A STATE HOTEL.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 387, 11 April 1902, Page 3

A STATE HOTEL.

(To the Editor of the Times.)

Sir—Like your correspondent “ Anti Monopolist,” I read the report of the 1 Liberal Association appearing m y.ur issue of Saturday last, but the remarks of the President struck ire m quite another way. I thought that u the Association was setting its; ,ace against monopolies they wou d be surely in favor of a state bOuJl so that a poor working man nugnt get his beer at a reasonable price. I can do with one loaf of bread a day, but 1 require several pints of beer so a state pint is what mv mates and myseif are going for. A working man in L-'-don can get his pint of four-half for a penny, or three half-pints, whilst i:. Gis--borne you have to pay sixpence. A Government that professes to leg-slate in the interests of the workug man ou?ht to take the duty oft his bier and ' ■"mm. Instead of doing this, howiver, ” tney extract the last farthing in the way o f duty and the poor pulmca-i is -obliged to look for his profit, not out of the spirit but out of the waver .ie is compelled to add to it before we poor beggars get hold of it. It seems to me that the prohibitionists r.r all the talking whilst we do all the paying I forgot how much my old woman made out that we contributed to the ie venue in the course of the year, 1 iat it did tot up to a respectable sum. I cannot understand how prohibitionists can be so mean as to go year after year sponging on poor icllows like myself and making them pay all their taxes, and just liecause we are fond of a glass of beer and they are not. And we all know that it is beer that has made the British nation. •What would our soldiers in South Alrica be worth to-day if they had not wa tiwsw m «n *■»