VOLSTEAD ACT.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18904, 20 January 1927, Page 12

VOLSTEAD ACT.

" PROHIBITION FARCE." COLONEL ROOSEVELT URGES REPEAL. tr&OM OUB OWS CORRESPONDENT.) SAN FRANCISCO, December 29. At a time when the American crime wave was assuming unwieldy proportions and. keeping the police, of the country continually on the qui vive, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, in an interview in the current issue of "Success Magazine," in New York, aroused national attention by urging Congress'to !' bring an end to the Proliibition farce." The Volstead Act, Colonel Roosevelt charged, has "debauched our citizens, prostituted many of our public officials, and brought the ?utiro American body politic into disrepute. No law in the history of the country has contributed to the breakdown of law as has the Volstead Act.' We should repeal it." / Young "Teddy" laid the blame of a rising crime wavo to Prohibition's door. "Prohibition," he said, "has brought about a violation of law on a more gigantic scale than the United States has ever known. The ratio of criminal convictions committed, is dropping materially all over the country." The bootlegging profession, he said, "is in intimate touch with the underworld. The gunman, the thug, the footpad have now turned their attention to contraband liquor trade." Faced by steadily increasing public opinion, Colonel Roosevelt said, "Congress should repeal the Volstead Act and substitute 6ome enactment permitting the increase of alcoholic content to such a point as the Constitution will allow."

He criticised the "theory of the dry law," and declared: "We must guard against any attempt to 'legislate a state of mind."