Gentlemanly Temperance

"Your industry needs a code of ethics to bring together all the respectable, responsible members of your business," barked New York State's Commissioner of Taxation & Finance to a meeting of liquor dealers in Manhattan last week. "You may not be aware of it, but there is a real probability that a strong prohibition movement may be with us again within a few years if the abuses of the liquor industry continue."

In a shabby Washington walk-up languishes a lackpenny remnant of the Anti-Saloon League, making itself known only by an occasional press handout concerning increases in drunkenness. Housed nearby are the W. C. T. U. and Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals, reviving gradually from the numbing shock of Repeal. But in Manhattan last week a new temperance organization swung into action with a disavowal of oldtime rumfighters' aims and tactics.

In the two decades before Prohibition, those lifelong teetotalers John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his father gave the Anti-Saloon League their stanch moral support and $350,323.67. When he declared for Repeal in 1932, Mr. Rockefeller by no means meant that he was quitting his long war on liquor. Having despaired at last of temperance by statute, he set his agents searching the world for other methods of attack. To Russia he sent his old friend Everett Colby, a suave, engaging onetime New Jersey State Legislator and Republican National Committeeman, who captained Brown's football team when Mr. Rockefeller was its manager, was best man at Mr. Rockefeller's wedding.

Result of these researches appeared in Manhattan last March when Friend Colby announced incorporation of The Council for Moderation, with himself as president. "Nothing," said he, "is going to be imposed on anybody by anybody. . . . Mr. Rockefeller is only aiding financially in a small way, with many others."

Last week the Council launched its campaign with quarter-page newspaper advertisements and announcements devoted largely to telling what it was not going to do. The Council will take no legislative or political action. It will not attempt to reform drunkards. It will not prosecute drunken motorists. It will not set standards of moderation or tell anyone how much he should drink.

What the Council proposes to do is spend $100,000 or more per year in attempting to persuade U. S. citizens to drink like gentlemen, to acquire "an attitude of individual responsibility toward the use of liquor. Our messages will travel over the airwaves, reach the eye and ear through the screen and stage, and fashion public thought through advertising and other kinds of publicity."

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