At the Mayflower

The Democratic national pot came to a brief hard boil in the ornate dining room of Washington's fashionable Mayflower Hotel one day last week. Then it settled down to a long sullen simmer. The fire under the pot was, as usual, Prohibition.

The occasion was a special meeting of the Democratic National Committee called by its energetic little chairman, John Jacob Raskob. A foreknowledge that he, a Wet, would bring up Prohibition as a party matter had provoked preliminary wails of warning from Southern Drys, which helped only to advertise the gathering. The certain prospect of the kind of intraparty fight that only Democrats can stage drew throngs of spectators to the assembly. Senators, Representatives, National Committee members milled about in open anxiety. From the wall fell the stern gaze of Thomas Jefferson.

After a routine morning session, Chairman Raskob, nervous, diffident, arose to read an hour-long address on party policy. He licked his lips, gulped, mispronounced words. Predicting that Prohibition would be an "outstanding issue" in the next campaign he declared: "My recommendation is that the 18th Amendment be not repealed but that the Democratic party advocate a new amendment which will provide that nothing in the 18th Amendment shall prevent any State from directing and controlling absolutely the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors within its borders. . . . This plan prevents the return of the saloon. . . . In order that the Democratic party will not be called 'Wet' or 'Dry' I should like to christen this plan as the 'home-rule plan' because it is neither a Wet nor a Dry plan but a plan under which the people, through their respective States, may exercise the right of self-determination."

This proposal started the Democratic pot boiling. Drys thought their chairman was using his high office to crystallize Wet sentiment against them, to pledge the Democracy against Prohibition long in advance of the national convention. Tennessee's Dry Senator Cordell Hull began the pleading: "My God! The Democratic party has never had such an opportunity. Why take a lantern and search out something on which we can divide? Let us leave this question alone."

The Hull speech was too tame, too polite a protest for Arkansas' barrel-chested, full-blooded Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson. His face as red as his necktie, he leaped to the platform, began an address of his own. He waved his arms, shook his fists at Chairman Raskob. He thundered and bellowed. He worked himself up into a passion of dissent. Cried he:

"A crisis has been needlessly and unwisely precipitated. . . . You cannot write on the banner of the Democratic party the skull and crossbones of an outlaw trade. . . . The only way the Republican party can hope for victory is to rely on the lack of wisdom of those who lead the Democratic party. . . . I repudiate the effort of the national chairman to submerge all other issues and bring most prominently to the front one about which he knows the Democrats entertain conflicting opinions. . . . This act was in bad taste . . . not calculated to promote harmony. . . ."

North Carolina's Dry Senator Cameron Morrison threw the meeting into wild confusion with another loud speech along the same line. His attacks on Chairman Raskob for injecting Prohibition into the meeting brought boos and hisses from the audience. Angrily he exclaimed: "Oh, your jeering methods, your hisses! But understand you'll never tie the Democratic party down to death and destruction for lack of men who scorn your hisses and defy your unfair methods. . . . If the Democracy would cease this foolishness over liquor we could go forward to a great triumph--"

"What have you got in your locker?" cried a heckler. The audience guffawed. The Senator asked the sergeant-at-arms to restore order. Chairman Raskob pleaded with the crowd to behave.

Cries of "Smith! Al Smith!" brought the 1928 presidential nominee to his feet. His good-humored speech quieted the meeting. Said he: "I got a brand-new conception of Democracy today. I thought I had seen and heard about all there was connected with it. I had a different idea of Jefferson. I believed firmly when I became a member of the Democratic party, and I did not start as such, that there would be no Democratic gathering where anybody would be jumped all over for expressing their individual opinion about anything, no matter what it was.

"I was sorry to see my old-time traveling companion, my old-time sparring partner [Senator Robinson, 1928 vice-presidential nominee] going off without proper understanding. If there is anything that happened here today that could be greater comfort to President Hoover and his cohorts than the Senator's speech. I would like to know what it is. Nobody said anything about repealing the 18th Amendment. . . . If the day comes when a Democratic chairman is going to be dragged about and kicked around the lot because he expresses an opinion we'd better stop talking about the principle of free speech. . .Don't for heaven's sake let the Democratic party try to copy the ducking, dodging and sidestepping of our Republican opponents. . . ."

What was generally rated as the most statesmanlike address of the meeting came from James Middleton Cox, 1920 presidential nominee. Temperately he explained the clash of opinion North and South, denounced racketeers and gangsters, pleaded for more sectional tolerance. "Our Government," he declared, "stands shackled by the chains of hypocrisy." The whole audience, Wets and Drys, stood up and cheered him.

Economic issues got only minor attention at the meeting. Chairman Raskob proposed liberalization of the anti-trust laws, new Federal facilities to promote mergers, an end to Democratic attacks upon Big Business. For these suggestions he was also abused by Southerners.

Late in the afternoon the meeting had all but disintegrated when the National Committee approved a $6,000,000 budget for the 1932 campaign.

From the political and editorial babble of discussion after the meeting these facts emerged: 1) Prohibition has been definitely launched as the prime issue for the Democratic National Convention to deal with; 2) the Wets, confident of a party majority, are good-natured, patient, conciliatory; 3) the Drys, fearful of being a minority, are noisy and truculent; 4) the South as in 1928 is confronted with the question of being Dry or Democratic; 5) Chairman Raskob holds his job more firmly than ever; 6) no presidential candidate profited from the meeting; 7) another convention of the Madison Square Garden 1924 kidney is in prospect for the party.

P: Stirred by the Democrat's fierce bicker over Prohibition, Dry Republican Senator Arthur Capper last week predicted: "President Hoover will be renominated and will lead the Republican party to victory on a Prohibition platform. That is the issue. The Republicans are Dry. We shall lose some votes in the East but we will carry the Middle West and West solidly."/-

/- Three weeks ago, the U. S. Drys Consolidated held council of war in Washington, formed a 15-man national board of political strategy.

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