NAWSA SUBJECT FILE Tilton, Elizabeth [H.] Will you please find our from the Chairman of your local Republican Committee who is likely to run as a delegate from your district to the coming National Convention of the Republican Party, and write him a letter similar to the following. It is very necessary to get this message to all who are going to the Convention. Dear Sir: Concerning the proposal for a "Wet" Plank in the National Republican Party Platform, may we call your attention to the fact that such a Plank would, 1, make lukewarm the vote of the home-loving women of America, 2, lose the Border States, 3, strain the West possibly to the breaking point, 4, and do no good to the East, because the Republican Party there can never outbid the Democratic Party for wetness. The only wise Plank is "Maintenance and Enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment". Respectfully submitted, mMEMORANDUM: In New York, met with W. C. T. U. and Law Enforcement leaders. They will have publicity out at once, concerning Dry Planks; also a Dry Plank meeting in town hall, New York, April 11th; also sending all over state call for Dry Plank meetings. Saw Anti-Saloon League and there talked with Frank Garnett, who sees President on Saturday morning; also talked with Wupperman, who has sent out today, through Country Editor Publishing Company, statement to the press, "The Candidate cannot be divorced from the Platform. The president is the Party's National Leader. Let him assert his authority." Mr. Wupperman sends me this morning letter which he has written direct to the President. Women in New York all writing President that he must assert his authority. I am starting here on my Dry Plank meetings in New England. Telegram received from Mrs. Patterson that we will have big Dry Plank demonstration in Washington May 9th. I am engaged of the Telegram Campaign, which is to get Dry Plank telegram from all organizations and prominent men over the country, to be thrown on screen at meeting. I think you must be able to get three or four such from big men or organizations. This must be our great demonstration, and we must show how strong the Republican Party is for Dry Plank. May I say that I do not believe we shall impress people by saying that xx the Drys got Prohibition through Congress, not through making the Parties Wet. The New York Evening Post said the Wets preferred their way, not ours. What we want to say is, that the Wets can only succeed by submerging the vast country-side and going to the City Machine, which depends on under-worlds for votes. These under-worlds will make short work of the very big business forces that have lifted them to the surface, therefore, this Wet movement is bad business for Big Business. We also want to say that this Eastern financial movement against Prohibition will certainly create a coalition between South and West. Such a coalition will be invincible and will make short work of the business interests up North that are trying to get rid of Prohibition because they think it throws power to the insurgent West and coming South, in short, this Wet movement is bad business and bad policy for Big Business. And, lastly, that no presidential candidate can be divorced from his plank. PUBLIC MEETINGS ON PARTY PLANKS TO PROTEST REPEAL PLANKS CAMOUFLAGED AS RESUBMISSION OR REFERENDUM. THE CONSTITUTION PROVIDES NO MEANS OF TAKING A REFERENDUM. RESUBMISSION IS PRACTICALLY A REPEAL, AMENDMENT THE DEYS ARE FOR ENFORCEMENT AND AGAINST REPEAL PLANES. WILL FIGHT ANY WEAKENING OF 18TH AMENDMENT AND ITS. ENFORCING LEGISLATION. ................ The Radio Committee PRESIDENT CANNOT BE DIVORCED FROM HIS PLANK. PRESIDENT MAKES THE PLANK. Gossip would have it that members of the President's official family would have a Dry President run on a Wet Plank. This cannot be done. The Country Editor Publishing Co., March 22nd, 1932, says: [xxxxxxxxxx] "If any political leaders thinks he can humbug the rank and file of the Republican Party by running the candidate as a Dry on the one hand, and pledging Congress to repeal on the other, he ought to be told the truth before it is too late. It was this sort of a swindle that sent the Democratic Party four years ago to the greatest defeat in its history. It is impossible to believe that the President would lend himself to such a transparent fraud. The candidate cannot be divorced from the platform. The President is the Party's National leader. Let him assert his authority." The President of the New York Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Acting Chairman of the New York State Women's Committee for Law Enforcement were reported in the press, March 24th, as sending the following to Mr. Walter Newton, Secretary to the President. "Will you point out to the President that members of his official family are openly quoted as working for a Wet referendum Plank in the coming Party Platform? President Hoover was elected by Drys. Members of his Cabinet have a right to resign and work for any wet organization they desire, but is it quite proper for them to use the position to which the President has raised them to exploit the Wet cause? ...... It is well for the politicians to understand now that the Drys will never support a Dry Presidential Candidate on a Wet Platform." BISHOP CANNON HINTS AT DRY THIRD PARTY IF TWO GO WET. Bishop Cannon asked what would happen if the Wet Faction should obtain a Wet Plank in the Republican Platform said: "If Hoover flatly declines to run on a Wet Plank, there will be no Wet Plank," Bishop Cannon said. "That matter is for Hoover to determine, regardless of the clamor of the Wet element of the Party." "Should he make no declaration and the Republican Convention should adopt the Wet Plank, and Hoover agree to run on it, and should both Party Platforms contain Wet Planks, then there would arise a situation which would compel those who put their convictions and moral principles above party labels to decide upon the proper course to pursue." Should the Dry people of the Nation tamely submit to these Wet maneouvers, Dry Democrats and Dry Republicans would unite to hold a joint convention of their own. REPUBLICAN PARTY CANNOT OUTBID DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR WETNESS. In New York State when the Republican Party tries being Wet, it is snowed under y the Democrats. Tuttle is a case in point. He raised the banner of e liquor traffic, and was overwhelmed by a 725,000 vote avalanche. 840,000 registered ters living in Dry upstate territory would not vote in November, 1930, while nearly ,00o voted for Professor Carroll, an independent Dry. Other hundreds of thousands of Republicans failed even to register in 1930. "How beautiful to die of a broken heart on paper" says Thomas Carlyle. "Quite another thing in practice." It is easy enough to say that, as the Democratic Party bids fair to have a Wet Nominee for President and a Resubmission Plank, if the Republican Party puts in a Wet Plank, it will lose no Republican votes, because the Republicans have nowhere else to go. That is a paper idea. It did not work out in New York, nor has the Party going Wet in Massachusetts helped the Republicans. In the North and West, Wetness is Democratic thunder. You cannot get around it. A Dry President, divorced from his Plank, is a President defeated by the independent vote and by the stay-at-home voters. That is the fact. THE DRYS DEMAND A DRY PRESIDENT, A DRY VICE-PRESIDENT, RUNNING ON AN ENFORCEMENT PLANK. MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN SEND FOLLOWING LETTER TO THE REPUBLICAN DELEGATES TO PARTY CONVENTION: Dear Sir: Concerning the proposal for a "Wet" Plank in the National Republican Party Platform, may we call your attention to the fact that such a Plank would, 1, make lukewarm the vote of the home-loving women of America, 2, lose the Border States, 3, strain the West possibly to the breaking point, 4, and do no good to the East, because the Republican Party there can never outbid the Democratic Party for wetness. The only wise Plank is "Maintenance and Enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment". WET AND DRY STAND OF ANNOUNCED OR POSSIBLE CANDIDATES. We give below pronouncement of some of the announced candidates and some possible candidates for President of the United States. We are obliged to take most of these from the newspaper, as for many candidates did not answer the letter we sent them asking for their stand. HERBERT HOOVER Hoover address at Notification Ceremony in Stanford Stadium. (Formally notifying Hoover of his nomination by the Republican Party for the Presidency.) "I do not favor the repeal of the 18th Amendment. I stand for the efficient enforcement of the laws enacted thereunder. Whoever is chosen President has under his oath the solemn duty to pursue this course." ..................Modification of the enforcement laws which would permit that which the Constitution forbids is nullification. This the American people will not countenance." President Hoover's Message to Congress, with the Wickersham Report, January 20, 1931. "The Commission, by a large majority, does not favor the Repeal of the 18th Amendment as a cure for the inherent abuses of the liquor traffic. I am in accord with this view. I am in unity with the spirit of the report in seeking constructive steps to advance the National ideal of eradication of the social and economic and political evils of this traffic, to preserve the gains which have been made, and to eliminate the abuses which exist, at the same time facing with an open mind the difficulties which have arisen under this experiment. I do, however, see serious objections to, and therefore must not be understood as recommending, the Commission's proposed revision of the 18th Amendment which is suggested by them for possible consideration at some future time if the continued effort at enforcement should not prove successful. My own duty and that of all executive officials is clear - to enforce the law with all the means at our disposal without equivocation or reservation." AS SECRETARY OF COMMERCE HERBERT HOOVER SAID: "What the Country as a whole has accomplished during the past five years in increased National efficiency is impossible of measurement...in addition to elimination of waste, we have had the benefit of notable advances in science, improvement in methods of management and Prohibition." (13th Annual Report, 1925.) HOW HERBERT HOOVER NOW STANDS. 1. Opposed to the return of the saloon. 2. Opposed to the modification of the Volstead Law so as to permit light wines and beer. 3. Opposed to the Government's going into the liquor business. 4. Opposed to the Repeal of the 18th Amendment. (cont.) 5. Opposed to the "revision" of the 18th Amendment. 6. Opposed to the return of the liquor problem to the individual states. 7. In favor of Federal prohibition. 8. In favor of Federal prohibition by Constitutional enactment as against statutory prohibition by Congressional action. 