Ashburton Under Sty Grog*

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11643, 22 August 1905, Page 7

Ashburton Under Sty Grog*

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, — We hear great outcries about slygrog selling taking the place of "legitimate trade" in no-license areas, and the question is often asked, "Isn't it better to have the licensed traffic than the illicit?" To this I, for one, would give a very positive "No." In the first place sly-grog selling is a reflection on the police or on the Department of Justice. If that Department dees its duty the thing will be stamped out in three months. In the second place, sly-grog is not onethousandth part so demoralising in its effects as the licensed traffic. What harm, except to a few hopeless- old tipplers, will fche thing described below do in Ashburton or anywhere else? The description is from, the veracious pen of the New Zealand Times' reporter. This is the kind of thing that we Protectionists may well disseminate far .and wide, though I doubt if the investigator, had any intention of benefiting' our cause. — I am, etc., HOTSPUE. The Commissioner's picture of sly-grog shops in Ashburton is as follows: — "A greasy room, a slatternly woman, lown at heel, and possessing a scowl that not only lowered her face, but seemed to lower her whole body. One felt that her knee-caps were ill-placed. A slouching man with a greasy hat and a dirty beard. "Town's quiet," said the pressman. "Tcrs," said the man. "And dry," added the visitor. "Yers," said the man again. A child squalled in another room — perhaps it had seen water, and feared to be washed. It squalled bitterly, until the woman went away and attended to it. Judging by the way it squalled after that, she must have attended to it with a clothesprop or a horse-shoe. The man with the dirty beard lit a pipe, and by-and-bye, having satisfied himself that the newspaper man was not a pitfall for the unwary, he produced whisky — at least, ho said it was whisky. It tasted like liquid dynamite.

In another placo that night the visitor purchased a bottle of, case, whisky for 7s 6d. The seller in this instance was a scared man. The sale was transacted behind a locked door, and the cork was drawn by the flight of a cigarette.

At still another groggery beer was purchased. The seller was in his stockinged feet, and one of his big toes stuck out and demanded attention to the dirt it had collected to itself. "Gityerbeerdown \" snapped the man so .quickly that it sounded like the name of a Russian admiral. "Want another?" he asked. "Well, yer better get out," he said on getting a refusal, and the pressman got.