THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 292, 13 May 1914, Page 5

THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE.

ADDRESS ISY LADY HOLDER. There was a good attendance of members of the Taranaki No-License League and others in trio Good Templar Hall last night, to hear an address by Ladv Holder, president of the W.C.f.U. in Australia, who has just returned from the National Temperance Convention in Brooklyn, U.S.A. Lady Holder said that New Zealand had long been looked upon by Americans as the country which would first introduce, prohibition, and she was, therefore, pleased to see something of the work iere. While it was impossible to expect attendances of 4000 peeople, such as she saw at the Convention in Brooklyn, still it was easy to see that the movement was gaining: ground. The women in America were doing a great work in 'the cause of temperance, and if they had been fully enfranchised they would have got prohibition long ago. The first municipal vote taken after women were given a vote in America, had closed 1000 I bars in one city. This was what the j Americans called "business." Referring to the statement that prohibition did not prohibit, she said that this! was largely put forward by the enemies' of the movement. Prohibition must he made to prohibit, and the law, if passed, could be enforced just as any other. She_ went on to refer to her American experiences of towns under prohibition, stating that they showed an absence of poverty, and disorder, with no retrogression in business. She had been told by the- polico in prohibited towns that their greatest trouble lay in the smuggling of liquor from unprohibited towns, and advocate:! imprisonment as a remedy. The police spoke well of prohibited districts ui point of order and prosperity. In Portland (Maine) she had seen only one drunken man in four or five days. Lady Holder related her experience of the subterfuges adopted for smuggling and keeping liquor in prohibited areas, contending that this ialone showed that prohibition made it harder for the liquor traffic to exist. In America, she continued, the prohibition movement was making great strides, and attracting the support of young and old, including sop'c of the best men of the land, and she made a strong appeal to New Zcalaiklcru to follow suit. She forcibly contended that there need be no compensation fop the annihilation of the licensed houses, and concluded with a strong plea fov more workers, more enthusiasm and more liberal financial support for the movement towards national prohibition.