LIFE IN AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1920, Page 3

LIFE IN AMERICA.

NEW ZEALAND MUTTON. HOW PROHIBITION IS WORKING OUT. Writing to a New Plymouth friend from New York, Mr. C. E. Bellringer, of New Plymouth, who travelled through America on his way to England, makes some observations of interest to New Zealanders. He says:— | Owing to the difficulties in Atlantic shipping and the largo number of Americans and Canadians who are making their way to Europe, I have had to make a longer stay on this side than I had at first intended. I, however, had the good luck at Toronto to drop on to a cancellation of a berth on the Imperator, sailing on Thursday, Islh inst, I do not in way regret the delay, as 1 have I)-; . able to visit Vancouver, Field, Lake Lowrie and Banff (the three latter show places in the Rockies), Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal, doing the 1000 miles trip through Lake Ontario down the River St. Lawrence from Toronto to Montreal —a truly magnificent trip. I have also spent a little time at Minneapolis and St. Paul, -Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Niagara, Boston, New York, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia; and bachj to New York, where altogether I' have had about three weeks,. On Sunday, I went to spend the day with a cousin at Brooklyn. He lives there, and his good wife, in ' honor of myself and a Nelsonian who is travelling with me, had obtained a leg of New Zealand lamh from one of the shops run by the Globe newspaper to counteract the high prices of the meat trust. The lamb was "real good," as they say here, and,to our prejudiced palates seemed the only first-class meat we had tasted since leaving the Niagara. Probably homecooking, after over nine weeks of ship and hotel fare, may have had a good deal of influence on us. She told me that she had to go to the city, that is toy Manhatten, to get it, and that she paid 38 cents a lb. for it, and that if she had purchased U.S.A. lamb the price would have been 75 cents per lb. Prices are high. Money seema to have no value. I went to see a baseball match, in which ''Babe" Ruth, the champion sloggcr, was playing for the New York team against Detroit. The charge for admission was one dollar, phis io cents war tax. There were over 15,000 people present, and at another match on Saturday between the same teams 25,000 were reported as attending.. On Saturday evening I went to Coney Island. The crowd there was estimated at 500,000. Ail the cafes, side-shows and innumerable other devises for attracting cash out ot the pockets of visitors wore doing a roaring business. Everything was at top prices. Ice cream cones, ordinarily sold at 5 cents, were raised to 15 cents.

The retail price of sugar is 25 cents per lb, and is hardly procurable at that. All prices, except clothing, in Which there is a bit of a slump, are soaring. You «annot in the hardwa-3 line ehtajn a firm price for anything, and delivery before 1021 is not possible. Thero is Ji big building boom on. Wage? are high, S to 10 dollars a day for plumbers, carpenters, etc., but rents and the cost of living make these wages of comparatively small value.

Prohibition lias come to stay. There is practically no evidence in public of the drink habit or the drink trade I <!o not for a moment' suggest that therb is ,no drinking. There is undoubtedly considerable dringingr, Tint it is done Secretly, and hides its head. The drinking class, who could afford to do so, kid in stocks at the time prohibition came into force, and have it in their cellars. Others, with the usual liquor spirit of law defiance, laid themselves out to do "bootegging,'' ami othp* like low practices, but with it all 'there is no public drinking, and, so far from the ,drug habit increasing, there is indisputable evidence that it is diminishing." I have done not loss than 8000 miles of railway and lake and river travelling. In, the course of this I ha,vc been in cities the aggregate of whose populations is not less, than 15,000,000, and although I have looked hard and persistently, I have not seen one really drunken man, and not ten who showed signs of having had liquor. I have spent a lot of time walking about the streets.t>f the cities on my own, and speak of things from, my own observation.

I trust that things, are moving surely in the town, which, after all, is to me the most .tlesirablo place on this old planet—the spot 1 call home.