Intemperance in British Lands.
According to the Auckland (New Zealand) Free Press, temperance people are waging a strong fight in New Zealand for prohibition, and look with encouragement upon the progress made in this country. In the issue of the Free Press of November 23 is a very striking article, “The Cry of the Children,” by Mr. Geo. R. Sims. He refers to the vast number of deaths of infants under twelve months in England and Wales, but points out very clearly that the real difficulty in all this is alcoholism. Many times the drunkenness is on the part of the mother of the child. Every year between 500 and 600 infants are killed by overlaying or suffocation in bed. Mr. Sims writes this not from hearsay, but from actual experience in it. The same issue calls attention to the slaughter of an innocent family by a drunken wretch, which does not particularly affect the public, and asks, “What would happen if some drunken, demented person should shoot a drinking, smoking bishop instead of an innocent woman and the mother of a family?” It also reports the sad fact that the labor unions of New Zealand are hostile to the movement. Bad as capital is in many of its phases, a thousand times greater curse to laboring men is intemperance.