DOES PROHIBITION PROHIBIT?

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXV, Issue 4253, 29 June 1895, Page 4

DOES PROHIBITION PROHIBIT?

In an article in the Grey " Argus " this question says the editor was put to Mr Henry George, the famous American apostle of the taxing land values, whether prohibition is a success in America. Mr George's answer to such a question ought to be of special value. He has no interest whatever in the question. He is neither an advocate for the liquor sellers nor of the extreme temperance body. In his social life he is credited with being a most abstemious man, his inclination and taste leading him that way. But he regards all such attempts in social progress as mere side issues, believing that if his favourite theory were once applied there would be little or no necessity for half the bother tbat is made in the world to promote purity and temperance. He also believes that by far the greater share of intemperance and degradation may safely be attributed to dire poverty and too much work and worry. But here are his own words as to ti^effefetß of prohibition in America, and if any man in the country is in & position to give a sound and unvarnished opinion on this muchdiscussed question it is Mr George, as he has more than once travelled the States from end to end, and is now about the best known man in America. He says : " Prohibition succeeds here in sections where no one wants to drink. Elsewhere it does nob prohibit, but as well as I can make out really leads to more drinking and to much hypocrisy and corruption. Whatever scheme will lift people in the social scale by rising the standard of comfort and opening out to all men the opportunities of earning an honest and decent living will do more for the promotion of temperance than than all the temperance alliances ever organised. It is amongst the very poorest and the most over-burdened ranks of the people that intemperance iB proportionally greatest. The percentage of intemperate persons amongst those who are sufficiently well off to escape the grim pressure of poverty is always comparatively small. When a man is sure of a fair living, can dress himself respectably, and keep a good home for his wife and children — these comforts beget self-respect, and if he indulges at all ib is only in a spasmodic way. The shocking examples are under these advantages comparatively f e^w. These facts ought to be well-known to all who move through the world with their eyes and ears open."