Hotfoot

To Kansans, their bone-dry liquor law has long been a laugh. Good whiskey is easier to get in Topeka than in wet Kansas City, Mo., 67 miles away. It just costs a little more. Everyone knows that there are at least 45 reliable bootleggers among Topeka's 76,000 population; that every bellhop has a ready pint or quart; that mixed drinks are served at the Rainbo, the Northern Star, the It'll Do Club; that to get a fifth of Old Granddad (unavailable in Kansas City) at Meadow Acres Ballroom, all you have to do is beckon the "Soup Man" and fork over $15.

But to Kansas' professional Republicans, the dry law is a sacred cow. For 66 years--long before national prohibition came & went--they have tended it lovingly, warded off all abuse and slander. They simply looked the other way while millions of quarts of bootleg stuff poured across the border from Missouri and Colorado./-

Last week Kansas Republicans admitted that they could no longer ignore a ridiculous situation. They had been given a hotfoot by small, bald, old-maidish Harry Hines Woodring, ex-governor (1931-33), ex-Secretary of War (1936-40), who last February lambasted Kansas prohibition as a "farce," called enforcement officers "shadows in a bootleggers' forest."

Kansans had thought that Democrat Harry Woodring was finished with public life when Franklin Roosevelt fired him in 1941. He went home to Topeka, lived quietly, invested in a soft-drink company, got a jeep agency. He tatted expertly, joyfully did the housework during the maid shortage, attended antique auctions, where he bid fiercely in competition with society matrons. One night a week he played bridge with Alf Landon and two other Republicans. This summer's polio epidemic dealt him a cruel blow--two of his three children contracted the disease; son Marcus, 12, died, daughter Melissa, 11, recovered.

Shadowboxing. Woodring's strafing of the dry law caught Kansas politicians off guard. So effective was his attack that the down-at-heels Democratic organization nominated him as the gubernatorial opponent of Republican Congressman Frank Carlson (TIME, Aug. 19). Then he wrote a wet plank (repeal, state-operated liquor stores, county option, no saloons) into the Democratic platform. By last week Harry Woodring had come up from nowhere to a 50-50 chance for election.

Into Topeka hurried Republicans to try to do something. They were unable to disregard the voters' growing disgust with the dry law. Yet they hated to go against the earnest advice of smart old Senator Arthur Capper, 81, veteran dry leader, who wanted no mention made of prohibition. So the worried platform makers shadowboxed around the question, promised to submit it to the voters--in 1948.

This done, the Republicans checked out of the Kansan Hotel. Next morning cleaning women removed a near truckload of empty whiskey bottles from bedrooms; bellhops rested after a tough day & night of toting sparkling water and ice; and Topeka bootleggers happily totaled up the receipts.

/-Last week the U.S. Treasury, which takes revenue from legal and illegal liquor sellers alike, reported that 570 Kansans hold $27.50 Federal Retail Liquor licenses, that 17 more have $110 wholesale licenses.

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