9. In favor of any change in enforcement legislation which is designed to improve enforcement. Frm the Christian Century - Feb. 11, 1931. ALBERT G. RITCHIE GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND. WANTS EACH STATE TO DECIDE FOR ITSELF. "Those States and communities anywhere in the Country which want prohibitory legislation of this kind are entitled to have it.......More than that, effective Federal measures should be established to protect such States against shipments from other states which would contravene their laws and the will of their people. But other states and communities have problems of their own which may not be the same, and these other states and communities are entitled to consideration, too. They should not be forced by Federal mandate to accept any particular law, whether it suits them or whether it does not. They should also be free to enact such laws within their own borders as are best suited to their own providence and their own needs an which in their experience, are best adapted to promote temperance, morality and order among their own people." (excerpt from letter to Mrs. Wm. Tilton, March 21st 1932.) FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. HOSTILE TO EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT. The Washington Post, Thursday, April 2nd, 1931, carries an Editorial entitled: Governor Roosevelt - Wet. "I believe an overwhelming sentiment exists in this State which asks for immediate action to change the Eighteenth Amendment and that the greater part of this sentiment is based on two righteous and sane objectives: First, to eliminate the fundamental source of the greater part of modern, organized crime, and secondly, to promote a greater temperance. To this policy I subscribe." WANTS HOME RULE DONE TO THE LOWER SUBDIVISION OF GOVERNMENT. BACKWARD TURN BACKWARD OH TIME IN THY FLIGHT! Letter to Robert F. Wagner on Sept. 9, 1930. "The force and effect of the 18th Amendment can be eliminated, of course, only by a new constitutional amendment. This would supersede and abrogate the 18th Amendment and substitute therefore a new constitutional provision. That is clear. The fundamental of a new amendment must be the restoration of real control over intoxicants to the several states. The sale of intoxicants by state agencies should be made lawful in any state of the Union where the people of that state desire it, and conversely, the people of any state should have the right to prohibit the sale of intoxicants within their own borders........... There should be definite recognition of the extent of home rule to the lower sub-divisions of government - in other words, a recognition of the rights of cities, villages or towns by popular vote to prohibit the sale of intoxicants within their own borders, even though the intoxicants may be sold in other' parts of the state through state agencies." John Garner (Nobody Knows) In a telegram to the Women's Christian Temperance Union, February 25th, 1932, Mr. Garner Wired: "Thus far we have been successful in preserving a harmony (in Congress) and I have no intention of making any declaration or otherwise doing anything that will disrupt this condition, and thereby create a hazard to legislation vital to economic rehabilitation. I am not particularly interested as to how my determination in this respect will affect my political future. Garner refused to amplify this declaration, although previously he has pointed to his record as "speaking for itself". He voted against the 18th Amendment, but in favor of various subsequent enforcement acts. His refusal to be spurred into taking a stand is identical with his close Republican friend, the late Speaker Longworth, who was an anti prohibitionist, but silent about it as long as he was Speaker." GOVERNOR "ALFALFA BILL" OF OKLAHOMA. William H. Murray, Governor of Oklahoma, says, according to the press, that he believes the issue to be "Bread, Butter, Bacon and Eggs"., in short, economics, bread rather than beer. Speaking before the National Anti- Saloon League Convention on January 15th, 1932, in Washington, he expressed himself strong for enforcement of existing law, but was very cautious regarding any endorsement of 18th Amendment. At least, this is the impression he made on the writer. He suggested that owing to diversity of country, we might in time come to have leagues of states, each group to manage its own affairs. This suggestion put one in mind of the prophecy of Le Bon, a Frenchman writing in 1898, (Psphycology of Crowds). Le Bon said that the great invasions were not over but futute invasions would not come out of the steppes but out of the Big Cities which were lower levels of civilization. The Big Cities would try to invade the vast Country-side. The first of these invasions might well come in the United States, when New York and Chicago tried to invade the vast Country-side. These invasions would be put down by the stern-willed, Puritan based stock of the rural and small town groups, if these groups sensed the danger in time. If they did not, and New York and its satellites came to dominate the Federal Government, then the country would break up into provinces, because the Anglo-Saxon group, inheriting the pioneer idealism of self-discipline and self-sacrifice in order that civilization might go up higher, would never consent to be levelled down to the materialism of the Big Cities. Either they would lift the Big Cities up to the pioneer idealism, make them suited to Democracy, or they would separate. It was rather surprising to get this idea of separation into provinces from Oklahoma. NEWTON D. BAKER REPORT, WICKERSHAM COMMISSION JANUARY 7TH 1931. "In my opinion, the 18th Amendment should be repealed, and the whole question of policy and enforcement with regard to intoxicating liquor be, remitted to the States." ALFRED E. SMITH MR. SMITH IS THE LEADING WET OF THE COUNTRY. HIS STAND IS WELL-KNOWN. On February 27th, according to an Associated Press report, he said: "I am personally still for the Repeal of the 18th Amendment. I firmly believe that it should never have been put into the Constitution." He denied that the South is Dry, condemned "ducking and dodging" on the question, and advocated a new Amendment to the Constitution to give each state the right to determine its method of liquor control by popular referendum. He said that relief could come only to this Country though the Democatic Party. (Associated Press, February 27th, Boston Herald. ) THE EDITOR REGRETS THAT SPACE DOS NOT PERMIT OF MENTIONING OTHER CANDIDATES PLANKS of 1928 DEMOCRATIC PLANK. REPUBLICAN PLANK. "We reaffirm the American constitutional doctrine as announced by George Washington in his farewell address, to wit: "'The Constitution which at any time exists until changed by the explicit and authentic act by the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all.' ""We also reaffirm the attitude of the American people toward the Federal Constitution as declared by Abraham Lincoln: "'We are by both duty and inclination bound to stick by that Constitution in all its letter and spirit from beginning to end. I am for the honest enforcement of the Constitution. Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our forefathers made it inviolate.' "The people through the method provided by the Constitution have written the Eighteenth Amendment into the Constitution. The Republican party pledges itself and its nominees to the observance and vigorous enforcement of this provision of the Constitution." NO CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION FOR A REFERENDUM The Federal Constitution makes no provision for the Government to hold a direct mass vote of the people, nor does it empower the Federal Government to conduct elections. The Federal Government has never submitted any question to the direct vote of the people. The Government is a union of sovereign states, each state entering the Union on the condition that it would have equal representation with other states in the Senate of the National Congress. Pure Democracy, government by mass vote of the people, violates this principal. The Framers of the Constitution called for "representative government". They never dreamed of Government by a mass vote of the people. No referendum is possible under the Constitution. Do not be deceived. RESUBMISSION OF THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT TO CONVENTIONS. PLAN OF WETS. The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, as were the other Amendments, by State Legislatures. The Wets propose to send out a Repeal Amendment, [misnamed], Resubmission, and to have it ratified, not by Legislature, but by Conventions. The Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Moral of the Methodist-Episcopal Church, says, that this method would entail great expense, many separate elections for the naming of delegates. It would also paralyze enforcement during the years that this process was going on. The process might go on for years, many states refusing to call Conventions at once, owing to cost. Some might never call them. There would, doubtless, be much corruption in the calling fo these conventions, much chance for foul play. Moreover, should the 18th Amendment be allowed to come to the States for ratification, what is to prevent many other Amendments suffering the same treatment. [The] The Drys demand that any new liquor Amendment be conducted as was the 18th Amendment. They resent the short-cut strategy of the "Wets" to drive both Parties wet. They call attention to the fact that the Drays carried 18th Amendment by going into each Congressional District and conducting there a campaign of education. The Drys also demand that no Repeal Amendment shall go out of Congress until the "Wets" give us a better plan, one warranted to give us an even greater temperance than the greater temperance already secured by Prohibition even poorly enforced. Have the "Wets" proposed any plan that would give us what prohibition has given us in Boston, a 60% decrease in cases in which Drink figured coming to the Family Welfare Society, a 79% decrease in women arrested for drunkenness (Department of Correction figures) etc., etc. What plan guarantees any decrease like to the decreases under Prohibition? When the "Wets" can give us a better plan, the "Drys" will listen. No better plan has yet been proposed. "Home Rule", that is, for each state to decide how it will manage the liquor problem, is not a better plan. It is practically return to the old conditions which begat Prohibition. It is camouflage to say that it will not bring back the Saloon. It would simply mean the Prohibition fight all over again. Far from getting liquet out of politics, it would keep it in politics for the next fifty years. RELEASED Wednesday, March 16, 1932. From: Mrs. Wm. Tilton, Chairman, Women's National Committee for Education Against Alcohol, Driscoll Hotel, Washington, D.C. MOVEMENT BEGUN IN NOVA SCOTIA TO RE-INSTATE PROHIBITION That prominent citizens in Nova Scotia are dissatisfied with the workings of Government Sale of Liquor, and are, therefore, taking steps that, if successful, will in time re-introduce Prohibition, is the statement made in a release sent out by the Women's National Committee for Education Against Alcohol. The statement is based on a communication from H. R. Grant of New Glasgow, Secretary of the Social Service Council and Temperance Alliance of Nova Scotia, to the effect that legislation for county plebescites on sale of liquor will be introduced as "the initial step in having the Government Sale Act Removed, and having instead well-enforced Prohibition." Mr. Grant states that under liquor sale in Nova Scotia in the past year, the people have spend about $5,000,000 in order to secure a liquor revenue of $1,000,000. "This is not a sound business proposition." Mr. Grant further notes that the program of making Beer cheap in order to increase sobriety and decrease jail population, has not come out as hoped. He quotes figures from Halifax as follows: CITY PRISON RECORDS In the entire 13 years, before 1916, under the old Liquor License Act, Commitments for Drunkenness ..................................... 