LICENCING QUESTION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19444, 2 November 1925, Page 15

LICENCING QUESTION

STATE PURCHASE AND CONTROL UNDER A NEW TITLE ADDRESS BY MR ROBERT HOGG Under the auspices of the New Zealand Licensing Reform. Association, Air Robert Hogg, senr., world traveller, lecturer and journalist, delivered an address in the House last evening on the liquor controversy. Air C. G. Russell presided over a large attendance oi ciiaZuus, who throughout gave the speaker an attentive Hearing.

“Vviiiie the subject of my address is State Control, it does not mean State control in the old form as used to be advocated ho years ago,” said the speaker at the outset. “I will deal v/nh it under tiie new title of corporate control. I, as U moderate, imd myself when this question is being discussed, between two extremes —those wno are in favour of licensing under the present system, and those who are in favour of entire prohibition of the liquor traffic. As a moderate, 1 hold that only those of moderate views can looK at this question without heat or passion. Men, when their passions and prejudices are inflamed by opposition, generally go to extremes, and during such time as that we should retain our sanity. Those in favour of corporate control are denounced by the extremists on both sides as being neither one thing nor the other, and they say it with such withering scorn in their voices that they expect to shrivel us

The Golden Mean ' The golden mean, continued the I speaker, was the path in which till anould read, and there was no reason , why the ruie saouid fail when applied ito the question at issue to-day. lhat i was why the speaker, as a moderate, i drinker, was there that night to voice iiis opposition to the ‘‘putting over ion this young country, which was I hjiown througnout the world as sober, mduo.rious, and self reliant, the curse of prohibition. All men had the right to express their opinions and to have those opinions fairly weighed. It mattered not how foolish tnose opinions might appear to be; the section of the community putting those views forward had the right to expect pro- ; ven facto to be accepted by its opponents. i “What tiro the claims of the proi hibition party in connection with ; America?” continued the speaker. I “ Tney claim that prohibition there ■ has been a success —lhat drunkenness, ■ crime, insanity and poverty have been : reduced. And what ‘are the facts/ . There is one way of getting at the true position, and that is to go direct to the statistics published by the vari- ‘ uus State governments. The United States is in favour of prohibition and is spending millions of dollars yearly I to enforce prohibition, and you cannot ! imagine that the Government would be ! guilty of falsifying its own returns with the object of holding up to ridi I cule that which it is trying to en- ; force.” Condition in States

I Proceeding, the speaker said that he ■ had left New Zealand two years ago j lor San Francisco, and had travelled • right across the American continent ; from Suite to .State, going to all the I capitals, making investigations at each • place visited, and going out at all I hours of the night to tind out the posi- ; tion for himself. Prior to that time I he had been for 22 years in New ZeaI land and had never been ia n bar. In I America he had gone about with an open mind, and had found it easier to get liquor there than in his own home town in New Zealand. If he were sick in the latter at night and wanted io obtain liquor, he would not know where to procure it. But he had not been three hours in America before he bumped right into liquor. Going off the wharf the first man he had met was drunk, while a little later, at a restaurant, he had seen whisky quite openly procured. Even in Washington, the seat of the Government, he was taken to places where whisky was sold in bars at all hours of the day and night. The Eighteenth Amendment was being violated right throughout the country. In every city he had gone to, with one exception, he had been asked if he wanted liquor. That solitary exception was Salt Lake City, but tho reason in that case was not prohibition, for abstention from liquor was one of the tenets of the Mormon faith. The experiences that he had had in the American hotels had been duplicated in the private homes that he ■ had visited.

Prohibition Claims Dealt With j One of the claims of the prohibition i party, as mentioned before, was that I drunkenness had been considerably re- ; duced since nation-wide prohibition ; had been brought into force on January 16, 1920. This he strenuously denied, and, quoting figures fur the 37 principal cities, said that in the year before prohibition there h'ad been 177,000 arrests for drunkenness; in 1920, the first year of prohibition, the ligure nad fallen to 140,0U0, a reduc- ; tion of 37,000. The year after, howj ever, there had been 193,000 arrests; : in 1922, 257,000; and in 1923 the figure ; had reached tho appalling total of 305,000. Then there was another statement: that prohibition had re duced diseases arising out of the excessive use of alcohul. Here again one had but to look at figures Io see the fallacy of this claim. The hospital admissions in the various cities dis- , proved the prohibitionists’ statements. Taking the figures for the two county ' hospitals in New York, the speaker said that, in 1918, there had been 1758 admissions and in 1922, 5624. ExI treme alcoholic eases in 1915 had numbered 1153 and in 1922 2226, 144 of whom were delirium tremens patients, ' with 51 of the latter dying. Turning to Chicago, one obtained similar figures there. Then, in regard to the • claims that liquor was la cause of in- | sanity and that poverty had been reduced by national prohibition, one did not have to do more than obtain authoritative figures. The speaker in his travels had visited the Old Country, with its 1.500.006 uremploved. seeing ■ Leeds, Liverpool, Bradford. London, j Edinburgh. Glasgow Dundee. Aberdeen and the other big cities, and had , not seen the povertv could be • found in America. In of Bri- ' tain could there be f.- : - ’ ihr broad I lines that one saw in th- I ■ . States

