W. C. T. U.'s 59th

Alongside the blue ribbon of Pabst was flaunted the white ribbon of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in beery Milwaukee last week. For the 59th time, the W. C. T. U. was holding its annual convention.

Sixteen States, in which live 43% of the nation's population, had successively turned thumbs down on national Prohibition by ratifying the 21st Amendment. The Prohibition Bureau had just had its personnel reduced 40% in the interest of Government economy, leaving a staff of less than 2,000 to enforce the Volstead Act from coast to coast. Andrew John Volstead, author of that Act, had just lost his $4,500 per year job as counsel to the Prohibition administration at St. Paul. Nevertheless, the scores & scores of white-clad, earnest ladies of the W. C. T. U. remained undaunted in Prohibition's darkest hour in a decade.

They pledged themselves to "watch the polls [lest] the Wets put across any crooked counting of the votes" at forthcoming Repeal elections. They heard Pastor Norman Vincent Peale of Manhattan's Marble Collegiate Church deplore the fact that "a very high public official, who should represent in his personal attitude the sacred ideals of the people, begins his summer vacation in a sailing vessel on Sunday."* They learned from Mrs. Dora B. Whitney of Michigan that recitations of "The Face On The Barroom Floor'' effectively aided a Dry campaign. They passed a resolution asking "fairminded men and women" to renounce the dripping major political parties, form a Dry third. And after eight years Brooklyn's scrappy little Ella Alexander Boole, 74, resigned the organization's presidency, in favor of a "younger woman."

The younger woman was Ida B. Wise Smith, who passed her 62nd birthday on the eve of her succession from the vice-presidency to the presidency of the Union. The 600,000 ladies of the W. C. T. U. are no longer on the attack, but Mrs. Smith is well qualified to direct their stubborn de fense. She has crusaded for liquor reform and child welfare for 30 years. Born in Philadelphia, her family took her to Ham burg, Iowa when she was a girl. She taught school, married, had two children. After her first husband died she managed a dry goods store for a while. In 1912 she re married. Her second husband is now dead. For the past 20 years she has directed Iowa's W. C. T. U., headquarters at Des Moines. She is stout, of medium height and a good trencherman. Because she tells jokes on herself, she is credited with a sense of humor. One she tells: When a newspaper reported an automobile accident in which she was injured, an anti-Prohibitionist sent her a clipping, commented: "Not half bad enough." She has the fervor of a Carrie Nation but the self-discipline of a Frances Willard. An ordained minister in the Church of Christ, Mrs. Smith likes to clear up little ambiguities in Scripture. Last week she told the W. C. T. U. convention that it need not be embarrassed by Christ's miraculous transformation of water into wine. "Wine," she explained, referred to the pure unfermented juice of the grape. Said she: "The word wine, like Old Dog Tray, has fallen into bad company. Ministers never use it in. connection with the Last Supper. Never, in giving the sacrament, say 'Drink of the wine.' The Scriptural words are 'the cup and the fruit of the vine.' "

*President Roosevelt sailed the Amber jack II from Martha's Vineyard to Nantucket on Sunday, June 18.

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