Repeal & Return

Out of the wordy welter of the House Judiciary Committee's hearings on legislation for Dry law repeal there began to take unmistakable shape last week a new and significant agreement among potent Wet witnesses. Heretofore few active Wets have been in accord on a remedy for conditions against which they complained (TIME, March 3). In the 1928 campaign Alfred Emanuel Smith proposed changes in the Volstead Act to permit a higher percentage of alcohol in beverages in the discretion of the States. Thus, by his proposal, one State might permit no alcohol whatever, another State two, three, or ten percent, the maximum to be determined by Federal law. Other anti-prohibitors have clamored for 2.75% beer or for light (i. e. 9%) wines. Still other shrewd opponents of the 18th Amendment insisted on its most severe and cruel enforcement as a means of rendering it odious.

But last week's Wet witnesses in Washington no longer trifled with such dilatory proposals. With a bold unity they demanded from the inexorably Dry House committee: Repeal of the 18th Amendment; Return of liquor control to the States, leaving to the Federal Government only its duty of restricting interstate liquor shipments. Such a Wet formula was known as "Repeal & Return." Political realists who considered such a drastic step impracticable and visionary alternately proposed that only the Volstead Act be repealed and the 18th Amendment be specifically amended to permit local option.

For two days witnesses pressed upon the committee the benefits they believed such a major change in U. S. Dry policy would produce. Much of their testimony was repetitious. All seemed agreed on these points: 1) enforcement is going from bad to worse, with no honest hope of improvement; 2) with speakeasies replacing saloons, and rapidly .becoming the smart place for ladies' luncheons, all official regulation of liquor and its sale has disappeared; 3) business and industry have not been benefited by Prohibition; 4) politics has been corrupted; 5) professional Drys and 'leggers are in effect working together to prevent any change in the present system; 6) the U. S. drink bill is about two-and-a-half billions per year, on which the U. S. loses all revenue. Throughout the land prevailed a condition which witnesses described as shading from "passive rebellion" to "flaming revolt" against the 18th Amendment.

Potent prohibitors scurried about the country last week to round up such famed rebuttal witnesses as Henry Ford and Albert Pritchard Sloan. This was because of the mounting pile of evidence from outstanding industrialists and Big Business executives that Prohibition is a failure. The economic benefit of Prohibition is a prime rock on which Drys rest their major argument for its preservation. Against that rock last week fell splintering blows delivered by William Wallace Atterbury, president of Pennsylvania R. R. ("Standard Railroad of the World"), Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania, and Pierre Samuel duPont, board chairman of E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co., and a major financial power in General Motors.

General Atterbury hurried from his private car in Union Station to the House Office Building to give his testimony. Excerpts :

"I am opposed to the saloon. I am in favor of temperance. I am at the head of a railroad the efficiency and safety of which absolutely require temperance on the part of employes. . . . Railroad employes are the most temperate body in any industry. Their temperance is secured not by law but because of universal regard for the fact that safety of railroad operation makes temperance imperative. ... I don't believe prohibition has made a particle of difference with the discipline of our road. . . . The Volstead Act should be repealed and the authority should be delegated to the States to determine what is intoxicating."

For more than an hour Mr. duPont stood before the committee and earnestly expounded his seasoned views against Prohibition. Excerpts:

"I am for the repeal of the 18th Amendment. I do not believe it possible to modify the Volstead Act in any way that will satisfy the people of the U. S. As for return to the States, they would then proceed to take up any modifications their people may see fit to undertake. The liquor business has fallen into disrepute. I propose we endeavor to get it into good hands. We should bring together bodies of men of undoubted integrity who would agree to undertake the control of the liquor business under a State and National commission."

Mr. duPont cited the fact that there are four prohibitory amendments to the Constitution: 1) against slavery; 2) against Negro discrimination; 3) against limitation of suffrage because of sex; 4) against intoxicating beverages. He pointed out that no legislation was necessary to enforce the first three, whereas the fourth requires the Volstead Act. Said he: "The only answer is that three of the amendments meet with the approval of the people of the U. S. and the fourth does not."

As an industrialist, he declared that he "never found the liquor question was a serious one with our employes." When Michigan's Dry Representative Michener, citing his own General Motors' Sloan, asked if it were not possible for "great and intelligent men to differ honestly" on this question, Mr. duPont responded sharply: "May I attack the word honestly? There are many industrial leaders who believe Prohibition a good thing for workingmen but who do not practice Prohibition themselves."

Another witness before the committee was James Jeremiah Wadsworth, 24-year-old son of New York's onetime Senator and grandson of the late great Secretary of State John Hay. After delivering his father's message attacking the 18th Amendment, young Mr. Wadsworth in a strong vibrant voice spoke for himself:

"Young people cannot be stifled in the folds of sumptuary rule. It is an intellectual claustrophobia. . . .* As for drinking among young people, I assert, not claim, that it has grown by leaps and bounds. By the time I entered Yale, the 'pastime' was so taken for granted it was not even discussed. . . . We young people are rebellious but we are fair. We would not force Drys to drink and they have tried to force us to abstain. If there are 99 personal Drys in a room with one man who wanted a drink, they have no ethical right to snatch his glass away. We don't want the saloon but we want the God-given right of conducting our private lives without legislative interference."

Dr. John Augustine Ryan, professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America told the House Committee: "Prohibition confuses the mental processes of high officials. Speaking of moral law, President Hoover was attempting [when he cited citizens' moral obligation to support the 18th Amendment] to state a moral principle which was none of his business. He is no more of a moral authority than I am. Let him not lay down dogmatically the law that good citizens should tell others what they should do. The President is no supreme arbiter of the moral duty of men."

Robert K. Cassatt, Philadelphia banker, son of the late president of the Pennsylvania R. R., said his business took him all over the U. S., that he had never met a businessman "who volunteered the information that his business was benefited by Prohibition," that the only two people he knew who had stopped drinking under the law were a U. S. Senator and a Pennsylvania judge.

Raymond Pitcairn, director of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., insisted that "no Wickersham commission is needed to investigate the rotten failure of Prohibition." Said he: "The people know it. The President and his Cabinet know it. Mr. Hughes knows it. Congress knows it. The young people know it best of all. But the prohibitionists don't know it. The Bellevue-Stratford and. Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia station these prohibitionists near the serving pantries of their hotel. They see large glasses of orange juice and bottles of White Rock and club soda going to many rooms on every floor. These good people raise their eyes to heaven and say, now that we have Prohibition, the people are really drinking orange juice and soda water."

*Morbid apprehension of being in an enclosure.

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