TRADES UNIONS FIGHTING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 1009, 8 July 1909, Page 21

TRADES UNIONS FIGHTING.

The trade unions of New York city are opposed to more stringent local option or prohibition laws being enacted. The unions in that city are fighting local option and prohibition on the ground that their operation throws many people idle in different trades and has no effect on the drinking evil. The preamble to the resolutions says that experience has demonstrated that local option and prohibition not only did no moral good, but on the contrary “ fostered hypocrisy, criminality, political degradation and graft.” It says that the operation of such laws shuts the workers from the only available gathering places accessible to workers for social, political and economic converse. It gives a list of thirty trades, which it says are directly or indirectly affected by the liquor traffic. The principal . resolution reads: “Resolved, That where local option and prohibition have been enforced, legalised business and manufacturing firms have been forced to discontinue and discharge all employees, with the result that while the formerly legalised places were destroyed, secret resorts were opened and the supposed evil they were intended to correct was alarmingly increased.”