AMERICAN PROHIBITION.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 March 1924, Page 5

AMERICAN PROHIBITION.

DR. MAYO ON QUESTION.

NO RETURN TO LIQUOR. STATE CONTROL CONDEMNED. . “The first question put to me by most people I meet in Auckland is, ‘How are you getting on with prohibition in America?’ and then they smile,” said Dr. |W. J. Mayo, of Rochester, Minnesota, U.S.A., addressing the Auckland Rotary Club. “Now I am going to try to answer some of the questions put to me.” There was first, said Dr. Mayo, the pathetic story of the Scotsman domiciled in the United States and deprived of drinks. His brother was a marine officer, and, when his ship arrived in port, the two foregathered for a few drinks. Finally the American Scot, not quite inebriated, left the ship, carrying in his rfght hip pocket a bottle of whisky. He was tacking across a road when a motorcar ran him down. He was helped to the pavement, and informed he was injured in the right hip. Putting his hand to the place and feeling the sticky trickle, he prayed fervently: “My God, I hope it’s blood.”

“Now, if liquor is so rare that a man prefers physical injury to losing a bottle of whisky,” said Dr. Mayo, “you may be sure prohibition is not such a farce as it is often made out to be.. If liquor is so common, so easily come by, you know as well as I do that it would not sell for 20 dollars a quart- Since prohibition came to America the children have been better dressed and better fed. You see whole families going to the cinema instead of only the father sallying forth to the saloon at the corner. FOR THE UNDER-DOG. “You say prohibition is a reflection on our moral stamina, that everyone should not be prejudiced for the few that cannot control themselves. I say prohibition is not for those who can control themselves, but for those who can’t, who work so hard and still are poor, who are not so intelligent.

“Some of your people have asked me whether State control would not be better than prohibition in America. To that I reply that this is a moral question. When I was in Vancouver, leaving for New Zealand, I asked a resident how the Government sales were prospering. ‘Oh! great,’ he replied, ‘we have sold 800,000 dollars’ worth in a month.’ ‘Do you find, then, that more people are purchasing liquor under Government control?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You see, the fact that the Government conducts the trade gives it a sort of standing, a certain dignity.’ The United States,” continued Dr. Mayo, “will never submit to its Government going into the liquor business, lending it a sort of standing. “Prohibition is not such a sudden, a revolutionary thing as people seem to imagine. Before Federal prohibition was carried, 82J per cent, of the States were ‘dry,’ some of them for a very long time. The opposition to prohibition comes from the large cities and the foreign population that lives there. The United Statee,. for long was made the asylum for the world’s riff raff, foreigners, not the same blood as our predominantly Nordic stock. The war opened our eyes to the fact that those of the Anglo-Saxon race had respect for the legal and moral obligations, but that these others had no respect for law. These foreigners which we allowed in, have proved a menace to our institutions.

ANGLO-SAXON STANDARD. “We want to get back to the old AngloSaxon standards. The first step has been through our immigration laws to dam the influx. Immigration has been so circumscribed by law, (hat practically no one can enter the United States but those of Nordic stock. But still there remains in the cities the vast foreign population that is the cause of all the lawlessness. What are we going to do about it? It has been proposed that those who have not taken out their final papers for citizenship, should be deported—returned to the country whence they came. “Another question I have been asked, ‘do you think the United States is ever going to let liquor back?’ I say ‘No.’ Have faith in the United States and in the long run we will enforce the law.”