KNOCKS FOR NORTHCLIFFE

Evening Star, Issue 17792, 14 October 1921, Page 8

KNOCKS FOR NORTHCLIFFE

NO. 3. Lord Northcliffo is very much shocked, declaring Prohibition in the U.S.A. to be a “subterfuge of a humiliating and demoralising nature” resulting in “ ilicit drinking, selling, and bribing high up.” In passing, we have "illicit drinking’’ in N.Z. There must have been some demoralising bribing in license days, for in 1908 a- liquor trade representative boasted that iu Chicago, where the Trade had " tho Legislature well in hand, ’ 7,000 saloons were open all day Sunday in spite of tho .Sunday closing Jaw. When one hotel, the Blackstone, closed on Sunday, as required by law, a movement was started in the Trade to boycott it.

A confidential report of the Licensed Victuallers’ Defence League of London eavs that what brought about Prohibition in' the U.S.A. was —this is an actual quotation from the report —‘‘ Drink was illicitly manufactured on a gigantic scale. _ Most of it was rank poison. Secret drinking clubs and private saloons were as plentiful as blackberries. The whole licensing system was based on a rotten and insecure foundation. The police were lax. Extraordinary methods, were adopted by the stealthy ‘to defraud the revenue.'’ So there you ‘are ! That was license, in the U.S.A. BEFORE Prohibition. The liquor people themselves say that all those- things which Lord Northcliffe professes arc a result of Prohibition wore actually there before Prohibition was introduced. The fact is, Prohibition is prohibiting far better than regulation ever regulated.— N.Z, Alliance Publicity (15).