Birthday

In different ways at different places, the tenth anniversary of Prohibition (Jan. 16) was celebrated last week.

P: At Detroit, the Anti-Saloon League of America held its 24th national convention. Famed Drys assembled from all over the land to testify to the success of their work, to pledge themselves to further endeavors. Dr. Ernest Hurst Cherrington, director of the Anti-Saloon League, proposed raising $50,000,000 for a ten-year program of "education." Four years ago a similar campaign on a smaller scale was instituted, no report made on its success or cost. Delegates speculated on whence the money would come. Dr. Cherrington said he had no large donors in mind, added: "We'll get it somehow. In God we trust."*

The League's president, Bishop Thomas Nicholson, urged "no quarter" for rum smugglers, declared: "I'm not for promiscuous killings, but I'm for the coast guard when they say 'We mean business.' "

Dr. Howard Hyde Russell, one of the League's 14 founders in the library of Oberlin College in 1893, presided over a "support the President" luncheon. He called on speakers to tell briefly why Industry backed President Hoover's Dry program. Few kept to the subject; only one, Luren D. Dickinson of Michigan, mentioned the President by name. Dr. Arthur James Barton of Atlanta declared: "Three years more--shall I say seven years more?--of the present order of things at the White House and the whole country will be Dry in law and in fact."

U. S. Prohibition Commissioner Doran sent a chill through his audience when he declared: "If under the lash of extremists, harsh and restrictive measures are adopted toward scientific and industrial groups [using alcohol], we will witness a terrific blow to scientific and commercial progress. . . . The crippling of our institutions, our medical arts and our commercial organizations . . . is too big a price to pay for this extreme brand of Prohibition."

Delegates heard Dr. Francis Scott McBride, their Washington lobbyist, recite his achievements. They crossed the Detroit River to have a look at government-controlled liquor stores and liquor export docks on the Canadian shore.

The Anti-Saloon League voted: 1) to get its friends to leave it large inheritances; 2) to oppose all referenda on Prohibition; 3) to intensify its propaganda; 4) to secure more Federal money and men for enforcement.

P: In New York, the local Women's Christian Temperance Union began a triumphant luncheon by singing:

We praise thee, O God, for the victory grand

That has driven the open saloon from our land.

P: In Chicago, the W. C. T. U. cut a birthday cake with ten candles, sang their anthem, "It's in the Constitution and it's there, there to stay." Excerpt:

It is there to stay; it is there to stay

Till the stars shall sink in silence

And the sun and moon decay.

Till the souls of men assemble in the final judgment day.

It is in the Constitution, and it's there, there to stay.

P: In Boston, the bell atop Faneuil Hall tolled mournfully. Beneath it men wearing black neckties, women wearing black rosettes packed into the historic old building. On the platform sat solemn elders in deep mourning. The Liberal Civic League had called the meeting "In memoriam of the death of Liberty and the 1,363 who have been killed in the war of Prohibition." Muffled drums rolled. A bugler blew taps. Chief speaker: Major General Clarence Ransom Edwards, retired, wartime commander of the 26th ("Yankee") Division, who asked for "laws promulgated by the ballot and not enforced by the bullets." When the band played the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," the crowd rose and cheered.

P: In Cleveland the "Crusaders"--against Prohibition--met, 50 strong, in Parlor B of the Hollenden Hotel. The Crusaders are an organization of wealthy young men dedicated to the "cause of sanity." Commander-in-chief is Fred G. Clark, President of Fred G. Clark ("Hyvis") Oil Co., music writer, wit, comedy player in the Hermit Club's annual frolic. Cried Crusader Clark: "We're not wet, but we are opposed to things as they are today." The Crusaders pledged $50,000 to recruit 100,000 young Clevelanders to work for Temperance as contrasted to Prohibition, planned to organize similar "battalions" in all cities of 25,000 or more. Their organization model: The American Legion. Potent young Crusaders already enrolled: Charles Hamilton Sabin Jr., John Hay Whitney, William Phillip Carr, Charles Augustus Otis, Dan Rhodes Hanna Jr., Philip Richard Mather. Their program to reach and stir "the vast in-between class of America who are neither radical Wets more radical Drys."

P: In the U. S. Senate, Senator John James Blaine of Wisconsin celebrated by offering a resolution for the outright repeal of the 18th Amendment, admitted that it had no chance of passage. Senate Borah urged that the resolution be brought to a vote "to make it clear that this amendment is here to stay." The author of the amendment, Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, read a carefully prepared rhetorical speech in praise of its "triumphant tread" to an almost empty Senate chamber. South Carolina's Senator Blease predicted full Dry enforcement "if we had a first class deputy sheriff, about three constables and a good federal judge in every township in the U. S."*

P: In the House, members rose and cheered when Representative Howard of Nebraska offered a facetious resolution praising Speaker Longworth for "preserving the prerogatives of the red granite of the legislative against the brownstone of the executive and the ermine marble of the Judiciary." The reference was to the speaker's refusal to accede to President Hoover's wish for a joint committee of Congress to study enforcement administration (TIME, Jan. 20). New York's Representative Oliver, flaying Prohibition, declared the government's policy had "driven liquor from the bar to the boudoir, from the saloon to the salon, from hops to hips, from keg to kitchen." New York's Representative Sirovich, a physician, gave the House his annual demonstration of the effects of wood alcohol and other governmental denaturants on the human system. Members squirmed at his account of fatty degeneration of the liver. After three hours of riotous debate, the House refused to change the Treasury's methods of denaturing industrial alcohol, or to vote $300,000,000 for Dry enforcement. It allowed $50,000 for official U. S. Dry propaganda and finally passed the Treasury Appropriation Bill carrying $33,000,000 for enforcement of Prohibition in its eleventh year.

* The motto on all U. S. coins except the five-cent piece.

*There are approximately 100,000 townships in the U. S.

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