The Brookhart Crusade
THE BROOKHART CRUSADE THE past year went a good way toward knocking the bottom out of "prosperity." Has it likewise removed the underpinning from prohibition? This promises to be the question which...
...Observers had predicted-and the President's message seemed to take for granted-that most of the Capitol's brow-knitting would be caused by the tariff, farm relief and similar prosaic matters...
...Ogden L. Mills, Under-Secretary of the Treasury...
...I want Secretary Mellon removed," he declares, "but that alone will not suffice...
...Whether that would mean an alignment of moderate drys against extremists remains to be seen, and is at present doubtful...
...And in a manner equally impressive the queries advanced by the Senator from Iowa have expanded into the slogans of a crusade...
...The supply of rebuttals to the Borah thesis has been enormous...
...This promises to be the question which will most seriously engross Congress during what remains of the present session...
...After all, if a university is worth anything, it must teach that law is a creature of reason...
...and having applied this to the problem in hand, he reported that (a) the Eighteenth Amendment was not being observed, and (b) improvement was out of the question until the personnel charged with enforcement could be overhauled "from top to bottom...
...Upon the basis of this evidence the Senator launched a fierce attack upon the administration...
...Hoover is reported as having inquired into the precise meaning and documentation of that thesis...
...Senator Brookhart has returned to the charge...
...Virtually everybody engaged in the battle upon bootleggers at least engineered a good defense-of himself...
...But as a whole the crusade is obviously not aimed at a limited group but at the whole attitude toward prohibition which the Republican party has allowed itself to assume...
...Seymour Lowman, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury...
...James Doran, Commissioner of Prohibition-these are some of the gentlemen branded for extinction...
...Some are contending that the aforesaid purchaser is lawless at present, but a new measure might relieve his conscience of all doubt...
...Everybody expects that the result will be an attempt to push through Congress some more drastic legislation than has hitherto been in vogue...
...He confessed that like unto a certain celebrated naval hero, he had only begun to fight...
...If the law was not being enforced in the District of Columbia, where was it being staunchly upheld...
...Senator Borah has an almost scientific confidence in the statistical method...
...While President Nicholas Murray Butler cannot be accused of ever having abetted the causes dear to Bishop Cannon, it is of not a little importance that he should have issued the following statement in an academic report: "There is no ground whatever for the conventional statement that violation of one law, or disrespect for it, leads to the disregard of all law...
...The contrary is the case...
...When Jones finds himself out of step with all his neighbors, there is little doubt regarding Jones's inability to make a helpmeet of reason...
...All of which seems to promise a lively fight, not to mention a curtailment of the general peace of mind...
...As a plan it has much to commend it from the indefatigably resurgent point of view...
...Bryan's most eloquent addresses...
...It is evident, however, that while prohibitionists from the South may continue to pin naive faith to some fresh and rosy statute, men of the Borah stamp are out to strengthen executive support of the Amendment...
...Such a development had not been foreseen...
...Somewhat more than a year ago, many a voter thought that the dry law could be formally upheld at the polls and informally ignored afterward...
...Now it is quite conceivable that this quest for "a complete reorganization of prohibition officials at the top" is really a flank attack upon the "conservative" element in the administration...
...A tiny grain of wheat, detected inside an Egyptian pyramid, flowered into one of Mr...
...Even Mr...
...What we obey, or respect, is not the formula arrived at by a majority of gentlemen canny enough to get themselves elected, but the sovereignty of reason...
...But when a problem has racked the brains and consciences of an electorate during years, when no egress seems permitted from a practical tangle, it is no idle thing to say that respect for reason is a prime civic necessity...
...And if the President had endorsed the "noble experiment," how high a valuation ought to be placed upon that endorsement ? Great gladioli from little corbels grow...
...Under such circumstances it is a relief to discern that statesmen are not alone in their devotion to the prohibition theme...
...In so far as they have unveiled their tactics, the extremists seem to be working for a law which will make the purchaser of liquor as guilty as the seller...
...These voters unquestionably are going to receive a jolt...
...But Senator Brookhart went to a dinner and his usually dependable nose ferreted out a flask the contents of which were, seemingly, illegal...
...And the end is not yet...
...Purely political factors, anxiety about the fate of drought and personal considerations all seem inextricably involved in this latest endeavor to give Volsteadism a curtain call...
...It was learned that evidence regarding the prevalence of offenses against Volsteadism was by no means limited to odors escaping from a bottle...
...Indeed the catalogue of persons whom the Senator would conduct to the exit is almost the Social Register of Washington...
Vol. 11 • January 1930 • No. 11
