“GRASPING A STRAW.”

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 49, Issue 14959, 10 July 1923, Page 6

“GRASPING A STRAW.”

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Having followed closely the articles advertised by the brewers, I have come to the conclusion that it is like a dying man grasping a straw. . Their day is done. Fain would they postpone the evil day, and they are resolved what to do. Ten of the largest liquor businesses in the Dominion have agreed to amalgamate under the title of the New Zealand Breweries Limited, with a total capital of £1,000,000. The public are offered ten per cent mortgage debentures free of exchange and income tax, with interest guaranteed for the first three years. The promise of liquor reform in the prospectus will trap some unwary ones, and money makes its appeal to most of us, but no right-thinking man and true lovtr of humanity will fall into the snare. It is rather strange this promise of the first three years’ interest. It looks as if even the brewers know prohibition will be carried next election,- and then what about the shareholders’ ten per cent interest? But money is not everything. Enormous are the profits made out of the degradation of , men. The struggles we have witnessed on the part of men who sought vainly to escape drink’s fetterdom! The stories we have listened to from drink-robbed wives and children, and the financial wreckage! We have witnessed in ease after case where men started in promising business positions, and the burial services we have conducted over the bodies of men slain by the liquor traffic, all throng upon us. Two thousand men die every year in New Zealand through the effects of strong drink. Every one of these men is a woman’s son. Do the breweries really think that the mothers'of these men are going to the very jaws of death for their lives and then clothe and educate them to keep the trade going? I say No, every time. A woman may drink and the husband be a drunkard, but no father or mother cares to see Ih-ir ron gr >w up r, drunkard. I beiirve the mothers- of this country are going tc d > ta-.br duty for the sake of 'heir V.ys •tire boys that are to be too future men of Now Zealand. If not, what a sad thing it will be a few years hence if they arc drunkards, and tivir fathers and mothers advise them to steady up. What will their answer lie: They will say to their parents: ‘'Why did you become a partner in the breweries if you did not wish us to drink your beer?” I think the Breweries, Ltd., will fall ibto their own trap. And this action on the part of the breweries will simply make every man who has at heart the best welfare of “God’s Own Country” vigilant and more eager than ever before to secure the triumph of the prohibition cause. —I am, etc.,

A MOTHER OF A LARGE FAMILY OF SONS Masterton, July oth.