AN OUTSPOKEN PROHIBITIONIST.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5348, 7 November 1928, Page 3

AN OUTSPOKEN PROHIBITIONIST.

MAYOR OF PHIMDELPHIA’S

DIFFICULTY.

Mayor- Mackay, according to the Philadelphia “Bulletin” of April 13, 1928, challenged President Cocjlidge, Congress, a,nd all Federal authorities of the District of Columbia t|o “dry ■up’’ Washington! and make it an example of prohibition enforcement to the rept of the nation. Mayor Mackay said: Why dbes not the President and the Congress give t|he rest of thie nation a real example in the enforcement of the dry laws if prohibition is enforceable ? My stand ha s been taken, and everybody knows what it is.” Mr Mackay said : “I have given Director Davis his instructions. Frqm now on the entire matter of policy activity lies in the Department’s hands.” 1 Dealing with speakeasies and the people who patronise them, Mayor Mac.kay said this :—. “I have always been a prohibitionist, and I want the policy of prohibir tiqn to triumph, an.l I am anxious t° enforce the law to the utmost. To make Philadelphia dry —something that cannlot, in fact, be donei” —he said. “I am caught bqtween the upper, and iqwer layers in. conection with prohibition. I mean .the people who say in public that the speakeasies of this city should be closed, and who are the people in private who patfrqnise these spenleasies. “When I became Mayior of this city I was left with 13,000 speakesies on my doorstep by the previous administration. I say, and! I say emphatically, that to make! thjs dry it would been necessary to double' the police force, double the number of judges, increase the District Attorney’s office and build and maintain additional prisons. Doubling the p'o'Jice force would ccjst over seven millic'n dfollars more a year to collect from taxpayers, and: altogether complete; enforcement measurements would call for a round ten million, dollars extra in city cqsts. It is time,” concluded Miayor Mackay, “that the public itself faced the facts. Are citizens willing to pay higher taxation in an effort to. enfor., e prohibition ? ”

Such is the state- of affairs in the city of Philadelphia, where even the Mayc;r, himself a prohibitionist, is unable to .cope with the evils, corruption and social degradation which prohibition has