DRINKING HABITS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 1514, 9 November 1912, Page 10

DRINKING HABITS.

Sir, —In your issue c£ Thursday I noticed a report of some remarks made by a member of the Ne.v Zealand Alliance anent the drinking habits of the English and the Scotch. as compared with those who inhabit •what is locally called " God's Own Country," and, as f>orue of the statements relate to a city of which I am a freeman burgess, 1 take tho liberty of asking you to kindly permit mo to contradict as flatly as I can tho intemperate allegations I have a right to complain of. I shall leave England to tako care of herself and confine myself to that " {esthetic " part of my native city called Tho Gallowgate, in which I challenge anyone to find a single hotel far less a receptacle for perambulators or "empties." I have lived for half a century in the vicinity of that locality and have never vet witnessed the scones or conditions spoken of by your teetotal friend. Let. me say that, in and around that locality the population 33 entirely a working-class one whose wages do riot permit of excessive drinking in the ' manner suggested. i suppose tho wages > there will nn from 203 to 25s ajr week, and how on that tho workmen's wives there can drink to excess in pubs where there are garages for the Drains and receptacles for the empty glasses beats me ! A woman who drinks to excess on a pound a week rarely possesses a perambulator, and such an assertion is on a par with the one about tho 1000 children and proportionate number of polioemcn waiting outside to auell disturbances when the whisky shops close at 10.30 p.m. Ten o'clock is the closing time, and •while I admit the early closing movement lias had no moral effect in lessening tho consumption of spirits, I fail to wo how your teetotal friend can further the cause ho weins to have at heart by disseminating ■statements to absolutely devoid of fact- It 3ias been my privilege to have lived in many more places than my native city, and I have nowhere met with a publican who was so credulous as to allow drunken women to place their empty classes outside his shop. Were ho to do so I am fearful his loss of crystal would exceed his ordinary profit. Regarding sido entrances to hotels, etc., permit me to add such have not- existed within tho municipality for over thirty years. Jxo. Miller.