SEEN AS AN EVIL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 49, 27 February 1945, Page 7

SEEN AS AN EVIL

LIQUOR TRUST'S METHODS P.A. DUNEDIN, February 26. "The Brown Owl is probably the greatest plan ever invented to teach girls to drink," said Mrs. W. H. Hiett Dominion president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, in her presidential address to the convention this afternoon. Mrs. Hiett spent three weeks in Invercargill recently in order to gain her own impressions of the Liquor Trust's activities. In the Brown Owl, she said, good meals were served and everything was made attractive as a setting for drink. It was probably a greater source of evil than the licensed bars, as drinking was made to appear an everyday custom. She had moaning tea at the Brown Owl, where she saw girls and lads being served by barmen employed to take orders and serve alcoholic drinks. She looked in again one afternoon and saw young men and women drinking freely. Elmwood was another charming setting that had been purchased to make drinking attractive.

Another bad feature was that children entered with their parents and became accustomed to seeing adults drinking. Extra taverns were to be built at Rugby Park, Avenal Road, and Elles Road. The only good thing about taverns, such as Kelvin and Clyde was that they locked up at 6 p.m. It seemed an extraordinary attitude for the Government to build drink shops without accommodation.