Torrid Talk

For two days last week before the House Judiciary Committee Wet speakers stormed and thundered at Prohibition-as-is, but all their torrid talk did not change a single Dry vote in Congress. The occasion was the first official hearings given by the House to proponents of modification (TIME, Feb. 10). The Judiciary Committee had before it seven resolutions proposing repeal of the 18th Amendment, of the Volstead Act. Anticipating a large audience, Chairman Graham moved his committee temporarily into the vast white marble Caucus Room of the House office building. Some 200 spectators appeared, more than half of them women. Though their numbers looked measly in the great Caucus Room, their noisy applause far exceeded their size.

The tenor of their testimony was "Prohibition is bad because-- ." The arguments presented were by no means fresh. Virginia's Congressman Montague, a Dry committee member, dozed off into restful slumber, so weary was he with hearing the same old facts used to damn the 18th Amendment. When handclapping in the audience became very loud, Dry Representative Yates of Illinois remarked: "I object to this noise. If we are to have a town meeting here I will withdraw." When nobody seemed to care whether he left or not, he decided to stay.

The No. I Wet witness, introduced to the committee as "a gentleman and a scholar" by Illinois Wet Representative Sabath who had never seen him before, was Walter W. Liggett, onetime Minnesota newsgatherer. Lately Mr. Liggett has been investigating Prohibition conditions in several states and writing for Plain Talk such articles as "Holy Hypocritical Kansas," "Michigan, Soused and Serene,"Bawdy Boston," "How wet is Washington?" His testimony was largely a rehash of his writings. Excerpts:

"In Washington 700 speakeasies and 4,000 bootleggers operate unmolested. In Boston prostitution is rampant, with 15,000 persons engaged in purveying booze. In Kansas, after 50 years of Prohibition, there is not a town where I can not go as a stranger and get a very good drink in 15 minutes. No less than 6,000,000 gallons of hard liquor are consumed in Kansas annually. Detroit is in the grip of gangsters and crooked politicians. North Dakota consumes immeasurably more hard liquor than before Prohibition. There out of every four farmers one is making bootleg liquor for the other three. Drinking goes on in the vilest places in Minneapolis. There is not a decent speakeasy in the city but there are 3,000 beer flats where girls preside. A young fellow telephones to Clara or Rose that, he is bringing up a friend and she gets a friend. They pull the shades, drink and other things go on. . . . They also have their beer farms in Minnesota, open to city boys and girls who motor out, drink and rent a room if they want it. . . .

"I know of a drunken revelry, a wild party, given by Dennis Murphy, a gambler, at a Grand Avenue roadhouse near Detroit on the night of Nov. 5 last at which a governor of Michigan, a chief of police and four judges were present with gamblers, criminals and bootleggers. The revelry included dances by naked hootchy-koochy girls -- and all the rest of it. It was a Bacchanalian orgy. . . .

"If we have Prohibition ten years more, this land will be ruled by gangs of underworld rats."

Writer Liggett's references to Kansas and Michigan caused reverberations out side Washington. Governor Fred Warren Green of Michigan who first said he did not "know much about the matter" came to Washington after the committee had risen. With it he filed a statement in which he said he had been Mayor of Ionia, "a typical American city," for 14 terms, was National Commander of the United Spanish War Veterans and had no desire "to dignify gossipy allegations admittedly based on the statements of a political enemy." To his statement was attached another from the four Michigan judges--Homer Ferguson, Maurice McMahon, Lester Moll and Allan Campbell--for whom the November party was given in which they denied that liquor was served, that the entertainment was indecent.

Kansas's Governor Clyde Reed was greatly exercised about Mr. Liggett's charges of wholesale drinking in his state. He prepared to send his attorney general, William Amos Smith to Washington to cross-examine Mr. Liggett at the committee's next meeting. Mr. Smith announced ahead of time that the charges were "false, libelous and untrue."

Witness No. 2 in importance for the Wets was Maryland's onetime Senator William Cabell Bruce. Said he: "I am one of the most temperate men. All the spirits I have drunk in the past 25 years could be got into a quart measure. I do like a glass of wine. But there is one wine I dearly love, the fresh sparkling wine of human freedom."

Fervently flaying "fanatical Christians" who advocate Prohibition as a profession, he declared: "I have said my prayers every morning and every evening of my life. But if I were dying I would rather have a raven perched on my bedpost or a fiend staring his grimaces at, me than to turn for religious consolation to these hybrid preacher-politicians."

Women came before the committee to advocate Prohibition changes : Representative Mary Teresa Norton of New Jersey, who argued for a nation-wide referendum on the 18th Amendment, with its repeal automatically following a majority vote against it; New York's Mrs. Charles Hamilton Sabin, head of the Women's Organization for Prohibition Reform, whose emerald rings glinted in the air as she emphasized her condemnation of "drinking Drys" in Congress; Miss M. Louise Gross, head of the National Women's Moderation League, who declared that unless the Prohibition law was changed before her two small nieces grew up, where she was can going to send them "abroad where they can learn to drink like ladies.''

The Wets made the best rough-and-tumble argument they could. Against Prohibition they showed a well-trained unity. But as for something better to take its place, they were either barren of all ideas or hopelessly divided. No remedial suggestions worthy of notice came out of the hearings. Even liberal Drys in Congress have made it plain they will not jump away from Prohibition, as is, until and unless the Wets provide them with some substantial substitute to jump to.

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