TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Waikato Times, Volume LVII, Issue 8085, 22 December 1906, Page 1

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

-—♦ — l Thi!s column is run kok as an auvkkTISEMENT. , The Liquor Problem. Individual Responsibility in Relation to the Liquor Traffic. The liquor problem is the problem of the world to-day. Upon its propei solution the solution of many other important problems depends. Th& light which patieot, earnest, and exhaustive scientific investigation has thrown the nature and effects of alcohol during the last quarter of a century makes it imperative for every thinking man and woman to face the question : " What shall we do with the liquor traffic ?" The time was when '.i was generally supposed that ■' The Traffic ' served a useful purpose and supplied a real need. That day has gone by, and now science and religion join in declaring that it serves no useful purpose whatever. There is no one of repute in the medical or the scientific world to-day, who, as the result of a careful and thorough investigation of the drink question, is prepared to say that it is safe and wise to use alcoholic liquors as beverages ; but, on the contrary, a note of warning is being sounded throughout the civilised world by men in the best possible position to kuow whereof they affirm, and the burden of that note is, " Where there's drink there's injury," and this injury is on the increase. Even in our own New Zealand, which is in the van of temperance progress, druukenness has increased by over 71 per cent, from 1895 to 1904, a.d , that is, from 6.G0 to 11.32 per 1000 of the population. And the Police Reports show that during the first five years of this century there were 25,011 persons convicted of druukenness for the first time in New Zealand ; that is an average of more than 5000 per year. And these were but a fraction of those who were intoxicated, and those who were intoxicated were but a fraction of those who were injured by the intoxicating cup. We hsve it on actuarial authority that not less than 240,000 deaths are caused in the United Kingdom annually through moderate drinking, and 31,000 In Australasia go to premature graves every year from the same cause. While many thousands more who never taste alcohol Buffer indirectly through the actions cf Uose who do. Now, if this traffic serves no useful purpose, as science declares, but, instead of being a benefit to the people, is the chief cause of poverty, misery, insanity, crime, disease, death, and damnation, surely our duty as citizens is plain. In this country we possess what our friends in the Old Land have long being struggling in vain to secure—viz, the power to abolish this body and soul destroying traffic. The possession of this power implies an awful responsibility, not only national but individual. On one vote may hang the temporal and eternal well-being of numbers of our fellow citizens. In the Waikouaiti electorate in 1905 the cause of God and humanity was defeated by one vote so that the blame for the whole of the evils of the licensed liquor traffic in that electorate for three years lies at the door of each elector who either voted for the continuance of the traffic or refrained from voting at all. There will not be a heart broken, a home desolated, a character ruined, a life lost, or a soul damned in that electorate through the licensed traffic during its extended existence, but what God will charge against each one who voted that this enemy of the race continue, or who refused to "come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty." It is foolish to talk of its not being wise to remove all temptation out of the way of the weak on the ground that the development of character depends upon the resistance of temptation. We could not remove all temptation if we tried, and God does not expect us to do the impossible. But He warns us against putting temptation in the way of cur brethren. He says:—" It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should come: but woe unto him through whom they come 1 It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were thrown into the sea rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble," When God doth inquisition make, Who then will answer for the slain'.' All these who prop this cursed trade And damm immortal souls for gain.

Commercial Travellers and Hotelkeepers. Sir, —As au " old commercial I have been much interested in the discussion that has taken place in your paper on the above subject. Some hotelkeepers are gentlemen; some are not, and the difficulty, even with " moderate - drinking commercials," is that except they drink and "shout" freely they are not always welcome, and in some instances the hotelkeeper tells them so. The great evil of the road is undoubtedly the practice of " shouting," and in my long experience I have known numbers of the best "commercials" go " under " in consequence of this custom, and what puzzles a great many people is that the representatives of tirms whose heads are members and sometimes officers of Christian churches, and even in some instances public advocates of " prohibition," fiud moucy for their representatives to acquire orders by this means, when all the while they know by experience how luuuy of their own representatives have been compktely ruined by the practice, I can think tn.d:iV of men whom f lisivp been proud to associatt within times past (representing firms of honourable Christian repute) who have been irretrif/abiy ruined, and now occupy drunkards' graves in consequence of this custom, Whether their responsibility for this ever come* home to the heads of firms of this calibre I cannot tell. I only know that the inconsistency of it doss appssa! both to

" commercials " and to customers alike. AN ULD COMMERCIAL. Brewers' Millions. More eloquent than all words to set forth the poiitiou aud power of the brewer, are 'he figures recently published showing the enormous wealth of this class of men. The will of a well-known Thames brewer aud distiller has just been proved for nearly two millions sterling. Twenty-five other brewers have left them behind them, during the last few years, the enormous sum of twenty-one millions sterling. This money has been made in a trade which is the curse of our country, yet we are beiug pathetically told that the Temperance party aims at ruining the poor brewer, who, according to his own account, is being driven to bankruptcy ! The figures we have qjoted are a sufficient reasou for refuting the claim of the brewer to consideration. Apart from moral considerations, we wonder how these millions in the hands of twenty-five men appear to the average man, as contrasted with the squalid poverty of the men who support the brewer ! Will nothing open the eyes of the nation to the folly and iniquity of its drink traffic.' L<ard Brougham said : " Strong drink is a mother of poverty aud a nurse of crime. ' Earl Cairns said. " Publichouses , are just so many allurements aud ambushes. so many traps and pitfalls, in the path of the working | man." Cardiual Manning said ; " I agree with the statement that the great curse which withers our people, that the pestilence which is devouring them, is drunkenness. Every year deepens my conviction that the spreading evil of intoxicating drink is destroying men, women, children, and homes, and is bringing upon our country a great national danger,"