The Five & Ten

While Engineer-President Hoover was designing the machinery of his forthcoming law enforcement investigation the U. S. last week was adjusting itself to the new Jones Act. This law has been professionally nicknamed the Five & Ten by virtue of its five-year penitentiary sentence and $10,000 fine to stiffen Prohibition punishments.

P:The U.S. Drys, Consolidated, last week nominated the "Personification of Prohibition,"* Mrs. Mabel Elizabeth Walker Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney General, to take charge of enforcement following its projected transfer from the Treasury to the Department of Justice. The Christian Herald opened her campaign under the caption: "TO DRY UP AMERICA: MABEL WALKER WILLEBRANDT." Dr. Daniel A. Poling, the Christian Herald's editor, declared that "every prohibitionist in the U. S. . . . will experience disappointment and regret" if this "remarkable woman" is allowed to retire. He called her "the first figure in the whole field of law observance and law enforcement."

Seconding the nomination of Mrs. Willebrandt in the Christian Herald were: Bishop Thomas Nicholson, Anti-Saloon League president; F. Scott McBride, Anti-Saloon League superintendent; Raymond Robbins. "personal friend of Herbert Hoover"; Mrs. Ella Alexander Boole, W. C. T. U. president; Chairman Fred B. Smith of the Citizens Committee of 1,000; Edwin C. Dinwiddie, secretary of the National Conference of Organizations Supporting the 18th Amendment, and many another.

P:"Personal Liberty Committee" was formed in Manhattan last week by young lawyers opposing prohibition who promised to defend without charge "worthy cases who may be subject to the heavy penalties provided under that [Five & Ten] law." Seven onetime assistant U. S. District Attorneys signed up. Dry leaders in Washington were enraged at this "disrespect" for law.

P:Baltimore police estimated that 5% of the city's 5,000 saloons, speakeasies and night clubs had been frightened out of business by the Five & Ten.

P:Mrs. Cecilia Black. 35, mother of three, was Chicago's first female captive under the Five & Ten. Deserted by her husband, she was trying to eke out a livelihood transporting five-gallon cans of alcohol in the back of her car.

P:The movement of diplomatic liquor from the Port of Baltimore to Washington's embassies and legations was badly snarled by the Five & Ten. The State Department ruled that non-diplomatic truck drivers were liable to be arrested, and advised foreign representatives to drive their own trucks. Sixty cases of fine wines and liquors consigned to the Siamese legation started the 4O-mile trip in a U. S. truck, with U. S. drivers, accompanied by Luang Debavadi, third secretary of the legation. A block from the destination, Washington police raided the truck, arrested the U. S. drivers under the Five & Ten law, but later drove the truck on to the legation, helped unload it.

P:In that most notoriously moist common wealth, New York State, the Drys in the Assembly last week attempted to pass a State prohibition enforcement act. The Wets tipped it upside down by adding in committee a rider making it applicable only to liquor of more than 6% alcoholic content. Later the Assembly killed the whole measure.

P:President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, militant Wet, went to Augusta, Ga., for a rest. He was amazed to find in that "extra dry State where the cooing of the Ku Klux Klan and the billing of the Anti-Saloon League are abroad in the land" more than 100 liquor law violators going on trial before U. S. District Judge William Hale Barrett, just as in "any such modern Sodom as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh."

P:The real effect of the Five & Ten law, it is generally agreed, depends largely on the attitude of the U. S. District Judges. They may or may not assign the maximum penalties. Heretofore offenders have bar gained to plead guilty to misdemeanors in return for nominal fines, thus saving U. S. courts from many a jury trial. But with Volstead Act violations now made felonies, there must be indictments and more jury trials because pleading guilty to a felony is very risky business. Increased inefficiency of the Federal judiciary is therefore anticipated, reviving the suggestion that Congress should authorize the creation of petty U. S. Courts to handle Prohibition cases.

-Her phrase.