THE LICENSING POLL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 98, 8 December 1911, Page 4

THE LICENSING POLL.

Yesterday’s Licensing Polls, the first taken under the amended Act, and providing for a straight-out vote on the Dominion issue, have resulted in a very heavy vote for total prohibition, and it seems fairly evident that the new issue has taken the place of the old local option issue, in many people’s minds. So far as the Stratford licensing district is concerned, Continuance was carried, 428 more votes being requisite to carry no-license on the three-fifths majority. This works out at 51.8 per cent, in favour of No-license and is a slightly move favourable vote to the trade than in 1908, the percentage of No-license voters being 52.2 per cent. It is doubtlul ii even yet, the full significance of the issues is clearly understood, And it is quite probable that a large proportion of those voting may have possessed an imperfect appreciation of the gravity of the position. But at any rate the poll of yesterday, though sufficiently emphatic in individual corners of the country, makes ii tolerably clear that the Dominion is not, on a three-fifths majority, prepared for so sweeping a change, and the, at any rate, temporary, serious disturbance of industry and finance which such a change would cause. The hguies to hand are, at time of writing, almost too incomplete to speak with any ceitainty, but it is fairly reasonable to suppose that the averages from all parts of the Dominion will be much the, same. Assuming this, it is probable that Dominion Prohibition is lost by a shortage of, in round numbers, ten thousand votes. It will be days before the actual official certified and complete returns are available, and already it is evident there are some inaccuracies in the figures now telegraphed. No-liccrise, in the local option sense, gains Oroua, which appears to be the only new electorate to run dry, though Waikato, Port Cl^^^^p^pMars-