PROHIBITION: United Wets

The liquor question was settled for Franklin Delano Roosevelt by the Democratic party in convention last June. It was settled for the Republican party by Herbert Hoover’s acceptance speech last August. Where Prohibition is still an issue is in the nation’s Congressional Districts. Less than two weeks before the electorate was to seat 435 Representatives and 33 Senators, militant U. S. Wets last week prepared for another vigorous putsch, feeling handicapped by the fact that the national spotlight was not playing on their many small but collectively important sidelights.

Throughout the land The Crusaders began a drive to raise $500,000 for their ”poor man’s campaign.” In Manhattan Walter P. Chrysler, assuming active charge of the local drive, announced: ”Prohibition is an utter failure and is doomed. With the right kind of Congress and sufficient active interest among the serious citizenship, I feel that we can hasten the sad story to a reasonably early conclusion.” To bring this about, Mr. Chrysler said, the Crusaders would actively support all Wet candidates for Congress, whether Democrats or Republicans, oppose with equal enthusiasm all Dry candidates. Many another tycoon joined Mr. Chrysler in lending his Big Name to the Crusaders, including Edward F. Hutton, Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., Seward Prosser, Elisha Walker, George Gordon Battle, Harry Ford Sinclair. For their Philadelphia letterhead the Crusaders have a Biddle, a Cheston, a Downs, a Lee; in Baltimore, a Poe; in Richmond, a Pinckney; in Chicago, a Forgan; in Wilmington, Lammot du Pont Jr.; in Rochester, Edward Bausch (& Lomb), Vice President Lewis B. Jones of Eastman Kodak, Jeremiah Hickey (Hickey-Freeman clothes); in Washington, Joseph Patrick Tumulty, Breckinridge Long; in St. Louis, a Lambert, a Niedringhaus; in New Haven, Tad Jones and Professor Jack Randall Crawford; in Hartford, Lucius F. Robinson Jr.; in Cleveland, the Crusaders’ birthplace, Hannas, Mathers and Hoyts.

The Crusaders literally do not know their own strength. They now claim “more than 1,000,000 members” with local headquarters in 100 cities. It costs $1 to become a voting member. Contributions are solicited. So far the organization has never had money enough to set up a coordinated, efficient central control. Executive headquarters is located over a barber shop in Mentor, Ohio. There sits, some of the time, Commander-in-Chief Fred George Clark, 38, Cleveland oilman. From time to time he hears how his forces are faring on their local fronts.

In Connecticut, for instance, the news is good this year. All of that State’s Democratic and regular Republican Congressional candidates and both its Senators are Wet. In New Hampshire, on the other hand, Humorist Corey Ford is the mainstay of an ineffectual Crusader contingent. If Wet Fred Brown beats weaseling, Wet-drinking George Higgins Moses out of his Senate seat it will not be due very largely to Crusader support. In other districts the struggle continues pull-devil-pull-baker.

In California, Crusaders Edward H. Clark Jr. and Robert Kenny are working for the Senatorial election of young Tallant Tubbs over Democrat William Gibbs McAdoo and Prohibitionist Robert Pierce Shuler. Oregon Crusaders are focusing their fight to bring about the repeal of the State’s enforcement law. In time’s nick, Crusaders in Washington got 60,000 signatures to a petition for a Prohibition referendum on Nov. 8. In Delaware the organization is trying to remove the Klair ”bone dry” Law from the State’s statutes. The Rochester, N. Y. chapter is stumping for Democrats Lithgow Osborne and Julian P. Bretz in the 36th and 37th Congressional Districts, notoriously Republican strongholds. The organization estimates that its membership is actively interested in 300 Congressional campaigns, in affiliation with four other anti-Prohibition units under the titular leadership of Pierre Samuel du Pont’s United Repeal Council.

United Repeal Council is an advisory cabinet made up of leaders of the Crusaders, Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, American Hotel Association, Voluntary Committee of Lawyers. Formed early last summer to lobby for Repeal planks at both national conventions, the U. R. C. represents a membership of 2,500,000. It had its latest meeting Oct. 5 in Manhattan to co-ordinate Wet forces behind Wet candidates this month.

Not all elements in the U. R. C. see eye-to-eye on policy. The A. A. P. A. is pledged to function strictly as its title indicates. The hotel men want modification of the Volstead Act as soon as they can get it. The W. O. N. P. R., unlike its allied bodies, abandoned non-partisan status when it plumped for Franklin Delano Roosevelt (TIME, July 18). Fortnight ago the W. O. N. P. R. reported that of 607 Congressional candidates answering their questionnaire, 553 or 91% declared themselves Wet.

“Right Side.” The Crusaders, most effective unit in the Council, are for modification with protection against the saloon’s return, but they go further. They stand for a unique brand of progressive anti-Prohibitionism. Says Commander Clark:

“There are three sides to the Liquor Problem. The Dry Side, the Wet Side and the Right Side! . . . The new Crusader . . . is going to make every possible effort to get the old temperance forces to cooperate with him. . . . The principles he stands for are practically the same code of principles the W. C. T. U. adopted when present-day grey-haired mothers were children in short dresses.” It is the Crusaders’ purpose, not only to get the present laws off the books but to follow through and put other laws on. The Crusaders et al. put little hope in the “Beer by March” prognostications of Senators Reed, Tydings, Robinson and Speaker Garner. Even with a Wet 73rd Congress, they know that getting two-thirds of both Houses and three-fourths of the States to pass an Amendment superseding the 18th is a long business and that even with a national majority in favor of reform the U. S. liquor problem is legally nowhere near Mr. Chrysler’s “reasonably early conclusion.”