Lawyers Go Wet

After twelve years of backing & filling, the American Bar Association last week chose its side of the Prohibition fence, went sopping Wet.

A motion was made during the Association's 1918 convention that a resolution be passed urging the States not to ratify the 18th Amendment. Another motion to postpone consideration of the question was carried 75 to 68. Thereafter the matter was carefully avoided, although many a State and city bar association went on record opposing constitutional Prohibition, including: New Jersey, Nevada, Virginia; San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, New York.

Last May, members of the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers Inc. petitioned the American Bar Association's executive committee to hold a referendum to decide once & for all where the Association stood. The committee agreed, sent out two ballots: the first to decide whether or not a referendum should be taken, the second to decide whether or not the Association should pass a resolution against Prohibition. If the first failed to pass, the second would be disregarded. All results were to be withheld until after the Congressional elections. At the Chicago convention in August, Dry lawyers made a last unsuccessful attempt to have the referendum quashed.

Last week the return showed: that more than 65% of the 30,000 members voted. That they voted almost 3 to 1 to carry out the referendum. That in the referendum they stood 13,779 to 6,340 in favor of placing the following resolution in the minutes of the Association's annual meeting next September at Atlantic City:

RESOLVED: That the American Bar Association favors the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

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