3305 In the entire 14 years, 1916-1930, Under the Prohibition Law Commitments for Drunkenness ..................................... 538 In the single year, 1931, of Government Sale, Commitments for Drunkenness ..................................... 480 Mr. Grant further states, "For all offenses, commitments during the 14 years under Prohibition number 2091, an average per year of 149. In the first year of Government Sale, they numbered 894." Mr. Grant quotes an editorial from the Windsor Tribune which points out how the Anti-Prohibitionists said that if real Simon-pure whiskey, brandy and wine could return, "instead in our jails being dens of bootleggers and victims of the traffic, jails would become temporary harbors for the few that may slip into wrong-doing." The Windsor Tribune says, "Is there any one today with average intelligence, who will deny that after one short year of open liquor stores, jails are bursting with offenders against the Nova Scotia Liquor Control Act?" Mr. Grant further quotes reports from the small towns, thus: "Port Hawkesbury - Moral conditions are growing worse. Up to the opening of the Government Store here, the cells in the jail have not been occupied for years. Now there are four and five different occupants every week." Mr. Grant makes himself responsible for the above statements and ends thus, "From a moral and economic stand-point, the present system of liquor legislation is a complete failure." He believes it only a question of time when Prohibition is re-instated in Nova Scotia. From 1928 Democratic platform on Law Enforcement. The Republican party, for eight years in complete control of the Government at Washington, presents the remarkable spectacle of feeling compelled in its national platform to promise obedience to a provision of the Federal Constitution which it [had] has flagrantly disregarded and to apologize to the country for its failure to enforce laws enacted by the Congress of the United States. Speaking for the national Democracy, this convention pledges the party and its nominees to an honest effort to enforce the Eighteenth Ammendment and all other provisions of the Federal Constitution and all laws enacted pursuant thereto. ### When I [????] Register A.D. Registered at Gen'l Elec. of Nov. 1913 Vote at Special Elec. 1914 13 6,798 1,478 19 14, 906 1,770 20 7,574 1,321 21 12,235 1,501 22 8,031 1,766 23 25,984 4,211 75,528 12,047 "Look at the similar figures for the 7th and 8th Congressional Districts. A.D. Registered at Gen'l Elec. of Nov. 1913 Vote at Special Elec. 1914 1 8,078 1,715 2 6,140 847 4 8,680 1,258 9 16,311 1,850 14 6,831 930 16 19,434 2,724 65,474 9,324 "Special elections, therefore, may be conceded to command less than 1/6 of the attention of men that general elections command, whereas they command more than 1/4 of the attention of women and, at that, women who have never voted before, who labored under the dis-advantage of not having the registration date set until within three or four days of the date/that/they had to go and register, not to mention the added disadvantage of a violent snow storm and only a day and a fraction in which to register, as compared with a whole week allowed to men. "From all which it may be surmised that, bolster up men's interest in politics as you may, concede them all the special privileges that you will, make it as hard for women as you choose, you are yet likely to get from women a more vigorous reaction in the way of political interest than you are likely to get from men. [??????? ????????] March 9, 1918 What They Proved On Tuesday New York women had a limited chance to prove whether or not New York Women want to vote. They proved that: Over 90 per cent of the women who registered for a special election can be relied on to vote at it. (Only 33 1/3 of the men eligible to vote on Tuesday made use of their chance.) They proved that the Socialist women are no more interested in voting than are Republican and Democratic women. They proved that sex antagonism is no factor at the polls; for they voted for men candidates in far greater numbers than they did for the one woman candidate. They proved that the polls can be as orderly as the churches. They proved that the New York Times was wrong. as usual, in all its elderly fears. From Christian Science Monitor - February 23, 1928. HOOVER RENEWS DEFINITE STAND FOR PROHIBITION. .......... Candidate for Presidency Favors Strict Enforcement of Dry Laws. Answers Questions of Senator Borah. Calls Prohibition a Test Which Must be Worked out Constructively. .......... The Text of Mr. Hoover's letter to Mr. Borah follows: "Upon my return to Washington I have taken up your letter. "I feel that the discussion of public questions by reply to questionnaires is likely to be unsatisfactory and ofttimes leads to confusion rather than clarity. Replies to the scores of such inquiries on many questions are impossible. "Out of my regard for you known sincerity and you interest in essential question, I will say again that I do not favor repeal of the 18th Amendment. I stand, of course, for the efficient, vigorous and sincere enforcement of the laws enacted thereunder. Whoever is chosen President has under his oath the solumn duty to pursue this course. "Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment noble in motive, and far-reaching in purpose. It must be worked out constructively." Christian Science Monitor - Monday, August 13, 1928. Hoover address at Notification Ceremony in Stanford Stadium. (formally notifying Hoover of his nomination.by.the.Republican Party for the Presidency.) .......... Bone Dry Pledge "I recently stated my position up the Eighteenth Amendment, which I again repeat. "I do not favor the repeal of the 18th Amendment, I stand for the efficient enforcement of the laws enacted thereunder. Whoever is chosen President has under his oath the solemn duty to pursue this course. "Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose. It must be worked out consyructively." Common sense compels is to realize that grave abuse have occured - abuses which mush be remedied. An organized searching investigation of fact and causes can alone determine the wise method of correcting them.. Crime and disobedience of law cannot be permitted to break down the Constitution and laws of the United States. Modification of the enforcement laws which would permit that which the Constitution forbids is nullifi cation. This the American people will not countenance. Change in the Constitution can and must be brought about only by the straightforward methods provided in the Constitution itself. There are those who do not believe in the purposes of several provisions of the Constitution. No one denies their right to seek to amend it. They are not subject to criticism for asserting that right. But the Republican Party does deny the right of anyone to seek to destroy the purposes of the Constitution by indirection." .................. Christian Science Monitor - Oct. 23 - 1928. Herbert Hoover's speech in New York. Defends Prohibition. "There has been revived in this campaign, however, a series of proposals, which, if adopted, would be a long step toward the abandonment of our American system and a surrender to the destructive operation of governmental conduct of commercial business. Because the company is faced with difficulty and doubt over certain national problems - that is, prohibition, farm relief and electrical power - our opponents propose that we must thrust government a long way into the businesses which give rise to these problems. In effect, they abandon the tenets of their own party and turn to state socialism as as solution for the difficulty presented by all three. It it proposed that we shall change from prohibition to the state purchase and sale of liquor . . . . . . . There is , therefore, submitted to the American people a question of fundamental principle. That is, shall we depart from the principles of our American political and economic system upon which we have advanced beyond all the rest of the world in order to adopt methods based on principles destructive to its very foundations? Boston Herald, April 23, 1929. President at A.P. Luncheon. President Hoover, addressing the members of the Associated Press at a luncheon today at the Waldorf (New York) declared that crime and disrespect for law threatened the future of the nation. Prohibition only part. The prohibition law, as declared, was not the main source of the lawlessness. Less than 8 per cent of the convictions for felonies last year could be traced directly to the dry act. Prohibition violations, he said, are "but a sector of the invasion of lawlessness." From the Christian Century - Feb. 11, 1931. Mr. Hoover now stands: 1. Opposed to the return of the saloon. 2. Opposed to the modification of the Volstead law so as to permit [sa] light wines and beer. 3. Opposed to the government's going into the liquor business 4. Opposed to the repeal of the 18th amendment. 5. Opposed to the "revision" of the 18th amendment. 6. Opposed to the return of the liquor problem to the individual states. 7. In favor of federal prohibition. 8. In favor of federal prohibition by constitutional enactment as against statutory prohibition by congressional action. 