Spirits' Soul

Last August, onetime Fisticuffer James Joseph Tunney, now chairman of $14,000,000 American Distilling Co., announced that his company was quitting the Distilled Spirits Institute because it was "without social consciousness or soul"; later he amplified his charges, said he found "something comic about a group which spends great sums to advertise the virtue of moderation and then breaks the backs of its representatives to make them meet impossible sales quotas."

For nearly a year and a half before Reformer Tunney's outburst, D.S.I. members got along like gin and whiskey on an empty stomach, squabbling over a permanent chairman to succeed the late William Forbes Morgan. Last week they found one with enough soul to satisfy even Gene Tunney. By unanimous consent they elected as executive director Dr. Wesley A. Sturges, since 1923 professor of law at, Yale University.

Son and grandson of Vermont Methodist ministers, softspoken, convivial Wesley Sturges, 45, is probably the most popular man on the Yale law faculty. He looks and acts more like an enterprising businessman than a Ph.D. professor or parson's son. A director of the American Arbitration Association, he won the D.S.I.'s attention few months ago by settling two minor scraps between Connecticut liquor dealers.

At an annual salary of $30,000 (Forbes Morgan got $50,000), Director Sturges will take office next week, will commute from Washington to New Haven for the one course he intends to continue teaching. Not ambitious to become a Liquor Tsar, he presumably will attempt to sell the distillers on policing themselves. Said he: "I am undertaking the office...hoping that by cooperation with the public authorities we can eliminate all aspects of the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages which may be offensive to important groups of our citizenship."*

As soon as Wesley Sturges was mentioned for his new job. Gene Tunney declared he was "delighted," promised to lead his directors back into the D.S.I. fold.

* Last week Distilled Spirits Institute announced that no liquor will be sold, served or shown in the Hall of Distillers at the New York World's Fair. Instead D.S.I. will display proof of distilling's contributions to U.S. economy and history, exhibit raw materials used in making spirits.

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