TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1909, Page 12

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[The matter for this column is sup« plied by a lepresentative of the local temperance bodies, who alone is responsible for the opinions expressed iait.] PROHIBITION RESULTS. Mr. William Archer, recording in the Westminster Gazette his observations in the Southern States of America, writes concerning Prohibition : — Of course I made it Ay business to I enqun-e into the egects of this great ■ movement, and, of course, I received ; many conflicting answers to my enquir- , les. Many people told me, just as they would in England, that you can't make a man sober by Act of Parliament. They enlarged on the evils of the "blind ! tiger," or illicit saloon. They eang tome the refrain : "Hush, little grop-shop, , don't you cry — you'll be a drug -store by1 and-by !" They told me of the "clubs" where each member can keep his private locker full of alcohol, and get drunk at his leisure. As for tho negro, they said, what is the use of keeping whisky ' out of his way, when in ten cents' worth of a patent medicine he can find enough cocaine to make him more dangerous than if he had swallowed a gallon of whisky? On the other hand, I waa" told of a State in which the gaol-keep-ers, who, strange to say, made their living out of catering for the prisoners under their charge, applied for a special grant-in-aid on the ground that prohibition had so depopulated their preserves that they could no longer keep body and soul together! This, though I believ« it to bo true, sounded a little like a fairy-tale; so I thought I would go to headquarters for exact informa- , tion. I Atlanta was the only city I visited where prohibition was actually in force ; so I betook me to the Decatur-street Police Court, in the middle of its lowest quarter. I arived at a fortunate moment; it happened to be the first of ■ May, and Mr. Preston, the Clerk of the ' Court, was just making up his statistics for April. He took the trouble of look- ' ing up the records of the previous year , for me, and gave me the following figures : — Cases tried in the first four months of 1907 (before prohibition), 6056; in the first four months of 1908 (after prohibition), 3139. Convictions , for drunkenness before prohibition, 1955; after prohibition, 471. "Take it all round," said Mr. Preston, "our workhas been reduced by just about onehalf. 1 ' I afterwards attended a sitting of this court (Judge Broyle's), when, in a very light calendar, there was not a single case of drunkenness. A "DRY" EXHIBITION. Mr. G. S. Munro,' chairman of the New Zealand International Exhibition Commissioners (1906-7) Has been interviewed by the Liverpool Post as to the effects of prohibition in New Zealand. He replied that he could say without hesitation, though not a teetotaler or a prohibitionist, that the improvement" in the condiion of life was unquestionable. ■j Prohibition, as far as it had gone, had been jully justified ; no one with experience of the country would gainsay this. But prohibition was not total prohibition, and it yefc remained to be seen what the results of the latter would be. "My own experience,", added Mr. •Mum'o, "as chairman of the executive commissiorers and general manager of j the Now Zealand International Exhibition at Christchurch, was very startling. This was a State undertaking/and stands as the largest and most successful exhibition ever held in the Southern Hemisphere. The local licensing committee refused to grant licenses for salts of liquor at this exhibition. I protested against this action, deeming it inhospitable to visitors and narrow-minded. But at the closo of tho exhibition I was compelled to admit the satisfactory results, " which were perfect order, no drunkenness, and no accidents. The average attendance was fifteen thousand per day, and the aggregate two millions. Tho exhibition was equipped with a water-shoot, tog-bosgan-shde, a helter-skelter, airehips, a Luck -jumping arena, and other semidangerous amusements, and there was. not a single accident. This, lam satisfied, was due in a great measure to the absence of drink." SIR VICTOR HORSLEY'S VIEWS. The doctrine that temperance is 'the foundation of national prosperity and efficiency was enforced by Sir Victor Horsley in a recent address at Whitefields Tabernacle, London. Dealing with the question of alcohol in the physiological, economic, and moral aspects, Sir Victor denied that it produced cheerfulness, and ridiculed Lord Robertson's statement in tho House of Lords that any reduction in the consumption of alcohol would destroy the jollity of the English people, as well as Lord Halsbury's declaration that alcohol was one of the most important foods of the working man. * ' The income of the nation, he savl, had risen 50 per cent, in ten years, but could they say that it was wisely spent wh.m they saw that forty millions were spent on corn, and no less than one hundred and sixty millions on alcohol? When money was thrown away like this, was it fair to turn round and complain of com- 1 mercial depression? As to the question of a higher license duty, he did not think that many of them realised that New York alone gathered by taxation on the sale of alcohol more than the whole of the United Kingdom, with a population ten times as large. Statements that we had reached the limit of taxation were founded on sheer ignorance.. Did higher taxes reduce the number | of publichouses? Most certainly, they would do so, as he had seen in Canada. He did not believe in "disinterested management," or in mvinicipalisation, but that from the moral, economic, and physiological points of view, the better life of the nation demanded tho disuse of alcohol. - . DRINKING AMONG WOMEN. In connection with the recent TanAnglican Congress enquiries were addressed to many doctors as to drinking by women. Fifteen medical men replied that it had decreased among the middle classes. Eighty-eight who practised in fashionable districts reported that it luid increased among the leisured and the wealthy, while ninety-three doctors working among the poor spoke of a marked increase in the case of working women. In these reports tho facilities for drinking offered by luncheon oars, restaurants, and groceis' licenses, and tlie wide advertisement of medicines ; many of which depended for their elfect upon alcbhol, were condemned as leading to drinking. The drinking habit, said tho report, was frequently due to the use of alcohol as a household remedy for f aintness and other ailments, a practice especially dangerous to girls. ""The alcohol habit," said another passage, "is often caused by the rush after pleasure, excitement, or business, the perpetual unrest, and the desire to go on even after exhaustion." An eminent practitioner in West London wrote :—: — "I consider that the piincipal cause of increased drinking in fhe upper classes is the rapid life, which results in a neurot'c state and a resort to alcohol in tho early hours of the day." By arrangement with the Home Office the police on four days watched 28 London publichouses, and they say 39,540 women with 10.746 children enter those establishments between 11 o'clock and half-post 12 at night.