•at night outside th’' ha 'L r—d rpstaii- • rants, people waiting to get the crumbs

that fell from the rich mian’s table. Other Countries’ Experience. America was not the only country where prohibition had been tried, for Canada and Norway were countries that had passed similar measures. In 1918, tho first year of prohibition in Norway, tho figure for drunkenness had been 22 per thousand of the population, while two years later it was 30 per thousand. In 1922 the figure had risen to 35, and since then it had been steadily increasing. The figures quote® were those of the Statistics Bureau of Norway. Before prohibition was instituted there, the country had had a system of State control, which had been commended by a committee of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland specially sent there to investigate matters. But State control had not satisfied the rabid prohibitionists, and there was now increased smuggling and illicit stills and other means whereby men were breaking the law. Canadian Results. Province after province in Canada, continued the speaker, had tried prohibition with ill results as had attended it in the United States and Norway, and they ■were now reverting to a form of licensed control, the people drinking light beers and wines with the result that drunkenness was a rarity. He proceeded to deal with the difficulty of legally defining what was alcoholic liquor and mentioned that a prosecution in America of a man who made 200 gallons of cider containing 12 per cent, alcohol failed, and any home in the States today could make up to 200 gallons of such a beverage containing from 6 to 12 per cent, of alcohol. There was much brewing of wines and, contrary to expectations, the vineyards were now doing better business than ever. Grapes, which realised 10 to 20 dollars a ton before prohibition, now fetched 125 to 200 dollars, and the increase was not due to the raisin-eating habi>, for that had existed long before the abolition of ilquor. Some people asked why, if the Americans no longer desired prohibition they could not wipe out by a simple majority vote. Well, that would require not a simple majority, but a three-fourths majority. Then opposed to the repeal of prohibition were the bootleggers, illicit dealers, medical men and chemists. He did not want to cast a slur on the medicai profession, but there were 156,000 doctors in America and each was entitled to charge 3dols. for a prescription containing alcohol, the maximum in a year being 62,000,000 prescriptions, representing fees totalling 186,000,000 dollars. Chemists were entitled to charge three dollars for every pint of whisky. It was only natural that they should be desirous of retaining such profits. Mr Hogg voiced a denial that drink caused poverty, stating that on the other hand poverty was responsible for drunkenness.

The Rev. Van der Las, speaking in Wellington, said: “President Coolidge is a fine Christian gentleman, who believed that when the people have adopted a law and written it into the constitution, it should be obeyed by all, and the President was determined the Prohibition law would be obeyed.” If that is so, why doesn’t President Coolidge enforce the law giving the negro the vote? Why doesn’t he enforce the law abolishing child labour in the cotton mills of the Southern States, whore young children are compelled to work not only in the daytime but on the night shift? Why doesn’t President Coolidge enforce these laws? They were placed on the Statute Book long years before Prohibition and they have not been enforced.

New Zealanders a Sober People. The workers of New Zealand, he said, were sober and we were a sober people. The lecturer proceeded to cite figures affecting Britain to demonstrate that liquor did not lessen the amount of employment, and reverting to New Zealand in particular declared: “We are not a drunken but a sober people, and prohibition would be an insult. Statistics show that in New Zealand the average liquor consumption per capita is one nip of whisky a week, 1A glasses of beer a week and a thimbleful of wine every two days.” Sir Geo. White, writing in the Alliance Almanac some time ago, said: “If the working classes of this country (Britain) spent in drink only at the same rate as the same class in America and Germany, fifty millions would be saved . . . and be transferred to the useful branches of industry, finding full employment for at least two million extra people.” If Sir George got his facts from the same source as he drew his arithmetic, so much tho -worse for the facts, as fifty millions would only pay a wage of 10s a week for the two million workers he speaks of, and his argument, therefore, was a very unsound one. As for Germany, the German liquor consumption per capita, on the other hand, was. he said, a gallon to a gallon and a-half of beer per week, and here we have them hold up by the prohibitionists as examples of sobriety! “The convictions in New Zealand for drunkenness are 1 in 1000 every four days —the cleanest record of sobriety of any civilised country in the, world'”—was'the final comment of Mr Hogg in this connection. The speaker then went on to say that Miss Annie S. Swan, the novelist, had visited America during the first year of Prohibition and came back with the statement that Prohibition was a great success. At the poll th\?e years ago the Prohibitionists used this statement by Annie S. Swan. This lady re-visit-ed the States this year and wrote an article for the. “British Weekly,” entitled “America Re-visited Facts about Prohibition,” ip which she said: “A new class of drinkers, also a new class of criminals, have come into existence. There has been an enormous increase of drinking among the leisured classes, and, what is so absolutely deplorable, among the young of both sexes. Human nature resents restriction on individual opinion and action.

