PROHIBITION IN MAINE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 41, 3 October 1911, Page 5

PROHIBITION IN MAINE.

A TRADE VIEW. (Per Press Association.) Auckland, October 2. In connection with the Maine Referendum reversing constitutional prohibition, a cable was received from New York on Saturday by the Auckland Provincial Council (Trade organisation), stating that the vote for the repeal of prohibition in the State of Maine was 60,481, and that the vote against repeal was 00,461, or a difference of twenty votes in favour of repeal. The official recount is now being made and the final result of such recount will not ho known until after October 9, and possibly may he delayed until December.. However, the fact is important that the. prohibition majority at the previous poll in 1884 was 44,000 in favour, of prohibition. This has now been reversed, thus resulting in the repeal of constitutional prohibition by the narrow majority of twenty votes.

Commenting on the foregoing, Mr W. S. Sloano stated that, this was the first opportunity that the peoplo of Maine have had to express their will on constitutional prohibition for twenty-seven years by their votes, and whatever the result of the recount of the recent referendum may be, the tremendous gain of 44,000 votes in favour of licenses is most significant. Ho could not, in face of these figures, see how the New Zealand Alliance can claim the result as a victory for prohibition. Proceeding, Mr Sloano said ho considered that ox-Prcsident Roosevelt put his finger on the spot when ho said: “Wo all want facts. I could sit down and talk theories, but it is facts we want. The State of Maine has been trying prohibition for sixty years. Surely that is long enough to try anything. What has been accomplished in the State of Maine? People are waiting to hear these facts, and to sit on them as a jury in order to get the right viewpoint.” Mr Sloano further remarked: “Now, Maine, by this over-whelm-ing reversal, has shown that public opinion is in favour of license. Maine has only followed the "example of her sister State, so that now Maine, New ■Hampshire, Vermont, Massachussotts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, lowa, Michigan, South Dakota, Alabama, Nebraska—in fact, east, west, south and north, fifteen out of ■seventeen States who-have tried prohibition in one form or another have all abandoned- and repudiated prohibition, and the wave of sentiment which swept across the continent has now receded hack by the knowledge gleaned from bitter experience and disappointment of prohibition.” In conclusion, he said.: “Surely the American people of these States should bo given the credit of having adopted prohibition in good faith, with honest and earnest desire ti> further the interest and welfare of their < itizons. No sensible person can now believe these people would have repudiated a system adopted with high nun-id purpose had they found that that system was making for sobriety, for prosperity, or for good citizenship. The only conclusion consistent with reason and common sense is that the people found they had built up false hopes and that conditions were not only no better, but were' far worse than they had been under the license system.”