National Affairs: Mr. Pinchot

It is a very low-grade cloud that has no silver lining. It is a very inferior issue that cannot be put to political purposes over a period of years. Prohibition is not such. Governor Pinchot, whose head hives a very busy Presidential bee, is fully aware of this fact. Being a Republican, if he wants to be President in 1925 he must defeat Calvin Coolidge for the nomination in the next Republican National Convention. To defeat Mr. Coolidge he must have an issue, and with the President’s tenacious silence an issue is difficult to find. But Mr. Pinchot is resourceful.

Mr. Coolidge carries on silently as an orthodox Republican. He is indubitably Dry. Mr. Pinchot is therefore determined to be even more orthodox, and more Dry. There is no doubt among political observers that such is his policy. The Governor of Pennsylvania hopes to win a national following among “the church people”* by posing as the very angel of Drought. As such he can safely aim a few shafts of criticism at an ordinary prohibitionist such as Mr. Coolidge. There is already a record of his marksmanship: 1) At the Citizenship Conference of the Council of Churches (TIME, Oct. 22) he declared with thinly veiled criticism that the President ought to take direct control of prohibition enforcement. 2) At the Conference of Governors he was a leading member of the group which “put over” the prohibition memorial. There is small doubt that his hand guided the pen which wrote into that memorial this critical paragraph: “The national Government alone has control of the manufacture of intoxicants and has a very special obligation to perform in prohibiting the importation into this country of wines and spirituous liquors contrary to the laws of the United States. The individual States are powerless to act in these respects; therefore the national Government should exercise its full power and authority in dealing with these questions.” Governor Blaine of Wisconsin, one of the defeated Wets, said afterwards: “There is one possible result [of the Conference]: Pinchot may be elected President.” 3) After the conference of the Governors with Mr. Coolidge, Mr. Pinchot was asked whether he were satisfied with the results. He answered: “That is not a fair question.” But next day, after time to contemplate, he said at Harrisburg: “The conference of yesterday not having developed the practical details of how to enforce the law, I venture, in pursuance of the President’s suggestion, to point out concretely how, in my opinion, the sources of illegal domestic liquor can be dried up. “The present orgy of lawlessness is utterly unnecessary. The Federal Government has a right to give or refuse a permit to make or dispose of beer, liquor or alcohol in any form and to describe its conditions. “If the Federal Government would write into each of its permits to manufacture, transport, store or utilize alcoholic liquors certain simple conditions it would make lawbreaking so difficult as to be practically impossible.” Mr. Pinchot has found his issue.

* Political cant for that portion of the community chiefly interested in “reforms.”