PARTIAL PROHIBITION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23259, 31 January 1939, Page 12

PARTIAL PROHIBITION

EXPERIMENT IN BOMBAY MILL WORKERS* PAY DAY [from our own correspondent] BOMBAY, Dec. 28 The city of Bombay experienced prohibition for the first time recently, when shops selling toddy and other country liquor and imported liquor were closed for two days—the mills' pay day and the day following. The experiment was in many ways a success, although the ' Congress Government's immediate objective was probably not fully realised. The intention is to keep liquor from the mill hands on pay dav and the day after, when they are likely to have most of their wages! Though the revenue from liquor consumption in the city is likely to fall, the policv is to save labourers from the clutches of moneylenders and from financial ruin. It is true that the mill-hands could not go straight from the mills to the liquor shops on pay day, but; as they had been fully warned about the "dry" days, those of them who could not do without liquor availed themselves of the concession allowed for domestic consumption, and provided themselves with an adequate stock. Hotels, railway restaurants and clubs were permitted to serve liquor to their patrons under certain restrictions.