PROHIBITION: To the Guts

Last week a great & good friend of Calvin Coolidge disturbed Washington by crying “guts.” Declared Seattle’s Kenneth Mackintosh, member of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement: “I shall insist that the Commission go to the guts of this whole Prohibition question.”

The “guts” of Prohibition is one place to which potent Dry Senators and Congressmen do not want to see the Commission go. But Commissioner Mackintosh, a Dry himself, did not propose to allow his colleagues to weasel on “enforcement” and pass up the larger issue of the enforceability of the 18th Amendment. Drys last week cried out in sharp protest against any such thoroughgoing program of investigation as he advocated.

The Commission was about to convene (next week, in Washington) to draft a report which may well alter the position of President Hoover on the issue. After 1 6 months of study it had not yet deter mined how deeply into Prohibition to delve. Commissioner Mackintosh’s strong language, his robust character, indicated that there would be serious internal dis turbances if the Commission tries to side step the “guts.”

Those who know Commissioner Mackin tosh were not surprised at the commotion his challenge stirred up. He first proved himself an eminent disturber when he at tended the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1920 as a delegate from the State of Washington. Primary voters had instructed him to support the presi dential candidacy of Senator Hiram John son of California. Disregarding his politi cal pledges, he boldly boomed Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts for the Presidency. It was largely on the strength of his agitation that Governor Coolidge was nominated for the Vice-Presidency. President Coolidge later rewarded his boomer with a nomination to the U. S. Circuit Court. More disturbances followed in the Senate, where the vengeful opposition of Senator Johnson, who had not forgiven Mackintosh’s 1920 desertion, was sufficient to keep Nominee Mackintosh off the Federal bench. He was serving as Chief Justice of the Washington Supreme Court when President Hoover appointed him to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement.