MARCH ON BREWERY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20867, 6 November 1929, Page 5

MARCH ON BREWERY.

A -WOMEN’S PILGRIMAGE.

DIVINE INTERVENTION SOUGHT,

(Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, November 5,

With heads held high, shining eyes, and an air of strong resolution and purpose, over 80 women marched from the Baptist Church at Otahuhu this morning to invoke Divine intervention against the opening of the new Waitemata brewery. It was a remarkable march and demonstration, without precedent in Auckland. Before the procession started over 100 women, with a sprinkling of men in support, assembled at the Otahuhu Baptist Church to offer prayer for the success of the mission. “Let it be understood we have no quarrel with the owner of the brewery, and have never met that gentleman," said the Rev. T. H. Eccersall. “I desire here and now to express my best wishes for his well-being. He may be a generous, genial, and good moral person in' many ways, but he has a hell of a job.” After prayer the women formed into a procession outside the church, and moved off. The leader was Mrs Lee Cowie, president of the W.C.T.U., who carried a blue flag decorated with a red cross in one corner. All her followers wore the blue riband of temperance and the emblematic white badge of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. They marched in single file. As the procession passed the Otahuhu School many, children gathered to view the strange scene. One small boy embraced the opportunity to test some of the fireworks which he had been saving up for his Guy Fawkes fire in the evening. Crowds gathered on the footwalks to see the procession go by, and there were remarks both ribald and sympathetic, The workmen on one building cheered loudly. It was difficult to say which side they were supporting. There were all sorts of conflicting remarks as the crowds in the main street caught glimpses of the banners which waved proudly in the wind. “ Save the Child and You Save the Nation," “ Liquor Makes Unhappy ’Homes; Vote It Out,” and “ For God, Home, and Humanity,” read the flags. Women with babies In their arms, young mothers pushing prams, old women with bonnets, old men’ with whiskers smoking pipes, yotag girls from shops waving handkerchiefs, butchers in their aprons, all lined the streets to watch the pilgrimage.

At the Otahulm monument the procession broke up and went the rest of the way to the brewery in buses and motor cars. Outside the brewery a considerable crowd had gathered with policemen keeping a watchful eye in case there was disorder. It was Just the reverse. There was a blend of soprano and contralto voices, with occasional tenors and baritones to harmonise in the hymn “0 God, Our Help in Ages Past.” It was sung with intense feeling. Then Mrs Cowie called for Divine intervention. Amid the rumble of brewery machinery and the occasional rattle of bottles Mrs Cowie pleaded to God that the brewery should be converted into a flourmill, a milk factory, or even a church. “ Every boy in gaol at Mount Eden is some mother's son,” she said, and there were sympathetic murmurs of support from other women. “Fifty per cent, of the people in Mount Eden to-day are there because of drink," she said, “and we are here to ask God to intervene." In a large semi-circle the women knelt in the dust of the roadway in fervent prayer. Among them were Mrs W. B. Farrard, aged 79 years, president of the Auckland Anti-gambling Society, representatives of the Independent Order of Kechabites, and other leaders of the temperance movement. The proceedings were very reverent. At the conclusion of the prayers the brewery was still in full swing with smoke drifting from the chimney and the odour which appears to be inseparable from places where beer is made floating afar. There were sail eyes ana Vt istful faces when the women turned away from the goal of their pilgrimage.