WHY DO HOTELS EXIST?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 116, 6 November 1911, Page 2

WHY DO HOTELS EXIST?

DO THEY SUPPLY A LEGITIMATE NEED? TWO f-MT'OUTAXT QUESTIONS. Tlic hotel lias been licensed as far back as 1 :s!).>, iiml the State, ilnLcd the licensing system in the interests of temperance) and for the good of the people. The people have not outlived their needs. The hotel exists because it is required and is perfectly legitimate; ami because, as one, writer has it, it supplies "a human demand for solace in this world of woe. into which man was forced without consultation." But to the rabid prohibitionist the best I hotel is a curse. [He does not know ! much if this is his only curse.J But he would abolish the hotel and the licensed trade, because when liquor is ; abused or misused it induces intoxication and drunkenness is an evil. But why not abolish money, railways, mines, firearms, and other means of evil in the hands of men? Because they are legitimate, necessities, and not curses. There are 110 curses in the world, but there are things which, when abused, make for crime and misery, and every person is a user of such things, and must use them if he must "live, move, and have his being." Therefore, in justice to all mankind, no one class can be proceeded against for using that from which evil comes. All are alike guilty, if guilt there is. But there is no guilt. Trouble does not come by the use of anything until the intemperate point i.s ' reached. Abolute prohibitionists arc at the end of their insane rope; without any true basis upon which to stand. Wise regulation in all things is the only just and sane ground. Personal liberty, to be temperate, must and shall ' be pre- ' served. The. people of this Dominion arc becoming more and more alive to the position that they have reached in having to deal with this insane erv for the abolition of the hotel; and it is a question whether a free, moderateliving people are (o be free to live moderately or to be subjected to the rule of rant and fanaticism. The prohibitionists are endeavoring to invoke the church and church-people to their help; but surely the church will not take sides as a church in a political struggle - where one party is lighting for its living, its rights ami the preservation of its property, and the other is lighting for political notoriety and the power to rob the other side of its living. its rights and property. The prohibitionists have no right to utilise their churches in this political propaganda, and if is degrading the (iospel, the churches, ami the clergy that it should be done. However, the prohibition clergy are bringing about their own ruin, and as drowning men at straws so they clutch at prohibition as their salvation. The people will, we have 110 doubt, determine to be free, and by striking out the bottom lines on both ballot-papers they will give prohibition and all its iniquities the set-back it deserves. This prohibition business is not only ''founded upon a lie.'' but it is built up and maintained by covetoiisness and "graft,'' as the Americans have learned wherever it has been put even temporarily into operation.—Advt.