Grand Old Prohibitors

Senator Simeon Davison Fess of Ohio, brand-new chairman of the Republican National Committee, last week tied the G. O. P. up tight to Prohibition. Meanwhile the Democratic party seemed to grow wetter and wetter.

Chairman Fess was once a Wet himself. He went Dry politically only when Ohio did. When President Hoover picked him, a staid Anti-Saloon Leaguer, to head the national committee, many an observer concluded that the President was preparing to seek re-election in 1932 as a thoroughgoing Dry, was already consolidating the Dry forces in command of the national machine. It was even suspected that this move was designed to block the rising power and prestige of that potent Wet presidential possibility, Dwight Whitney Morrow, Republican Senatorial nominee in New Jersey. The Grand Old Party might, it seemed, become an organization of Grand Old Prohibitors.

When he took office as chairman Senator Fess could not proclaim the party bone-Dry because too many Republican candidates are running as Wets. Therefore, last week, he weaseled conventionally: "I don't see how Prohibition can be made a party issue in this campaign. We will, however, take a decided stand on law enforcement."

But if Senator Fess could not make the party Dry by word, he could by deed. He promptly appointed Mrs. Lenna Lowe Yost, potent Washington lobbyist for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, to be director of the important Women's Division of the Republican National Committee, vice Mrs. Louise M. Dodson of Iowa, resigned. Mrs. Yost, a sister-in-law of Fielding Harris ("Hurry Up") Yost, athletic director at the University of Michigan, was a student under Senator Fess when he was professor of law at Ohio Northern University. She moved to West Virginia, entered politics as a feminist. She headed the State's Republican Executive Committee, was chosen West Virginia's Republican National Committeewoman. Last winter she ably marshaled all Dry witnesses for the House Judiciary Committee's investigation of Prohibition (TIME, March 17, et seq.). She was credited with having enough influence to get her husband, Ellis A. Yost, a good job with the Federal Radio Commission. Her elevation in the Republican National Committee plainly foreshadowed a party effort to hold in line all the women who had voted for Herbert Hoover in 1928 on the theory that he was Dry, to conduct another vigorous "white ribbon" campaign this year.

Mrs. Yost's appointment caused menacing rumblings from the Wet wing of the G. O. P. First to protest was Republican Congressman Fiorello Henry LaGuardia of New York: "Chairman Fess can't dry up the Republican party. . . . Mrs. Yost will be only a temporary director of women's activities because we won't stand for it. . . . There'll be a Wet explosion at the next national convention." Major Henry Hastings Curran, president of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, loudly mocked Chairman Fess's attempts to eliminate Prohibition as an issue.

As a national party the Democrats seemed ready to concede Chairman Fess's point that Prohibition should be kept out of the headquarters campaign. Mindful of the Dry wing of his party in the South, Jouett Shouse, the Democratic national executive chairman, last week declared: "I don't regard Prohibition as a national issue between the two parties in this election." However he did not weasel on his personal position: "There must be a change in the Prohibition laws. There should not be a repeal of the 18th Amendment without offering some constructive substitute. I believe that will take the form of State control."

The Wet Democratic trend has been clearly indicated by the party's Senatorial nominees in recent primaries: James Hamilton Lewis in Illinois, Robert Johns Bulkley in Ohio, Thomas Pryor Gore in Oklahoma, Gilbert Monell Hitchcock in Nebraska, Alexander Simpson in New Jersey and Sedgwick Kistler in Pennsylvania.

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