Morrow's March

At Trenton, N. J. last week a platform was being concocted for the State Republican Convention by its Resolutions Committee. Outside the meeting room in the Stacy-Trent Hotel, newsgatherers waited excitedly, for in there with the committeemen had marched Dwight Whitney Morrow, nominated fortnight ago to run for the Senate as a Wet (TIME, June 30). Would he prevail upon the State Republican leaders, traditionally Dry in word if not in deed, to make the platform express his revolutionary personal views? If he did, it would be the first time since the passage of the 18th Amendment that its repeal had been demanded by any Republican organization.

The buzz of voices ceased in the hotel room; the door opened; committeemen came out. "Did you ...?'' newsgatherers asked. "Was the Morrow plank . . . ? Did Mr. Morrow . . . ?"

"He laid down the law," a grinning committeeman told them. "He insisted that the platform be drawn in conformity with his Newark speech."

The plank which soon followed was a close paraphrase of that speech, only notable omission being Mr. Morrow's politically revolutionary aphorism: "Prohibition . . . is a question which constantly confuses moral principles with the art of government'' (TIME, May 26). Excerpts from the plank:

"We believe that never has the liquor traffic presented a more vital problem to government . . . that the 18th Amendment should be repealed and that there be substituted for it an Amendment which will restore to the States the power to determine their policy toward the liquor traffic. . . ."

Two days later, the New Jersey Democrats, traditionally Wet, issued their platform. Said they: "We congratulate our opponents upon their public espousal of this fundamental Democratic doctrine" [States Rights]. Rev. James K. Shields, Superintendent of the New Jersey Anti-Saloon League, warned his fellow Drys that traditional, militant Wets were not so much a danger to their credo as "the Morrow type . . . much more to be feared: the quiet, dignified, scholarly churchman of evangelical persuasion, who never rants but nevertheless stands for the action that would be fatal to the 18th Amendment."

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