THE PROHIBITIONIST.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3972, 25 November 1891, Page 2

THE PROHIBITIONIST.

Publishei by the courtesy of the Editor of Wairarapa Dal'y under the auspices of tile New Zealand Alliance for the prohibition of the liquor traffic, Masterton Auxiliary.

When ratepayers demand the entire ea> tinction of all places for the sale of liquors'hcir prayer should be granted. — Charles Buxton, Brewer.

[Communications for this column musl be addressed to " The Prohibitionist' care of Editor of iVairarapa Daili.]

Recently in tho editorial columns of the Daily reference was made to the foul language that was too frequently on the lips of the youth of Masterton. It was indicated that there was something defective in our system of education that led to this. Wow we have nothing to do as Prohibitionists with secular versus religious education, but we think we can point to one source from which wells forth obscenity and blasphemy in the hearing of our school children. Every day a large portion of the 700 children in attendance at our schools pas* one or more of tho six drinking bars in Masterton four times a day. Daily the citizens of Masterton are horrified and disgusted by the oaths that come from the lips ot the worshippers at the shrine of Bacchus. What was witnessed the other day shortly after a hundred children had passed a bar is of common occurrence. Six men emerged from a publichouse soaked with drink. Two of them faced each other in savage fury. Then followed the usual cursing of God and man and a general flood of blasphemy. This is the kind of moral lesson that hundreds of children are exposed to twenty times a week. It is no wonder then that their lads grow up proficient in the use of the vocabulary of blackguardism and obscenity. In the course of a few years these lads w'll be electors and aspirants after municipal and parliamentary honours. It would be a sad day for Masterton when foul mouthed larrikins would have the audacity to seek the suffrage of the' citizens. It behoves .then every one whose ears are outraged by this moral filth to bring the Tash of the law down on the offenders. Let the citizens take the matter in their own hands. The next time the law of purity is violated let the citizen make sure of his witnesses and take out a summons against the offender. The friends of prohibition will gadly assist in dofiaying the necessary legal expenses. A conviction or two would teach those moral cancer planters a much needed lesson.

A recent testimony to the success of Prohibition is furnished by a contributor to this column. He directs attention to the N.Z. Post and Telegraph Gazette which contains an extract from the "New Zealand Abroad "—a volume of travels written by the postmaster of Balclutha, Mr Mc Hutchison. The writer thus records what he witnessed in the flourishing State of lowa. At Creston, (he says), it was rather a novel and pleasing experience for a New Zealander to witness a large holiday gathering where there were no booths for the sale of 'doctored' Glenlived, and absolutely no bars dispensing 'manufactured three star', and to rub shoulders with so many pleasure seekers without once meeting the bibulous weeping driveller or hilarious roysterer full of whiskey and bad language. When prohibition first became law in lowa a few years ago, more than fifty newspapers strongly opposed the measure ; at the present day there were not five antiprohibitioa journals in the whole State. Said a Yankee, " I guess when we can afford to sell two jails and lease a reformatory, as we have done, there's nobody but darned idiots would ever let rum-sellers run our section again."

The Rev. F. Aked, of Liverpool, in liia Plain Truth, says:—"The attitude of the Christian Church to the liquor traffic must be one of open unflinching, uncoraproniisiug hostility. The Church must offer no quarter, as it looks for none. It must regard the liquor traffic as all evil and all hateful. Opposition to it must be regarded as an integral part of the Church's work. One thing, amongst others, which the Church must do or die in attempting, is—kill the public-house."

Let but the logical and openminded man or woman become a truth-seeker upon the great drink question, and (says the Liverpool Keformer) one goal only will be reached. It will be the goal of total prohibition. There is no other logical resting place. In a letter to the " Dnily Telegraph," Canon Doyle admits this fact, and points the too oft evaded moral. The amount of crime and poverty arising from <?rink is so great, be says, that " 1

am convinced if we were to absolutely drop all foreign policy and all domestic legislation for ten years, and were to devote that time entirely to devising methods for stamping "out this evil, these years would : seem to our descendants to have been the noblest and the most profitable of our national hie. Of all the remedies which have been proposed, total prohibition is the only one which promises to be final and effectual."

The New York Times publishes an (says Alliance News of September 18) account of the working of the prohibitory law in Kansas, sent by a correspondent after personal inve&tig* ation in twenty counties in the State. The result of tho tour forces the beli'-f that Prohibition in Kansas is a permanent fixture, and that ifeTfa reasonably enforced all through, except in four cities. Of the 100 prisons in the State, it is stated that eighty are empty, and this is< butedin part to the operation of law. Of the exceptional krtyha Wichita has a population 'of 80,000, and contains sixty drinking places, open with the knowledge/ of the police, but subject to monthly fines, In Leavenworth, where the law is also not enforced, the town derives a portion of its revenue from the fines levied on drinking-shops, and the same is the case in Atchison. In Topeka, the capital hi the State, it is said the law is absolutely enforced with the approval of the [people.

Sir Charles llussell, Q.C., M.P., at a Liberal Demonstration at Doncaster in September, said :—" Then there is the subject of Direot Veto on the liquor question. I think the Chairman, although I should judge him to be an ardent Temperance reformer— (Cheerß) placed this question upon a true and sound basis, so much so, that if there be in .this room persons who are not teetotal reformers, yet are true to Radical principles, there is no reason in the ,world why they should not vote for the resolution.—(Cheers). A curious thing is that all those who oppose the popular veto appear to have arrived at the conclusion that the popular veto would be used in one direction only, namely, the extinction of the liquor traffic. That is a very serious admission they are making, beoaußO if they believe the people do not jant . it, and yet withold from the people I the power of doing that which they want to do, they are simply flying in the face of one of the most important as well as the simplest, tenets of Liberalism—depriving the people of doing for their own good that which their own good and protection requires (Hear, hear).