Borah v. Butler

Frank W. Stearns, Boston merchant and unofficial godfather of Calvin Coolidge, resigned from the Roosevelt Club of Boston, but the club's membership had suddenly jumped from 350 to the limit of 1,000. . . . Free tickets for a debate between a Senator from Idaho and a college president sold (some of them) for as high as $20. . . . Symphony Hall in Boston had never before held a jamming, cheering, laughing, applauding 3,500. . . . Newspapers choked with type on the subject. . . . Prohibition was the cause of it all.

No particularly new arguments were created by Senator William Edgar Borah of Idaho, Dry Republican, and President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, Wet Republican, in their Boston debate last week, but what was said was said eloquently. Herewith some of it:

From Dr. Butler: "Let me tell you in a moment why I am moved to stir up everywhere and always the question of the attempt to enforce compulsory total abstinence by constitutional amendment.

"On a dark March afternoon in 1920 I sat in the Supreme Court of the United States . . . and I listened to the conclusion of a great argument. The case at the bar was as to the validity of the so-called 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. . . .

"In front of an attentive court stood the tall, pale figure of an acknowledged leader of the American bar, one of the most distinguished public servants of his generation, who was presenting the argument against the validity of the amendment.

"He looked at the clock behind the Chief Justice and saw that it was within two or three minutes of the hour when the Court would rise, and he concluded his impressive argument with these exact words: 'If your honors shall find a way to uphold the validity of this amendment, the Government of the United States as we have known it will have ceased to exist. Your honors will have found a legislative authority hitherto unknown to the Constitution, and untrammeled by any of its limitations. . . .'

"It was a tense moment when Elihu Root ended. ... I made an inner vow, there and then, that if the Court should find a way to uphold that amendment, despite that argument, I would give such strength and time as were at my command to appeal to the American people to undo that wrecking of our Government. . . .

"You will not hear from me but once the word 'Wet' or 'Dry.' I do not use them, first, because they are vulgar, and, second, because they are meaningless. My sense of humor protects me from applying the word 'Dry' to those supporters of a policy which has filled this nation, from Atlantic to Pacific, from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande, with a traffic in intoxicating liquor, wholesale and retail, that is illicit, illegal, untaxed and stupendously profitable. . . .

"My first ground of appeal to my party to lead the way in restoring our Government is that this amendment is revolutionary and highly dangerous. There are two ways of overturning a federal form of government and destroying it.

"One is by breaking it to pieces, which was secession. The other, and equally dangerous, is to destroy the component parts by building up at the centre a great federal bureaucracy to care for every detail of local and State administration and life. . . .

"No matter what may be the evasions and silences of party platforms, no candidate for high office will be permitted to shelter himself behind the papier-mache breastwork of law enforcement. He will have to stand up and declare whether he is for the Federal Union established by the Constitution or against it; whether he is for the forbidden and abhorrent 18th Amendment, which has been forced into the Constitution, or against it. . .. ."

From Mr. Borah: "I have a profound respect for the opinions of Senator Root; I know his standing as a lawyer and a statesman, but I have a still more profound respect for the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. If the Constitution of the United States, as construed by the Supreme Court, be not the law, then there is no law. . . . "I agree with Dr. Butler that this is not a case which can be cured by the application of political soothing syrup, and certainly the Republican Party would not take a position in the next campaign upon the question of near-modification of the Volstead act. . . . "Then we come to the other proposal, which was hinted at. But Dr. Butler did not seem to touch it, and that is the repeal of the 18th Amendment and the substitution therefor of Government control, Government sale and distribution of intoxicating liquor to 120,000,000 of people. . . . "In my opinion, it would rot out the pillars of government inside of half a century. It contains every evil and none of the virtues of Prohibition. It would be bureaucracy and bureaucracy--drunk! . . . "I agree with Dr. Butler. The fight is on. So far as I am concerned, I do not care whether it is in the Republican platform or not, it will be presented to the American people in the campaign of 1928. . . . "If a great party in this country will really put itself behind this amendment and in a quarter of a century, even so short a time, it has made no progress, it will be time enough to talk about a repeal of the 18th Amendment and going back to the saloon." The Verdict. And so it seems, as mentioned by Dr. Butler in his rebuttal, that the fundamental difference between these two gentlemen is whether or not the 18th Amendment is constitutional. Nine unofficial judges of the debate decided, six to three, that Mr. Borah and the U. S. Supreme Court decision of 1920 had better arguments than Dr. Butler and Lawyer Root.