CHAMBERLAIN ON PROHIBITION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1049, 14 April 1910, Page 22

CHAMBERLAIN ON PROHIBITION.

“ I have been a great traveller, and I have seen prohibition at work in the United States of America, and I rely, in regard to it, much more upon the information I have obtained from impartial, intelligent people than I do even on my own observation, and the evidence I have received from such persons—persons thoroughly disinterested —is all to the same effect: that in town, at any rate, anything in the nature of compulsory prohibition of drinking is absolutely impossible, and it only leads to drinking in worse forms than under the old system. There is no doubt whatever that this '•-:<is a class measure in the strongest sense of the word. It affects the poor, it does not affect the rich. It interferes with the poor man in his convenience, in his comfort, in all the arrangements of his life; it does not touch the home of the man who has property of his own. I think that when a man has sunk his savings in a public house, recognising that it is not an unlawful trade, if that house is closed for no misconduct on the part of the man, but simply on the ground that it is not now supposed to be re-

quired,. that- man is entitled to compensation.”—Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain. ' . , 7