TRADE TOPICS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 10 November 1910, Page 20

TRADE TOPICS.

<The Clarendon Hotel is now under the management of Mr. Tom Henshaw, who for many years has occupied a leading position in the employ of the Union Steamship Company, and as proprietor of the Petone, Ngaruawahia, and Rotorua hotels. The Clarendon has been thoroughly renovated, the upstairs saloon bar is replete with luxurious fittings, and the whole house has been made up-to-date. With his long experience in catering for the public,’ Mr. Henshaw with confidence solicits a call from visitors for whom he has ample accommodation in every respect.

At the Ashburton Police Court on Friday, James Stewart, labourer, of Methven, was fined the maximum penalty of £lO and costs for supplying liquor to a prohibited person.

During the hearing of an application for a prohibition order, last week, one of the witnesses ventured the opinion that sly-grog selling was rampant in Masterton and that defendant was procuring liquor of the most vile description which was simply poisoning him.

Judging by the general opinion among miners, (writes a Waihi correspondent), there is a very strong and growing feeling here that “license” will be won back at next year’s local option poll. As far as can be gathered, this is the outcome of the harassing conditions which exist under no-license in regard to procuring liquor, also as the result of the large number of prosecutions in this connection, which will probably top the list for the whole of the Dominion. Many are of opinion that it would be far bettei’ to have straightout national prohibition than to continue under the provisions of no-li-cense legislation as it now stands.

The illustration on this page represents the well-known Gladstone Hotel which is a favourite house with tourists and visitors to Dunedin. Being centrally situated in Maclaggan Street, the Gladstone attracts an ever widening circle of patrons who are always certain of first-class accommodation being provided. Mr. Jno. Collins, the proprietor, has a reputation second to none as a caterer for the public wants, and his house is stocked with only the finest class of wines, ales, and spirits.

Owing to the virtual cancellation of the form under the British Budget. Irish publicans are relieved from furnishing answers to 60 questions requiring the minutest details of sales and profits durng the past three years. The concession has provoked a demand for similar treatment in England. The concession is interpreted as a desire not to challenge a fight with the Nationalist Parliamentary party. Burton brewers have decided to withdraw rates pending a decision on the rating appeals. The Treasury has refused to accept the new assessments founded on the Shoreditch assessment case, and a fresh action will be taken.

At the Paeroa Police Court on Thursday, W. Martin, of Karangahake, was fined £5 and costs for sending liquor into a no-license district without being properly labelled. He was also fined £1 and costs for failing to give the vendor of liquor a written order that it was to be brought into a no-license district.

A report by W. and A. Gilbey, wine and spirit merchants, on this sea&son’s vintage, estimates that there will be only a-tenth of the usual crop in the Rhine and Moselle districts. There will be no vintage at all in Champagne, Saumur, Burgundy, and Chablis. No brandy will come from Cognac, while there will be only a third of the average vintage at Medoc,

and a half crop in Italy. Spain will only supply from one-half to threequarters of her usual output, and Australian supplies have decreased. France’s loss by the failure of the vintage is estimated at £20,000,000.

At the Ohakune Police Court on Friday last, before Mr. Kerr, S.M., Henry George, for sly-grog selling, was convicted, and fined £2O and costs. At Taumarunui on Thursday. John Boggs was fined £25 for a similar offence.

The habitual disregard of the prohibitory law engenders disrespect for all law; it benumbs the moral sense, and leads to evasion, subterfuge and hypocrisy, resulting not infrequently in perjury; its blighting effect on the material prosperity of the people is strongly marked; it cuts off from the community the revenue derived from the liquor business without lessening the evil of intemperance; it largely increases public expenses in the vain effort to enforce the law; it adds seriously to the burden of taxation.

Fortunes have been made out of public-houses in the City of London in the past, but what with high rents, increased rates, and heavy license-

duties, coupled with the change that has taken place in the habits and customs of the people, many city publicans are finding it impossible to make both ends meet. In some cases the shutters have been put up for good —and the pity is that a large poster with the words printed in bold letters, “The latest result of Mr. Lloyd George’s Budget,” has not been posted outside. As illustrating the struggle going on it may be mentioned that of the eighty-eight consolidated rate summonses dealt with at the Guildhall, last month, quite a number were those of license-holders.

A beer keg which was “planted” in some bush near Kaitangata after a party had had “once round” from it subsequently disappeared. The ‘Press’ reports that the ostensible owner promptly reported the theft to the police, who made inquiries, and found that there had been six subscribers at 2s 2d each, and that the names of these subscribers had not been given to the vendor (a Dunedin brewer), and now the man who ordered the beer has been summoned

for the alleged breach of the law applicable to no-license districts involved in not giving the names of his partners in the keg. • * » » How easily perscons may innocently commit a breach of the Bicensing Act was illustrated by one of the technical cases heard at the Oamaru Court, states the “Mail.” The defendant was a young man charged with giving an order for liquor to be sent to Oamaru without giving a statement in writing of his name and address and the name and address of the person to whom such liquor was intended to be sent. It appeared from statements made by defendant’s counsel that the young man had been about to return to Duntroon from Oamaru, when a friend said to him: “Ask Bert Orr to send me a bottle of whisky.” In compliance with the request, defendant had pulled up at the Empire Hotel and shouted to the barman, “Send a bottle of whisky on to .” The licensee had despatched the liquor through the Court in the usual way, and subsequently a police officer, looking through the hotel books, had marked the absence of the written statement from the person ordering the liquor. Since it is outside the province of the police to discriminate between innocent

breaches and those to which suspicious circumstances attach, a prosecution followed, and the young man’s obliging disposition cost him a fine of 10s.