LICENSING LEGISLATION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1021, 30 September 1909, Page 20

LICENSING LEGISLATION.

ITS EFFECT ON THE TRADE. HANCOCK AND CO.’S DIMINISHED PROFITS. The disturbing effect licensing legislation has had upon the Trade in the Dominion, was referred to by Mr. A M. Marks, chairman of Hancock and Co., at the annual general meeting held in London last month. In moving the adoption of the report Mr. Marks said: “There are various causes to account for a diminution in our profits during the year under review. A drought, a most uncommon occurrence in New -Zealand, had the effect of largely increasing the price of raw materials, our requirements in barley alone costing the company £4895 in excess of the price paid in the previous year upon the same quantity. The price of hops also rose considerably. Again, there was financial stringency throughout the Dominion, which necessarily restricted the spending power of the people. This was largely occasioned by a falling off in exports and lower price for the staple products exported, and then there has been a general election, which always tends to disorganise business to some extent.

“In our particular enterprise we have during the past year fallen the victims of that portion of the community who support the abolition of licenses, and in one, district where we have interests ‘ no-license ’ has been carried, whi.e in Auckland proper there has been voted a reduction, of licenses. . But this does not mean that less liquor will be consumed. It only means that instead of being sold and consumed under the strict supervision the Licensing Act provides, it is obtained by consumers in large quantities, and as a certain result drunk in larger quantities. I am credibly informed that hitherto there has been a larger, rather than a lesser, consumption in the districts previously restricted. •’The wisdom of the policy now being pursued has yet to be proved to the satisfaction of many f people who are anxious for the welfare of the people of New Zealand, and in this direction, on behalf of myself and my colleagues on this board, I wish to state that while we desire to see our business prosper and our results commercially satisfactory, we have always been adverse to anything that could tend to the injury of the people of New Zealand. It is a fine country, with a fine people, such as the Motherland can rightly be proud of, and I trust that the adverse vote that was recorded in some districts last year will not create the impression in this country that the New Zealander is such a drunkard that it is necessary to restrain him by legislation from getting drunk. He is not so, but as I remarked just now, a type that everyone here would be pleased to own. “ Restrictions upon the trade that will tend to create a quality of the highest standard in the liquor supplied, the provision for the requirements of the people in other directions besides in spirituous liquors, the strict control to ensure all licensed premises being perfectly clean morally, are all objects that every member of this board is in direct sympathy with.

“ New Zealand is a land of great fertility. It is a country that presents excellent openings for the settler, and the increase of population that will undoubtedly take place, if it is not ruled by extremists, will certainly provide all the extension of the trade that is required to ensure our success, without looking to an increase in the consumption per head. I know New Zealand well, and have done so since my boyhood, and I am sure that it is beyond the range of probability, much less possibility, that there can ever be total abstinence in the country. Indeed, if such were the case, it is quite possible that it might be quickly denuded of a very considerable portion of its labouring population; a new one would be diffi-

cult to find; the burdens of taxation upon those that remained would be too heavy to contemplate, and prosperity would be banished, because the British investor, who has been willing to advance the money that has been, and is being, constantly required for the development of this new country, would wisely close up his pocket and ask how the revenue is to be raised to meet the service of the various loans. “ I hesitate to believe for a moment that a people who have so nobly and generously rallied round their Mother Country and who have so frequently in time of need shown themselves so to the front in their assistance, as is evidenced by their recent magnificent gift of a Dreadnought, will allow themselves to be stigmatised as a nation not sufficiently self-restrained to be allowed the freedom that is enjoyed in most countries, or that they will allow a section to dominate them in such a way as to cause them to herald and cultivate their own downfall.”