DRY LAW REPEAL

Hokitika Guardian, 22 February 1933, Page 2

DRY LAW REPEAL

APPROVAL CIVEN BY CONGRESS.

RESULT OF THE FIRST STEP,

(Ur'ted Press .Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.)

WASHINGTON, February 20

Congress put the repeal of the prohibition amendment up to the States when the House mustered the twothirds vote required .to approve the resolution already approved by the Senate.

The House voted repeal by 289 to 121, sixteen more - than the two-thirds majority required.

Conventions in 36 States must approve, to put the new lameridment, the 21st, into effect, as soon as the out come of the known Congressional quarrel on how." the State Conventions should be called, to act, has. swung into full light. Mr Roosevelt expressed gratification at the adoption of the prohibition repeal'resolution, and ' added, he hoped that this session would also enact the beer legislation now in the Senate. With a , vastly important first step, namely, Congressional-approval of the proposal to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment accomplished, at this season,'with a suddenness that generally had not beeh expected by even the strongest proponents of the wet clause, America to-day enters upon another crucpil stage of the Prohibition expertRepeal, and the selection of' the methods of the re-ihtroduction of the liquor’traffic. The. path of the complete reversal of the greatest of modern sumptuary and sociaL measures is beset, by many peculiar difficulties: The Blaine , Amendment provides for a step in constitutional action hitherto untried, namely, ratification ...by. State .Constitutonal Conventions, and not by State Legislation, r asi was , tb£ Highteant Aniendment. '• • .> .

There, is complete confusion concerning the procedure. " It is feared that u thq Wyoming is among the first to. have already calledthe Specified Convention —are .allowjed. flo proceed, 'in their forty-eight diverse, ways of carrying out the specific provision, the process of obtaining the requisite thirty-six ratifications might consume as much as four years',- with their constitutionality questionable in the ultimate interpretation by the United States Supreme Court.

It -is felt that ;a Federal . statute specifying. every detail in the creation of the procedure of the, State Conventions ’is essential. Efforts will he made toobtain such legislation, hut, it may be delayed until, a special session of Congress.

There is also no concealing the fact that the'Ttlry*’ Tfofces lie. TfaeP' again on their oldest and best-coin-inanded group when the Blaine Amendment room to the States for approval, unless a serious deterioration has occurred within the State “dry” organisations, and this is strongly denied by such outstanding prohibition figures as Bishop Cannot and the superintendent of the anti- 4 , saloon league, Mr Mcßride, who claim": that fifty per cent of the States still approve, of prohibition.

The Blaine Amendment may meet unexpected resistance in various strategic centres, such as Texas, Kansas, the and others, thus possibly delaying, if riot seriously endangering, ratification. It has long been claimed that the dry organisations have found it comparatively easy to manipulate the political control of the State legislatures wfiich approved of the Eighteenth Amendment. The provision for especi-al)y-choseni state constitutionalist contentions, contained in the Blaine proposal, is specifically desgned to fore—istjalT any similar manipulation. Whether it will be successful remains to be sqen. Even if the Blaine amendment isj approved by the States ,the liquor question in the United States will hardly to altogether settled. It will reqlly only then be ready for ultimate settlement, - and, since individual States under the new amendment, will haye the right to regulate or to prohibit the liquor traffic, according to their own desires, there is a strong possibility of much serious conflict between the State laws.

Although many States,:';Jed notably hy;New York State, hav^) already invitjed their most distinguished jurists aM public men to propose systems for tile control and regulation of the liquoi traffic, there is bound to Be much w jrking at cross-purposes, and two of tie principal . benefits which are expected to follow from the resumption of the authorised liquor business—namely, the eradication of the lawless elements, and the resumption of Governmental revenues —may not altogether be> realised in that “liquor running” between “wet” anel “dry,” or between even “wet” States, where the regulation is dissimilar, will allow the continuation to a serious degree of “idbt-legglng,” liquor racketing, and large-scale gang control.