PROHIBITION: At Chicago

Nowadays the country is facing the “enforcement crisis” and last week the Anti-Saloon League meeting in Chicago called its biennial convention by that name. It was a great meeting. To it came Bishop Thomas Nicholson, President of the League; Francis Scott McBride, General Superintendent; Wayne B. Wheeler, its Washington representative; William H. Anderson, former superintendent of the New York State branch; Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Lincoln C. Andrews (in charge of Prohibition); Andrew Volstead, onetime Congressman; Roy Asa Haynes, Prohibition Commissary; Senator Sheppard of Texas, who introduced the 18th Amendment in the Senate.

Are there any other names to match them on the rolls of Prohibition? All of these save William H. Anderson spoke. He was there as a delegate and as correspondent for The Fellowship Forum, a “Protestant paper” published at Washington (and favorable to the Ku Klux Klan).

President-Bishop Nicholson exclaimed:

“We are now in the greatest struggle since the Civil War for the effectuation of democracy.

“We have gone beyond the question as to what we think about the liquor traffic or about Prohibition. We are face to face with the problem as to whether, when, through the proper use of all the legislative processes known to our republic, we have achieved a signal victory over a great evil, we are to be deterred from the enjoyment of that victory by an unscrupulous minority whose one slogan is ‘You can’t enforce that law.’

“It should stir every drop of blood in the veins of every patriot.”

Said Superintendent McBride:

“The world’s stadium is crowded. The eyes of the world are looking on. The victory will be for humanity. But this is not a game. It is a fight. It is a war— war to the hilt.

“Comrades, gird your swords tonight,

“For the battle is with dawn!

“Oh, the clash of shields together,

“With the triumph coming on!

“Greet the foe,

“And lay him low,

“When strong men fight together.

“I hope and believe that the Prohibition movement has resulted in great good, notwithstanding the disregard for law so flagrant in certain localities where temptations for making money by violating the law are more difficult to overcome.”

Andrew Volstead declared that, although it is not generally known, there is a penalty of 90 days in jail for buying illicit liquor, and two years for a second offense:

“It would have a salutary effect to prosecute some of these purchasers so that the country might know some of the so-called ‘good people’ are simply in the bootleg class,” he said. “This provision is contained in Section 29 of Title 2 of the Prohibition Act.

“It is idle to attempt to restrain simply by imposing a fine. That is nothing but a license, and the judge who imposes it is little better than the bootlegger.”

A memorial service was held for William Jennings Bryan, and one of his addresses was heard by phonograph.