THE LICENSED VICTULLAERS

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 693, 18 June 1903, Page 20

THE LICENSED VICTULLAERS

THE BARMAID QUESTION-

Thibb is no use blinking the fact that one of the main arguments relied upon by the Teetotal Party in their campaign against the barmaid is based on the alleged fact that the calling provides a abort cut to immorality. The argument, like many others against the licensing trade, is used by people who are entirely ignorant, of the matter, and constitutes a foul unpardonable slander on a class of young women who are just as much entitled to respect as the wives and daughters of the cowards that assail them. The people of this colony are not all tipplers, any more than they are all water drinkers; there is, happily for the welfare of the State and the future of humanity, a solid and substantial majority of the male population who p notice the golden maxim, and we unhesitatingly affirm that the testimony of this majority, the members of which know that whereof they speak, would almost unanimously be cast in repudiation of the slander above noted. Nevertheless, some of the mud thrown has stuck, and we find certain licensing committees making it a condition of the renewal of licenses that barmaids shall not be employed. This action is not only unjust and silly and generally contemptible for its own sake, but it is actually in contravention of the law. The Act does not prohibit the employment of women in bars, and when the committees arrogate to themselves the powers of the Legislature it is time that Parliament stepped in and made a change. The committees must not magnify their office. They are not appointed to act as censors of the morals of ' the community, but merely to administer a specific statute, and if they overstep their duty they must be restrained. But we fear that the only possible way of reforming consists in abolishing them. Wherever the majority of the committee is composed of prohibitionists it follows that such committee is destitute of the primary judicial element, namely, impartiality, and as, under the existing order, with a wide female franchise and a diminishing sense of justice, teetotal committeemen threaten to become, comparatively speaking, a permanent institution, wisdom suggests that the order should be changed. If the committee system is to be retained there should be attached a qualification for membership. No one should be eligible who belongs to any teetotal organisation, on the one hand, or who has, on the other, any direct interest in the Trade. Men of the intemperate character of some of the leaders of the no-license movement are just as much out of place on the licensing bench as an habitual drunkard would be.