“WET” AND “DRY.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17347, 12 May 1924, Page 10

“ WET ” AND “ DRY.”

PROHIBITION COUNCIL GIVES EVIDENCE. tsy Telegraph—Preaa Association—Copyriga* Australian and N.Z. Cabl® AssooiTdon. WASHINGTON, May 9. Mr Wheeler, general counsel for the Anti-Saloon League, replying to intimations that President Butler, of Columbia University, would libeiaiiso the Republican Party’s prohibition principles and seek insertion of a socalled “wet” plank in the party platform, issued a statement in which he said: “No party can slip into power on a ‘wet’ plank. Besides if, as Professor Butler claims, it will take a wet’ plank to save eleven States for the Republicans, what will it take to save twice as many ‘dry’ States. Mr Wheeler, testifying before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which is considering the fifty-nine identical Beer Bills, said: — “Why should Congress favourably conI skier legalising 2.75 per cent. beer I when three-fourths of the States for- [ bid it. Beer has caused much crime, inj sanity and pauperism among saloon i patrons. Furthermore, in the past tho | brewery-owned saloons were centres of ■ vice and corruption, but- when wo | stopped the legalised sale of beer the j death, poverty and crime ratios dei dined. We had, in four dry years, 873,000 fewer deaths, many thousand ; fewer arrests for drunkenness, and a ; 74 per cent, decrease in poverty due to intemperance.” ‘

ENFORCEMENT CAMPAIGN. NEW YORK, May y. A Philadelphia message reports that the figures published by General Sinedlev Butler, relating to the prohibition enforcement c-rusade, there, reveal the fact that there were 39,000 arrests for various offences diwing the past four months, representing 0000 more than in the same period of 1923. Arrests for intoxication head the list with 18.869, showing an increase of 4000. The report further cites 1818 arrests for illegal possession of liquor, 781 arrests for illegal sale, and 112 arrests for illegal transportation. Medical authorities, commenting on the figures, deplore the rising figures relating to alcoholic insanity due to enforced patronage of bootlegjgers, whose piroduce is often liquid poison. Prohibition proponents assert that such insanity alone can deter wilful violators of the law. hast January, with the permission of President Coolidge, General Smcdlev Butler. United .States .Marines, became Director of Public Safety in Philadelphia. He proceeded to whip the police force into shape by threatening to discharge every officer who permitted illicit liquor establishments o r disorderly houses within his jurisdetion. Within lortyeight hours, he had discharged eight police captains and claimed to have shut 900 saloons. Hundreds of raids have been made throughout the city.