B efore the 18th Amendment was adopted the Drys were on the sensational side of the Prohibition argument. Effectively they dramatized the evils of liquor, exhibited homes broken, lives wrecked by the Curse of Drink. The Wets, on the defensive, got poor publicity. Adoption of the 18th Amendment reversed the positions. The Wets took to the attack, sensationally dramatized the “failure of Prohibition,” exhibited the law’s breakdown, stressed bloody methods of enforcement. As defenders of the system their own efforts had brought to pass, the Drys lost something of their old aggressiveness, found themselves fighting with blunt weapons.
Last week the U.S. Drys, Consolidated, began to present their evidence to the House Judiciary Committee against pending resolutions to repeal the 18th Amendment. Like everyone else, they knew the resolutions had only the remotest chance of passage, but the committee hearings had put them in a position where they had to rebut the voluminous testimony of 45 Wet witnesses piled up before the committee (TIME, March 10).
Stage Manager. To marshal Dry witnesses and their testimony was the work of Mrs. Lenna Lowe Yost, chairman of the Association of Organizations in Support of the Eighteenth Amendment, Washington agent (lobbyist) for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Able, smiling, determined, she stage-managed the Dry testimony from the wings of the committee room, sent her witnesses out to tell their stories, did not take the stage herself.
The Wets’ chief attack on Prohibition had been that it was no benefit to industry and business, that no part of Prosperity was attributable to its influence. To combat this view was the prime purpose of Dry witnesses. In their zeal they went to what seemed unfair lengths by a counter charge that the Wets favored a return of the saloon. Hardly a Wet witness had appeared before the committee who had not specifically, emphatically, disowned the saloon as a liquor institution.
Statistics. Deprived of the more dramatic sorts of testimony they had used to bring in Prohibition, the Drys presented great masses of statistics to make their points. Over and over again the authenticity of these figures was indecisively wrangled by Dry witnesses and Wet committee members.
First to take the stand in defense of Prohibition was Samuel Crowther, business writer and investigator for the Saturday Evening Post. His major thesis: the prosperity of the past decade was due to Prohibition. His prime evidence: statements solicited from Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison, who, unlike Pierre Samuel du Pont and William Wallace Atterbury, did not risk the ordeal of crossexamination by personal appearance before the committee.
The Ford Message: “The Eighteenth Amendment is recognized by the men and women of our country, especially the women, as the greatest force for the comfort and prosperity of the U.S. I feel sure that sane people of this nation will never see it repealed or any dangerous modification.”
The Edison Message: “I still feel Prohibition is the greatest experiment to benefit man. My observation is that its enforcement is at least 60% and is gaining, notwithstanding the impression through false propaganda that it is a lower per cent. It is strange to me that some men of” great ability and standing do not help to remove the curse of liquor.”
These two messages set the Drys, jammed into the House committee room, to wild applauding.
Refrigerators & Washing Machines. Samples of Mr. Crowther’s statistical statements:
Prohibition has diverted 15 billion dollars from the liquor traffic in ten years.
Out of 129 labor employers queried, 87 responded, of whom “a large majority” felt that “the working man today is spending practically nothing for drink.”
In 1919 there were 2,000 electric refrigerators in the U.S. In 1928, under Prohibition, there were 1,250,000.
In 1919 there were 1,000,000 electric washing machines in the U.S. In 1928, under Prohibition, there were 6,000,000.
Declared Witness Crowther: “The evidence is conclusive that working men are spending less for liquor.”
515 to 4. The next witness was Dr. Daniel Alfred Poling, president of the International Christian Endeavor Society. His prime statistic: Representatives of 3,000,000 Christian Endeavor members had voted 515 to 4 in favor of Prohibition this year. He had, he said, polled 62 nameless college presidents, found 26 who thought student drinking was not general, three who thought it was, one who thought it was increasing. Declared Dr. Poling: “There is less drinking among young people than at any time in the past eight years. Let us stop slandering our sons and daughters! . . . Neither in Washington Square nor in 42nd Street nor in Hell’s Kitchen are there as many places where liquor is sold as before Prohibition.”
“Whiskey Capital.” The benefits of Prohibition in Louisville, Ky.—once the “whiskey capital” of the U. S.—were depicted by its citizen Henry H. Johnson who vowed that the country club expression, “the 19th hole,” was now unknown in his State. Resorting to statistics, he declared that Louisville’s rate of population growth had increased eight times in the last ten years, that its factory output had doubled, that its property values had almost trebled. Declared he: “Ninety per cent of Louisville’s prosperity is due to the fact that we got rid of the blasting, blighting liquor business.”
Next day such potent prohibitors as Francis Scott McBride, chief lobbyist for the Anti-Saloon League, Clarence True Wilson, chief lobbyist for the Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals, and Mrs. Ella Alexander Boole, president of the W.C.T.U., packed into the committee room to hear approvingly other witnesses defend the Dry cause.
Life Saver. Patrick Henry Callahan, paint and varnish man of Louisville, Ky., oldtime friend of William Jennings Bryan, ardent Dry Catholic, indefatigable letter-writer and publicist, told the committee of the lives Prohibition had saved. His statistics: alcoholism, 26,400; cirrhosis of the liver, 42,300; Bright’s disease, 62,100. Declared Mr. Callahan: “With undisputed statistics I have shown from merely three diseases where prohibitionists have saved more [U. S.] lives than were lost in action in the Great War.* A hundred thousand lives are not to be sniffed at.”
Social Drinkers. To prove that polite society hostesses really object to serving guests liquor, Mrs. Ruth G. Knowles Strawbridge, matronly Philadelphia socialite, took the stand to tell of her referendum letter among the “socalled better class.” She sent out 2,300 queries to hostesses (TIME, July 1). Said she: ” I found that these society women regarded liquor drinking at private gatherings as an unutterable nuisance. … A favorite theme was that of the expense and the great disgrace of maintaining relations with bootleggers.” Mrs. Strawbridge declared she received 1,337 responses opposing wet social gatherings, 247 in favor of maintaining them.
Milk Drinkers. Speaking for a “million farmers,” Louis John Taber, Master of the National Grange, fairly flooded the committee with agricultural statistics to establish the benefits U. S. husbandmen have received from Prohibition. His best statistic: before Prohibition every U.S. citizen drank 42 4/10 gal. of milk per year; today each drinks 60 gal. He argued that grains which once went into liquor now make breakfast foods, that corn is higher in value now than before 1920, that the price of grapes has increased. Mr. Taber painted farm conditions in such cheerful colors that he seemed sorely embarrassed when a Wet committee member produced a statement of his last April when he was seeking farm relief. Then he had told an entirely different story of “deplorable conditions” among U.S. farmers.
“Pepper & Ginger.” Between the sessions of the committee hearing, Mrs. Yost mustered a company of women to present to the committee this week at a special “Ladies’ Day.” She promised to put more “pepper and ginger” into the Dry testimony hereafter.
* U. S. battle fatalities: 50,510.