AN OUTSPOKEN PROHIBITIONIST

NZ Truth, Issue 1197, 8 November 1928, Page 21

AN OUTSPOKEN PROHIBITIONIST

MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA'S DIFFICULTY. ' ' ;

* ; ■■.-. . . ' . ■ Mayor Mackay, according to' the Philadelphia "Bulletin"' of April:. 13, 1928, challenged President Coolidge, Congress,' and "all Federal authorities of the District of Columbia 'to "dry up" Washington . and make it an example of prohibition enforcement to the rest of the nation. .' Mayor Mackay said: "Why does not the President and the Congress give the rest of the nation a real example In the enforcement of the dry laws if prohibition is enforceable? My stand has been taken, and everybody knows what it is," . Mr. Mackay. said:- '.'l. have given Director Davis his instructions. From how on the entire [' matter _of police activity lies m the. Department's hands." . .

Dealing-- with speakeasies, and the people who patronise them, Mayor Mackay said this:— ,

"I have always been! a prohibitionist, and I want the policy of prohibition to triumph, and I am anxious to enforce the law to the utmost. To make Philadelphia dry— something that cannot m fact be done"— he said, "I am caught between the upper and lower layers In connection with prohibition. I mean the people who say m. public that the speakeasies of this city should be closed, and who are the people In private who patronise these speakeasies. ' ■ : ..,-.■ .-• . ~

"When I became Mayor of this city I was left with 13,000 speakeasies on, my door step by/the previous administration. I say, and I say emphatically, that to. make this city dry it would 6% 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 police force would cost over 7 million dollars more a year to collect from taxpayers, and altogether complete enforcement measurements would call for a round ten million dollars extra m city costs.. It is time," concluded Mayor Mackay, Vthat the public Itself faced the facts. Are citizens willing to pay higher taxation m air effort to enforce prohibition?" ■"

Such is the state of affairs m the city of Philadelphia, where even the Mayor, himself a prohibitionist, Js unable to cope with the evils, corrupJion and social degradation which prohibition has produced.* 9