The Devious Decade

After its original aim of Pennsylvania slush fund revelations had become stale, the Senatorial investigation committee continued its parenthetical meanderings in the vagaries of Wet and Dry. Examination of Wayne B. Wheeler, counsel for the Anti-Saloon League, was again Chairman-Senator Reed's 'piece de resistance for the week. Facetiously saying, "It has been slanderously asserted that I am a Wet," he withdrew from examining Captain William H. Stayton of the Wet forces, and most of the committee withdrew during his lengthy colloquies with Dr. Wheeler. Senator Reed launching questions with a cigar; Dr. Wheeler aiming replies with a pencil; florid, heavy Mr. Reed on a driving offensive; thin, eye-glassed Mr. Wheeler hunched in alert defense--this is what they brought to light between them after long shirt-sleeved hours during which (according to Mr. Reed) they actually became quite "chummy." The Anti-Saloon League. Founded in 1893 in Ohio, it is not a corporation. It has no membership. It is parent to 48 state leagues. It consists of a Board of Directors, a General Superintendent, and a President. The President is largely honorary, usually a clergyman (at present, Bishop Thomas Nicholson of Chicago). The Superintendent (at present Dr. Ernest H. Cherrington of Westerville, Ohio) appoints superintendents for the 48 state leagues, these becoming members ex-officio of the National Board of Directors whose total number is 130, and who, in turn, elect the general superintendent. (Senator Reed1: "Well, frankly, Doctor, you got a pretty close corporation." He was particularly hot about the arrival in his own Missouri of a "meddling" Tennessean sent by the A. S. L.).

A. S. L. Politics. The Anti-Saloon League urges Dry candidates on all voters at all primaries. If a Dry Republican lost a nomination to a Wet Republican and there were a Dry Democrat running, the League would urge its Republican listeners to break party pledges (though not sworn oaths or state laws where they cover this point).

Although Congress passed the Corrupt Practices Act in 1925 requiring all organizations spending money to support or combat political candidates, to file reports of such expense with Congress, the Anti-Saloon League has not yet filed any such reports.

Just prior to the passage of the 18th Amendment, Dr. Wheeler worked hard in Washington getting the Amendment into shape and Congressmen in line. Dr. Wheeler and his cohorts also lobbied vigorously for the Volstead Act. (Senator Reed: "In a word, you may almost be said . . . to be the author of the Volstead Act?" Dr. Wheeler: "No, I should say that Mr. Volstead did more work. . . . He sat up nights with it. . . .")

A. S. L. Finances. Dr. Wheeler was irked by Senator Reed's insistence upon having the names of donors and "angels" (big donors) to the League treasure chest. But Senator Reed did insist on the ground that the League is "purely political."

To the total expenditure since 1920 of over three millions by state leagues in New York, Ohio, New Jersey and Indiana, figures came forth for 16 other states, bringing the state totals to $6,487,291. This added to the national League's expenditures from 1895 to 1920, (geting the U. S. dry) and since 1920 (keeping it so), made a grand Dry outlay of $44,917,576.

It is a comparatively simple thing to raise money for a Reform. It is less easy, more ticklish, to solicit funds to combat a Reform, even when the appeal is for moderation in good works, for making haste slowly, for not courting fresh evils by a too-sudden reversal of a legal status quo. No one was vastly surprised, nor filled with misplaced admiration, when the Wet chief reported political moneys that totaled an insignificant one-fiftieth of the Dry moneys. The Wets have been in action only eight years, and not until the evils of Prohibition became pronounced did they become truly active. Moreover, their organization, while as efficient as the Anti-Saloon League, has been tentative in purpose and vague in action. Where the Anti-Saloon League has the sympathy of classes ranging from fanatic moralists to sound business men and astute bootleggers, the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment is supported only by libertarians. That persons profiting from the liquor business in the past or present have been denied leading parts in the A. A. P. A. was declared and proved by that body's chief.

This chief is a stocky, square-jawed ex-captain of Marines; a steam boat operator with a shipshape mind and terse, nautical manner. He answered questions so unhesitatingly, in such swift accents, that the shorthand reporters had to ask him to avast and go more slowly.

A. A. P. A. William Henry Stayton, he said he was, of Smyrna, Del. He and one Gordon C. Hinckley had conceived the A. A. P. A. in 1918, incorporated it in 1919. They had signed up prominent people.

A. A. P. A. Finances. Between 1919 and 1925, total annual revenues of the national body had averaged $36,000. Since the Corrupt Practices Act was passed a quarterly statement had regularly been submitted to Congress. This would now show an average income, state and national, of roughly $600,000 per annum.

A. A. P. A. Politics. A card index of the members (now 726,000) had been kept. Political activities had consisted in circularizing these members; holding mass meetings (not issuing money to candidates); advertising and lecturing in states where the liquor issue is alive (as at this November's referendums, scheduled or proposed, in New York, Montana, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Colorado, California, Nevada). In the Pennsylvania primary, Wet Vare had been supported, frankly as the least of three evils to the extent of $3,500. (The Dry expense for Pinchot was over $100,000).

Unlike the Anti-Saloon officials, Captain Stayton's salary from the A. A. P. A. was zero dollars and always had been. Like the Anti-Saloon Leaguers, he was ready to put the Wet principle above party interests, but not to the extent of breaking pledges after primaries. He was nonpartisan, never anti-partisan.