ALLIANCE CAMPAIGN

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 217, 11 June 1935, Page 3

ALLIANCE CAMPAIGN

Local Option in Brooklyn

“The interests of the liquor traffic and the interests of the community can never be reconciled, because the more the liquor trade prospers the greater Is the injury it inflicts on the people,” said Mr. J. Malton Murray, addressing a meeting in the Methodist Church Schoolroom, Brooklyn, last evening. Mr. H. P. Mourant, convenor of the meeting, occupied the chair, and explained that it had been called in view of the licensing poll that would be held with the general election this year, probably in December. Brooklyn would have to vote on local no license as well as on the national issue.

After quoting the opinion on the nolicense question voiced by the president of the Southland Building and Investment Society, also referring to local issues in the United States, Mr. Murray said that New Zealand court statistics revealed the freedom from crime enjoyed by the no-license districts; from the standpoint of material well-being they were recognised as the soundest in the Dominion, and he urged his hearers to organise and work energetically to prevent the return of the open bar to Brooklyn. The meeting adopted the following resolution: —“That as the licensed liquor bar is everywhere wasteful, injurious and anti-social, being a cause of poverty, moral degradation and crime; and as the experience in the nolicense districts of New Zealand amply demonstrates the advantages to the community of the no-license condition; this meeting resolves to work energetically to prevent the establishment of the licensed bar i n Brooklyn.”