NO=LICENSE CAMPAIGN.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 257, 23 July 1908, Page 8

NO=LICENSE CAMPAIGN.

ADDRESS BY MRS. HARRISON LEE. Mrs. Harrison.Lee, tho well-known Temporanco lecturer, addressod a small audience at Kilbirnie last.evening. , • Mrs.' Lee gave a bright and animated address. Referring to tho. medical. use of liquor, sho said that strong drink was too only medicine which mon were willing to take by the pint or quart. She had never known a man go into a chemist's shop for a quart-of -quihino. There was no need to keep the bars open in the interests of the hop growers and barley growers, for they would cultivate other things with more profit. It was untrue that closing the bars would incroaso drinking in the homes. Unprejudiced from Ashburton was to the opposite, effect. • There would be no difficulty about accommodation in\the event of . No-License.' In Goro one. accommodation house had had to add forty-six rooms, and another, twenty'rooms to meet : increased demands was "introduced. In any case, No-Liconso would provide additional accommodation, since the bar-rooms would naturally be converted into bedrooms. In Ashburton, Gore, and Invercargill, the rates had been lowered • since tho advent of No-Licenso, and lower rates meant lower rents. "At Home tbo Liberal Government was making a magnificent effort to grapple with the -evil,, which Prince Leopold had said was the only terrible enemy England' had to fear.; Some'of -;the brewers had withdrawn their contributionsto the hospitals and charitable-institutions-in view of the possible passage of _the Licensing Bill. Their: action, as tho Bishop of London had pointed out, was like turning their, guns on tho Red Cross, for.it was' the. liquor traffic that was responsible for most- of the suffering in these institutions.. -The Temperance party in England . were-.clamouring for the right which New Zealand, voters had had'for fifteen years. She hoped, that they would use that right; those who struck a blow at the liquor, traffic in Wellington would bo striking a. blow, at the liquor traffic in .England. .They could do as much hero, by their votes upon this question, as if thoy sent £100 to Dr. JBarnado's Home, or to Genoral Booth for his submerged tenth. • The lecturer referred to General Booth's scheme for trans-ferring-severalmillions of- submerged population to a. colony where they would bo free from the temptations of drink, and stated that her own idea was the less expensive, one of . removing, all the brewers to a desert island, ; where there were no. pcoplo for them to -degrade. In Now Zealand, if the, NoLicenso party could win tho working men. to their side, thp liquor traffic would bo doomed. Wlion she was in CJutha she had asked-to be introduced ,to a destituto publican, because, after all the help she had given to hotel victims, it .would be pleasant to give a distressed .publican half a crown. - But they could not find such a person for her to assist. Even -the. publicans, would- bo converted to No-License when they had experienced its benefits. -The' Mayor of Ashburton, who had been a publican for twenty-one years, had told her that though he was still not a teetotaller, .he must admit that Ashburton had never been , so prosperous as it was undor No-License. The Rev. W. Douglas was chairman of tho meeting'. ... Mrs. Leo will speak to-night at Brooklyn.