PROHIBITION IN AMERICA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 5

PROHIBITION IN AMERICA.

“PUSSYFOOT’S” ADMISSION. (Peom Ctch Own Coheespokdent.) SAN FRANCISCO, June 17. Mr "William Johnson, better known internationally as “Pussyfoot” Johnson, the American temperance reformer, who a few years ago conducted a campaign in Australasia in the cause of prohibition, has appeared iu an entirely new role after his Continental tours. A reformed “Pussyfoot” Johnson bringing with him new tenets of individualism drifted into Kansas City, Missouri, on June 10 and deposed to gaping newspaper men that a man has as much right to drink liquor as he has to eat food which might be distasteful to others. The admission of the world-famous reformer created a big stir throughout America, and his statement was printed iu large type on the front page of the daily newspapers, accompanied by his smiling photograph. Mr Johnson, according to telegraphic despatches, declared "that after all his years of battling for this and that, he has decided that men and women will, after all is said and done, do about ns they please, and he admitted that this was as it should be.”

A short time after “Pussyfoot” had been interviewed by Kansas City scribes Louis Von Hemert, a retired banker of Java, who is travelling round tho world with S. M. S. Philipse, a retired railway oltieial, was expressing ills views on the prohibition question. He and his companion had just arrived in San Francisco from Australia, and he said Americans do not look as healthy as Australians. “Americans,” he said, “ do not look as healthy as Australians, even though the climate is as healthy ns that of the great Commonwealth—tlrat is, in regard to the climatic conditions on tho Pacific coast. Do you know, I think it is because Americans do not get enough to drink.” The now regime in Ontario, where the Provincial Government has legalised 4,-t per cent, beer, has had a curious effect upon Americans, who are flocking over the international border to sample the new brew of Canada. In San Francisco two divorces have been given in one week where missing husbands were stated in court by their wives to have suddenly made up their minds to leave California for “where beer can be bought without risk of imprisonment.” One of the missing husbands, upon leaving his San Francisco spouse, announced: “I am oft for Ontario. Canada, where I can get a drink."' The second delcared: “Me for Hamilton, Ontario.”