COUNTING THE COST.

Shannon News, 3 November 1925, Page 3

COUNTING THE COST.

A LAWLESS BUSINESS. CORRUPTION RAMPANT. (By HENRY BOURNE JOY, Director Packard' Car Co., and formerly Director Federal Reserve Bank at Chicago.) v "The almost countless millions of dollars which have been appropriated and spent in five years to accomplish the enforcement of bone'dry Prohibition have failed in that accomplishment. Not only has this country failed, as naturally must be the case, to make itself bone dry at the vast cost of the appropriations for the dry armies and dry navies, but also it has been foregoing during that period a ■ revenue which if might readily have in Us national ueasuiy of approximately five hundred millions of dollars per annum, excise, tax, and an amount of money approximating that sum has been going to the purveyors of .alcoholic beverages, whom some people call boot-leggers and others call merchant princes. Our courts, are consigning to Jail, to associate with thugs, murderers, burglars and every sort of villain, a large number of decent young men who have taken a chance of making easy money by purveying liquor across the borders. Men have always taken such risks for easy money. They arc not cheating our customs nor "defrauding Hie Government of revenue, because ihere is no duty on the goods imported - . They take the risk for the easy money. Again human nature prevails. "It is perfectly safe to state to-day ' that this country- cannot survive with half of its people trying to put the other half of ii.s population in the | penitentiaries of our country for fol- | lowing the natural dictates of human [ instincts."—"The North American Re- \ view," 1925. A law which makes criminals oif people who are not criminals, and 'which would transform this country into a kind of penal settlement is not a fit law for New Zealand. ' 13 (Published' by Arrangement.;)