TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 896, 3 May 1889, Page 5

TEMPERANCE.

SUCCESS OF PROHIBITION IN KANSAS. AN EARTHLY PARADISE. In the inaugural address of the Governor of the State of Kansas last month, he stated that fully nine-tenths of the drinking and drunkenness prevalent in Kansas eight years ago have been abolished, and he affirmed with earnestness and emphasis that the State was to-day the most temperate, orderly, sober community of people in the civilised world. The abolition of the saloons had not only promoted the personal happiness and general prospsrity of the citizens, but it had enormously diminished crime, filled thousands of homes—where vice, and want, and wretchedness once prevailed—with peace, plenty and contentment, and had materially increased the trade and business engaged in the sale of useful and wholesome articles of merohaudise. Notwithstanding the fact that the population of the State was steadily increasing, the number of criminals confined in Penitentiary was steadily decreasing. Many of the gaols were empty, and all showed a marked falling off in the number of prisoners confined. ’I he dockets of the Courts were no longer burdened with long lists of criminal cases. In the capital district, containing a population of nearly 60,000, not a single criminal case was on the docket when the present term began. The business of the police courts of the larger cities had dwindled to one-fourth of its former proportions, while in cities of the second and third class the occupation of police authorities was practically gone. These suggestive and convincing factß appealed alike to the reason and the conscience of the people. They had recon. ciled those who doubted the success, and silenced those who opposed the policy of prohibiting the liquor traffic. [Some readers on this side of the Atlantic may not know that this does not apply to the City of Kansas, which is not in the State of Kansas, but on its border, and in the State of Missouri.]