The Luck of Prohibition
THE LUCK OF PROHIBITION TO THE friends of prohibition we extend our sympathies. It was their most bitter luck that the Union League Club and, less discouragingly, the National Republican Club of...
...Indeed the Republican party cannot much longer risk being branded as the party of prohibition...
...And what injury will be worked in half a dozen years...
...From various quarters have already been issued warnings of the danger to the Republican party implicit in the Union League poll and in the resolution of the National Republican Club...
...And in this case, unfortunately for the drys, somebody turned a hose into the mixing box just as the mortar was approaching its proper consistency...
...Immediately they will be of no harm, for where are the dissenters to turn...
...What shall happen to the culprit...
...And if more were needed, the circumstances of the last presidential campaign committed it to the support of prohibition, anxious as it was to avoid such commitment...
...It may be unjust to brand it in that way...
...But it is dreadfully important that events of the moment are not too outrageously at variance with the testimony, otherwise the wall can never be built up...
...Or perhaps, since neither of the major parties has shown much enthusiasm for the front-line work, it would be more accurate to say the party which permits itself to be associated with what we must here regard as the forces of error, will be hampered by that association...
...But we can see only phantom perils here...
...Hardly...
...Is it necessary to repeat that the Eighteenth Amendment is already on the way toward nullification, if not in law, then in practice ? When prohibition goes, the party which fights its battles will be pulled down with it...
...In the first place the opinions reflected are those of a very influential group of citizens...
...What political disaster would follow if the Republican party as a whole should announce its disapproval of dead-letter government, of legislation which cannot be executed except in defiance of the immediate, living wish of the people and in violation of the constitution...
...Observers of things American are seldom anywhere near agreement, for conditions vary greatly from state to state, often from county to county, but the one point on which they are almost unanimous at present is that except for the copy which it offers to the editorial and news columns, except for the small talk which it contributes to every dinner table, prohibition is treated exactly as though it did not exist...
...Is it necessary to repeat that everywhere there is a growing disinclination to cooperate with the federal government in enforcing prohibition, and that everywhere the brewing of beer, the pressing of wine, are developing into household arts...
...To the Democratic party...
...Now if the Republican party should be hankering to carry such a burden as the Democratic party carried after the Free-Silver campaign it will permit itself, by its silence, by its eloquent evasions when it is not silent, to be associated further in such a way...
...What happens before or after the hearing is not so important because what happens before can either be denied or explained away, and the testimony itself can be built up as a wall to overshadow or blot out what happens later...
...The advantage of this association with the drys was slight in 1928...
...but fairly or unfairly it has acquired the title, the fact that it has been in power throughout the trial of prohibition being enough to identify it with prohibition...
...It was their most bitter luck that the Union League Club and, less discouragingly, the National Republican Club of New York City, should have gone on record for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment even as the drys were having their turn before the House Judiciary Committee...
...We do think it dangerous...
...Far from placing the party in jeopardy, we think the Union League and the National Republican Club have prepared for it a stronger and more easily fortified position...
...And it seems to us that eventually those consequences are almost certain to be of advantage to Republicanism...
...We do not think it wise...
...They had a right to a fair hearing, and a fair hearing in these so complex days means not only that the examiners should be open-minded, but that the press should be conveniently free of contradictory evidence for the time being...
...If they have turned the Union League Club against a policy of the Republican party for the first time in its history they have not done so without a thought of the political consequences involved...
...it will be a very dubious advantage in 1932, and it will be a handicap in 1936...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 21
