PROHIBITION: Last Mile

Bannered across the front page of the London Evening News one afternoon last week were the headlines:

PROHIBITION IS DEAD- THE MORMONS KILLED IT- WHOOPEE— HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN.

¶ Underneath was a picture of a man guzzling beer from a keg in a New York bar.

¶ The London Star’s headlines squawled: THE DECIDING VOTE BY LATTER DAY SAINTS.

¶ Said the Evening Standard: FINAL U. S. STATE VOTE ENDS REIGN OF GANGS.

Thus did whiskey-producing Britain greet the 5-to-4 vote by which Utah last week became the 36th Repeal State.* Americans, knowing for some time that Repeal was a certainty, were not excited or much surprised that quiet Utah should have been the deciding State. Pennsylvania and Ohio were the 34th and 35th—Pennsylvania by a majority of 1,000,000 votes, Ohio by 800,000. Had Utah gone Dry the 36th State would have been Bourbon-producing Kentucky, where Repeal was last week ushered in with violence and bloodshed.

More surprising than Utah’s wetness was the fact that North Carolina, by a vote of 2-to-1, and South Carolina by a narrow majority, shrank into the Dry column.

The actual execution of Prohibition will take place in Salt Lake City at noon S. M. T. Dec. 5 when the Utah convention meets to ratify. The death chair will be prepared earlier that day. between noon and 1 p. m. E. S. T. by conventions in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

In Granite Falls, Minn. Andrew John Volstead received newshawks with his feet on a rolltop desk in his law office. “Anything I might say could do nobody any good,” he said. “All it would do would be just to bring ridicule upon me. If I were to say that Prohibition had been a mistake, there would be an awful uproar. . .”

* The 36th State to ratify Prohibition was Nebraska, Jan. 16, 1919.