Plebiscite, Parades

With 187 Congressmen on record as Wet (TIME, March 21) and the nation economically ailing, antiProhibitionists have been pointing with new emphasis and hope to drink as a source of revenue and employment. Last week the economic argument for Prohibition reform had gathered enough momentum to cause plans for monster "beer parades" throughout the land, and three famed Drys came out in favor of resubmission of Prohibition to the people.

At the Jefferson Day dinner in Washington onetime Governor Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia, firm teetotaler, proposed a Constitutional amendment modifying or repealing the 18th Amendment, ratification to be by a majority of the electors of three-fourths of the States. Two days later Bishop James Cannon Jr. approved the Byrd plan before a meeting of the Anti-Saloon League at Richmond. Day after that Secretary of Agriculture Arthur Mastick Hyde returned from the Missouri State Republican convention and endorsed that body's appeal that Congress call a national Constitutional convention on Prohibition.

New York's natty, fun-loving Mayor Walker broached the beer parade idea. He set May 14 and predicted that a million marchers would turn out in his town. He urged the mayors of all other U. S. cities to hold similar demonstrations. The American Federation of Labor and the American Legion promised support. Mayor Walker admitted getting his idea from Mrs. William Randolph Hearst.

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