Labor and Drink.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 18

Labor and Drink.

One of the healthiest signs of the Labor movement in aW lands is the insistence with which the Labor organs and leadertT discountenance drinking. One of the most prominent Labor men in Britain recently said : 'If you -workmen will take as keen an interest in politics as in feeding the publican. . . then you will assuredly have a clearer apprehension of your political destinies.' In speaking thu B the leader referred to was merely emphasising the fact that a man who wastes his time, health, and means in drinking- is injuring his own value to himself, and consequently to the State. Liquor never yet made a more efficient workman nor a clearer thinker. On tho contrary, it 1S alleged on good grounds that a man'a efficiency as a machine is reduced by the use of liquor, and that the deterioration begins with the first glass If we consider this question merely from the temporal point of view it might be urged that the habitual usa of liquor is not only unnecessary but harmful, inasmuch as it lessens the amount and debases the quality of production. The result is injury to the producer, and when, as is frequently the case, the injury rebounds on the heads of the innocent, the evil effect is multiplied. The mental and moral injury also inflicted correspond in magnitude, but these are not insisted upon so strongly by labor leaders as the evil effects from a disciplinary point of view.