REFORMING THE "TRADE."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 27 February 1914, Page 4

REFORMING THE "TRADE."

——. .»- - ~ Earl Grey, who is'to visit New Zealand next week, was one of the foremost pioneers of the movement in Great Britain for a reform publichouse, and was founder in 1901-2 of the >Home Counties Public-house Trust. Limited. The Trust has; now 11,000,000 customers, and has never had a conviction against one of its houses. Lord Grey advocates the Trust management from a temperance standpoint. He believes that it is possible, by slow, yet BUre, degrees, to change Che tastes and habits of customers from fuddling their br»in6, deadening their bodies, and impairing their health by alcoholic potations, to other tastes and habits more conducive to health and happiness. He says that anyone who pays a surprise visit to any of the Trust's houses will find them scented with feweet fragrance of flowers instead of with a sickening odour of alcoholic fumes. They will find them made attractive with well-selected pictures in place of beer and spirit advertisements, which, as a rule, are the only adornment of the ordinary "tied" house. They will find that a demand by customers foiv soup, eatables, and non-alcoholic liquors is more appreciated by the manager than a demand for beer and spirits, and they will also generally find in the manager and. his wife a bright, cheerful couple, whose example exercises directly upon the',' frequenters' of the house, and indirectly on the -whole locality, a moral and refining influence.