"Repeal by Christmas"

Repeal of the 18th Amendment looked so close last week that even a good professional Dry like Prohibition Director Alfred Vernon Dalrymple was in favor of letting distilleries resume production immediately under government license to stock up for the coming deluge. "Major" Dalrymple, a hefty, red-faced A. E. F. veteran who spent years chasing 'leggers, personally opposes Repeal which would cost him his job. Yet at New Orleans he declared:

"There's no use to kid ourselves and there isn't any use in delaying the start of liquor manufacture. It will mean putting hundreds of thousands of men back to work and it will mean hundreds of thousands of dollars of new business."

What prompted the Dalrymple statement was the fact that there is today under government bond in the U. S. only about 6,000,000 gal. of medicinal hard liquor. After Repeal the country would gulp this all down in a few weeks. Because it takes four years to age real whiskey, an acute domestic liquor shortage looms unless production is again permitted. As it is unlikely that the Federal Government will grant that permission in advance of final Repeal, foreign liquor manufacturers have amassed enormous surplus stocks for shipment into the U. S. at a moment's notice.

Repeal last week passed the halfway mark and swept on unchecked. Votings:

Alabama broke the tradition of a solid Dry South by going 3-to-2 for Repeal. A sour political note was struck by Judge Oliver Day Street, Alabama's Republican national committeeman. who told his slim following: "If Repeal is a Democratic measure and if President Roosevelt desires it, this should be sufficient proof that it is no Republican measure and no Republican has any business voting for it."

Arkansas had the distinction of carrying Repeal around the turn and into the homestretch. Its vote was also about 3-to-2. Drys charged that Wets had paid the poll taxes of indigent citizens in return for their votes. After the balloting the Attorney General warned that Arkansas, under State law, was still "as dry as a camel's tonsils."

Tennessee gave Repealists their first bad scare when it turned in a wet majority of only 9,000 out of nearly 250,000 votes. Memphis and Nashville were barely able to overcome the Dry strength of Republican moonshining East Tennessee. There was some talk of a recount.

Oregon refused to listen to William E. ("Pussyfoot"; Johnson who stomped out of the State declaring his Dry campaign had been a failure and that the U. S. was "in for a five-year drunk." The Oregon vote was 2-to-1.

By the end of the week the State score for Repeal stood 20-to-0. Elections this year in 16 more States were definitely in sight after Colorado's Governor moved for a vote Sept. 4. Postmaster General Farley, who had led the Administration's anti-Prohibition campaign, marched in to see President Roosevelt and report on the situation. Said he afterwards: "The country is safe. We will have Repeal by Christmas. The President agrees with me."

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