A Groundswell Breaks

It was the day after election. Prohibition Director Amos Walter Wright Woodcock was in San Francisco about to embark with two friends on the S. S. Maui for a fortnight's business-&-pleasure trip to Hawaii. Three hours before sailing time a messenger handed Mr. Woodcock a government telegram from Washington. His face puckered as he read it. Cancelling his bookings, letting his friends sail without him, he explained to newsmen: "President Hoover has called me East for a conference."

For this last-minute recall, other newsmen pestered officials in Washington for an explanation. In view of the election results (see p. 16), a logical question was: Is the Administration planning some radical or sudden Prohibition change?

Tut-tutting such an idea Attorney General Mitchell declared that Director Woodcock had been summoned back "to furnish data requested some time ago by the President." What the "data" were, the Attorney General would not say, leaving newshawks to presume that President Hoover wanted more information on Prohibition to work into his message to Congress three weeks hence. Another explanation advanced for Director Woodcock's recall was that he was wanted to justify his budgetary request for 500 more field agents at an additional cost of $2,000,000 per year.

Commission. It was the day after election. Into its secluded conference room on the tenth floor of the Tower Building in Washington filed members of the National Law Enforcement Commission behind their chairman, George Woodward Wlckersham, for another series of secret sessions on Prohibition. As if aware of the subject's political dynamite, the Commission had suspended its work in the middle of the Congressional campaign early last month. Its membership still was almost as divided as the electorate. Their hushed deliberations generated all manner of rumors about Volstead Act modification, beer and light wines.* One Commissioner was heard to remark: "The hell of it is, this thing is in the Constitution." G. O. Politicians from National Chairman Fess down looked plaintively toward the Commission for some miraculous solution to their thorniest political issue.

Congress. It was the day after election. In New York Henry Hastings Curran, president of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, sat counting his Congressional gains. In Washington Dr. Francis Scott McBride, superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League, sat counting his Congressional losses. Their results were not far apart.

That last summer's groundswell of Wet sentiment had broken far up the Dry beach of national politics was too plain to dispute (TIME, Sept. 27). Equally clear was the fact that the wave of Wet votes was insufficient to produce any major changes by the 72nd Congress in the 18th Amendment or Volstead Act. It was pos sible, even probable, that the election returns on Prohibition had moved President Hoover to recall Director Woodcock from his Hawaiian holiday, to redouble its ef forts to bring out a report.

House. In the 71st House are now 91 members for repeal or modification, 324 Anti-Saloon-League-endorsed Drys, and 20 weaslers. The 72nd House will contain 134 Wets, with the Dry-voting strength falling below the 300 mark for the first time in a decade. The net gain of 43 Wet seats was distributed as follows : Pennsylvania 7; Illinois 5; New York and Ohio 4 each; Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Wisconsin 2 each; Arkansas, California, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Washington, 1 each. Wet Mr. Curran enthusiastically set his gains at 70 but this figure was arrived at by adding 16 Illinois members who may go Wet on the strength of that State's referendum, and a handful of other Congressmen already Wet who had become noisy for repeal during the campaign.

Senate. Wet gains in the Senate were numerically nil, psychologically large. The present Senate has 18 Wets. The new Senate will have 18 Wets. Drys had scored victories over Wet incumbents in Colorado, Iowa and Maine which cancelled the Wet gains in Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio. The Wet wing's prestige, however, was increased by the election of such men as New Jersey's Morrow, Illinois' Lewis, Ohio's Bulkley.

Declared Mr. Curran: "At the present rate of progress we shall be rid of the Prohibition experiment in five years. . . ."

Retorted Dr. McBride: "The Dry cause has weathered the Democratic landslide and the unprecedented Wet campaign in a remarkable way."

P: Throughout the campaign National G. O. P. Chairman Fess kept repeating: "Prohibition is no issue between the parties." After he had studied the election returns, he proclaimed: "Prohibition will be a major issue in 1932. I look for the Democrats to seize the opportunity to go Wet.* . . . The South is Democratic first and Dry second. . . . The Republicans won't surrender or straddle. The party will remain Dry or it will be split." Dry little Senator Fess has long shuddered in private at the very real prospect of that "split."

P: No woman in Massachusetts worked harder to keep her State from going Wet in the election than wealthy, white-haired Mrs. Henry W. Peabody of Beverly, leader of the Woman's National Committee for Law Enforcement (TIME, March 24). Month ago Mrs. Peabody discovered the unwelcome Wet trend, sent her 9-year-old grandson out of the State. When the returns showed last week that a Wet Governor and a Wet Senator had been elected and the State's enforcement act repealed, Mrs. Peabody amazed her friends and relatives by renouncing her Massachusetts citizenship, putting a large For-Sale sign on "Green Walls," her Beverly estate, and taking the first train for Florida. Said she:

"I will not live in an outlaw State. If I must live in a Democratic State, it will have to be a dry State. I suggest my home be bought for retired Senators and Governors to be used two years from now." Twitted about Florida's notorious Wetness, she added: "Its strong State law is remarkably effective. . . . The drinking in Miami and Palm Beach is perpetrated by privileged people from the North."

*Most persistent rumor: Government agents have queried brewers as to how soon they could resume 4% production, how many men they could employ, if or when Congress should legalize this beverage. *Wets already claim 472 delegates out of 1,098 at the next national Democratic convention.

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