THE LICENSING LAW

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 150, 19 March 1924, Page 12

THE LICENSING LAW

Sir, —Replying to Mr. M. A. Carr, who criticises me in your issue of March 18, I am diffident about introducing a personal matter. But Mr. Carr accuses me of net. being a business man. It may interest him to know that I was a business man in London entrusted with the supervision of commercial travellers. I think Mr. Carr doos the members of the Commercial Travellers’ Association an injustice when he says that they will not stay in a no-license town anv longer than necessary, but move on to a licensed place. This clearly means that in Mr. Carr’s opinion what commercial travellers think about chiefly is intoxicating liquor, anti this I tospectfnlly submit, is not fair to the travellers as a whole, many of whom are total abstainers. As set forth in his letter of March 18, Mr. Carr’s four points amount only to this: improved hotel accommodation is necessary to attract tourist traffic, and that where taste, comfort and convenience, are not catered for the accommodation is . inefficient and unsatisfactory. That is so selfevident, and applies universally to license and no-license hotels, that further comment is unnecessary.

My point is this: that a hotel can bo established without a bar, and the proprietor, by providing accommodation where taste, comfort, and convenience aro catered for, can build up nil tho security of tenure that he wants. Tho private hotels in this Dominion are not affected by the recurring polls on the licensing Question, and many of them arc entirely satisfactory and doing good business. This brings it down to the key factor which is that tho liquor trafficalleges that security of tenure in the nale of liquor is essential for the provision of good hotel accommodation Mr. Carr supprts this view. He was reported as complaining of the quality of liquor and the conduct of hotels. These things are in tho bands of the liquor trade irrespective polls. I submit that if the liquor traffic will nqt give its customers good

liquor and decently conducted hotels because it is threatened with a poll every three years, it will certainly not do it when it knows it is safe for at least ten years. The liquor trade surely knows that its continuance depends on securing the votes of its customers. A square deal and good service is surely the right way to secure those votes. The liquor trade by the manner in which it treats its customers keeps them in a continual state of protest. And if the liquor trade felt safe for at least ten years it would certainly not give its customers any better treatment than it gives them now. Tho reasoning of Mr. Carr is that profits from the bar trade will enable a hotel-keeper to give better accommodation than is possible in a hotel where there is no bar. As a business man and commercial traveller Mr. Carr must surely recognise that it is absolutely unsound to sell one thing dear in order to sell another cheap. If Mr. Carr was at the head of a business, and a traveller reported that he had sold a case of salmon at loss than cost in order to book an order for a chest of tea bearing an extravagant profit, I am sure Mr. Carr would tell the traveller that that method of business was no good. But that is what the argument for secur ity of tenure for the sale of liquor m hotels amounts to. Mr. Carr is unfair to Ashburton and Oamaru when he says that they are tlie least progressive of Sent 1, Island towns. The Christchurch “Press, which is no friend of no-license, said of Ashburton in October last: “Its progress since about 18/6 has indeed been marvellous,” and only last week the Ashburton ‘Guardian” carried a paragraph in which a large body of tourists were reported as saving of the Ashburton hotels that for comfort, conduct, and general provision they were quite equal to those to bo found in ‘wet’ towns of greater size. —I am, etc., J. MALTON MURRAY, Assistant Secretary, New Zealand Alliance. March 18.