Jersey Brewings

Last week 226 Congressmen roused themselves to attention in the House when tall, thick-shouldered Representative Franklin William Fort of New Jersey strode out into the well and began to deliver an hour-long speech on Prohibition. On their little stools in the gallery, newsmen bent forward intently to follow his words. Well did they know that Mr. Fort is a close personal friend of President Hoover. Until last week he was secretary of the Republican National Committee (see p. 16). Perhaps he might throw new light on the President's Prohibition views.

Sounding like a regular Dry, Congressman Fort declared that Prohibition was here to stay, that it was responsible in part for U. S. economic advancement, that the Press was grossly biased, that the Wets had no adequate substitute for liquor control. But like a thoroughgoing Wet he sounded when he said: "The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act made unlawful the traffic in liquor--not its use. . . . Sincere friends of temperance have done the cause of Prohibition its greatest injury by insisting that the use of alcohol has become immoral." As a climax, Orator Fort plumped for home winemaking, home-brewing.

Reviewing the provisions of the Volstead Act, Mr. Fort cited the penalty section (No. 29) which reads: "The penalties provided for the manufacture of liquor without a permit shall not apply to a person for manufacturing non-intoxicating cider and fruit juices exclusively for use in his home."

Continued Congressman Fort: "I don't pretend to be much of a lawyer these days. . . . But this latter provision seems to me to lift cider and light wines home-made for home use out of the one-half of i % definition and to apply the test of intoxication in fact. ... If they can be lawfully made, they can be lawfully possessed in the home of the maker. Whether this language can be stretched to cover home-brew non-intoxicating in fact is another question but clearly the making of home-made light wines and ciders is not prohibited. . . . Perhaps the act needs clarification on the question of homebrew, although nobody has ever been convicted for making it for home use. ... To those who want beer and light wines, I suggest they be content with what they make. . . ."

Wet-wishing newsmen retired from their gallery to type out circumstantial stories identifying President Hoover with Congressman Fort's opinion on light wines and beer. Hastily Mr. Fort denied that he spoke for the White House. The Hoover secretariat issued a formal statement repudiating the notion that the President had been consulted on the Fort speech.

The question of whether home-brewing was legal or not was soon enveloped in a dense legalistic fog. Andrew John Volstead, author of the National Prohibition Act, denied that there were any such loopholes in his law. But well known is the fact that the above-quoted exception was put into Mr. Volstead's act to permit the farmer, chief supporter of Prohibition, to make his wine and hard cider without Federal molestation. Recalled was the case of onetime Representative John Philip Hill of Maryland who publicly made high-powered wine in his home only to be acquitted in a test case by a Baltimore jury. In New York a court case was found where a U. S. judge had ordered confiscated ten barrels of home-made wine because it contained 13% alcohol.

The day after the Fort speech, short thin-haired, hawk-faced Representative Frederick Reimold Lehlbach, also from New Jersey but an avowed Wet, arose in the House to answer his colleague. Insisting that the aim of Prohibition was to stop drinking, Congressman Lehlbach exclaimed:

"It is as absurd to suggest that these people make their own beverages at home as it is to suggest that they make their own clothing or raise their own food. . . . Let's talk about the essential violator of Prohibition, the person who uses alcoholic beverages. . . . There are millions of him throughout the land. Whether he serves wine to his dinner guests, whether he brews and drinks a makeshift beer, whether he keeps a jug of corn or apple in his oat bin or hayloft, he instinctively feels he is within his personal and private rights and it's nobody's business. . . . Drop shams and subterfuges and declare the user of alcoholic beverages the criminal and turn loose your enforcement forces against him."

The difference in viewpoint between Representatives Fort and Lehlbach on this question cast a long shadow across New Jersey Republican politics where the party is similarly divided on Prohibition. In the Fort speech observers saw a campaign effort to straddle the issue, to appear both Wet and Dry for the coming election. The issue is sure to be carried into the Republican senatorial primary centred between Dwight Whitney Morrow and Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen. Candidate Frelinghuysen is a Dry jf the same stamp as Congressman Fort. Candidate Morrow may yet be jockeyed into a Wet position not unlike that of Congressman Lehlbach's.

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