LABOUR LEADER SPEAKS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 9 October 1925, Page 10

LABOUR LEADER SPEAKS.

AN ABSOLUTE AND DISMAL FAILURE. By JAMES J. HOLLAND (President of the New York State Federation of Labour). "The virtue of temperance ini all things needs no particular elucidation. But. five years of National Prohibition give us the proof that the ideal of temperance cannot be achieved through coercion, assumption, fanaticism or governmental tyranny. In fact, Prohibition liasi proved an absolute and dismal failure. In no case have such laws ever gained voluntary obedience, and. never has it: been possible to enforce obedience. “The Prohibition Amendment is an unreasonable, and unnatural law. There is no use at all in discussing the question, whether or not it can be enforced. It cannot. "Being against the laws of Nature, the maintenance of the Prohibition Amendment and its enforcement act, the Volstead Law, is a physical impossibility. Force creates force. The more force you use against another resisting force, the more resisting force you create. First enforcement and defiance of enforcement. Then stronger enforcement and stronger defiance of enforcement. In fact, it seems that defiance always keeps a little, ahead of the next step in more rigid l enforcement. Prohibition enforcement in the United. States during the last five years is a. practical illustration, of Government by force, of the philosophic saying: ‘lt isi the curse of an evil deed that it continually breeds evil.’ ” North American Review, 1925. You d’o not want, this law in New Zealand; it is within your, power to keep it out. Strike out. the two bottom lines oni your ballot paper. —7 (Published by Arrangement.)