PROHIBITION FAILS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 909, 28 February 1930, Page 9

PROHIBITION FAILS

OPINION OF SOCIAL WORKER DEMAND FOR REPEAL NEW YORK, Wednesday. The Rev. John Ryan, director of the social action department of the National Catholic Welfare Council, gave evidence at a sitting of the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives which is investigating the prohibition law. He asserted that, as a result of that law, the President, Mr. Hoover, and the members of the National Enforcement Commission had committed an excess in their public utterances by trying to force a moral issue on the people. This noble experiment, said Mr. Ryan, already belonged definitely to the category of legislative failures. When a determined conscious majority of the people of America decided that they no longer wanted national prohibition they would find legal ways to end it, In spite of the undemocratic barrier erected by Conservatives, fanatics, autocrats, and industrialists. Mr. W. W. Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, appealed to the business interests of the country to get rid of prohibition. He based his demand upon the ground that prohibition had brought about universal disrespect for law, and that anything that destroyed respect for law menaced the general security of tlie country. Similar contentions were put forth, personally or by letter, by numerous prominent anti-prohibitionists, including Mr. J. W. jWadsworth, a member of he. Senate, and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University. •