Congressional Attention

With Congress once more functioning many matters came to Congressional tongue tips, among them prohibition.

In the Senate the most entertaining proposal was a resolution by Coleman L. Blease, fire-eater, elected in South Carolina a year ago. His resolution would require the Treasury Department to investigate the use of liquors in foreign embassies and legations; he wants to know whether the Italian Debt Funding Mission had wines and beer, and if so, why no arrests were made. The Senator asseverated:

"I intend to see the Government enforces prohibition on all persons in the country, whether they are foreigners or not. If we can get along without liquor, so can the envoys."

The chief pronouncement in the Senate on prohibition came, however, from Walter E. Edge of New Jersey, a wet, who knows how to stir up trouble and is pretty sure he knows how the people of New Jersey stand. He delivered a long oration favoring modification of the Volstead Act. He quoted Stephen Leacock:

"But the plain truth is that beer is just an ordinary beverage. You cannot make it criminal if you try. The attempt is silly. Common sense revolts at it. Some people like beer and some don't. Some people find that it agrees with them and others do not. . . . The attempt to make the consumption of beer criminal is folly and futile. . . ."

These and other remarks of Mr. Edge engendered a stormy debate. Mr. Willis of Ohio, anti-saloon partisan, who is tenderly nursing his presidential aspirations, rose in reply.

MR. WILLIS:

"Of course, I do not have access to all of the company with which the Senator from New Jersey seems to be familiar, because as I understood him, he said that it is almost impossible to go into company without some one inquiring as to 'who has the supply?' Well, I have not had that experience, I regret to say, or do say without regret [laughter]; and if the Senator has had that experience and has been in such company he has had an experience which has not come to me."

Mr. McKELLAR: The Senator recalls that he and I were in the House in the old days when liquor was sold in Washington. I want to ask the Senator if he does not recall, when the saloons ran in the city of Washington--

Mr. WILLIS: It was reported to me that they were running; yes.

Mr. McKELLAR (continuing): That we saw at least 100 drunken men where we now see one even in the city of Washington, where the law is violated, as we are told?

Mr. WILLIS: Why, of course the Senator is correct about that. Senators travel upon trains as other citizens do. I submit to any Senator who has been traveling in the past 25 years whether there is any change in the situation. Drunkenness used to be common upon the trains. A score of times I have been spoken to by conductors upon the railroad trains in the State of Ohio, before prohibition went into effect, begging me to do what I could then, as a member of the general assembly and subsequently as a private citizen, to exterminate this traffic because they were annoyed by the drunkenness upon their trains. You do not find it now; I do not.

And so the row went on.

In the House, Prohibition came to the fore when the Treasury and Post Office Departments' appropriation bill was disbursed. Representative James A. Gallivan, of Massachusetts, Democrat, spoke to a packed house on a section in the Treasury appropriation providing $250,000 for the arrest of violators of the prohibition law. He described a banquet given by two prohibition agents (as described in an official report):

"Glory be to God, what an appetite they must have had! How the prohibition agents do enjoy themselves at the expense of the people! Here I read, tips to maitre d'hotel, $10; to assistant maitre d'hotel, $5; to numerous waiters, $6. Why, when I give them a 25 cent tip downstairs, they nearly fall on my neck.

"Now, what did they eat? 'Supreme of Cantaloupes au Porte. . .' Then after dinner they had cigars and cigarets. But they did not heed the remark of that great Vice President, Thomas R. Marshall, about a good 'five-cent cigar. These birds had to have Corona-Coronas at 70-c- apiece."