LABOUR AND LIQUOR.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1284, 13 November 1911, Page 9

LABOUR AND LIQUOR.

LECTOKE BY PROFESSOR MILLS. J "An appeal to temperance people'and"! Labour: people' to bo good citizens was 'how Professor W. T. Mills described the address which he delivered in the Municipal Concert Chamber on Saturday night. "I stand for Labour and I stand for temperance," he said, and then he went on to insist that temperance could not solve the labour problem, but that Labour people should vote No-License. It had been proved long ago, he said, that alcohol was not a food, and it had now also been proved that it was not a stimulant. It did not enable a man to reach out into the iuture and take a portion of the strength which he would otherwise be ablo to use later on. True, it left a man weaker for the future, but it also made him weaker in tho present. This had been ascertained by means of careful, repeated, scientifie experiments. Men thought they were doing more and better work with alcohol than without it, but tho actual results when examined showed that the reverse was the case. What alcohol really did was to partially paralyse one's sensibilities. It was an anaesthetic, and the part of the human system which it principally and most injuriously affected was tho braiu. Seventy per cent, of the mentally defective children came of parents one or both of whom were alcohohsed. Personal I abstinence could not reach that evil; nothing but the law could protect tho race against that race enemy. Every scheme of regulation implied the right and wisdom of prohibition. The only kind of regulation any man proposed was to prohibit at some point, and the question in dispute was how much prohibition wq ought to have. He thought that if prohibition was good after 10 p.m. it was good before that hour. If it was good after a man was drunk it was good before. If prohibition helped boys to become men, it would help to keep them men. The drink trade was a great monopoly. Ho was against all monopolies, but this one, and this one only, could be destroyed by the votes of the people, and .t was the. ally of all other nibnonoli ;*. He urged his hearers to vote for No-License, for national pro-, hibition, and for the candidates who favoured tho bare inaioTity.

Dr. R. 0. Whyto presided over the meeting, which was well attended. Applause was loud and freauent.