THE LICENSING POLLS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7979, 9 December 1911, Page 4

THE LICENSING POLLS

So far as it may be possible to make deductions from Thursday’s voting on the licensing polls, one of the outstanding phases shown by the figures is that voters have to a largo extent side-tracked the local no-license issue in favour of the wider question of national prohibition. When the final figures are available they will disclose an appreciable falling-off in. the aggregate number of votes for local nolicenso, whereas the poll in favour of prohibition is greater than any previously registered against licenser. The four cities, where altogether more, than ninety thousand votes were cast, may bo taken as examples of the diminished numbers favouring abolition of licenses in individual districts. The centesimal fall in three years is shown by„the following:

We should he inclined to consider this feature of the results surprising if we were not accustomed to the rather peculiar facts connected with the plebiscites on the question. The small use made by prohibitionists of the now. abandoned reduction issue, for example, must frequently have puzzled all who have given consideration to the matter. This gave power to cut dotvn the number of licenses by anything up to 25 per cent, on the vote of a bare majority, yet the number of districts availing themselves of this was never anything like the number having a bare majority for no-license. In 1908, for instance, forty-seven electorates had a majority against licenses, while only seven carried reduction. Out of a total of 462 licenses that have been swept away as the result of local option polls, reduction .accounts for .303 and nolicenso for 154. Thus those who agreed on behalf of the Alliance to delete the reduction issue parted with an instrument which had proved doubly as effective as no-license. This was done, of course, by way of agreement, or compromise, in order to get Parliament to legislate for a national vote on prohibition. Now tho prohibition poll has been taken and fallen , short ■of the effective percentage, while local nolicense appears to have got a more or less serious set-back.

There is, however, quite sufficient significance in the figures to give persons engaged in a business at present legal plenty of food for thought, as Mr Myers, of Auckland, puts it. Another point mentioned by that gentleman deserves notice in view of the somewhat impatient revival of tho agitation for the bare majority. That is the fact of throb no-license districts—Masterton, Ashburton, and Ohinemuri—having a majority for restoration of licenses. These are but three out of seventy, it is true, but they emphasise how the views of changing constituencies may alter, and how unsatisfactory it would be, from the point of view of all parties, to have the existence or abolition of an important service hanging every third year on tho vote of a hare majority. Indeed, we are not without some belief ‘ that the partial collapse of tho no-license campaign is largely duo to ' a widespread opinion that w© should decide definitely and permanently one way or tho other. ; It has. always seemed to us a serious hardship, if not an injustice, to call upon the Jidtel-keeping business „to defend its life, even against a possible threefifths of the population) ©very three years. To have this under a bar© majority system would be obviously unfair” while it would also greatly depreciate whatever value may attach to the successes of those campaigning against tho us© of alcohol.

190S. 1011. Per cent. Per cent. Auckland City 51.88 48.00 ■Wellington City ... 54,41 44.50 Wellington South ... 63.53 5t).Ul> Wellington Suburbs 63,00 56.00 Christchurch City... 50.02 43.40 Dunedin City 56.63 50.81