Wet Plans

What the Anti-Saloon League has done, the Association against the Prohibition Amendment seeks to undo. What the late Wayne B. Wheeler was to Dryness, Captain William H. Stayton is to Wetness. Captain Stayton, an ex-Navy man now in the shipping business at Baltimore, is less vocal than was Mr. Wheeler. But Captain Stayton has been working away "patiently" for eight years as the brain and muscle of the A. A. P. A. Now & again he is heard from, as he was last week.

Atlantic Coast Republicans, including Senator Walter E. Edge of New Jersey, Representative-elect James M. Beck of Philadelphia, Representative John Philip Hill of Baltimore, one-time (1915-17) Senator James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. of New York and President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, attended a dinner at the Union League Club, Manhattan. Mr. Wadsworth and President Butler made orations but the oracle of the evening was Captain Stayton, who outlined his Association's plans for next year.

Captain Stayton repeated his remarks another evening at another dinner, given anonymously at a Manhattan hotel and attended by industrialists, bankers, lawyers.

Captain Stayton's desires & devices were as follows:

Desires: To see if the U. S. feels about Prohibition as it felt last decade. If feeling has changed, to repeal the 18th Amendment and deal with "the liquor question," which the A. A. P. A. admits exists, in some other way, perhaps by the "Quebec Plan" (government dispensaries).

Devices: To persuade both political parties to stand for a national Prohibition referendum. To send two letters, costing 5c each, to the 27,000,000 citizens who will register to vote next year. To defray the $3,000,000 which this letter campaign and other publicity would cost, by inviting citizens and corporations to contribute in proportion to what they would save per annum if a liquor tax should replace the income tax. Failing a national referendum, to obtain more state referenda.*

Captain Stayton paraphrased an imaginary income-taxpayer's reasoning: "'I want to get rid of these taxes. If the average man wants to drink beer and pay taxes on it, why, hell, let him do it.'"

P: Captain Stayton bowed to his chief foe. "The Anti-Saloon league is as afraid of a referendum as a woman is of a mouse."

P: Superintendent McBride of the Anti-Saloon League bowed to Captain Stayton and the A. A. P. A.: "They can get it [U. S. sentiment on liquor] for 50c in any good almanac or other compilation of the returns of last election."*

*Eight State referenda with liquor the issue have been held since all the states except Connecticut and Rhode Island ratified the 18th Amendment. These resulted as follows:

Wet % Dry %

Nevada 77 23

California 47 53

Missouri 34 66

Montana 53 47

New York 75 25

Wisconsin 66 34

Illinois 60 40

Colorado 41 59

States remaining Dry--3. States turned Wet--5.

*A mistake. No national referendum was held on Prohibition in 1924.--Ed.

/-Delaware is a popular state for persons desirous of forming temporary or dummy corporations. Delaware does not tax stock of Delaware corporations held by nonresidents of Delaware.