SLY-GROG SELLING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 938, 27 February 1908, Page 22

SLY-GROG SELLING.

Writing in the London “ Times ” a while ago, Dr Mortimer Granville drew attention to the crass stupidity of a policy of suppression as applied to the liquor traffic. “ The fanatical crusade,” he remarked, “has been carried too far. . It has passed beyong the legitimate limits of a fad, and is beginning, to assume the proportions of a public injury, inasmuch as severely, restrictive measures are .leading everywhere to an increase in illicit liquor sales and secret drinking.” It is a remark which has been over and over again verified by official reports and statistics in Europe, America and New Zealand ; and we are in course verifying it in Australia. The Parliamentary Sessional Reports of N.S.W. (10th July, 1907), laid on the table of the Assembly, show that since the parent State’s Liquor Act came

into force the convictions for sly-grog selling were 27 in 1905 and 66 in 1906 — a sudden jump, which bears distressing testimony to the harassing restrictions of the statute, as well as their utter futility. Speaking on this subject, the President (Mr J. J. Power) of the U.L.V.A. of N.S.W. recently remarked: —“The police inspectors say that fines are absolutely of no use in putting down sly-grog selling. The severity of the liquor laws only tends to manufacture criminals, because hundreds of thousands of workers will have their Sunday liquor, and they get it under worse conditions than through the channel! by the police and the public Board of Health.” And what is true of N S.W. is only a little less true of Victoria, where the illicit traffic in a score of different directions is becoming notorious. This “ manufacturing of criminals ” from amongst decent, liberty-loving Australian citizens and licensed victuallers is even regarded as a matter for rejoicing by the teetotal fanatics, one of whom, speaking at Wesley Church, Melbourne, opined *that the driving of the liquor traffic out of the streets was “ what the temperance party wanted.” He even welcomed secret drinking in the homes as an advance on a policesupervised trade in hotels. Of such is the alleged “temperance reformer;” the fanatic who lives by his wits—or the absence of wits in others —and whose be-all and end-all is self advertisement and selfaggrandisement. In the relation there is a duty and a task cast upon the various associations representative of the liquor trade. That it will prove a difficult and an onerous one, no one who has watched the course of events will deny. It will need, first and foremost, to bring home to the public mind the dangers which must and do inevitably follow from harsh repressive legislation. If once public opinion is educated to the danger, the reaction against fanatical extremists and legislative fol’ies will be short, sharp and convincing ; whilst the trade will then receive the measure of justice and fair dealing to which it is entitled as a legitimate and honourable casing. And if the liquor trade will push on with its organisation in every portion of every State, fighting by constitutional means and with a united body of wholesalers and retailers at its back, there will be short shrift for the platform extremists, and no room in public life for trimmers on this vital question. Only by these can the evils of sly-grog selling be checked and finally overcome.