PROHIBITION INQUIRY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 14 April 1926, Page 9

PROHIBITION INQUIRY.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE LAW

“WETS” EVIDENCE BEFORE THE

SENATE COjVIMITTEE.

BY CABLE—PBESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. Received 2.30 p.m. to-day. April 13. Mr Stanley Shirk, research director of the New York Moderation League, told the Senate Inquiry that drunken drivers and drunken children had increased far above any previously noted. The rising generation were drinking more, and the conditions were becoming worse. A national survey revealed that arrests for drunkenness in 457 representative places in the United States had increased from 250,000 in 1920 to 500,000 in 1124. Father Francis Kasaczus, a prie/st on the Pennsylvania coalfields, said that prohibition generally had corrupted, the mining community. He .said that those who make liquor in those communities sell it cheap. It is easy to get, and everybody gets it. He declared that the chi'drsn of to-day were the victims of prohibition, and he cited numerous instances of mothers and children being drunk and dissolute, including the case of an infant of three years, which demanded moonshine whisky. Mrs Vola An glim, deputy __ chief of the probation office in the New York Family Court, testified that the number of cases before the court had increased since prohibition, .and family suffering had been augmented. The “wets” will conclude their testimony to-morrow, after which the't‘dry’ supporters will recommence their evidence. Meanwhile the House of Representatives Alcoholic Liquor Traffic Committee suddenly announced that it was helming next week a complete survey of prohibition conditions: —A. and N.Z. Assn.