The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1934-03-27
REPEAL AND THE QUICK RESULTS


Mrs. Howard C. Hoge, one of the good
women who is laboring in the ranks of the
w. c.. T. U. to aid in saving the people Of
this country from the curse of the liquor
traffic, speaking at Charlotte on March
23rd, made statements which should cause
good citizens of this country, no matter
what their views of national prohibition,
to stop and think and then take action.
Mrs. Hoge is one of the national w. G. 7.
u. leaders and is president of the Virginia
organization. Here is what she had to say
about the concrete results of repeal of the
prohibition amendment as they have been
observed since the country went back to
its wallowing in the liquor mire:
"No country and no people ever were treated to
more glowing promises of what repeal would DO
for that country and that people if it might only
be permitted to stage comeback IMAM we, the
people of these United States.
"Neyer was there a more rude and shocking
establishment than has come in the wake of
repeal Instead of promoting temperance, reduc-
ing crime and unemployment, the return OF the
LIQUOR traffic has already invaded thousands of
areas where the legal sale of beverage alcohol was
never known before; through high pressure sales
manship in the press and the movies, and through
the radio, it has already shared thousands of youth
and adults, bewildered by its glttering propa-
ganda; and including the eight preceding months
of localized beer, the traffic has already robbed
legitimate industry of than one billion dol
lars to large extent, diverted from the purchase
of necessities and wholesome Injuries At the same
time our new repeal policy is more promot-
ing disastrous harvest of wholesale dissipation,
industrial neficency, and desttutlon disease and
death.
tyy n
amazing increase in automobile deaths since the
first of the year as compared with 1888. Last year
at this time the deaths reported numbered 10 IN
every hundred thousand population. For the weeks
just passed. the average leaped upward to "a per
hundred thousand and further increase IS lndlcat
ed. Figures are pouring into our national head
quarters corroborating this situation in many other
sections of the country.
we are beginning to find that liquor revenue, how
ever great it may be, is even directly speaking,
scarcely more than drop in the bucket so far as
government demands are concerned But exam
med at close range find that this widely adver-
tised contribution of the traffic to the public eX
chequer is nothing but revenge mirage, and that
in reality the traffic pays nothing, but saddles
upon the backs of millions of our fellow citizens,
who can least afford it, the real burden of the tax
itself and in addition, the destructive and demon
alizing cost of its inevitable consequences.
1--WE do not attack the administration of Wash
ngton for the many constructive steps they have
our president for his fearless leadership in many
directions But we cannot praise nor overlook the
deliberate and continued surrender of the admin
straton to the demands of the brewers and dis
tillers. nor regard without emphatic protest the
apparently approved policy of unlimited expansion
of our national debt and the consequent certain
increase in federal taxation
''The only way out of this situation is new,
thorough-going program of education. Since wo-
man. as usual will be the first to suffer in this
crisis. the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
is inaugurating a nationwide study of the funda-
mentals of taxation.
political graft and misuse of public funds can
not long continue if the people inform themselves
regarding these principles.
"From now on we wage an unwavering war on
the tax eater and the tax juggler in public office.
"And it is because we know that the liquor
traffic and political graft and corruption are so
intimately and everlastingy in alliance against the
public interest that pledge not only unceasing
battle with legazed drink, but new educational
offensive against the menace of extravaganza taxa
tion."