TEMPERANCE ITEMS

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5017, 4 May 1895, Page 3

TEMPERANCE ITEMS

At Birmingham recently, a Dissenting minister of Birmingham was charged with being drunk. He was found in the street in an incapable condition. He explained that ho been to a private party and when he got into the cold he was overcome. He was lined ss, the magistrate remarking that .a minister ought to refrain from such conduct. So, wo add, ought everybody else.

The Calcutta Liberal of December 30th says it has been made a punishable offence to employ young women in liquor bars. This is a step in the right direction which might be followed with great advantage in our own and other countries. Many a bright industrious girl has been ruined by accepting the position of barmaid. The coarse conversation of the patrons of the publican—often half-tipsy—is well calculated to undermine a girl's modesty, and to familiarise her with a lax code of morals; in too many cases the way is thus paved for a descent to a lower depth. We are glad to learn that in the Transvaal, and in some of the Australian Colonies, it is proposed that it shall be made illegal to employ girls or women in the liquor business, and that traders infringing the projected statute shall be subject to a substantial penalty for each offence."

According to the Methodist Times, "Every man who speaks for compensation, is really a champion of the liquor trade, and a deadly enemy of real temperance reform. Every scheme which involves a proposal for compensation, is a mockery and a snare, which takes away with one hand, a great deal more than it gives with the other. Whatever may ho the professed object, its practical effect would be to saddle this country with the liquor trade for ever and ever. All such iniquitous proposals will be supported only by those who are sham reformers, who in their heart dislike the Temperance Crusade, and who would be glad to spike our guns. Further, anyone who introduces any rival Temperance proposal just now, must he rogarded as a traitor. Division in our ranks, can only help the enemy." Interviewed on the evo of sailing from New York to England, Mr John Burns, M.P., made the following interesting remark'.-"I feel satisfied that the bulk of the tradeunion men in our country are Temperance men. There is a rapid change going on in that direction. However much trade-unonists may differ on other points, they arc all agreed in opposing the saloonkeepers. There is a growing tendency to hold their meetings apart from saloons, and to seek meeting places in town halls, municipal chambers, and the like

Among the labour leaders especially there is a strong sentiment for Temperance, The bulk of the Socialistic labour leaders, and lecturers especially, are teetotallers. In England we are beginning to realise that beer and brains don't go together, We have come to tho conclusion that drink and democracy are divergent elements."

According to tlio Ml Mull Ga;ette, "The habitual drunkard ajipeam to be a (by subject in more senses llinn one. I'rom a Scotch paper wo learn that, a Commission on Habitual Drunkards sat recently in Glasgow. The accounts for the expouses incurred by the Commission havo just been made public, Ono of the items covers the liquid refreshment furnished to the members, tho nature and quantity of which is stated to havo occasioned 'some amusement'--wo presume among the habitual drunkards themselves. The Commission numbered six gentlemen, and the daily supply of liquor consisted of half-a-dozen bottles of lngor, balf-a-dozen of bitter beer, half-a-dozen of mineral watera, one bottle of whisky, and one Lottie of sherry. It is not apparent, of course, how much of this ' refresher' actually went to further tlio efforts of tho Commission to solve the painful subject of its investigations. In any case, we imagine the average ' habitual' would have made him self fairly happy on his shavo of thegood things at hand. To get off ' somewhere east of Suez' • has hitherto been regarded as one of the most efficacious methods of' raising a thirst,' We had no idea that getting, on a Commission on-Habitual Di'irakavds ran it quite so'close,"