The Wets Take the Field
Thompson, Charles Willis
October 29, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 657 THE WETS TAKE THE FIELD THE wet-dry war has undergone a transformation in 1930; not a complete transformation, the wets to the offensive and the...
...As a slogan, repeal is just right, for it makes an unequivocal issue and erects a flagpole to rally around...
...Here is a list of a few of the states that never will vote to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, never until the crack of doom: Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas, Vermont and Maine— sixteen in all...
...This it has done countless times with statutes, and several times with provisions of the constitution...
...nobody wants to go to battle for a half-measure...
...here are sixteen (and there are more) which, under the constitution, can thwart the will of the majority of the forty-eight states and a majority of the people of the nation...
...But all that is in the future ; meanwhile, let the battle go on...
...Thompson...
...This is all in the East, and we have been told that the West would never come over to the wets...
...His observations cover of Shakespeare's stage dipretty far and is going fur- a wide field> ran9in9 from California to New Jersey, rections: "Laertes wounds ther...
...In such a division nearly all the North will have to become wet, ultimately...
...Under the constitution any proposed amendment can be defeated not only by a small minority of the people, but by a small minority of the states...
...In the long, confused din of ten years it has been vaguely assumed that it was a question of the East against the West...
...A defeated candidate must never bolt, because people will say that he is a sorehead...
...but she had to declare herself, and she decided to please the wets...
...As for the South, it has its own reasons for staying politically dry, whatever may be the degree of respect paid to the law in that section...
...The signs, then, are that in the near outcome it will be city against country...
...first time, I do not mean Hamlet wounds Laertes...
...In Washington, the home of Senator Jones, author of the driest of all dry laws, the Republican convention declared for modification...
...The progress of the transformation in this one year has been so rapid that the architects of transformation themselves have not been able to keep up with their own work...
...But, wherever there is a change, it is a change brought about by the cities...
...The situation reminds one By CHARLES WILLIS THOMPSON What one of the most experienced of journalists has change, it is the change of to say about the changing fortunes of the epochal struggle over prohibition is presented to our readers with full assurance that an objective and fair treatment of the subhut one that has advanced iect is 9iven h Mr...
...In California the Republican voters nominated Mayor Rolph for Governor, and nominated him as a wet...
...His view as to the outcome of TT , ° , rT sive and the drys the de- ., , ¦ . .. , , „ ., ,, . ,, ui«~i«* --------j- i — T • ((/• the struggle is particularly well thought out, tho tensive...
...Anybody who is interested can prove this for himself...
...It is somewhat like the year 1854, when the confusion on the slavery question began to dissipate rapidly and alignments began to be made...
...Tuttle, forced them to range themselves on the side of the wets, bolt or no bolt...
...In saying for the may dash the hopes of both sides._The Editors...
...Prophecy is risky, and all one can safely do is to note the signs...
...There comes a time," he said, "in the life of every individual who is true to himself when principle must be made paramount...
...The old sectional one, North against South...
...They have dropped, in the East at any rate, the old meaningless shift of calling for "light wines and beer," which was the voice of timidity in the presence of Anti-saloon League domination...
...So vigorous is the wet offensive that the days of courage are being revived, the days of cowardice are disappearing everywhere, men are speaking their convictions, and pussyfooters are being dragged into the open and made to step hard...
...it is, and always has been, an unacknowledged form of government...
...The harlequin of Massachusetts politics, Bossy Gillis, intruded himself as another wet candidate, wetter than Draper, and 22,000 foolish wets wasted their votes on him...
...He has only got as far as Mr...
...Two years later there was, for the first time, a straight-out battle at the polls between the supporters and opponents of slavery...
...Smith got two years ago...
...The New York Republicans, remembering how the drys bolted and beat their one wet candidate, Senator Wadsworth, were determined to pussyfoot...
...This is excellent, as a slogan...
...Nobody will shed his blood for a compromise...
...great majority finds its will thwarted by a law kept on the books by a small minority, it merely nullifies it...
...Even in such a wet state as New York, it was the cities which commanded the change...
...New York would be as dry as Kansas, politically, if the rural districts ruled as they used to...
...There are, in truth, several more, but I confine myself to these because nobody will dispute me...
...This, of course, does not portend any internecine division in the wet states and those that are growing wet...
...The Democratic candidate is a wet...
...Two years ago Governor Smith was taking the extremely advanced position that the Eighteenth Amendment should be replaced by another...
...the majority in each will rule...
...Draper, with old-fashioned New England sturdiness, bolted just the same...
...But wherever in the West, the issue is being made, it is always the same story: the wet offensive, the dry defensive...
...he is for repeal and a new amendment, but that is a somersault for the Republican party in his state...
...The South is left out of this estimate, of course, for even such wet cities as Mobile must submit to the inexorable southern need for statutory dryness...
...it will be silently nullified...
...That was frightfully radical for 1928...
...This year Governor Roosevelt was declaring for a new amendment too, and hardly were the words out of his mouth when the New York Democrats nominated him on a platform declaring for unconditional repeal and no new amendment whatever...
