WILD SCENES IN OHIO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17692, 1 August 1919, Page 3

WILD SCENES IN OHIO

COMING OP PROHIBITION. LIQUOR SOLD BY AUCTION. Remarkable scenes were witnessed in the State of Oiiio on the day before the introduction of prohibition. A New York message says:— Saturday's orgies, when the majority of the pubhc-liouses were closed on account of the expiration of the yearly liquor license, were surpassed, despite the fact that there were comparatively few establishments paying the £60 for renewing the license, which automatically became cancelled at midnisrht by tho enforcement of prohibition. Three or four hundred qf the public-houses, restaurants, aDd hotels did, however, pay tho price, and all were crowded to their fullest capacity. , . -i wards midnight the remaining stocks of liquor were put up to a.uction, with the result that most of the patrons depoxted loaded with as much as they could carry, in every sense of the word. Thousands of men and women from tho neighbouring "dry" State of Michigan crowded across the border, and the tables of the restaurants "were stacked high at midnight with the liquors purchased, to bo consiuned at leisure later.

.is now the largest "dry" State in the Union. While some liquor traders are invading other States, determined to carry on until prohibition becomes national next year, numbc-rs engaged in the liquor trado ha7a announced their intention of migrating to South. America and Europe, while others have decided to remain and to convert their breweries iT>to ico manufacturing or cold storage plants. ' °