PROHIBITION IN MAINE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10439, 3 October 1911, Page 5

PROHIBITION IN MAINE

A "TRADE" STATEMENT. WHAT MR SLOANE THINKS. (By Telegraph—Special to the Age.) AUCKLAND, Last Night. A cable was received from New York on Saturday by the Auckland Provincial Council (a "Trade" organisation), stating that the vote % the repeal of Prohibition in the State of Maine was 60,481 and that the vote against repeal was 60,461, or a difference of twenty votes in favour of repeal. The official recount is now being made, and the final result of such recount will not be known until after October 9th, and possibly may be delayed until Decemiber. However, the fact is important that the prohibition majority at the previous poll'in 1884 was 44,000 in favour of prohibition. This has now been reversed, thus resulting dn the repeal of constitutional prohibition by si narrow margin of twenty votes.

Commenting on tlhe foregoing, Mr W. S. Sloan stated that this is the first opportunity that the people >? Maine have had to express their will on constitutional prohibition for 27 years. By their votes, and whatever the result of the recount of the recent referendum may be, the tremendous gain of 44,000 votes in favour of licenses is most significant. He could not, in face of these figures, see how the New Zealand Alliance can claim the result as a victory for prohibition. Proceeding, Mr Sloane said he considered Ex-President Roosevelt put his finger on the spot when he said: "We all want facts. I could sit down and talk theories," but it's facts we want." The State of Maine has been trying prohibition for sixty years. Surely that as long enough to try anything. What has been accomplished in the State of Maine 9. The people are waiting to hear these facts and to sit oh them as a jury in order to get the right ' view point. Mr Maine, by this overwhelming reversal, has shown that public opinion is in favour of license or regulation, as opposed to impracticable prohibition. Maine has only followed the example of her sister States, po tthat now Maine, New Hampshire, Vermonte, Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, lowa, Michigan, South Dakota, Alabama, and Nebraska, in fact,, east, west, south and north, fifteen out of sixteen States which have tried prohibition in one form or another have all abandoned and repudiated prohibition and tihe wave of sentiment which swept across the Continent has now receded,, and been forced back by the knowledge gleaned from bitter experience and disappointment of prohibition. In conclusion, ho said: "Surely the American people of these States should be given the credit of having adopted prohibition in good faith wth an honest and earnest desire to further the interest and welfare of their citizens. No sensible person can now believe these people would have deliberately repudiated the system adopted with a moral, purpose, had they found that system was making for sobriety, for prosperity, or for good citizenship. The only conclusion Consistent, with reason and com-mon-sense is that the people found they had built on false hopes; that the conditions were not only not better, but were far worso than they had been under the license system."