"Booze by Christmas"

Between Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes, namely in the Canadian province of Ontario, rural Drys waged a battle of ballots last week with urban Wets.

The Drys (Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians) sought to elect representatives to the Provincial Legislature who would maintain the ten-year-old 0. T. A (Ontario Temperance Act) under which only "native wines and light beers" can be sold.

The Wets (Roman Catholics, Anglicans and a few Presbyterians) sought under the leadership of shrewd Conservative Premier George Howard Ferguson to return enough representatives under his banner to permit him to secure repeal of the 0. T. A. and substitute a Government-controlled liquor rationing system. During the campaign Premier Ferguson raised a feminine hornet's nest about his ears by declaring: "Twenty-five years ago a girl would hardly speak to a man who carried a flask, but now a man without a flask is a man without a girl!"

Though such lively campaign utterances raised a furor of criticism, the electoral results showed 79 representatives potentially for repeal of the O. T. A. and only 32 left to support it. Within ten minutes after the returns were announced shares of Canadian Industrial Alcohol rose to a total increase in value of $3,200,000, and other Ontario distillery stocks similarly skyrocketed.

Assumedly the new liquor legislation cannot be rushed into operation before next spring, but Wet optimists prattled of "Booze by Christmas."