NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 8399, 27 December 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE.

Mr Walker has returned from his visitation of the Westland anxiliaries of the New Zealand Alliance. He expresses his astonish* ment at the possibility of the West Coast snstaining so many hotels as exist there. The six larger towns, he says, have a combined population of 14,000, and a total of 134 licensed hotels, or 1 hotel to about 35 adnlt males of the popnlation, beside wholesale and bottle licenses. Westport has 23 hotels to 2,000 people; Reef ton, 18 to 1,800 ; Bronner, 17 to 2,000; Grey mouth, 26 to 3,600; Kumara, 27 to 2,000; and Hokitika, 23 to 2,600. • In some instances, snoh as Reefton and Kumara, the figures include the immediate neighborhood beyond the borough boundaries. At Ahaura he oounted a total of 56 houseß, 8 of which are lioensed hotels, or 1 hotel to every 6 other houses. He concludes that the West Coast must be enormously rich to stand this tremendous drain upon the resources of its people, and that, if the drink traffic were abolished, no part of the colony would be more abundantly prosperous. Living is somewhat dearer than on the East Coast, but unskilled labor commands 10s a day. The law granting to municipalities and road boards the licensing fees is principally responsible for the continued existence of this large number of licensed houses —a very small proportion of which accommodate the public in any other way than selling liquor, and in some instances with the most flagrant habitual violation of the Licensing Act. That working men should fail to Bee the interest they have in the abolition of this traffic is the chief astonishment, inasmuch as the money whioh is worse than wasted upon the drink would otherwise largely augment the employment of labor; and the next great astonishment is.that municipalities should consider it an advantage to pave the streetß by means whioh ruin the homes of the people, as though well-paved streets were of more importance than well-ordered and happy homes. Municipalities and road board districts should be delivered by law from this temptation to tolerate these means of impoverishment and moral and social ruin to the people. At a largely attended meeting at the Hokitika Town Hall on Monday, December 15, the following resolution was unanimously adopted:—" This meeting takes this earliest opportunity of appealiog, through the Ministry, to the new Parliament to take early steps to confer upon the people complete control of the liquor traffic, in harmony with the resolution passed by the late Parliament upon this subject; and specially directs attention to the facts that on the West Coast there is a vastly larger proportion of hotels to population than in any other part of the colony, and that the people are powerless under exietiog law to rid themselves of this great evil." Mr Walker wiil spend the month of January about Dnnedin and Otago, and in February and March revisit Nelson, and proceed to the Napier district, Gisborne, and Auckland, postponing for a time his intended visitation of the Canterbury auxiliaries.