Dry Discord

President Hoover at the Gridiron Club dinner last month heard the shade of Historian John Fiske reveal "the truth" about Lincoln's attitude toward slavery. Fiske quoted Lincoln as saying: "The great issue of slavery must be met. We are engaged in a noble experiment. . . . I am appointing a commission to go into the whole labor situation, including slavery, which will report sometime, somewhere, somehow."

The President could smile at this parody of his appointment of the National Law Enforcement Commission. But it was no smiling matter for him last week when senators, instead of Gridiron japesters, began in earnest to hector his commission and the Administration's Prohibition policy.

Democratic Dry Senator Harris of Georgia, hearing that one commissioner was dickering for a four-year lease on a Washington home, threatened to withhold the commission's expense money unless it ceased its secret activities. Exclaimed Senator Harris: "Every enemy of Prohibition is in favor of the commission . . . acting behind closed doors and conducting their deliberations for years." He demanded a report from the commission to justify its existence.

While the commission maintained its gravelike silence, one of the commissioners, U. S. District Judge Paul John McCormick, returned to his Los Angeles home for the holidays. There, "speaking as an individual," he gave an interview on the commission's work, in which he saw two major problems--Prohibition enforcement and "governmental lawlessness." Deploring the search of private homes by Dry agents without warrants, he observed :

"It is a gross misuse and denial of constitutional rights of citizens and a menace to life and property. A man's home is his castle and the practice of entering it for Prohibition enforcement, without recourse to legal procedure, should be abolished."

Despite the fact that Judge McCormick had lately sat on the U. S. bench in Manhattan, had there issued many a Dry padlock order against Broadway night clubs, Senator Harris cried: "Just what I feared! . . . An encouragement to violations of the law. . . . A partisan against Prohibition unfit to hold office on the commission. . . . Prohibition forces will be greatly disappointed if the President does not remove this man. . . ."

Senator Borah, arch-campaigner last year for Herbert Hoover, swerved off in a new direction when he contributed this statement to the growing discussion:

"I'm not deeply concerned about a report from the commission. . . . If it should report, it will not tell us anything that we do not know. . . . The only thing is to find the kind of officials who will enforce the law. . . . It will never be enforced by the present personnel from top to bottom. I'm more interested in officials . . . than in the theories and dissertations of the commission."

The "top" of the "present personnel," Secretary of the Treasury Andrew William Mellon, had not had a good night's sleep for a week before the Borah blast. It was not the problems of Prohibition that kept him awake, however, but rough seas in the Bahamas whither he had cruised aboard the yacht Vagabondia. Putting in to San Juan, Porto Rico, Secretary Mellon got some rest at a hotel.

In his absence defense of Prohibition, as is, fell upon Attorney-General Mitchell who retorted to Senator Borah:

"There never has been greater zeal and activity . . . great handicaps. . . . When Congress is ready to consider and adopt legislation to carry out the Administration's recommendations for more adequate law enforcement machinery, those whose duty it is to enforce the law will be able to accomplish more. . . . Determined and unceasing pressure from the President for enforcement. . . . Such deficiencies as exist . . . are not due to lack of will . . . either at the top or the bottom."

Chimed in Prohibition Commissioner Doran: "To say that Prohibition cannot be enforced with present personnel comes perilously near to saying that it cannot be enforced at all."

All this eruption of talk was most bothersome to President Hoover. It was a topic he had hoped to muffle away while his commission studied it and many another matter. Wets kept out of the hubbub while Drys waged a factional war. Around Washington spread a belief that professional prohibitors in Congress really suspected the commission might recommend changes in the Dry law.

President Hoover called in Senators Harris and Borah, soothed them with kind words. Chairman George Woodward Wickersham announced that his commission's report on "Law Enforcement" was ready. Undersecretary of the Treasury Mills plotted out a scheme of enforcement improvements whereby the coast guard and the border patrol would be unified, the number of ports of entry along the border reduced. From the White House emanated intimations of more shakeups, further reorganizations, in the enforcement service; of the President's putting U. S. district attorneys on their mettle. Senator Sheppard of Texas, author of the 18th Amendment, dusted off his bill to make liquor-buyers as culpable as bootleggers. Senator Harris prepared to renew his demand to double enforcement appropriations, bringing them up to 30 millions per year. Dry Senator Norris of Nebraska entered the general excitement by joining Senator Brookhart of Iowa in a loud demand for Secretary Mellon's resignation.

Construing this as an attack on the President, the latter's good friend, Senator Jones of Washington, author of the famed Five & Ten Law, announced: "The President believes in Prohibition as sincerely as I do. . . . The President is doing his best." Which prompted Senator Borah to thunder again. Said he: "Washing your hands with sightless soap in the presence of the President will not bring effective service!"

Senator Borah also added: "The permit system itself is a scandal. . . . Practically open saloons are running in the jurisdiction of district attorney after district attorney. . . . I don't mean simply New York or Chicago; I mean a condition which prevails throughout the country."

Since Senator Borah is undoubtedly a power, indeed one of the most potent powers that got President Hoover elected, something had to be done and done quickly. So Attorney-General Mitchell issued orders to each & every district attorney, forbidding them to dismiss any liquor cases on court dockets without explicit permission from the Department of Justice.

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