Poll

The Prohibition poll conducted by the Literary Digest, opinion-collecting weekly, grew top heavy last week with Wet votes. More than two million ballots were tabulated as follows:

For Enforcement--553,337 For Modification--598,252 For Repeal--848,751 Out of 40 States covered, thus far only two--Kansas and Tennessee--gave Enforcement a clear majority over the combined vote for Modification and Repeal, In Florida, Louisiana and Kentucky, Repeal votes exceeded those for Enforcement. Nineteen States gave a plurality to Repeal, 21 a plurality to Enforcement.

The Digest poll, as its sponsors had hoped it would, bred sharp Wet-&-Dry controversy. The Wet complaint: their vote had been split between Modification and Repeal, their real strength confused and diminished. The Drys raged more vehemently. Their charges: 1) Wet funds were financing the pool; 2) more ballots had been sent to men than to women; 3) by some inexplicable divination on the part of the poll managers, Wet families had received many ballots, Dry families none. Dr. Clarence True Wilson of the Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals advised a New Jersey audience to vote as many times as they could in the poll, then rather lamely withdrew the advice when he found a newsgatherer had overheard him. In the Senate, Washington's Senator Jones, author of the "Five & Ten" law, got up to say: "Prohibition has nothing to gain and everything to lose in this poll. . . . It would not be wise for people who believe in Prohibition to take part in it." It did not seem to occur to Dry leaders that one reason why they were losing the Digest poll might be due to the fact that their followers were taking their original advice, abstaining from voting.

The brunt of the Dry attack was borne by William Seaver Woods, Digest editor. Again and again Dr. Woods insisted his magazine was neutral. "Bosh." he retorted to all Dry charges, as he carefully explained that the 20,000,000 ballots sent out were scientifically apportionated to each state on the 'basis of population, that past events had proved Digest polls 95% accurate, that duplications were infinitesimal.

The publicity bureau of Funk & Wagnalls, publishers of the Literary Digest, let it be known that Dr. Woods was not only the son of a Methodist minister but an ardent personal Dry, a fact to which his friends in New York and Washington who had vainly offered him drinks readily attested.

Funk & Wagnalls also reminded people that the firm was long known as a "Prohibition house," that the late Dr. Isaac Kauffman Funk founded "Prohibition Park" as an amusement centre on Staten Island. His son Wilfred John Funk, now inactive president of the company, is also a personal Dry.*

The Digest office, however, would not reveal whether Robert J. Cuddihy. able, amiable, Roman Catholic vice president of Funk & Wagnalls, actual publisher of the Digest and sponsor for its poll, was personally Wet or Dry.

*But Wilfred John Funk, who whiles away his time writing jingles (TIME, Feb. 10). sometimes pretends to be a drinking man. A Funk jingle published last week:

Myra, if I have a jag on

I am apt to hitch my wagon

To a street light on occasion

Suffering a slight abrasion.

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