LABOUR LEADER SPEAKS

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 66286, 5 October 1925, Page 5

LABOUR LEADER SPEAKS

AN ABSOLUTE AND DISMAL FAILURE By JAMES J. HOLLAND (President of the New York State Federation of Labour.) “The virtue of temperance in all things needs no particular elucidation. But five years of National Prohibition give us the proof that the ideal of temperance cannot be achieved through coercion, assumption, fanaticism or governmental tyranny. In fact, Prohibition has proved an absolute and dismal failure. In case have such laws ever gained voluntary obedience, and never has it been possible to enforce obedience. “The Prohibition Amendment is an unreasonable and unnatural law. There is no use at all in discussing the question, Avhether or not it can be enforced. It cannot.

“Being against the laws of Nature, the maintenance of the Prohibition Amendment and its enforcement act, the Volstead Law, is a physical impossibility. Force creates force. The more force you use against another resisting force, the more resisting force you create. First enforcement and defiance of enforcement. Then stronger enforcement and stronger defiance of enforcement. In fact it seems that defiance always keeps a little ahead of the next step in more rigid enforcement. Prohibition enforcement in the United States during the last five years is a practical illustration of Government by force, of the philosophic saying: ‘lt is the curse of an evil deed that it continuously breeds evil.’ ” —North American Review,” 1925. You do not want this law in New Zealand: it is within your power to keep it out. Strike out the two bottom lines on your ballot paper.*