9. In favor of any change in enforcement legislation which is designed to improve enforcement. What more could the President do to make his championshi of prohibition complete? Mr. Hoover is a dry. He is a dry, not merely in the sense that he has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution, but because he is a believer in the merit of that spe cific part of the constitution which prohibits the traffic in intoxicating liquor. As President it was unnecessary for him to announce his convictions as to the merits of prohibition. It has been sufficient that he faithfully enforce the law. But as a cnadidate for re-electio n, it became a paramount necessity that all doubt as to his personal view should be dispelled. Mr. Hoover has effectually dispelled it. On the assumption, which generally prevails, that the democratic party will be wet in 1932, with a wet cnadidate for the presidency, it now seems clear that the fate of prohibition will rest with the republican party under Mr. Hoover's leadership." What lies underneath wet Invasion of South [by New Yorkers] To the Editor New York invades the South - - to turn it wet. What is the motive behind this great multi-millionaire drive for Local Option - return of the saloon. For that is what it will mean, precisely what it meant before. Up North, it is not the merits of Prohibition but the rich wets say [?] the object is to get Prohibition out of politics. They mean that Prohibition in the North is blamed for the fact that weak or [?] pathetic Democrats now go to Congress in place of [?] - Pat Republicans. Thus political power lies more and more with the South and west. Repeal Prohibition: give it back to States and Quit you like men! Be strong! There's a battle to fight - There's a wrong to right There's a God who blesses the good with right So fare ye forth with a song Quit you like me. Be strong There's a work to do There's a world to make new. There's a call for men who are brave & true On! on with the Song Quit you like men! Be strong! There's a year of grace There's a God to face There's another heat in the great world race Speed! Speed with a song Wm. Herbert Heednut Quotable [Psalms?] P. 183 Willett, Clark & [Cabby?] Pub President Hoover's Message to Congress, with the Wickersham Report, January 20th, 1931. ................... ...... "The commission, by a large majority, does not favor the repeal of the 18th amendment as a method of cure for the inherent abuses of the liquor traffic. I am in accord with this view. I am in unity with the spirit of the report in seeking constructive steps to advance the national ideal of eradication of the social and economic and political evils of this traffic, to preserve to gains which have been made, and to eliminate the abuses which exist, at the same time facing with an open mind the difficulties which have arisen under this experiment. I do, however, see serious objections to, and therefore must not be understood as recommending, the commission's proposed revision of the 18th amendment which is suggested by them for possible consideration at some future time if continued effort at enforcement should not prove successful. My own duty and that of all executive officials is clear - to enforce the law with all the means at our disposal without equivocation or reservation. "The report is the result of a thorough and comprehensive study of the situation by a representative and authoritative group. It is clearly recognizes the gains which have been made and is resolute that those gains shall be preserved. There are necessarily differences in view among its members. It is a temperate and judicial presentation. It should stimulate the clarification of public mind and the advance of public thought. Herbert Hoover. The White House January 20, 1931. The hope is that The Eastern multi millionaire will again reign supreme in the United States Senate Sisters, cousins, wives and aunts of them meet financeers camouflage for innocent ladies this fight for power as a moral fight. They cry out about the young people. Though you can hardly get a corporal's guard of college Presidents, who feel that Proofs and abstinence harm young people. But in the North, it is common talk that groups of financeers [believe they can] put their money behind repeal and call on the country to let the materialism of New York rule the nation, because it well [get] give them back control of legislatures & the United States. [*Therefore, the South should recognize that every net inch it gives is an inch to denude itself of coming political power and listen with a mighty grain of salt *] [*Ras. Rob. Roosevelt Big Business*] [*Home Rule, even to the looser. [due?] of government* to pleads for Roosevelts reference [??]] Excerpt from President Hoovers Speech of Acceptance at Pala Alto, Calif., August 11th, 1928. "I do not favor the repeal of the 18th Amendment. I stand for the efficient enforcement of the laws enacted thereunder. Whoever is chosen President has under his oath a solemn duty to pursue this course." Keeplaw vs. Scofflaw Series COPYRIGHT BY HARRIS & EWING Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, in his Thirteenth Annual Report, 1925, said: "What the country as a whole has accomplished during the past five years in increased national efficiency is impossible of measurement. ... "In addition to elimination of waste, we have had the benefit of notable advances in science, improvement in methods of management, and Prohibition." ISSUED BY KING, GRANITE TRUST CO., QUINCY, MASS. [*Hoover Speech*] CONFIDENTIAL CAUTION TO EDITORS: The following advance copy of the address of Herbert Hoover accepting the Republican nomination for president is sent to you for your convenience and must be held in the strictest confidence until 4 p.m. Pacific time (8 p.m. Eastern Daylight, 7 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Central, 5 p.m. Mountain time), Saturday, August 11 (eleven), 1928, and no intimation or suggestion of its contents shall be given in any form or manner before that time. George Akerson Assistant to Mr. Hoover ADDRESS OF ACCEPTANCE of the Republican nomination for President BY HERBERT HOOVER To be delivered at the Stadium at Stanford University, California, Saturday, August 11, 1928, at 4 p.m. (Pacific Time) [*page 9*] [ Page 1 ] You bring, Mr. Chairman, formal notice of my nomination by the Republican Party to the Presidency of the United States. I accept. It is a great honor to be chosen for leadership in that party which has so largely made the history of our country in the last 70 years. Mr. Chairman, you and your associates have in four days travelled 3,000 miles across the continent to bring me this notice. I am reminded that in order to notify George Washington of his election, Charles Thompson, Secretary of the Congress, spent seven days on horseback to deliver that important intelligence 230 miles from New York to Mount Vernon. In another way, too, this occasion illuminates the milestones of progress. By the magic of the radio this nomination was heard by millions of our fellow citizens, not seven days after its occurrence, nor one day, nor even one minute. They were to all intents and purposes, present in the hall, participants in the proceedings. Today these same millions have heard your voice and now are hearing mine. We stand in their unseen presence. It is fitting, however, that the forms of our national life, hallowed by generations of usage, should be jealously preserved, and for that reason you have come to me, as similar delegations have come to other candidates through the years. Those invisible millions have already heard from Kansas City the reading of our party principles. They would wish to hear from me not a discourse upon the platform—in which I fully concur—but something of the spirit and ideals with which it is proposed to carry it into administration. Our problems of the past seven years have been problems of reconstruction; our problems of the future are problems of construction. They are problems of progress. New and gigantic forces have come into our national life. The World War released ideas of government in conflict with our principles. We have grown to financial and physical power which compels us into a new setting among nations. Science has given us new tools and a thousand inventions. Through them have come to each of us wider relationships, more neighbors, more leisure, broader vision, higher ambitions, greater problems. To insure that these tools shall not be used to limit liberty has brought a vast array of questions in government. The points of contact between the Government and the people are constantly multiplying. Every year wise governmental policies become more vital in ordinary life. As our problems grow so do our temptations grow to venture away from those principles upon which our republic was founded and upon which it has grown to greatness. Moreover we must direct economic progress in support of moral and spiritual progress. Our party platform deals mainly with economic problems, but our nation is not an agglomeration of railroads, of ships, of factories, of dynamos, or statistics. It is a nation of homes, a nation of men, of women, of children. Every man has a right to ask of us whether the United States is a better place for him, his wife and his children to live in, because the Republican Party has conducted the government for nearly eight years. Every woman has a right to ask whether her life, her home, her man's job, her hopes, her happiness, will be better assured by the continuance of the [ Page 2 ] Republican Party in power. I propose to discuss the questions before me in that light. With this occasion we inaugurate the campaign. It shall be an honest campaign; ever penny will be publicly accounted for. It shall be a true campaign. We shall use words to convey our meaning, not to hide it. The Republican Party came into authority nearly eight years ago. It is necessary to remind ourselves of the critical conditions of that time. We were confronted with an incompleted peace and involved in violent and dangerous disputes with both at home and abroad. The Federal Government was spending at the rate of five and one-half billions per year; our national debt stood at the staggering total of twenty-four billions. The foreign debts were unsettled. The country was in a panic from over expansion due to the war and the continued inflation of credit and currency after the Armistice, followed by a precipitant nation-wide deflation which in half a year crashed the prices of commodities by nearly one-half. Agriculture was prostrated; land was unsaleable; commerce and industry were stagnated; our foreign trade ebbed away; five millions of unemployed walked the streets. Discontent and agitation against our democracy were rampant. Fear for the future haunted every heart. No party ever accepted a more difficult task of reconstruction than did the Republican Party in 1921. The record of these seven and one-half years constitutes a period of rare courage in leadership and constructive action. Never has a political party been able to look back upon a similar period with more satisfaction. Never could it look forward with more confidence that its record would be approved by the electorate. Peace has been made. The healing processes of good will have extinguished the fires of hate. Year by year in our relations with other nations we have advanced the ideals of law and of peace, in substitution for force. By rigorous economy federal expenses have been reduced by two billions per annum. The national debt has been reduced by six and a half billions. The foreign debts have been settled in large part and on terms which have regard for our debtors and for our taxpayers. Taxes have been reduced four successive times. These reductions have been made in the particular interest of the smaller taxpayers. For this this purpose taxes upon articles of consumption and popular service have been removed. The income tax rolls today show a reduction of 80 per cent in the total revenue collected on income under $10,000 per year, while they show a reduction of only 25 per cent in revenues from incomes above that amount. Each successive reduction in taxes has brought a reduction in the cost of living to all our people. Commerce and industry have revived. Although the agricultural, coal and textile industries still lag in their recovery and still require our solicitude and assistance, yet they have made substantial progress. While other countries engaged in the way are only now regaining their prewar level in foreign trade, our exports, even if we allow for the depreciated dollar, are 58 per cent greater than before the war. Constructive leadership and cooperation by the government have released and stimulated the energies of our people. Faith in the future has been restored. Confidence in our form of government has never been greater. But it is not through the recitation of wise policies in government [Page 3] along that we demonstrate our progress under Republican guidance. To me the test is the security, comfort and opportunity that has been brought to the average American family. During this less than eight years our population has increased by 8 per cent. Yet our national income has increased by over thirty billions of dollars per year or more than 45 per cent. Our production—and therefore our consumption—of goods has increased by over 25 per cent. It is easily demonstrated that these increases have been widely spread among our whole people. Home ownership has grown. While during this period the number of families has increased by about 2,300,000 we have built more than 3,500,000 new and better homes. In this short time we have equipped nearly nine million more homes with electricity, and through it drudgery has been lifted from the lives of women. The barriers of time and distance have been swept away and life made freer and larger by the installation of six million more telephones, seven million radio sets, and the service of an additional 14 million automobiles. Our cities are growing magnificent with beautiful buildings, parks, and playgrounds. Our countryside has been knit together with splendid roads. We have doubled the use of electrical power and with it we have taken sweat from the backs of men. The purchasing power of wages has steadily increased. The hours of labor have decreased. The 12-hour day has been abolished. Great progress has been made in stabilization of commerce and industry. The job of every man has thus been made more secure. Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing. Most of all, I like to remember what this progress has meant to America's children. The portal of their opportunity has been ever widening. While our population has grown but 8 per cent we have increased by 11 per cent the number of children in our grade schools, by 66 per cent the number in our high schools, and by 75 per cent the numbers in our institutions of higher learning. With all our spending we have doubled savings deposits in our banks and building and loan associations. We have nearly doubled our life insurance. Nor have our people been selfish. They have met with a full hand the most sacred obligation of man—charity. The gifts of America to churches, to hospitals, and institutions for the care of the afflicted, and to relief from great disasters, have surpassed by hundreds of millions any totals for any similar period in all human record. One of the oldest and perhaps the noblest of human aspirations has been the abolition of poverty. By poverty I mean the grinding by undernourishment, cold, and ignorance and fear of old age of those who have the will to work. We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal but given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation. There is no guarantee against poverty equal to be a job every man. That is the primary purpose of the economic policies we advocate. I especially rejoice in the effect of our increased national efficiency upon the improvement of the American home. That is the sanctuary of our loftiest ideals, the source of the spiritual energy of our people. The bettered home surroundings, the expanded schools and playgrounds, and the enlarged [Page 4] leisure which have come with our economic progress have brought to the average family a fuller life, a wider outlook, a stirred imagination, and a lift in aspirations. Economic advancement is not an end in itself. Successful democracy rests wholly upon the moral and spiritual quality of its people. Our growth in spiritual achievements must keep pace with our growth in physical accomplishments. Material prosperity and moral progress must march together if we would make the United States that commonwealth so grandly conceived by its founders. Our government, to match the expectations of our people, must have constant regard for those human values that give dignity and nobility to life. Generosity of impulse, cultivation of mind, willingness to sacrifice, spaciousness of spirit—those are the qualities whereby America, growing bigger and richer and more powerful, may become America great and noble. A people or government to which these values are not real, because they are not tangible, is in peril. Size, wealth, and power alone cannot fulfill the promise of America's opportunity. The most urgent economic problem in our nation today is in agriculture. It must be solved if we are to bring prosperity and contentment to one-third of our people directly and to all of our people indirectly. We have pledged ourselves to find a solution. In my mind most agricultural discussions go wrong because of two false premises. The first is that agriculture is one industry. It is a dozen distinct industries incapable of the same organization. The second false premise is that rehabilitation will be complete when it has reached a point comparable with pre-war. Agriculture was not upon a satisfactory basis before the war. The abandoned farms of the northeast bear their own testimony. Generally, there was but little profit in midwest agriculture for many years except that derived from the slow increases in farm land values. Even of more importance is the great advance in standards of living of all occupations since the war. Some branches of agriculture have greatly recovered, but taken as a whole it is not keeping pace with the onward march in other industries. There are many causes for failure of agriculture to win its full share of national prosperity. The after-war deflation of prices not only brought great direct losses to the farmer but he was often left indebted in inflated dollars to be paid in deflated dollars. Prices are often demoralized through gluts in our markets during the harvest season. Local taxes have been increased to provide the improved roads and schools. The tariff on some products is proving inadequate to protect him from imports from abroad. The increase in transportation rates since the war has greatly affected the price which he receives for his products. Over six million farmers in times of surplus engage in destructive competition with one another in the sale of their product, often depressing prices below those levels that could be maintained. The whole tendency of our civilization during the last 50 years has been toward an increase in the size of the units of production in order to secure lower costs and a more orderly adjustment of the flow of commodities to the demand. But the organization of agriculture into larger units must not be by enlarged farms. The farmer has shown he can increase the skill of his industry without large operations. He is today producing 20 per cent more than eight years ago with about the same acreage and personnel. Farming is and must continue to be an individualistic business [ Page 5 ] of small units and independent ownership. The farm is more than a business; it is a state of living. We do not wish it converted into a mass production machine. Therefore, if the farmers' position is to be improved by larger operations it must be done not on the farm but in the field of distribution. Agriculture has partially advanced in this direction through cooperatives and pools. But the traditional co-operative is often not a complete solution. Differences of opinion as to both causes and remedy have retarded the completion of a constructive program of relief. It is our plain duty to search out the common ground on which we may mobilize the sound forces of agricultural reconstruction. Our platform lays a solid basis upon which we can build. It offers an affirmative program. An adequate tariff is the foundation of farm relief. Our consumers increase faster than our producers. The domestic market must be protected. Foreign products raised under lower standards of living are today competing in our home markets. I would use my office and influence to give the farmer the full benefit of our historic tariff policy. A large portion of the spread between what the farmer receives for his products and what the ultimate consumer pays is due to increased transportation charges. Increase in railway rates has been one of the penalties of the war. These increases have been added to the cost to the farmer of reaching seaboard and foreign market and result therefore in reduction of his prices. The farmers of foreign countries have thus been indirectly aided in their competition with the American farmer. Nature has endowed us with a great system of inland waterways. Their modernization includes not only the great Mississippi system, with its joining of the Great Lakes and of the heart of midwest agriculture to the Gulf, but also a shipway from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. These improvements would mean so large an increment in farmers' prices as to warrant their construction many times over. There is no more vital method of farm relief. But we must not stop here. An outstanding proposal of the Party program is the whole-hearted pledge to undertake the reorganization of the marketing system upon sounder and more economical lines. We have already contributed greatly to this purpose by the acts supporting farm co-operatives, the establishment of intermediate credit banks, the regulation of stockyards, public exchanges and the expansion of the Department of Agriculture. The platform proposes to go much farther. It pledges the creation of a Federal Farm Boards of representative farmers to be clothed with authority and resources with which not only to still further aid farmers' co-operatives and pools and to assist generally in solution of farm problems but especially to build up with federal finance, farmer-owned and farmer-controlled stabilization corporations which will protect the farmer from the depressions and demoralization of seasonal gluts and periodical surpluses. Objection has been made that this program, as laid down by the Party Platform, may require that several hundred millions of dollars of capital be advanced by the Federal Government without obligation upon the individual farmer. With that objection I have little patience. A nation which is spending ninety billion a year can well afford an expenditure of a few hundred millions for a workable program that will give to one-third of its [ Page 6 ] population their fair share of the nation's prosperity. Nor does this proposal put the government into business except so far as it is called upon to furnish initial capital with which to build up the farmer to the control of his own destinies. This program adapts itself to the variable problems of agriculture not only today but which will arise in the future. I do not believe that any single human being or any group of human beings can determine in advance all questions that will arise in so vast and complicated an industry over a term of years. The first step is to create an effective agency directly for these purposes and to give it authority and resources. These are solemn pledges and they will be fulfilled by the Republican Party. It is a definite plan of relief. It needs only the detailed elaboration of legislation and appropriations to put it into force. During my term as Secretary of Commerce I have steadily endeavored to build up a system of co-operation between the government and business. Under these co-operative actions all elements interested in the problem of a particular industry such as manufacturer, distributor, worker, and consumer have