"TRADE" REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 52, 2 March 1909, Page 6

"TRADE" REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND.

SOME ENGLISH OPINIONS.

(From Our Special, Correspondent.)

LOXDON, January 27.

The cabled news that the Auckland Brewers and Licensed Victuallers' Association has decided to abolish barmaids and private bars, to raise to 20 the age limit of youths who may be supplied with intoxicating liquors, and to supply no women with drink for consumption at the bar, has excited a good deal of attention here. "Any one item of this programme," says the "Daily News," in an editorial note, "is enough to make the ordinary English member of 'the trade' demand with tears of indignation, 'Are these my countrymen?' Socially speaking, the answer is ' No.' The community in New Zealand differs from our own in many respects, and in none more momentous than this of a full popular control of the commerce which, of all others, is the most easily extended to the detriment of the nation.

"Reformers in this country," adds the "Daily News," "must note ruefully the difference between a community wheTe, for example, the serving of liquor by women is abolished by 'the trade' itself out of a sense of its responsibility to the public, and a community where that astounding innovation is, after being incorporated in a measure of licensing reform dropped to lighten a legislative ship already doomed to destruction. Sew Zealand has a will of its own in regard to the liquor traffic; it has no House of Lords to 'interpret' that will for it. In these respects, as in so many others, the Dominion has a lesson to teach the Mother Country."

Mr. Hall JoDes, the High Commissioner for New Zealand, in an inter, view on the subject of the cablegranJ; said that the reforms promised by the Auckland Brewers' Association would probably apply to the whole of the Dominion. "It is significant," he said, "that the news of this promised action comes from Wellington. The Auckland Brewers' and Licensed Victuallers' Association has ramifications all over the Dominion, and I am inclined to think that the news is -of much more than local significance. These promised reforms will remove some of the objections of tbbse who yoted at the last election for no licenses; and it is evidently the intention of the trade to save the remaining licenses if , possible by promnt and genuine measures of reform;"