A BUSINESS MAN AND PROHIBITION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3384, 22 January 1919, Page 8

A BUSINESS MAN AND PROHIBITION.

A meeting of those interested in the prohibition movement was held in Reid Hall, isouth Dunedin, on the 17th, and was moderately attended. The Deputy Mayor of St. Kilda (Or Dove) was voted to the chair. Mr J. B. Waters said he was present _to put the case front a business man's point of view. Business men had been a long time making up their minds, but they now hoped that , their efforts combined with those of the alliance would be effective. Business men were taking up the question of prohibition very largely because they were convinced that it was a measure which was entirely for the good of the country from an economic standpoint. The business man looked at the subject only from a financial aspect, and one reason why the business men had come into the question was that conditions of this and other countries were now different from what they were before the war. New Zealand and other countries engaged in the war were staggering under a tremendous load of debt. Out here we did not understand that yet. We were living in an atmosphere - where there seemed to be plenty of money for amusements, although the cost of living was high. The time he was afraid was coming when we would all realise that having won the war we had to pay for it. We would have to pay interest on the money we had borrowed, and we had borrowed about £64,000,000 at present for war purposes alone, and Sir Joseph Ward had said the expenditure had got to stop somewhere, and had stated that before long we would have a debt of £200,000,000. We would have to find something like £11,000,000 per annum to meet this. Then the oldage pensions, which no one would like to see reduced, and we had got to provide military pensions for disabled men and their dependents, and it was estimated that we would have to face something like £2,000,000 per annum for the soldiers' pensions, which would make £4,000,000 for a pensions fund, or altogether about £15,000,000 for fixed charges. On top of that we had to provide education, which we did not want to see curtailed. ' That cost £1,500,000 and the Minister of Education wanted further votes, and very soon it would amount to £2,000,000, which would be £17;000,000. Then charitable aid amounted to another £1,500,000, and there was departmental expenditure, running railways, etc., and the total revenue against all thi3 was £20,000,000. That was probably the maximum. If it was not enough it could be raised only by increasing taxation and that with the present cost of living. There were only two ways known in business to meet a heavy obligation. One was economy and the other was increasing the output. We had to increase our production and we had to control our non-productive expenditure. The biggest expense in this country was the expenditure in connection with alcoholic liquor, £4,500,000, and no one pretended to say that liquor was necessary. All admitted it was a luxury. Business men said if they had. to meet this expenditure they must economise, and one thing the country could very well do without was the expenditure on liquor.—(Hear, hear.) Then we must increase our output. This was a period oi reconstruction, and the three things necessary in reconstruction wire raw material, labour, and money. The principal of these was labour, because without labour they could not get raw material, and without raw material they could not get money. Would anyone say whisky or beer helped to get anyone of these things? The man who drank was less efficient than the man who did not. It was Teckoned that there was a loss of another £4,500,000 in loss of efficiency in labour. When labour went down the production of raw material went down, and as business men they said the best thing they could do was to come in with the alliance and get rid of this drink. They thought that £4,500,000 to buy out the liquor trade was a sound investment.