Truth BEER AND PROSPERITY.

NZ Truth, Issue 137, 1 February 1908, Page 4

Truth

BEER AND PROSPERITY.

Published every Saturday Morning at Luke's Lane (off mannebs- , street), Wellington, N.Z. Subscription (m advance), 13s, pee annum. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1908.

There is bitter feeling between the licensed places m the South and the centres that have had their beer ruthlessly dragged away from them. Ashburton, which has sworn off alcohol, is very dull in -the business une just at present, and the prospects of the place are as discouraging^ as the future of anybody who gets witmn ten milos of Wellington Engineers when they are practising with high explosives. On the other hand, the neighboring town of Timaru, which surrounds its beer with optimistic cheerfulness, is forging ahead at a rapid pace and the builders are. unable to cope with the orders for houses of every kind. This startling contrast has excited the envy of dry Ashburton, and the green-eyed moaster of jealousy has taken possession of the local "Guardian," which is run by a pale, pious, plausible, paltry, plotting, pimply, pig-headed prohibitionist. In an exuberance of impotent rage the peevish paper says it was told b~ a prominent person interested m /the Timaru building boom that the seaport's prosperity was more apparent than real, that only about half the business people were paying their way; that many of them owed back"*- wages to their assistants ; that the place was unduly boomed ;>and that strangers starting a biz there courted bankruptoy ; likewise building was being absolutely' overdone. These ill-bred strictures inspired • the wrath of an Ashburton resident named William Bryant, who wrote to the Timaru "Post" on the subject, "I should like to know ifthis is true," he writes, "as some of, my relations are staying at Timaru,. and they informed me that business is flourishing, and trade good. We are going to get license 'back m Ashburton, and I think our paper is doing its best to block it. No License is a rank failure m Ashburton. Things m Ashburton are very dull, and retail business very slack," This temperate journal doesn't favor ttye excessive use of unlimited beer, but it confesses that it is getting tired of the frantic remarks by coldtea cranks that Ashburton and, other, prohibition centres are buzzing hives of prosperity, and that the swept towns are going down to bankruptcy and perdition. Timaru is jumping ahead with such express speed that they freely predict it is destined to be "the" port of the South Island, and people are rushing the place to get iv early. The fact that many outsiders are starting business .there is 'proof that the youthful city is marching along, and if too many strangers arrive m a premature sort of wav they can't all expect to make a fortune m five minutes. When the station-hands strike a slow, depressing place like Ashburton, with gloom and prayers hanging about its countenance, and beer and festivity banished from its streets, they movp on to Timaru and have a good time. Some of, them haven't seen civilisation for six months and don't want to be decorous and tame ; they want Life, with a capital L, and they get it n't Timaru. Then a chagrined raspberry newspaper, which watches the trig cheques drifting past to beery Timaru, batters ' its head against the water fountain and publishes an article to the effect that Timaru, is going headlong to financial destruction. This paper would f like to own property m Timaru ;