NO-LICENSE MEETING.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 3, Issue 250, 24 November 1914, Page 3

NO-LICENSE MEETING.

"Ashburton Under No-License wbs the subject of an address given in the Oddfellows' Hall, Pukekohe, on Sundav evening, by Mr H. E. Vincent, until lately an architect in businets in Ashburton and now the Raglan electorate organiser for the Prohibition Party. Ths speaker claimed that Ashburton possessed no natural facilities tending to rapid development. On the contrary it did not afford facilities to absorb its own natural increase of population in its own industries. In npite of these limitations the borough and suburbs of Ashburton showed an increase that was truly phenomenal and which could not be shown by any other town situated as Aehburton is. In the nine years from 1902, when prohibition was carried, until 1911, the annual value of the rateable properties within the borough boundaries increased by 49 per cent. The town district of Hampstead, a suburb of Ashburton, had in the eame period increased in capital valuation by 125 per cent. Allenton, another suburb, had increased in capital value for the same pericd 166n per cent., and the whole of the Upper Ashburton Koad Board district, extending for some six ur seven miles to the west of the town, had increased by over 60 per cent, in valuation. In 1902 there were only 69 places in the district that came under the Factory Act,'' but in 1911 there were 134-an increase of nearly 100 per cent. —while the persons employed had increased live fold. Ih 1908 there were 122 shops in the district, and four years later there were 162, an increase of forty shops in four years. At first there was some dilficulty with sly-grog shops, but they were very quickly suppressed, and slygrog was now almost as extinct in Ashburton as the moa. There were still some convictions for drunkenness in Ashburton, but 90 per cent, of those cases were arre3ts at ths railway station of persons who procured the drink outside Ashburton. Druukenneßs in Ashburton was almost nil.

With regard to the vote for Restoration, the electorate that voted Ashburton dry in" 1902 never had a chance to vote upon the issue again. In 1905 the electoral boundaries were so altered that more than half of the original electorate was eliminated, whilst in 1911 the boundaries were again greatly changed. Figures and facts, he maintained, proved that Prohibition has been a good thing for Ashburton.