INTOXICANTS AND CRIME.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 14060, 15 May 1906, Page 9

INTOXICANTS AND CRIME.

TO THE EDITOB. Sir, —In the “ Current Topics ” of your issue of last Saturday, you published aii' extract from a Melbourne journal relating to crime in Chicago, which stated that, “owing to a recent alarming increase in. the number of violent crimes in the streets, the City Council has now made the license fee for liquor saloons . lOOCdol instead of 500dol, and, with the additional revenue, 1000 more policemen will be employed. The number of policemen, nowon duty is absurdly email, and the number of saloons is one for every 243 inhabitants.” Why this reference to the connection between “violent crimes and liquor saloons?” During the last local option campaign in this colony, th© paid agents of the liquor trade, in attempting to whitewash 'the liquor business, tried to persuade the> electors that th© prohibitionists’ estimate of tho crime caused by the intoxicant trade was greatly exaggerated. And one “trade” organiser even charged the American Prohibitionist Churches with the responsibility of the conditions by which American criminality is created. Now, it is a fact that the official records of the United States have a vastly different tale to tell; and an article on this subject, published by Mr S. S. M’Clure in “ M’Clure’s Magazine” a year or so ago-, has- since evoked much discussion both in England and America. He presented an exposition of murders and homicides (perpetrated in tho United States during recent years, and he made a startling showing of th© increasing American lawlessness, which he scathingly ascribes to - tho reign of what h© terms “ the criminal oligarchy,” which h© eays consists of three classes. Now, mark you, he place© first: “Saloonkeepers, gamblers and others who engage in business that degrades; secondly, contractors, capitalists, bankers and others who can make money by getting franchises and other property of the community cheaper by bribing than by paying the community; thirdly, politicians who- are willing to seek and accept office with the aid and endorsement of the classes mentioned.” You quote a Dr Thomas Allen, as asserting “that within the last six years there had been 795 murders in Chicago, but only eight legal executions.” Mr M’Clure in his article accounted, for that shocking fact in the following terms: “ Can a body of policemen engaged in blackmail, in persecution and in shielding law-breakere, make a community law-abiding? Can a body of policemen engaged in criminal practices prevent others from committing crimes? Can a board of aldermen who, for private gain, combine to loot- a city, govern a city well? Is it any wonder, then, that under such a system of corruption there is only one person in a hundred convicted and punished, while in England one in thyee is mad© to suffer?” Now, there is no doubt that the bulk of this colony’s record, of violent crimes and fatalities arc due to tho pretence of the intoxicant trad© in our midst (some very recent ones can be debited to it), and it will ever he so whilst the voters of continuance are in the great majority., Even as far back as the, year 1854, a Select Committee of the New Zealand Parliament reported that “tho vice of drunkenness is admitted to bo the main cause,of crime in this colony, and expressed the hope that some legislative measures may be adopted without delay to avert tho progress of this principal incentive to lawlessness.” —I am, etc., LEST WE FORGET.