WHERE NO-LICENSE FAILS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3024, 22 October 1908, Page 5

WHERE NO-LICENSE FAILS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —There is just a chance that the average man and woman of this electorate has not used his or her thinking apparatus in arriving at a decision as t« whether No-License will prove good or otherwise to the Masterton district, should it happen to be carried at the forthcoming poll. They are apt to be guided by the opinions of No-License advocates, and vote blindly on the subject. There are a lot of sound reasons, however, that the advocate for n prohibited community carefully conceals, that should influence votes in favour of continuance. Legalise the sale of liquor, and you will have crime, no doubt. There will be paupers and criminals to be provided for, but you w'll get a revenue to help to bear the cost. Keep the open bar, and you will have law abiding citizens engaged in a traffic, men who try to make it decent, and who will take a pride in the purity of their wares and the comfort of their hostelries. Prohibit it, and you will have a gang of law-breakers on the one hand, selling snake juice composed of cheap chemicals and general cussedness, and a gang of spies and informers on the other. You will still have your criminals and paupers, but not the revenue to meet the burden.

The No-License apostle declares that a great percentage of crime is caused by drink. Supoose this to be true, does it take the alleged cussedness out of liquor to drive it irom the front bar into the back alley. Is.it not a fact that the very worst brand of "fighting beer" is obtained from the illicit dispenser. Oar criminal records go to prove that only a comparatively small percentage of our true criminal ever drank liquor in excess, and in. hundreds of instances when a man is convicted he naturally seeks a scapegoat, and shoves his slide from the paths of rectitude on to the back of Bung. If there had been drink in the Garden of Eden, poor old Eve would have dodged the blame for the apple episode. Adam threw it on to her simply because be could not plead an Edenic "booze" in extenuation.

Mr Tommy Taylor, in his talk on the No-License question, on Monday night, made some "catchy" comparisons. He remarked that when the police were looking for a man who had committed a felony they did not go to the church in the hope of finding him, but made straight for the pubs. That was where the crooks could usually > be found, and went to prove that the trade is rottan. Following on that line of argument, and knowing that some of the greatest criminals in the history of the world were at the time they were grabbed leading lights of the church, then religious influence must be classed as putrid. Because the asylums contain a percentage of religious manaics, who is going to deny the immense influence of religion for good. Another bugbear used is the argument that a large percentage of our men and women die premature deaths from the effects of strong drink, but the returns made by our statistical experts knock this theory kite high. Only a very small number are catalogued as the victims of John Barleycorn, as compared with those who passed out from causes accredited to "diseases of the digestive organs." If the advocates of No-License are desirous of getting us well up to the allotted span of life, let them turn their crusade against indigestible iood—and bring in a law to force the people of the Dominion to a diet of brown bread and butter milk, on conditions laid down by a well-known journalist in this district, who swears he is on the right diet track. Half the misery of this world and the great desire for stimulants is brought aboi't by over-eating, ot eating food that refuses to be digested, and sets un an argument with the gastric juices. Get up a crusade against the mince pie, the railway sandwich, the hard boiled eggs, and pickled pigs feet, and thus fight the curse of indigestion and lessen the crave for stimulants. Where can you find a more cranky proposition than the average dyspeptic—an irritable, morose, homicidal individual. Wretched cookery is responsible for more misery and crime than can ever be laid at the feet of drink. If a man be fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils when loaded with half a pint of good liquor, what must be the condition of his mind and morals when he is full of sodden beef stake pie, half-baked potatoes and bread, that if fired from a cannon would kill a bull.

If the people of Masterton electorate are alive to their best interests, they will kick this No-License business clean off the political horizon, and maintain regulated sale rather than illicit sale. No-License will prohibit the sale of good beer and the collection of legitimate revenue, in favour of bad beer and no revenue. I have been in prohibited States of America, and right here in New Zealand, and I have never yet known it

necessary for a man to go thirsty if he had the price of a pint of beer concealed about his person.—l am, etc., BROWN BREAD AND BUTTER MILK.