TWJ KINDS OF POVERTY

Grey River Argus, 6 October 1914, Page 3

TWJ KINDS OF POVERTY

MR. SNOWDEN ON DRINK-MAUL

SQUALOR

PLAIN TALK TO WORKMEN

"There are two kinds of poverty in this world," said. Mr. Philip Snowden, the well-known social reformer, in addressing a crowded meeting under the asupices of the local temperance party in the Auckland Town Hall. "There is the respectable poverty that sliies iit the sight of its neighbour, and tries to hide its poverty, as though it were a thing of which to be ashamed, and there is a filthy poverty, which exposes itself in the. daylight and is not ashamed. You never find filthy poverty which is not associated with chink,"

Mr. Snowden's address was mainly confined to the subject of relationship between drink and social problems of the day- During the last 20 years, he said, a revolution had come over pubbe opinion, for the social conscience of the people had been stirred to a remarkable degree upon the subject of the poverty of the people, and the riches of the few. Men in. all classes of the community were giving their closest attention to the study of economic and social questions, and this had brought into greater prominence the association of the liquor traffic with all these questions. One fortunate result had been the drawing together in hearty co-operation the organised temperance movement and the organised labour and socialistic movement. (Applause.) Twenty years years ago there was no sympathy between the two movements. Temperance men said that drink prohibition would solve the whole social and industrial problem, and Jabour men retorted, provoked by this extreme attitude, that it was poverty that led to drinking. Both of them were wrong, declared Mr. Snowden, for if we abolished the liquor traffic, the problem of poverty would not be solved, and it was equally unsound and unscientific to say that it was the poverty of the people, that was wholly responsible for their drinking habits. Mr. Snowden proceeded to point out that the Labour party was the only party solidly in support of the last Licensing Bill, thrown out by the House of Lords. When a drastic measure of temperance reform was introduced as one of the first fruits of the recovered power of the people, no more united than that of organised labour. The German, Austrian, Belgium and Scandinavian Socialist congresses had

all passed resolutions appealing to their members 'individually to abstain from liquor.

" 'He who would be free himself must strike the blow,' " declared the lecturer at a later point. "It is for the working classes of this and other lands to realise their great* responsibilities. We have talked too much to working men about their rights, and far too little about their duties and responsibilities. It is not a popular thing to always tell the naked truth to a meeting of working men, but one who claims to be a leade rof the working classes must in duty bound tell them their faults because it is only by overcoming those faults that they can equip themselves adequately for the great work which is before them."

Mr. Snowden appeajed to the workers to vote for prohibition, for of all the obstacles in the way of social reform drink was the first and easiest to overcome.

Mrs. Snowden also briefly addressed the meeting.