A DESTRUCTIVE PROPOSAL

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 282, 25 November 1905, Page 11

A DESTRUCTIVE PROPOSAL

O OME years ago the hotel-keeping business was conducted in old wooden structures that had served their day and generation, and were ~o dilapidated as to call public attention to their unfitness for hostelries. Licensing Committees ordered the re-build-ing of many hotels throughout the country, and owners, realising the necessities of the public, took in hand the work of replacing the old wooden buildings by handsome hotels, elegant architecturally, and built in brick. There are a few old hotels still about, but these aie fast giving plaoe to new structures, and some owners would have built long ago but for the fear that no-license would be carried, and much of the expenditure on hotel buildings be lost to them. This agitation for Prohibition has retarded the re-building operations, and, where given effect to, has destroyed property, and lowered values. Shanties and illconditioned boarding-houses take the place of hotels in Prohibition or NoLcenise districts, and "the trade 1 " becomes sly, degraded, and demoralised. This is the condition the advocates of License districts, and' "the trade" belington. This is the destructive policy the Prohibitionists avow. They aare not who suffers so long as the destructive policy of which they are enamoured gathers force and l ensures the ruin of others. When one looks around and realises what efforts are being made by hotel proprietors to provide ample accommodation for the travelling public, one must be convinced' of the destructive character of No-license, when, by voting No-License, the community would ruin many, degrade the trade, and render Wellington unfit for the residence of travellers and touirists who, in free countries, are accustomed to every comfort that money can buy. It would be a libel on ourselves were the citizens of Wellington to support the destructive policy of No-License.