been called into council together, not for a single occasion but for continuous work. These efforts have been successful beyond any expectation. They have been accomplished without interference or regulation by the government. They have secured progress in the industries, remedy for abuses, elimination of waste, reduction of cost in production and distribution, lower prices to the consumer, and more stable employment and profit. While the problem varies with every different commodity and with every different part of our great country, I should wish to apply the same method to agriculture so that the leaders of every phase of each group can advise and organize on policies and constructive measures. I am convinced that this form of action, as it has done in other industries, can greatly benefit farmer, distributor and consumer. The working out agricultural relief constitutes the most important obligation of the next Administration. I stand pledged to these proposals. The object of our policies is to establish for our farmers an income equal to those of other occupations; for the farmer's wife the same comforts in her home as women in other groups; for the farm boys and girls the same opportunities in life as other boys and girls. So far as my own abilities may be of service, I dedicate them to help secure prosperity and contentment in that industry where I and my forefathers were born and nearly all my family still obtain their livelihood. The Republican Party has ever been the exponent of protection to all our people from competition with lower standards of living abroad. We have always fought for tariffs designed to establish this protection from imported goods. We also have enacted restrictions upon immigration for the protection of labor from the inflow of workers faster than we can absorb them without breaking down our wage levels. The Republican principle of an effective control of imported goods and of immigration has contributed greatly to the prosperity of our country. There is no selfishness in this defense of our standards of living. Other countries gain nothing if the high standards of America are sunk and if we are prevented from building a civilization which sets the level of hope for the entire world. A general reduction in the tariff would admit [ Page 7 ] a flood of goods from abroad. It would injure every home. It would fill our streets with idle workers. It would destroy the returns to our dairymen, our fruit, flax, and livestock growers, and our other farmers. No man will say that any immigration or tariff law is perfect. We welcome our new immigrant citizens and their great contribution to our nation; we seek only to protect them equally with those already here. We shall amend the immigration laws to relieve unnecessary hardship upon families. As a member of the commission whose duty it is to determine the quota basis under the national origins law I have found it is impossible to do so accurately and without hardship. The basis now in effect carries out the essential principle of the law and I favor repeal of that part of the act calling for a new basis of quotas. We have pledged ourselves to make such revisions in the tariff laws as may be necessary to provide real protection against the shiftings of economic tides in our various industries. I am sure the American people would rather entrust the perfection of the tariff to the consistent friend of the tariff than to our opponents, who have always reduced our tariffs, who voted against our present protection to the worker and the farmer, and whose whole economic theory over generations has been the destruction of the protective principle. Having earned my living with my own hands I cannot have other than the greatest sympathy with the aspirations of those who toil. It has been my good fortune during the past 12 years to have received the co-operation of labor in many directions, and in promotion of many public purposes. The trade union movement in our country has maintained two departures from such movements in all other countries. They have been staunch supporters of American individualism and American institutions. They have steadfastly opposed subversive doctrines from abroad. Our freedom from foreign social and economic diseases is in large degree due to this resistance by our own labor. Our trade unions, with few exceptions, have welcomed all basic improvement in industrial methods. This largeness of mind has contributed to the advancing standards of living of the whole of our people. They properly have sought to participate—by additions to wages—in the result of improvements and savings which they have helped to make. During these past years we have grown greatly in the mutual understanding between employer and employee. We have seen a growing realization by the employer that the highest practicable wage is the road to increased consumption and prosperity and we have seen a growing realization by labor that the maximum use of machines, of effort and of skill is the road to lower production costs and in the end to higher real wages. Under these impulses and the Republican protective system our industrial output has increased as never before and our wages have grown steadily in buying power. Our workers with their average weekly wages can today buy two and often three times more bread and butter than any wage earner of Europe. At one time we demanded for our workers a "full dinner pail." We have now gone far beyond that conception. Today we demand larger comfort and greater participation in life and leisure. The Republican platform gives the pledge of the Party to the support of labor. It endorses the principle of collective bargaining and freedom in labor negotiations. We stand also pledge to the curtailment of excessive use of the injunction in labor disputes. [ Page 8 ] The war and the necessary curtailment of expenditure during the reconstruction years have suspended the construction of many needed public work. Moreover, the time has arrived when we must undertake a larger visioned development of our water resources. Every drop which runs to the sea without yielding its full economic service is a waste. Nearly all of our greater drainages contain within themselves possibilities of cheapened transportation, irrigation, reclamation, domestic water supply, hydro-electric power and frequently the necessities of flood control. But this development of our waters requires more definite national policies in the systematics co-ordination of those different works upon each drainage area. We have wasted scores of millions by projects undertaken not as part of a whole but as the consequence of purely local demands. We cannot develop modernized water transportation by isolated projects. We must develop it as a definite and positive inter connected system of transportation. We must adjust reclamation and irrigation to our needs for more land. Where they lie together we must co-ordinate transportation with flood control, the development of hydro-electric power and of irrigation, else we shall as in the past commit errors that will take years and millions to remedy. The Congress has authorized and has in process of legislation great programs of public works. In addition to the works in development of water resources, we have in progress large undertakings in public roads and the construction of public buildings. All these projects will probably require an expenditure of upwards of one billion dollars within the next four years. It comprises the largest engineering construction ever undertaken by any government. It involves three times the expenditure laid out upon the Panama Canal. It is justified by the growth, need, and wealth of our country. The organization and administration of this construction is a responsibility of the first order. For it we must secure the utmost economy, honesty, and skill. These works which will provide jobs for an army of men should so far as practicable be adjusted to take up the slack of unemployment elsewhere. I rejoice in the completion of legislation providing adequate flood control of the Mississippi. It marks not alone the undertaking of a great national task but it constitutes a contribution to the development of the South. In encouragement of their economic growth lies one of the great national opportunities of the future. I recently stated my position upon the 18th Amendment which I again repeat: "I do not favor the repeal of the 18th Amendment. I stand for the efficient enforcement of the laws enacted thereunder. Whoever is chosen President has under his other the solemn duty to pursue this course. "Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose. It must be worked out constructively." Common sense compels us to realize that grave abuses have occurred --abuses which must be remedied. An organized searching investigation of fact and causes can alone determine the wise method of correcting them. Crime and disobedience of law cannot be permitted to break down the Constitution and laws of the United States. Modification of the enforcement laws which would permit that which the Constitution forbids is nullification. This the American people will not countenance. Change in the Constitution can and must be brought [ Page 9 ] about only by the straightforward methods provided in the Constitution itself. There are those who do not believe in the purposes of several provisions of the Constitution. No one denies their right to seek to amend it. They are not subject to criticism for asserting that right. But the Republican Party does deny the right of anyone to seek to destroy the purposes of the Constitution by indirection. Whoever is elected President takes an oath not only to faithfully execute the office of the President, but that oath provides still further that he will, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I should be untrue to these great traditions, untrue to my oath of office, were I to declare otherwise. With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system. Nothing however is perfect but it works for progress. Our pre-eminent advance over nations in the last eight ears has been due to distinctively American accomplishments. We do not owe these accomplishments to our vast natural resources. These we have always had. They have not increased. What has changed is our ability to utilize these resources more effectively. It is our human resources that have changed. Man for man and woman for woman, we are today more capable whether in the work of farm, factory, or business than ever before. It lies in our magnificent educational system, in the hard working character of our people in the capacity for far-sighted leadership in industry, the ingenuity, the daring of the pioneers of new inventions, in the abolition of the saloon, and the wisdom of our national policies. With the growth and increasing complexity of our economic life the relations of government and business are multiplying daily. They are yearly more dependent upon each other. Where it is helpful and necessary, this relation should be encouraged. Beyond this it should not go. It is the duty of government to avoid regulation as long as equal opportunity to all citizens is not invaded and public rights violated. Government should not engage in business in competition with its citizens. Such actions extinguish the enterprise and initiative