Many a U. S. voter has been held in line for Prohibition by the argument that Big Business supported it. In the 1928 campaign, Nominee Hoover got five tycoons to uphold his Dry stand to every one Nominee Smith got to flay the 18th Amendment. As long as tycoons pontificated in favor of Prohibition, smaller men chimed in with their approval.
Last week, however, when the House Judiciary Committee resumed hearings on resolutions to repeal the 18th Amendment, a first serious crack was found in Big Business solid support of Prohibition. Its Wet representatives spoke out their opposition loud enough for little men to hear.
The committee moved its hearings back to its own quarters because not enough Wets had been present fortnight ago to fill the House Caucus Room (TIME, Feb. 24). The small committee room was crowded with 300 ardent spectators. Its air grew hot and sour. Thirty newsmen scribbled rapidly to keep pace with the flowing testimony of Wet witnesses. Idaho’s Dry Senator Borah dropped in but, after hearing the audience applaud a particularly violent denunciation of the 18th Amendment, hastily withdrew. He, like others, knew that all the Wet noise would not sway a Dry Congress into relaxing the law one iota.
Under the stage-management of Capt. William H. Stayton, board chairman of the National Association Against the Prohibition Amendment,* the first witness was Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, Manhattan private-banker, director of Guaranty Trust Co., New York Trust Co., Bethlehem Steel, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, New York Railways, Fifth Avenue Coach Co., Chicago Motor Coach Co. As a colonel in the War, Mr. Murphy was adjutant of the Rainbow Division, A. E. F. He declared:
“I am opposed to Prohibition because I consider that the last ten years has shown that it is absolutely impossible to enforce. It has led to more crime, more corruption, more hypocrisy than any other law. . . . People say if you mop up the wet spots in cities the thing is done. I have never seen more vicious drinking in my life than I have seen in Indiana and in South Carolina. I have never gone anywhere in the country where the liquor law was observed. . . .
“Personally I do not know a single leading banker in the U. S., a single leading industrial executive, a single important railroad executive that I can think of who does not break this law and who does not drink.”
“Henry Ford?” suggested a committeeman.
“I said people I know. I don’t know him,” replied Mr. Murphy.
As a corporation director Mr. Murphy believed that “more serious damage is being done today than would be done if we restored the free and cheap use of beer.” The only person he knew of who had stopped drinking under the 18th Amendment was “a very elderly maiden lady who has Prohibition tied up with her antipathy to the Catholic Church.” (Mr. Murphy is a Protestant.)
The next potent businessman to flay Prohibition was Henry Bourne Joy of Detroit, onetime president of Packard Motor Co. He identified himself as a Presbyterian, a five-year supporter of the 18th Amendment. Then he proceeded:
“I do not want my wife, my children and my grandchildren living under such conditions as exist today. . . . I fully realize the strangle hold the allied Protestant church lobby has on Congress, but we have confidence that the backbone of this lobby will be broken. . . . The allied church lobby will do all within its power to prevent a sane wise solution.”
Mr. Joy flayed “the marriage of the vast church influence and the Anti-Saloon League which was consummated through the creation of the Wickersham Commission.” He connected Chairman George Woodward Wickersham with the “church lobby,” implied that President Hoover was not informed of this connection. So severely did he criticize Chairman Wickersham that the Judiciary Committee struck his words from the record.
Other witnesses pleading for a repeal of the 18th Amendment and a return of liquor control and regulation to the States:
Playwright Channing Pollock: “I don’t know a club in America where liquor cannot be obtained. . . . I have not seen one audience where Prohibition was not a joke and the evader of Prohibition a person regarded with favor.”
Author Owen McMahon Johnson: “I state unqualifiedly that over 80% of the leading writers of this country are militantly against Prohibition.”
Missouri’s onetime Senator George Howard Williams: “There is no need to talk about nullification of the 18th Amendment. It is already a fact as surely as the 14th and 15th Amendments have been nullified in the South.”
Frederic Rene Coudert Sr., Manhattan lawyer: “The 18th Amendment does not represent a law. … It is a piece of fanaticism. . . . There is no enforcement and there never will be any. . . . Call out the Navy. . . . Put every citizen who violates the law into jail and have accommodations for 50 or 60 million. Then take the consequences of the government that does that of being swept out of existence.”
Ralph Martin Shaw, Chicago lawyer: “Both sexes now get drunk together.” Samuel Harden Church, president of Carnegie Institute* spoke hopefully of a third or liberal party to combat Prohibition and politico-religious “dictation.”
Frederick G. Clark, Cleveland oilman and Commander-in-chief of the Crusaders, advanced a concrete threat when he said he expected his organization to have ten million young men in the field by 1932 to vote for Prohibition modification (TIME, Jan. 27).
Confident that nothing would come of all the Wet shouting in Washington, citizens in the dry-voting South and West treated the hearings with contemptuous indifference.
Last week saw the beginning of a significant movement in the Senate for another Prohibition investigation. Unlike others, it was sponsored by Drys. Its proponents were Nebraska’s Senator Norris, Idaho’s Senator Borah, Montana’s Senator Wheeler, Iowa’s Senator Brookhart. Senator Norris, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had offered a resolution for that committee to inquire into the whole wide field of Prohibition enforcement, to study even its enforceability, with a view to remedial legislation. Behind this Dry movement was a dissatisfaction with the secret work of the National Law Enforcement Commission and its recommendations. Some Dry Senators felt that President Hoover was afraid to reveal the true inwardness of Prohibition. Senators Norris, Borah and Brookhart each claimed to possess a mass of evidence which, they said, would “blow the lid off” Dry enforcement. Their honest purpose was to lay bare its evils and attempt to correct them.
Opposition developed from two quarters : Southern and Western Democrats who feared that any such upheaval of Prohibition might play advantageously into the hands of the Wets; regular Republicans who feared that such an inquiry would tend to discredit the National Law Enforcement Commission and thus nullify President Hoover’s attempts to deal with this problem in his own peculiar way.
Meanwhile the Wickersham Commission’s recommendations were well mired in Congress. Predictions are freely heard that they will remain in the mire throughout this session. A House Judiciary sub-committee last week openly despaired of agreement on the proposal for juryless liquor trials. Legislation to transfer Pro hibition enforcement from the Treasury to the Department of Justice is near the bottom of the Senate’s calendar where it is likely to remain.
*The N. A. A. P. A. claims its 232 board members control 45 billion dollars in corporate investments. *An educational establishment not to be confused with the Carnegie Institution of Washington (see p. 16), created for scientific research.
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