Author, Author

Ever since the National Commission on Law Observance & Law Enforcement issued its Prohibition report in January, 72-year-old Chairman George Woodward Wickersham has been hounded for an explanation of how the Commission's Wet majority reached Dry conclusions. Last week Chairman Wickersham journeyed to Boston where in an address to the Chamber of Commerce he made his first public comment on his report. Excerpts:

"The publication was met with an outburst of hostile criticism. . . . Curiously enough the most abusive articles came almost exclusively from the Wet press. I say curiously because I should have thought the Wets would have derived more encouragement from the report and the separate statements of the commissioners than the Drys. ... In the past there has been much well-founded complaint of the extreme intolerance of the Prohibitionists. This peculiar characteristic of late appears to have been appropriated by their opponents. . . . Apparently a large body of antiProhibitionists expected the Commission to find a way for them to secure liquor with ease and were enraged when we failed to do so.

"Much has been made of the differences between the conclusions in the report and the opinions expressed by individual members. ... A careful study will satisfy any impartial mind that these differences are confined mainly to the remedies suggested for the ills recognized in the report. . . . Some of us, of whom

I am one, feared that any of the modifications proposed would inevitably lead to the restoration of the licensed saloon."

To newsmen who still awaited explanations as to how the Commission reached its conclusions, he refused all interviews.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.