which has been the glory of America and which has been the root of its pre-eminence among the nations of the earth. On the other hand, it is the duty of business to conduct itself so that government regulation or government competition is unnecessary. Business is practical, but it is founded upon faith--faith among our people in the integrity of business men, and faith that it will receive fair play from the government. It is the duty of government to maintain that faith. Our whole business system would break down in a day if there was not a high sense of moral responsibility in our business world. The whole practice and ethics of business has made great strides of improvement in the last quarter of a century, largely due to the effort of business and the professions themselves. One of the most helpful signs of recent years is the stronger growth of associations of workers, farmers, business men and professional men with a desire to cure their own abuses and a purpose to serve public interest. Many problems can be solved through co-operation between government and these self-governing associations to improve methods and practices. When business cures its own abuses it is true self-government which comprises more than political institutions. One of the greatest difficulties of business with government is the multitude of unnecessary contacts with government bureaus, the uncertainty and inconsistency of government policies, and the duplication of [ Page 10 ] government activities. A large part of this is due to the scattering of functions and the great confusion of responsibility in our federal organization. We have, for instance, 14 different bureaus or agencies engaged in public works and construction, located in nine different departments of the government. It brings about competition between government agencies, inadequacy of control, and a total lack of co-ordinated policies in public works. We have eight different bureaus and agencies charged with conservation of our natural resources, located in five different departments of the government. These conditions exist in many other directions. Divided responsibility, with the absence of centralized authority, prevents constructive and consistent development of broad national policies. Our Republican presidents have repeatedly recommended to Congress that it would not only greatly reduce expenses of business in their contacts with government but that a great reduction could be made in governmental expenditure and more consistent and continued national policies could be developed if we could secure the grouping of these agencies devoted to one major purpose under single responsibility and authority. I have had the good fortune to be able to carry out such reorganization in respect to the Department of Commerce. The results have amply justified its expansion to other departments and I should consider it an obligation to enlist the support of Congress to effect it. The government can be of invaluable aid in the promotion of business. The ideal state of business is freedom from those fluctuations from boom to slump which bring on one hand the periods of unemployment and bankruptcy and on the other, speculation and waste. Both are destructive to progress and fraught with great hardship to every home. By economy in expenditures, wise taxation, and sound fiscal finance it can relieve the burdens upon sound business and promote financial stability. By sound tariff policies it can protect our workmen, our farmers, and our manufacturers from lower standards of living abroad. By scientific research it can promote invention and improvement in methods. By economic research and statistical service it can promote the elimination of waste and contribute to stability in production and distribution. By promotion of foreign trade it can expand the markets for our manufacturers and farmers and thereby contribute greatly to stability and employment. Our people know that the production and distribution of goods on a large scale is not wrong. Many of the most important comforts of our people are only possible by mass production and distribution. Both small and big business have their full place. The test of business is not its size --the test is whether there is honest competition, whether there is freedom from domination, whether there is integrity and usefulness of purpose. As Secretary of Commerce I have been greatly impressed by the fact that the foundation of American business is the independent business man. The Department by encouragement of his associations and by provision of special services has endeavored to place him in a position of equality in information and skill with larger operations. Alike with our farmers his is the stronghold of American individuality. It is here that our local communities receive their leadership. It is here that we refresh our leadership for larger enterprise. We must maintain his opportunity and his individual service. He and the public must be protected from any domination or from predatory business. I have said that the problems before us are more than economic, that [ Page 11 ] in a much greater degree they are moral and spiritual. I hold that there rests upon government many responsibilities which affect the moral and spiritual welfare of our people. The participation of women in politics means a keener realization of the importance of these questions. It means higher political standards. One-half of our citizens fail to exercise the responsibilities of the ballot box. I would wish that the women of our country could embrace this problem in citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted, the foundations of democracy made more secure. In this land, dedicated to tolerance, we still find outbreaks of intoler- ance. I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit. The glory of our American ideals is the right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. In the past years there has been corruption participated in by individual officials and members of both political parties in national, state and municipal affairs. Too often this corruption has been viewed with indifference by a great number of our people. It would seem unnecessary to state the elemental requirement that government must inspire confidence not only in its ability but in its integrity. Dishonestly in government, whether national, state, or municipal is a double wrong. It is treason to the state. It is destruction of self-government. Government in the United States rests not only upon the consent of the governed but upon the conscience of the nation. Government weakens the moment that its integrity is even doubted. Moral incompetency by those entrusted with government is a blighting wind upon private integrity. There must be no place for cynicism in the creed of America. Our Civil Service has proved a great national boon. Appointive office, both North, South, East, and West, must be based solely on merit, character, and reputation in the community in which the appointee is to serve; as it is essential for the proper performance of their duties that officials shall enjoy the confidence and respect of the people with whom they serve. For many years I have been associated with efforts to save life and health for our children. These experience with millions of children both at home and abroad have left an indelible impression—that the greatness of any nation, its freedom from poverty and crime, its aspirations and ideals—are the direct quotient of the care of its children. Racial progress marches upon the feet of healthy and instructed children. There should be no children in America that is not born and does not live under sound conditions of health; that does not have full opportunity of education from the beginning to the end of our institutions; that is not free from injurious labor; that does not have every stimulation to accomplish the fullest of its capacities. Nothing in development of child life will ever replace the solicitude of parents and the surroundings of home, but in many aspects both parents and children are dependent upon the vigilance of government, national, state and local. I especially value the contribution that the youth of the country can make to the success of our American experiment in democracy. Theirs is [ Page 12 ] the precious gift of enthusiasm, without which no great deeds can be accomplished. A government that does not constantly seek to live up to the ideals of its young men and women falls short of what the American peo- ple have a right to expect and demand from it. To interpret the spirit of the youth into the spirit of our government; to bring the warmth of their enthusiasm and the flame of their idealism into the affairs of the nation— is to make of American government a positive and living force, a factor for greatness and nobility in the life of the nation. I think I may say that I have witnessed as much of the horror and suffering of war as any other American. From it I have derived a deep passion for peace. Our foreign policy has one primary object, and that is peace. We have no hates; we wish no further possessions; we harbor no military threats. The unspeakable experiences of the Great War, the narrow margin by which civilization survived from its exhaustion, is still vivid in men's minds. There is no nation in the world today that does not earnestly wish for peace--that is not striving for peace. There are two co-operating factors in the maintenance of peace—the building of good-will by wise and sympathetic handling of international relations, and the adequate preparedness for defense. We must not only be just; we must be respected. The experiences of the war afforded final proof that we cannot isolate ourselves from the world, that the safeguarding of peace cannot be attained by negative action. Our offer of treaties open to the signature of all, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, proves that we have every desire to co-operate with other nations for peace. But our people have determined that we can give the greatest real help--both in times of tranquility and in times of strain—if we maintain our independence from the political exigencies of the old world. In pursuance of this, our country has refused membership in the League of Nations, but we are glad to co-operate with the League in its endeavors to further scientific, economic and social welfare and to secure limitation of armament. We believe that the foundations of peace can be strengthened by the creation of methods and agencies by which a multitude of incidents may be transferred from the realm of prejudice and force to arbitration and the determination of right wrong based upon international law. We have been and we are particularly desirous of furthering the limitation of armaments. But in the meantime we know that in an armed world there is only one certain guarantee of freedom—and that is preparedness for defense. It is solely to defend ourselves, for the protection of our citizens that we maintain armament. No clearer evidence of this can exist than the unique fact that we have fewer men in army uniform today than we have in police uniforms, and that we maintain a standing invitation to the world that we are always ready to limit our naval armament in proportion as the naval nations will do likewise. We earnestly wish that the