Committee Hearings

There are five members of that subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee which for the past fortnight has had before it the subject of prohibition--Senators Harreld of Oklahoma,* Walsh of Montana, Reed/- of Missouri, Goff of West Virginia, Means of Colorado. But all five are rarely present. Once last week only Senator Harreld was there, and he was lounging behind his home-town newspaper while serious-minded witnesses gave testimony.

The eleven-day case for the Wets, ably managed by Senators Bruce of Maryland and Edge of New Jersey, came to a close with a vigorous speech from President Samuel H. Church of Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh. He accused professional Protestant reform-fanatics of seeking ecclesiastical control of the U. S. Government:

"The Methodist Church is out-heroding Herod in its demand for the religious control of our people. They have organized their Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, have a building of their own in Washington and, with the zeal of Torquemada, are striving for the ecclesiastical mastery of private conduct, not through the Gospel but through law. . . .

"The Baptist Church has organized the Lord's Day Alliance, and under the guidance of Rev. Harry L. Bowlby is moving heaven and earth to wipe out by civil statutes every ounce of pastime and pleasure of those weary and toiling masses who more and more are looking to Sunday as a day of healthful recreation and happy exercise. . . ."

Father Kasaczun, a parish priest of Sugar Notch in the Pennsylvania anthracite district, had previously given the most lurid account of the alcoholism of this era. Stills, he said, were to be found, in at least one out of every five homes. Parents got drunk in the presence of their children. Wives who tended the stills ended by running away with the "star-boarder." Young girls demanded that their boy friends provide liquor on auto parties, so that immorality at tender ages was prevalent. Once the priest heard a child of three pleading, "Mamma, moonshine."

This horrifying testimony was supported by Mrs. Viola M. Anglin, of the City Magistrate's courts, New York City, who said that every New York child who was at all acquainted with his neighborhood could direct one to a speakeasy. The committee listened with particular keenness when she told the tale of a woman who had been deserted by a bootlegger-husband and then turned bootlegger herself, much to the material advancement of her children.

The Drys, managed by Wayne B. Wheeler (hated and detested by Wets), resumed their testimony with an army of dignitaries, chiefly ecclesiastic.

Caparisoned in robes of office, came Episcopal Bishop James Henry Darlington of Harrisburg. Most pertinently he countered the evidence of the Catholic parish priest by pointing out that, under prohibition, Pennsylvania had last fall seen its first coal strike not marked by disorder. The Bishop, like all Dry witnesses, tended to show that the effects of prohibition upon the morals of the young were grossly exaggerated. And also the Bishop strongly insisted that beer, although slower to work, "produces greater stupefaction." He said he had known of 40,000 whisky drinkers who had reformed, but only 200 beer drinkers.

Rev. Charles S. MacFarland of the Federal Council of Churches hailed prohibition as a "magnificent experiment," eloquently pleaded: "Give it a chance."

Hosts of welfare workers presented figures, opinions, to counteract those previously presented by Wets, but the most unusual Dry witness was Amos Alonzo Stagg, Yale football star of long ago and famed University of Chicago coach. Said he: "When I went to Yale I saw many of my college mates get drunk. They did not always get drunk on the beer, but they got drunk on the wine when they chose to drink that.

"I want to say this: that the University of Chicago from the beginning took a strong stand against drinking, and the officers of the University and members of the Faculty created a sentiment against it, so that there has never been anything like the drinking at the University of Chicago that I saw at Yale. And I can say this with honesty, that there has not been nearly as much drinking since prohibition came in as before."

There was also testimony from Canadians casting doubt upon the success of government distribution of liquor.

*The state which was "born dry," as there was a dry clause in its constitution when admitted to the Union.

/-The only Wet on the subcommittee, the wittiest, and, with the possible exception of Walsh, the most brilliant cross-examiner.