FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE.

Shannon News, 2 October 1925, Page 3

FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE.

THE TRUTH AND NOTHING ELSE. By WALTER J. AID AMS. (Of the Honolulu Advertiser; Accredited Correspondent with the United States Fleet on its recent visit to New Zealand). New Zealanders cannot conceive the appalling situation that now exists in America, where the public is paying huge sums to enforce a prohibition that the same public is flouting on the sly. The dry element will say—-“ When another generation comes ,up, when the youth of to-day are matured, then there will be no' demand ior liquor.' 1 The dry element will not mention, however, the fact that more young people in U.S.A. are drinking to-day than ever before; that there is more drinking among women than ever before; that wines and beers are being set aside in favour of whisky of doubtful origin and all the vile concoctions of a thousand illicit stills. There is not a city in America where a man cannot get liquor—even if he lias never/ been there before —in whatever quantity he wishes. > It’s not good liquor, and he pays through the nose for it, but it is liquor—all' the more harmful because* of Prohibition. ( Booze, as Americans call it, is eas ily obtainable. It is delivered, by the milkman, the clothes cleaner, or some other agent. If one lives bn a “route” a bootlegging agent will call to take one’s order and will show samples i of his newest stocks. The bootlegger , is bold about his work, and justly so. His patrons are,the “bestpeople,” the folk who can afford to pay high priCCS.

iii the meantime the working man, the clerk or shop' employee, drinks what he can get—or make at home. No more beers, no more wines for him; but in their plu.ee “hell-brews” distilled by foreigners and peddled on tbe streets or in odd corners of the city. . '■ Hiigfh schoolboys carry flasks to school dances—they’re not considered gay unless, they do —and shocking disclosures have been made in tlie press concerning such affairs and their natural aftermath, of scandal, sorrow, and deceit. Prohibition is responsible for all this evil.

These things are unbelievable, in New Zealand,, tout only too true in America. In America they are accepted as every day facts, tbe fruit of illogical efforts to change human nature by legislation. New Zealanders should read American newspapers, summarise their daily display of new anent crime, viciousness, and evil, and then think whether they’d rather be legally purified or naturally orderly. . Laws do one or other of two things —one law in America has done the other. , That is the evidence of. an actual “eye witness” of conditions under Prohibition. Why listen to the vague assertions -of paid sneecli-makers when the facts presented by men on the spot prove Prohibition to be wot.se than an absolute failure? (Published by Arrangement).