. . The moment it is forbidden is created an unholy and irresistible desire to obtain it. I have hoard not one but several mothers of college boys deplore the effects of the prohibition laws, pointing sadly to the facts. One whose opinion could not be gainsaid said most emphatically that she did not know a single eolege boy who did not drink more than was good for him. . . Then a vast criminal section of society—the bootleggers to wit —has been enriched ! beyond the dreams of avarice, creating a new financial power to be regarded with distrust and anxiety.” “That,” said Mr. Hogg, “is Miss Annie S. Swan’s statement of what Prohibition has done for America. The Prohibitionists three years ago believed and used her former statement. Will they accept her more matured verdict ? . State Control. i The lecturer then touched upon what 1 he had observed of the undoubted sue- 1 cess of State control over the area 36 miles on cither side of the border be- s

tween England and Scotland where there were formerly ill-appointed mining villages without even pavements which now had paved streets, municipal libraries, billiard rooms, and sports areas, all owned by the municipality and provided out of the liquor profits. The old week-end orgies were abolished. The men drank more through the week, but there was very much less drunkenness.

What Was Proposed. What the speaker was advocating for New Zealand was corporate control, under which the State would immediately take possession of 20 per cent, of the liquor business in the country, tho whole of the trade being controlled by a board consisting of four representatives of the trade and four State appointees, with a chairman nominated by the State. All profits above 10 per cent, would be devoted to civic and national purposes, taking the place of a corresponding proportion of the rates as at present. The distribution and sale of liquor would be absolutely in the hands of the corporate body suggested. Prohibitionists, he declared, did not want the improvements which they knew very well could be brought about under such a system, whereby goodwill and high rents would be done away with. Under corporate control, too, the three years’ referendum would be abolished. “The present system in that respect is undemocratic,” declared the speaker, adding that there was no legislative provision for the taking of any further polls in the event of prohibition becoming law while if that did come about, a three-fifths majority would be required to repeal prohibition, although it could be carried by a bare majority.

“Example Better Than Precept.” * Example is better than precept/ continued, stressing the fact that one could not achieve righteousness of outlook by compulsion or coercion. Much was said about what the worker could produce under prohibition. Was he a more machine to produce more wealth for the wealthy? He alluded to Britain’s shipbuilding industry in general and the yards on the Clyde in particular, giving some details' < ’ what the men accomplished there, producing more in recent years than had been the case previously with considerably less men. No one could challenge tho industry of those shipyard employees, he declared. In fine, he made an eloquent appeal for “the third issue” as an indication to the Government that a reform of the licensing trade was desired by the people, for with the present uncertainty of the three years’ referendum, what else could one expect in the trade but ill conditions? A hotelkeeper had to make all he possibly could in each three years lest he be put out of business at the end of that term. Questions were asked and answerel as follows: Isn’t a vote for State control a vote in favour of continuance?—No. It is what it professes to be, a vote for State control andl against prohibition. Would prohibition abolish poverty? —lf it would do so, why a Labour Party? If poverty was caused by drink then the rich ought to be poor, because they drink tho most. Tho Right Hon. John Burns, speaking in the House ct Commons, said: “They tell us that workers arc poor because they drink. Here I stand, a life-long total abstainer, a skihuu mechanic, .id a Malthusian, and if I were out of' work for one month my cupboard would be empty.’ ’ Mr Hogg was asked if tho voting on the three i. r sues was democratic.

The speaker replied that the prohibitionist should be the last person to raise the question of whether an act was or was not democratic. As a matter of fact all the liquor laws were undemocratic. To be democratic the issues must be equal. They were not in this ballot. If continuance won there would be another ballot in three years, but if Prohibition won there was no provision for any further ballot. Again, in the prohibition districts of New Zealand it took a three-fifths majority to bring back the licensing of liquor, whereas they may have Dominion prohibition by a bare majority. Further, in the constituency in which he lived they carried continuance. Tho Boundary Commissioners went along, cut them out of a “wet” district and put them in a “dry’ one and closed one hotel, against the legally expressed will of the people. Then after a few years they went along again and put that locality back into the old constituency, but the hotels were not allowed to re-open. (Published by Arrangement.)