Methodist Methods

One morning last week in Washington a tall thick-shouldered man of 57 with grey hair and a goatee climbed into an automobile, set off for Portland, Ore. He was tired. Though no Congressman, he had been working hard with Congress and now, upon its adjournment, he was going home. His physician had advised him to take a long summer's rest, to camp and fish in the open, to fill his lungs with fresh Pacific air. As he started on his transcontinental motor trip, he might easily have been mistaken for a successful doctor or a famed lawyer. But he was neither. He was Clarence True Wilson, A. B., B. D., Ph. B., D. D., LL. D., executive secretary of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a power in U. S. Drys, Consolidated.

Dr. Wilson's going halted, at least temporarily, the agitation of a prime popular question: Is the Methodist Board a "lobby"? Is Dr. Wilson an arch-lobbyist? The question had been most recently raised by Congressman George Holden Tinkham of Massachusetts.

For its activities the B. of T. P. & P. M. claims the "high sphere of public morals." It helped to bring about Prohibition and with that work it has been chiefly identified since. It opposes "nudity, blasphemy, profanity and the treating of revolting subjects in the American theatre . . . commercialized gambling, prizefighting and the debauching of the young by publications which are indecent or which are clearly intended to excite lascivious feeling."

Under Dr. Wilson the Board's activities are manifold. It maintains a drumfire of publicity in behalf of Prohibition. Its representatives appear before Congressional committees for Dry legislation, against Wet proposals. It classifies Congressmen according to their voting record on Prohibition. It favors or opposes presidential appointees on the basis of "public morals." It agitates Sunday closing laws, book and cinema censorship. It supplies debaters to uphold the Dry side of any Prohibition argument. It compiles Sunday School textbooks, temperance leaflets for Epworth Leagues, pledges Negro school children to total abstinence.

To what extent do these activities of the Board constitute "lobbying"?

Congressman Tinkham charged that: the Board put up its Methodist Building close to "strategic" the position Capitol for because lobbying; of it has its attempted to "dictate and control legislation by personal agency"; it has sought to influence judicial appointments; it has participated in political campaigns without filing expense accounts under the Corrupt Practices Act.

Sharp of tongue, Dr. Wilson retorted last week thus: "Personally, I have such a contempt for Mr. Tinkham, for every thing he stands for ... for his appeals to sectional prejudice and religious bigotry that I take small pleasure in answering him. His motives are obvious and loathsome to every right-thinking man. . . . This board has a right under the Constitution to appear before any committee of the House or Senate, the same right any citizen has. It has . . . the duty to acquaint the government with information . . . as to the desirability or undesirability of any appointee. . . . It has a right to express its opinions. . . . The Board has made no report to Congress of political expenditures because it had none to report. . . . Our Board never spends a cent in lobbying. . . . We have nobody assigned to lobbying. . . . When he [Tinkham] asserts we are lobbyists and then cites these public modes of service, he knows he falsifies. . . ."

Congressman Tinkham, declaring that Dr. Wilson "is long on expletives and short on facts," found in this denial an admission of his charges that the Board "lobbied." It was an oblique argument because the two men were using the word "lobby" in different senses. Dr. Wilson was thinking that a "lobby" means underhanded, sinister bribing of legislators to procure special favors from the Government. Congressman Tinkham was talking about the kind of lobby defined in the dictionary thus: "Persons, not members of a legislative body, who strive to influence its proceedings by personal agency whether in the lobby [of the Capitol] or elsewhere." Thus Congressman Tinkham was correct within the formal limits of language. Whether the definition feared by Dr. Wilson applies also remained open to debate.