, move and have his being." Therefore, in justice to all mankind, no one class can be proceeded against for using that from which evil comes. 'All are alike guilty, Jf guilt there is. But there is no guilt. Trouble does mot come by the us© of anything until the intemperate point is reached. Absolute prohibitionists are at the end of their insane rope, without any true basis upon which to stand. Wise regu-lation.-in all things is the only just and sane ground. Personal liberty, to be temperate, must and shall be preserved. The people of this Dominion are becoming more and more alive to the position that they have reached in having to deal with this insane cry for the abolition of the hotel; and it is a Question whether a free, moderate-liv-ing people are to be free to live moderately or to be subjected to the rule of cant and fanaticism. The prohibitionists are" endeavouring to invoke the church and church-people to their help, but surely the church will not take sides as a church in a political struggle—where one party is fighting for its living, its rights, and the preservation of its property, and the other is fighting for political notoriety and the power to rob the other side of its living, its rights and property? The prohibitionists have no right to utilise their churches in this political propaganda, and it. is degrading the Gospel, th«? churches and the clergy that it should be done. However, the prohibition clergy are bringing about their own ruin, and, as drowning men at straws, so they clutch at prohibition as their salvation. The people will, we have no doubt, determine to be free, and, by striking out the bottom lines on both ballot-papers, they will give prohibition and all its iniquities the set-back they deserve. This prohibition business is wot only "founded upon a lie," but it is built up and maintained by covetousness and "graft," as the Americans have learned wherever it has been put even temporarily into operation.