WHERE PROHIBITIONISTS FAIL.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XII, Issue 704, 3 September 1903, Page 20

WHERE PROHIBITIONISTS FAIL.

Under this heading, Mr James Kenworthy writes to tire Wanganui " Herald — Sir, —“ It is a truism that alcoholism is even a more terrible scourge than war. For one victim of the battlefield, more than a hundred are killed by the bottle.” That reads like a very strong justification of the heated and unscrupulous methods by which leaders in the Prohibition movement now in Wellington, including reverend gentlemen and young new-ly-fledged M.H.R.’s, are '‘bearing” the Premier by pictorial and every conceivable device in order to goad him to a rash interference with the law, or present want of law, to suit their own particular ends, that they make ruination example of licensed vendors of the deadly alcohol. No wonder the Premier should plead 'it was hard to be thus assailed, seeing, he might justly have added —the tigerishness of both Prohibs. and pubs., between whom he had to bear the buffetings. These Prohibitionists resent anything in the shape of provision for securing pure liquor by bringing the manufacture under expert supervision and Government control, as Sir Julius Vogel long, long ago desired, nor do they favour a really effective Prohibition law, covering alike both private as well as public use and sale. This going to the root of the evil by ensuring a pure, therefore less injurious, article, would kill their stalking horse. There would be fewer cases of excess drinking, being less of the painkiller and mustard sandwich created thirst, therefore less inordinate craving, fewer drunks, fewer lunatics, and better general health even among what might be termed immoderate drinkers. It would be too big a stride towards temperance and national good health, and too quickly cut away even the semblance of justification for present intemperance in advocacy for their one-sided prohibition of merely stopping retail sale to the poorer people, while allowing wholesale sale and cellars full for the moneyed people. Seems as if political bias carried more weight than desire for effective reform, else such tactics as carried on, in Wellington to discredit the stalwart Premier could not be resorted to by what should be cleanly-minded reformers. Walker had to go—shunted off to Australia—he was too fair-minded. These present baiters would act the wo-man-haircutter to the modern Samson-of-equal-dealing, in whom they chose to see their one stumbling-block, were the conditions only favourable, or a modern decoy available. Mr Seddon has not yet, however, been seduced by their various wiles, as was the Scriptural Samson by the woman, and has so far escaped the shearing. While this may be the bitters for the Prohibs., it should be syrup for the larger masses of temperate" temperance people’throughout the colony. There

is another side worth recital and the attention of genuine reformers. A tabulated statement prepared in the United States by Professor Warner, of Stamford University, based on fifteen separate investigations of actual causes of poverty, numbering in all one hundred thousand cases in America, England, and Germany, gives this other side. The enquiries were conducted by the associated charities organisations for America, by Charles Booth (not the Salvation Army brand) for England, and by Mr Bohmert in Germany, all trained investigators unbiassed by theories, desirious only of ascertaining causes with a view to paving the way by others for remedies. The figures show “ that about 20 per cent, of the worst cases of poverty are due to misconduct, and about 75 per cent, to misfortune. Drink causes only 11 per cent., while lack of work and poorly paid work causes nearly 30 per cent. All evidence worth considering goes to prove that poverty and ‘crime are both results of idleness or low paid labour. As a rule, men who are steadily employed at some productive work, and who get in return for their labour what they consider to be a fair share of the product of their efforts, are temperate and moral. If all men could feel sure of steady work at fair pay there would be practically no need for policemen or temperance societies. If the preachers would study theology less and political economy more, and then go into their pulpits and preach practical economy for everyday use, they would be doing a far greater work than they are when they talk about patient submission here, in order that reward may be had hereafter. Poverty and 'crime are results of laws which men have made, and we will have both as long as these laws are in operation. It is not the fault of God or Nature, or whatever you may term the creative cause, that many men are poor, shiftless, and intemperate. The fault lies with the people, and with them rests the remedy and the responsibility. AV hen the people are wise enough to remove the cause, the evil will disappear. It is about time for men to stop repeating the antiquated statement that intemperance is the prime cause of poverty, and take up the study of the real cause, enforced idleness. The foregoing as to poverty and crime is a quotation used in “ The Clue to the Economic Labyrinth,” a recently issued work, the aim of which is • to secure a fairer balancing of the conditions of

human life in the direction of lessening the disparity between the enormously rich and the luxurious viciousness which unspendable wealth leads to, and the suffering, degradation, and crime attending upon extreme poverty. ‘The cause is indicated on the one side by the above quotation. The “ Clue ” furnishes the other in the conditions arising from the monopoly of Mother Earth as private property, and the tribute which its owners exact for any permission granted to labour for its use in developing its fruitful resources, together with the criminal enslavement of the masses by the “ lawmade ” value given to gold, th s combination making a hydra-headed monster which controls the industrial world. As to the drink item, the author who made the quotation thus points the moral : Prohibitionists had better help in taking away the worst cause of drunkenness, which is not, as they think, the supply of alcohol, but the social conditions which drive men and women into the barroom.