NO LICENSE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 925, 28 November 1907, Page 20

NO LICENSE.

Aerated water manufacturers are interested in the “ no license,” or prohibition question, for if the licensed hotel goes down, an important portion of the trade will be lost. The sly grog shop, which will assuredly spring up in place of the hotel, will be much of a customer for aerated drinks, or anything, in fact, but “ firewater” of the worst type. The heavy vote cast for no license at the recent elections in New South Wales (says “ Australian * Cordial Maker”) was probably not a thoroughly understood vote; that is, it was a vote cast by people who had chiefly paid attention to one side of the question, and doubtless many supposed, with child-like simplicity, that if all hotels were closed the evils of excessive drinking would disappear. Now, what would probably occur is that the evils of excessive drinking would be increased, while moderate drinkers would be inconvenienced to no purpose. Let us turn for evidence to the prohibition country of the world —the State of Maine. Mr. E. N. Bennett, a member of the British Parliament, visited Maine last year, and relates his experiences in “ The Nineteenth Century and After.” Under a strict sheriff “ drink could be obtained in 400 places spread over 72 streets in Portland.” Mr. Bennett had no trouble in obtaining beer, and “ within the compass of an hour’s walk met 25 drunken men and women,” and was accosted several times by pocket pedlars who “ sell spirits—most of it fiery and maddening stuff —at exorbitant prices to customers whom they chance to meet.” “ I next visited the police station,” he writes, “ where six ‘ drunks’ had

just been brought in. . . On the previous day there were 14 arrests for drunkenness. During the week I was there, no fewer than 58 arrests for drunkenness took place, and the average for the year actually amounts to 40 or 50 per week, which, in a population of 60,000, works out at about 40 per. 1000 inhabitants per annum, i.e.. three times as bad as the worst English drinking centres,, the seaport towns, six times as bad as London, and nine times as bad as English manufacturing towns” —and ten times as bad as Sydney or Melbourne, it is safe to say. .In fact, Portland, the capital of the prohibition State, of Maine, is probably one of the most drunken spots on the face of the globe. Bangor and Gardiner, other towns in Maine, are much worse than Portland, yet intelligent people in Australia are asked to create a similar state of things by closing the licensed hotel and introducing the evil of surreptitious drinking, with its train of attendant evils. It behoves every man and woman to earnestly study all aspects of the question before they vote for so serious a movement as that of “ legally” prohibiting the sale of alcoholic liquor.