PROHIBITION AND LIQUOR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXII, Issue 15524, 26 January 1911, Page 6

PROHIBITION AND LIQUOR.

No doubt Monsignor Fowler will be taken severely to task by the prohibitionists of New Zealand for seeing no good in the practico of their doctrines in America. But after reading our visitor's account of his experience of "no-license" in the United States we are not surprised to find him preferring the regulation of the liquor traffic to its total suppression. When the prohibition laws were passed in lowa, he told one of our reporters yesterday, the four principal cities of the State simply defied the Legislature and continued to keep their ealoons open. "In many cases saloon-keepers were taken before the Courts," tho Monsignor explained, " but their fines were paid by the brewers and the wholesale liquor men, by whom many of the saloons Were owned." In these circumstances the prohibitionists can hardly have expected to make their reform a success. In Kansas the position was even wor&e. The boundary . between this State and Missouri passes along c street in Kansas City, and when the bars on one side of the thoroughfare were closed their owners had only to open them on the other. We can easily imagine the kind of prohibition wo should have in Christchurch if there were ao-licecaso on one ride of High Street and open bars on tho other. To make the situation in Kansas City all tho more ridiculous Missouri prohibited gambling while. Kansas permitted it, with the result that the row of drinking shops was faced by a row of gaming saloons. This deplorable state of affairs cannot be fairly laid to the charge cf prohibition, and it will be interesting to hear what the Monsignor has to say about no-license when he has seen it in operation in this country. In the meantime his testimony to the difficulty of enforcing prohibition when it is not supported by a substantial volume of publio opinion and where it is surrounded by license is not without its value. These problems have been exercising us in New Zoaland and apparently they still remain unsolved in America.