PROHIBITION STANDS MORALLY RIGHT AND ECONOMICALLY WISE.

White Ribbon, Volume 32, Issue 377, 18 December 1926, Page 8

PROHIBITION STANDS MORALLY RIGHT AND ECONOMICALLY WISE.

I By Guy Hayler, President, World Prohibition Federation.) Fifteen propositions for the repeal or nullification of the Eighteenth Amendment have gone into the waste paper basket, because the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee declares in its report that Prohibition is morally right and economically wise. So ends another defeat for the Wets of the world. The findings were attested to by four of the five members of the subcommittee: Hice W. Means (R), Senator for Colorado, Chairman of the group; Guy D. Goff (R). Senator from West Virginia; John W. Harreld (R), Senator from Oklahoma, and Thomas J. Walsh (D), Senator from Montana. Senator James Reed (D), w’ho hails from Missouri, was the only member of the Committee who did not sign the report, and the absence of his name was to be expected, as he is known as a Wet, and had acted In a partizan spirit throughout the inquiry. The complete report of the Committee declared: “The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States w’as ratified according to a proclamation of the Secretary of State, January 29th. 1919. We believe this amendment to be morally right and economically wise. So long as this Amendment is a part of our fundamental law, it is the duty of all officers, executive and judicial, to aid in Its enforcement. The advocates of modification of the present Prohibition law's propose to weaken the same. They seek directly or indirectly to authorize the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages. This i 3 contrary to the spirit and intent of the Eighteenth Amendment. The Constitution is a grant of powers. Those powers are limited and such limits are not to be transcended. A national referendum is not provided for, and it is our belief that it was not the intention of the framers of the Constitution, that a national referendum w'ould ever be attempted. No law's have been enacted which provide a machinery for the holding of such a referendum.”

The Report, with the evidence taken before the Committee runs into 1,660 pages and reveals the not surprising fact that the bulk of the witnesses and written or printed evidence came from cities like Chicago, New' York, Philadelphia, where, law enforcement wiuld naturally be a difficult matter. The Dry forces with minor exceptions w r ere represented. as Dr. Charles Scanlon points out, by men and women cf distinction, character and ability, who were acquainted with the facts and gave them in such volume and with such conclusiveness that the Hearing will afford fresh materia] for years to come. The Columbus “Ohio State Journal” says. “The wet advocates In Congress have lost their fight. Their proposal for a referendum on the Volstead Law- and uL their proposals for the modification of that law have died in the Senate to which they were referred. It w r as a foregone conclusion. The Committee has a dry majority, and both Houses of Congress, as at present constituted, are overwhelmingly dry.” “The satisfaction of the l)rj« with the result requires no explanation,” says the "Literary Digest.” The Wets profess themselves contended with a defeat in that they secured from a “notably dry Senate such a hearing as was given” as the wet daily, “Springfield Union" puts it. The Liquor men are making their last-stand efforts in the United States to bring back alcohol. They have ceased to defend or justify the Liquor Traffic, nor can they get anyone to defend it on its merits. The present tactics is to defy the law. to encourage others to defy it. in the hope —and a forelorn hope if the United States is to govern itself democratically—that the Federal Government will surrender. But there is great power on the side of those forces which seek to uphold law's that are morally right and economically wise, ar.d the faith recognising that cannot fail.