PASTOR DANIELLS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 136, 15 July 1914, Page 9

PASTOR DANIELLS.

VISITING TEMPERANCE LECTURER. Pastor Daniells, the visiting temperance lecturer from the United States, lectured last evening in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Barbadoes Street. He dealt more particularly with the scope and results of the prohibition movement in the States, where he said jits effect had been entirely good. The speaker maintained that people who | were face to face with facts knew that prohibition did reduce drunkenness and j crime, that it did lessen the consumption of alcoholic drink and increase the moral welfare, happiness, and financial prosperity of the communities adopting it. Continuing, the lecturer said that the prohibitory laws of the United States covered 71 per cent, of the area, and affected a population of 47,000,000 people, or 51 per cent, of the total population of the country. There were 2856 counties in the United States, 1700 of which had adopted total prohibition. Seven hundred of the cities had '' gone <lry," cities with populations ranging from 5000 to 100,000; nine States had [adopted prohibition for their whole area, and thirty-one had partial prohibition. There was a Bill before Congress at the present* time • proposing that national prohibition should be secured for the United States by means of an amendment to the Constitution, and sooner or later that measure would probably be adopted. Congress could not impose national prohibition on the country, but if the Bill now under consideration were passed it would have to be submitted to the States for the votes of the people. If a bare majority of the people in the States voted for it the States would be considered as supporting national prohibition. A threefourths majority of the States would have to adopt "the reform in order to secure the necessary amendment of the Constitution. That meant that thirtysix States would have to vote for it. As nine had already adopted prohibition and thirty-one were working to a large extent under prohibitory laws, it would appear that national prohibition were a reform well within their reach.

' Referring again to the prohibitory laws, the lecturer admitted that it was true that to some extent they were evaded in parts of the United States. The law was not strictly enforced throughout all rural areas, in small- villages, and in incorporated towns. In larger cities, however, where there was a strong foreign European element, which clung" tenaciously to the use of intoxicants, the prohibitory law was strictly enforced. Kansas was an example of a State where the law was enforced absolutely from one end to the other, and had been so since 1908. In conclusion, the speaker said that in his own State they had had no trouble when prohibition was carried in 1884. In such circumstances saloon keepers generally moved on to other States, while the majority of the employees drifted into other and legitimate departments, of commerce. In New Zealand of course there were no neighbouring territories and the position might be slightly more difficult. In the bare majority principle there was no fluctuation or instability, and it was upon the basis of the bare majority that all No-license issues were determined in America, with the result that throughout the history of the movement the only State which had gone back on its decision was lowa.