PROHIBITION IN AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 211, 6 September 1899, Page 2

PROHIBITION IN AMERICA.

SOME OF ITS EFECTS.

Advocates of Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic are at times apt to overlook one most important factor, the spirit of "contrariness" innate in human nature. Forbidden fruit is proverbially the sweetest, and it is ! only nat\;,ral to expect the same tea* idency on the part of unregenerate mankind in regard to what he drinks. I There seems, indeed, strong ground | for believing that the prohibition jof the sale of alcoholic drink has the direct effect of intensifying the I desire for drink; that at least is the ! natural assumption to draw from I such results of Prohibition as may Ibe seen in places where the interdiction has been carried into force. What are the results? Mr Gardner, a gentleman recently arrived from America, who lived for some considerable time in the "'prohibited States of Maine and Kansas, as well as in other parts of the United Stales, in conversation -with a "Star" reporter summed up his observations |as follows: —"Where prohibition does exist, it is easier to get drink oa Sunday than it is in a State where there is no prohibition." "In Portland, for instance/ he continued, "it is nothing unusual to see more drunken men in the streets on Sunday than you will see in any town in New Hampshire, the adjoining State, where liquor is sold quite freely up till twelve on Saturday night. You see very little drunkenness on Sunday in New Hampshire, but in Portland, especially on Sundays, drunkenness prevails to a great extent. So far as the facilities for getting the drink are concerned, there is no difficulty, as I found out by experiment. The drink is usually sold at the back of stores and grocers' shops, and the police wink at it. The same conditions prevail in Kansas. In Lawrence .and Topeka, two large towns in Kansas, it was just as easy (if not more so) to get drink as in. Portland. "The hardest State to get liquor in on Sundays, according to my experience, was South Carolina, where the liquor traffic is controlled by the State. They have State dispensaries, and it is absolutely impossible to get liquor on Sundays. I never saw a more sober State; I am speaking more particularly of the State capital, Columbia, and Charleston, and I suppose the same thing holds good for the other towns in the State. "So far as my observation goes, Prohibition only engenders a state of ~ corruption worse than anything existing where the traffic is licensed. | Sly-grog shops are opened, and -the police simply wink at the illicit traffic Take California. I don't sugppose there is another State m the Union where liquor is so plentiful; yet it is very seldom that you will see a drunken person there on * Sunday, although the wine shops are generally open during- the day. 1 cannot say thai Kansas and Maine are any better or worse than the other States on week-days, but on. Sundays they are decidedly worse. I can't account for this in any other way than in the fact that when the lav says 'you shall not do this,' man m Ms contrariness goes anddoesi it. | —-^la iCgax-OTS-tllg^gect^e-IVrohxta-lmxci, upon trade, Mr Gardner's experience shows it to have been anything but •favourable. i:Let me give you an instance," he said. "In Lynchburg, a town in Virginia, Prohibition was carried, and it was changed from a 'wet' town into a 'dry' one, to use the colloquial expression for prohibited and non-prohibited places. What was the result? After the sale of liquor was stopped business began to fall off, and the leading merchants and business men moved from the town to a place which up till then had been nothing more than a refreshment station for the railway, but which speedily went ahead, and absorbed most of the business and trade of Lynchburg. Building sites in the later place went right dowffl in price, and the Whole place became very dull. After a year's trial they gave up Prohibition, and Lynchburgl; became a 'wet' town again. The same thing is going on all over the States. New Hampshire has not anything like the natural resources of | Maine, and yet it is more prosperous than that 'prohibited' State. As fai as I have observed, Prohibition has always had a bad effect upon trade, in America at any rate."