A SENSIBLE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIX, Issue 1071, 15 September 1910, Page 20

A SENSIBLE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT.

FIGHTING PROHIBITION WITH MODERATION.

ACTION BY AMERICAN STEEL

TRUST

Mr. R. E. Nixon, formerly of Russell, Bay of Islands, but mow of Seattle, Washington, sends a personal note to the Editor of this journal, enclosing the following clipping from a Chicago paper (reprinted elsewhere) which makes very interesting reading. He says he thinks the clipping will be of interest to readers of this journal, as throwing some additional light on the prohibition movement we are fighting- He sends his best wishes for the success of the Anti-Prohibition movement in thig country and urges the traders to stand together, and fight side by side in the movement for liberty and justice. “ MEN WHO DRINK ONLY LIGHT BEER AND WINE DO NOT GET DRUNK,”' Says Melville Stone. Could not Americans Avoid Drunkenness as Europeans Avoid It ? We Think That They Could. It may be stated positively that the United States Steel Company—the biggest industrial concern and the biggest trust in the world—has decided to fight intemperance—not by prohibition,, but by the encouragement of really temperate drinks and the discouragement of whisky. At the great steel city of Gary, in Indiana—the city of tens of thousands of workmen, that represents already an investment of sixty millions of Steel Company earnings—the first sane experiment in prohibition will be made. The Steel Company will take no personal part in the management of any institution for the sale of drink. But it will encourage men that will undertake a demonstration of their belief that drunkenness is caused by whisky, gin' and other poisons, and that drunkenness can be fought most effectively—not by prohibition, which encourages whisky, but by exclusive selling of light wines and beers under decent civilised conditions. The plan is to permit upon territory controlled by the Steel Company in Gary the sale only of light wines and light beers. This sale will be organised as it is in Germany and in France. There will be no whisky or gin or brandy—no highly alcoholic poisons sold at all. But common! sense and real temperance, and a liberal expenditure of money, will be combined in fighting the scores of dives, whisky, gin and alcohol sell-

jng dens that have been established all round,the outskirts of Gary. It is hoped and belived when the workingmen with their families and the other inhabitants of Gary are enabled to secure, at reasonable prices, under pleasant, cheerful, social conditions, the mild and relatively harmless stimulants, that the whisky and gin business will be driven out, and real temperance established in the great city of steel by the Lake. Certainly no more valuable experiment could be made by any industrial organisation. If the experiment succeeds —and all men who understand the subject hope and think it will —one of the great problems of American life will have been solved, and an excellent lesson taught by the steel-making city to all the cities and villages in the union. Melville Stone, the head of the Associated Press, hearing of a conference held by Judge Gary of the Steel Company, George W. Perkins of the firm of J. Pierpont Morgan and others, in connection with the plan to experiment with true temperance at Gary, said:

“That is about the first and the most sensible thing that I have heard on the temperance question. “You must fight and the most sensible thing that I have heard on the temperance question. “You must fight drunkenness with real temperance, fight poisonous and dangerous drink with really temperate stimulants. “I lived for three years in Switzerland at one time; practically everybody drank mild wines and light beers, and I saw just one drunken man in Switzerland in three years, and he was not really drunk, only a little foolish and flustered.” What Melville Stone says of Switzerland, Griscom, formerly American Ambassador to Italy, said of Italy. And those that understand and that have travelled know that the same is true of France and of Germany. Where the mild stimulants are sold at reasonable prices under cheerful, pleasant, social conditions, drunkenness is practically unknown. If these things can be in Switzerland, Italy, Germany and other European countries, why not in America Why not use common sense, moderation, make allowance for human nature and the dullness of life, and that which is inevitable Why insist on prohibition laws that are disregarded, breed crime and encourage whisky? Why say to human beings, “You shall not drink,” when you know perfectly well that men will drink? Why do not the Prohibitionists confine themselves and their attention to opposing that which causes drunkenness and crime—the poisonbus alcoholic liquors? Fortunately, the experiment is to be made at Gary, if plans do not fail. If the experiment succeeds there — as it must, if properly undertaken—it will be tried elsewhere, it will spread all over the country. And this country will become really temperate. Temperance means self-control — not arbitrary compulsion from the outside.