...they nominated ex-Senator Gerry on a platform declaring: "We therefore advocate the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, substituting therefor state legislation...
...But that is not the heart of the matter...
...Outspokenly wet New Jersey, for instance, is further along than Montana, California, Washington and Oregon, where the new militancy and aggressiveness of the wets is only beginning to compel an exchange of rapiers—to recur to the Hamlet figure...
...It only portends a division between those states in which the cities rule and those states in which the farms rule...
...in the Middle-West the fight is on in Ohio, in Illinois—where, as in New York, a bolting Republican dry is running—and less sharply in other states...
...This is not according to Hoyle...
...Senator Dill, Democrat and very dry, says he expects to see the legislature submit a referendum repealing or amending the state enforcement act...
...not a complete transformation, the wets to the offensive and the drys to the defensive...
...The change, in these northern states, differs in degree...
...Now, all this is in a year of transition...
...Nullification" has an ugly sound because of its associations, but it is neither criminal nor wrong...
...The fight was led by King County, which means Seattle, and in the primaries there the wet leader, Ralph A. Horr, defeated the 658 THE COMMONWEAL October 29, 1930 present dry Representative and won the nomination on the wet issue...
...This aberration presented the nomination to the minority candidate, Butler, and the will of the voters was thwarted by the intransigence of some of them...
...but their candidate, Mr...
...It takes only thirteen states to defeat a proposed amendment...
...Still, the will of the majority never can be thwarted very long...
...When the...
...Back to 1919 and state rights, in other words...
...That is changing...
...Their state convention straddled the issue, hoping to tide over just one more election before taking one side or the other...
...and it will not change...
...They are advocating straight-out repeal...
...In Massachusetts nothing but an asinine third canthe first time since the Eighteenth Amendment was passed...
...The Eighteenth Amendment will never be repealed...
...But, as a practical measure, repeal is impossible...
...What is it to be...
...Somewhat out of breath, the governor scurried up to the band wagon and swung aboard it as it was hurtling past...
...I mean the first time in history...
...The Democrats nominated a wet, Milton K. Young, on a dry platform, but what the Democrats do is of no great importance in California...
...Prohibition has never been an issue in Oregon since that state "settled" the question in 1916, but this year, for the first time, a candidate of high standing has opened war on the Anti-saloon League—and, significantly, in Multnomah County...
...The candidates were Butler, a dry, and Draper, a wet...
...nobody can get enthusiastic over a proposition to do something that will partly satisfy the other fellow...
...For the first time the ™d have been weighed and tested in the scales of a realis- Hamlet...
...What, then, is to be the final outcome...
...wet in the political sense...
...In Montana Senator Walsh, dry as he is, says he will abide by the will of the voters...
...As fast as they take an advanced position they find themselves in the rear, and have to run to catch up with the procession they started...
...The position of the northwestern and middle-western drys is becoming more and more precarious...
...The Anti-saloon League tried to get a mixed decision by inducing the state convention to declare for the Eighteenth Amendment as usual, but the convention adopted a platform which said nothing whatever on the subject...
...Everywhere, if there is a didacy prevented the Republican voters from being as bold as in New York...
...and "repeal" and "law enforcement," though impossible of achievement, are yet good slogans for the contenders...
...They are fighting to free the wet states from being forced by law into dryness...
...It is an interesting ^ ch . j , , , , presentation of facts...
...McCormick, running for the Senate in Illinois, had it all framed up to win the election by pleasing both wets and drys...
...The transformation began in New Jersey, with Ambassador Morrow's declaration for repeal and his unprecedented victory...
...The voices in Montana, Washington, Oregon and California show the sudden militancy of the wets, and wherever there is a showdown they are either victorious or obviously on their way...
...The most noteworthy symptom is the advanced ground the wets are taking...
...Since 1920 the prohibition debate has been a fog and a hurly-burly, but in 1930 all over the Union is sounding an imperative challenge to politicians, and out of it the line-up will speedily emerge...
...If the wets could get a two-thirds majority in each House of Congress to submit an amendment, it would not get into the constitution unless ratified by three-fourths of the states...
...Those northern states which are being rapidly forced over from nominal political dryness into open political wetness are being so forced by the cities...
...Such states as Kansas do not figure in the calculation, for long before the Eighteenth Amendment Kansas was dry by preference, and the wets are not campaigning to force wetness on any state that wants to be dry...
...As they advance, or rather as they gallop on, they are dropping the other timid and paltering compromise—the proposal to substitute a new and milder constitutional amendment for the unenforceable Eighteenth...
...Thereupon Draper bolted...
...He is General Charles H. Martin, Democratic candidate for Congress...
...Three days later the Rhode Island Democrats did the same thing...
...The drys, fighting on the defensive, are conducting a state-wide campaign to make candidates repudiate the platform...
...then in 8CUfflJng wets have taken the offen- tlC ^d well-trained judgment...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 26
