PROHIBITION: Hearst on Treason

To William Randolph Hearst, publisher extraordinary, retired politician, the Brooklyn, N. Y., Daily Eagle (Independent), popped these questions: “Whom will you support for President and what issues will determine the election?”

Mr. Hearst’s own 26 newspapers had given no clear reflection of his stand because in different cities different stands are needed to please different groups of readers. Mr. Hearst used to be a Democrat. But ever since he was publicly tongue-lashed by Alfred Emanuel Smith in their celebrated quarrel of 1919, et seq., the G. O. P. has grown in Hearst favor. Before the nominating conventions this year, the Hearst press boomed Secretary Mellon for President and Prosperity. When Mayor Walker of New York City visited the Hearst ranch after the Democratic convention, people said he went to make overtures; to persuade Mr. Hearst, if not actually to support Nominee Smith, at least to “lay off” him, to forget Nominee Smith’s bitter contempt for him and to bury the old quarrel. Except for a series of cartoons, showing Tammany as a little yegg in a tiger-striped sweater, Mr. Hearst subsequently published nothing very damaging to the Brown Derby.

Mr. Hearst was in Paris when the Eagle’s questions reached him. President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, prominent Republican, had just flayed the G. O. P. for its Prohibition attitude (TIME, Aug. 27). Chairman Raskob of the Democratic National Committee had just asked Nominee Hoover please to be more explicit about his Prohibition attitude. Nominee Smith had just defined his Prohibition attitude by proposing a form of the so-called Canadian Plan (dispensation by States) for U. S. liquor control.

Mr. Hearst decided the time had come for him to make a statement and so, via the Eagle, he said:

“. . . I doubt . . . if the Democratic party can make Prohibition the dominant issue and, furthermore, I do not believe the party could win on that issue even if it could make that issue dominant. I say this, notwithstanding the fact that I believe Prohibition is proving itself a failure in America just as it has proved a failure in every other country in which it has been tried. . . .

“There is a popular belief that Prohibition was imposed upon the country during the War, while a majority of our voters were unable to register their disapproval. But the plain facts are that more than two-thirds of the local option districts of the United States were dry long before the war and that the dry Federal Act was but the national and natural expression of that dry local option majority. The people of these same districts are still dry and are not going to change constitution or legislation until they have lost faith in Prohibition as a remedy for the liquor evil. I believe that day will arrive, but I do not think it has arrived.”

Mr. Hearst then elaborated the fact, which every one knows, that the People, not the President, alone can alter the law or the Constitution. He called it “treason” for a Nominee to propose that the law or Constitution should be changed.

He said: “. . . There is enough defiance of law by private citizens. Must we also have defiance of the Constitution by the President to please Mr. Raskob?”

He flayed Dr. Butler as follows:

“. . . A good thing we did not gratify Dr. Butler’s aspirations, or rather jack-aspirations, and nominate him for President. He apparently would not uphold the Constitution and would not enforce the law. . . . We should remember that Dr. Nicholas Money Butler was the campaign collector for the not too sweet-smelling Harding Administration and that he may be following some of his oil friends into the Tammany-cratic party. Dr. Butler was not called the little butler of the rich for nothing. On the whole it would seem that Dr. Butler and Mr. Raskob are imposing personalities, but only to those who are willing to be imposed upon. . . .”

He flayed Nominee Smith’s plan for Prohibition, as follows:

“When the necessary vast majority of the people of the United States finally make up their minds that Prohibition is not effective they will want Prohibition modified, but they will want it modified in the direction of genuine temperance. That means that they will not want it modified by Tammany Hall, which, as everybody knows, has always been hand-in-glove with the liquor interests and has always in the past supported the saloon and been supported by the saloon.

“Even Mr. Smith’s plan of personal liberty and States’ rights and State local option while perfectly sound Democratic doctrine is not in line with modern thought in sumptuary legislation. The people of the United States have passed the strictly States’ rights construction period and there have always been definite limitations on personal liberty. Our country has developed from a federation of loosely linked States into a closely knit nation. The Constitution has given the Federal Government the right to legislate for the nation on the liquor question and the Federal Government probably will continue to possess and exercise that right. . . .”

He offered a Hearst plan for Prohibition, as follows:

“The intelligent solution of the liquor question probably lies in the exclusion of highly alcoholic liquors and the judicious distribution of light wines and beers through Federal dispensaries, thus maintaining an equal degree of temperance in the public interest and throughout the whole nation.

“It is hardly conceivable that our progressive and essentially moral people will go back to a condition where we will be bone-dry in one State and souse-wet in another, and where churches and schools will elevate one city and gin mills degrade another. States’ rights and local option would mean alcohol ad libitum and ad nauseam wherever the whiskey rings held political sway; and that is not a thing to be contemplated in any sort of a sincere temperance program.

“I personally have been an earnest temperance advocate for 40 years and I am only willing to support a substitute measure for Prohibition which promises better temperance than Prohibition.”

He added:

¶ “The actual and crucial questions before the country are national finances, international relations, and public prosperity.”

¶ “The Tammany Democrats who are so fond of referring to Mr. Smith as another Lincoln should remember that Lincoln said, ‘Never swap horses while crossing the stream.’ “