TOM MANN AND THE DRINK QUESTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 116, 7 May 1908, Page 3

TOM MANN AND THE DRINK QUESTION.

To the Kditor. Sir--Will you kindly allow me to reply to .Mr. Mamuler it the from 'l'om Mann's In-iure of any reference to tin- drink (juration in tin* problem ol social advance. I will lir>t attention to what are really two feature-. ol' modern political lilt*. <'ne ]•> Ihe advent into the legislative arena of l.alior. brought about principally hy trade unionism. and supported imfihly from Unit source, it* chief object being to secure bcUer conditions for the uoi'ker in regard to wage-, ho\n>. houses, and so on. mid having little direct consideration for the eil'ec!, economic or otherwise, on the general community. The secoiul feature 1 refer to is the niodeiji list crusade, revolutionary. and international in character. being often in conflict with the I I jalior movenii'ut (Or tin* lir-t feature), but with a general tendency to permeate it with the MK'ialwt principle*. 1 believe I. am safe in >tatmg that the majority of the most prominent Labor leaders ami socialists agree that drink in a bar to pro^re ; s in the respective movement?. Also, inasmuch as the highest ideal of citizen-hip obtains anions them, such privileges as vote-. etc.. will be used to thi' end of freeing -ociety from thai inenbu* -the trade in alcoholic drinks, lint a c!o>('r examination of socialism—and this wa> Mann- subject ami platform—brings to light tho fact that, with the establishment of a socialist State, the drink traffic land all other traffic) would cease to exNt on the profitmaking ba*is. because a fundamental proposition or first principle of socialism 1 is production for tiso instead of for profit, ami by a co-operative commonwealth in place of private enterprise. ■ The point T wish to make clear is that one great incentive to and strength of the trade is the profit aspect, and it is also the chief source of the bitterness of the light against the abolition of the drink trade. Socialism would remove the chief reason for the existence of the hu*ine>s—namely, profit-making—leav-ing the further consideration of what drink (as of what clothes or food or any other thing) should be produced to the decision of the majority of either the whole community or any special group m<Kc interested in the u*e of tho article under consideration, as should be determined in the new constitution of societv.—T am. etc., I A. IT. Ttirn. I See. \.l\ Socialist Society.