Buck-Passing

The Mayor of New York, as everyone knows, drinks. The President of the U. S., as everyone also knows, does not drink. Last week one of the Mayor's officials collided with one of the President's in the murky realm of Prohibition enforcement.

There are, by police count, some 32,000 speakeasies in New York City, all of them profitably patronized. There is in the

Penal Code of the State of New York a section (No. 1530) providing for the closure of a public nuisance. There is a recent decision by the State Court of Appeals that a speakeasy is a public nuisance. Also in New York are Grover Aloysius Whalen, the Police Commissioner; Maurice Campbell, the local U. S. Prohibition Administrator; and a tidal sentiment against Prohibition.* Tall, blue-eyed, cinematically handsome, fastidiously dressed. Administrator Campbell rose to Major in the Army Ordnance Corps during the War. For three years (1919-22) he was a cinema director for Famous Players-Lasky (Oh, Lady, Lady, She Couldn't Help It, Ducks and Drakes, Two Weeks with Pay, March Hare, One Wild Week, The Speed Girl, First Love,

Midnight, Burglar Proof, An Amateur Devil, The Exciters"). His experience with Prohibition began in 1927 when General Lincoln Clark Andrews imported him from the field of press-agentry.

Last week Administrator Campbell rolled up a batch of several hundred uninvestigated complaints against speakeasies, despatched them to Commissioner Whalen, called that official's attention to Section 1530 of the Penal Code and the Court of Appeals' decision, told him, in effect, to get busy and dry up New York City. Wrote Prohibitor Campbell: "If the police make raids and the several magistrates and district attorneys conscientiously do their duty, the speakeasies in New York will rapidly fade away."

Commissioner Whalen, no less tall, handsome or fastidious than Administrator Campbell, exclaimed: "Buck-passer!" For courtesy's sake he held a conference with the city's five district attorneys and emerged to exclaim again, this time officially: "Buck-passer!"

Back to Administrator Campbell went the speakeasy complaints and with them a letter rejecting the U. S. proposal, refusing to use city police as dry agents. Wrote Commissioner Whalen:

"If you are unwilling to discharge your sworn obligations to the Federal Government or wish to make a confession of your inability to effectively direct the activities of your department, for which a large proportion of a $36,000.000 appropriation is allotted, the admission should be made primarily to your superiors in Washington, instead of 'passing the buck' to the State law-enforcing officers. Your plan would necessitate increasing the police personnel by 5,000 men, costing the taxpayers of the City of New York a minimum of $15,000,000 per annum."

Administrator Campbell retorted: "If there has been any buck-passing, the Commissioner has proved himself a champion."

The national significance of this Camp-bell-Whalen incident seemed to be that it was the first concrete test-and failure-of the Hoover policy of Federal and local co-operation on Prohibition enforcement (TIME, July 29 et seq.). New York is the largest and wettest of many a large, wet U. S. city where Prohibition is hardest and most expensive to enforce. If Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Boston et al follow New York's lead and decline to "cooperate" through their police forces, the Hoover policy, if continued, will resolve itself into a one-sided thing tantamount to urban nonenforcement.

*0ne William M. Bennett, running as a dry candidate for mayor in the Republican primary this month, pledged to exterminate every speakeasy, is commonly regarded as a "joke'' candidate.