METHOD OF COMPENSATION.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1588, 17 March 1919, Page 4

METHOD OF COMPENSATION.

V* VVXUX iJi.IWAAXVX'Ii To the Editor of THE SUN. Sir, —In your issue of Saturday last, “Hotel Worker” wonders why the lease of a North Canterbury Hotel was eagerly snapped up recently by a Christchurch brewery company, in view of the risk of Prohibition being carried at the poll next month. If your correspondent only realised how perfectly confident are the liquor monopolies that Prohibition will be utterly defeated on April 10 he need not have the slightest fear that his employers “will receive more than a fair slice of the compensation.” What does he take them for? Does he think that those liquor monopolies, which possess some of the smartest and shrewdest business men in this Dominion, are going to chase a paltry four and a-half million pounds limited compensation, whilst there is a far bigger haul to be bagged next December in the shape of some ten to twenty millions of State purchase money if State ownership should then

be carried? Is "Hotel Worker” really unaware that his bosses are quite cocksure that, by means (1) of a split Prohibition vote as betwixt compensation and no compensation, (2) a pro-liquor soldiers’ vote, (3) a well-stuffed electoral roll, the Prohibitionists will be hopelessly beaten, so that at the general election poll in December, by reason of three issues on the ballot paper bidding for public support against each other, Continuance in some form will again win handsomely? Hence, the aforesaid brewery company’s eagerness to secure that hotel. —I am, etc., TOP-LINER. March 16.