burdens and dangers of armament upon every home in the world might be lessened. But we much and shall maintain our naval defense and our merchant marine in the strength and efficiency which will yield to us at all times the primary assurance of liberty, that is, of national safety. There is one of the ideals of America upon which I wish at this time to lay especial emphasis. For we should constantly test our economic, social and governmental system by certain ideals which must control them. The [ Page 13 ] founders of our republic propounded the revolutionary doctrine that all men are created equal and all should have equality before the law. This was the emancipated of the individual. And since these beginnings, slowly, surely and almost imperceptibility, this nation has added a third ideal almost unique to America—the ideal of equal opportunity. This is the safeguard of the individual. The simple life of early days in our republic found but few limitations upon equal opportunity. But the crowding of our people and the intensity and complexity of their activities it takes today a new importance. Equality of opportunity is the right of every American—rich or poor, foreign or native-born, irrespective of faith or color, It is the right of every individual to attain that position in life to which his ability and character entitle him. By its maintenance we will alone hold open the door of opportunity to every new generation, to every boy and girl. It tolerates no privileged classes or castes or groups who would hold opportunity as their prerogative. Only from confidence that this right will be upheld can flow that unbounded courage and hope which stimulates each individual man and woman to endeavor and to achievement. The sum of their achievement is the gigantic harvest of national progress. This ideal of individualism based upon equal opportunity to every citizen is the negation of socialism. It is the negation of anarchy. It is the negation of despotism. It is as if we set a race. We, through free and universal education, provide the training of the runners; we give to them an equal start; we provide in the government the umpire of fairness in the race. The winner is he who shows the most conscientious training, the greatest ability, and the greatest character. Socialism bids all to end the race equally. It holds back the speedy to the pace of the slowest. Anarchy would provide neither training nor umpire. Despotism picks those who should run and those who should win. Conservative, progressive and liberal thought and action have their only real test in whether they contribute to equal opportunity, whether they hold open the door of opportunity. If they do not they are false in their premise no matter what their name may be. It was Abraham Lincoln who firmly enunciated this ideal as the equal chance. The Sherman Law was enacted in endeavor to hold open the door of equal opportunity in business. The commissions for regulation of public utilities were created to prevent discrimination in service and prevent extortion in rates--and thereby the destruction of equal opportunity. Equality of opportunity is a fundamental principle of our nation. With it we must test all our policies. The success or failure of this principle is the test of our government. Mr. Chairman, I regret that time does not permit the compass of many important questions. I hope at a later time to discuss the development of waterways, highways, aviation, irrigable lands, foreign trade and merchant marine, the promotion of education, more effective administration of our criminal laws, the relation of our government to public utilities and railways, the primary necessity of conservation of natural resources, measures for further economy in government and reduction of taxes—all of which afford problems of the first order. I would violate my conscience and the gratitude I feel, did not upon this occasion express appreciation of the great President who leads our Party today. President Coolidge has not only given a memorable [ Page 14 ] administration, he has left an imprint of recitude and statesmanship upon the history of our country. His has been the burden of reconstruction of our country from the destruction of war. He has dignified economy to a principle of government. He has charted the course of our nation and our party over many years to come. It is not only a duty but it is the part of statesmanship that we adhere to this course. No man who stands before the mighty forces which ramify American life has the right to promise solutions at his hand alone. All that an honest man can say is that within the extent of his abilities and his authority and in co-operation with the Congress and with leaders of every element in our people, these problems shall be courageously met and solution will be courageously attempted. Our purpose is to build in this nation a human society, not an economic system. We wish to increase the efficiency and productivity of our country but its final purpose is happier homes. We shall succeed through the faith, the loyalty, the self-sacrifice, the devotion to eternal ideals which live today in every American. The matters which I have discussed directly and deeply affect the moral and spiritual welfare of our country. No one believes these aspirations and hopes can be realized in a day. Progress or remedy lies often enough at the hand of state and local government. But the awakening of the national conscience and the stimulation of every remedial agency is indeed a function of the nation government. I want to see our government great both as an instrument and a symbol of the nation's greatness. The presidency is more than an administrative office. It must be the symbol of American ideals. The high and the lowly must be seen with the same eyes, met in the same spirit. It must be the instrument by which national conscience is livened and it must under the guidance of the Almighty interpret and follow that conscience. ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT HOOVER AT THE NATIONAL ANNUAL LUNCHEON OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AT NEW YORK CITY APRIL 22, 1929 UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1929 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE ADDRESS MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: I have accepted this occasion for a frank statement of what I consider the dominant issue before the American people. Its solution is more vital to the preservation of our institutions than any other question before us. That is the enforcement and obedience to the laws of the United States, both Federal and State. I ask only that you weigh this for yourselves, and if my position is right, that you support it—not to support me but to support something infinitely more precious—the one force that holds our civilization together—law. And I wish to discuss it as law, not as to the merits or demerits of a particular law but all law, Federal and State, for ours is a government of laws made by the people themselves. A surprising number of our people, otherwise of responsibility in the community, have drifted into the extraordinary notion that laws are made for those who choose to obey them. And in addition, our law-enforcement machinery is suffering from many infirmities arising out of its technicalities, its circumlocutions, its involved procedures, and too often, I regret, from inefficient and delinquent officials. We are reaping the harvest of these defects. More than 9,000 human beings are lawlessly killed every year in the United States. Little more than half as many arrests follow. Less than one-sixth of these slayers are convicted, and but a scandalously small percentage are adequately punished. Twenty times as many people in proportion to population are lawlessly killed in the United States as in Great Britain. In many of our great cities murder can apparently be committed with impunity. At least fifty times as many robberies in proportion to population are committed in the United states as in Great Britain, and three times as many burglaries. Even in such premeditated crimes as embezzlement and forgery our record stands no comparison with stable nations. No part of the country, rural or urban, is immune. Life and property are relatively more unsafe than in any other civilized country in the world. In spite of all this we have reason to pride ourselves on our institutions and the high moral instincts of the great majority of our people. No one will assert that such crimes would be committed if we had even a normal respect for law and if the laws of our country were properly enforced. (1) 47346-29 2 In order to dispel certain illusions in the public mind on this subject, let me say at once that while violations of law have been increased by inclusion of crimes under the eighteenth amendment and by the vast sums that are poured into the hands of the criminal classes by the patronage of illicit liquor by otherwise responsible citizens, yet this is but one segment of our problem. I have purposely cited the extent of murder, burglary, robbery, forgery, and embezzlement, for but a small percentage of these can be attributed to the eighteenth amendment. In fact, of the total number of convictions for felony last year, less than 8 per cent came from that source. It is therefore but a sector of the invasion of lawlessness. What we are facing to-day is something far larger and more fundamental— the possibility that respect for law as law is fading from the sensibilities of our people. Whatever the value of any law may be, the enforcement of that law written in plain terms upon our statute books is not, in my mind, a debatable question. Law should be observed and must be enforced until it is repealed by the proper processes of our democracy. The duty to enforce the laws rests upon every public official and the duty to obey it rests upon every citizen. No individual has the right to determine what law shall be obeyed and what law shall not be enforced. If a law is wrong, its rigid enforcement is the surest guaranty of its repeal. If it is right, its enforcement is the quickest method of compelling respect for it. I have seen statements published within a few days encouraging citizens to defy a law because that particular journal did not approve of the law itself. I leave comment on such an attitude to any citizen with a sense of responsibility to his country. In my position, with my obligations, there can be no argument on these points. There is no citizen who would approve of the President of the United States assuming any other attitude. It may be said by some that the larger responsibility for the enforcement of laws against crime rests with State and local authorities and it does not concern the Federal Government. But it does concern the President of the United States, both as a citizen and as the one upon whom rests the primary responsibility of leadership for the establishment of standards of law enforcement in this country. Respect for law and obedience to law does not distinguish between Federal and State laws—it is a common conscience. After all, the processes of criminal-law enforcement are simply methods of instilling respect and fear into the minds of those who have not the intelligence and moral instinct to obey the law as a matter of conscience. The real problem is to awaken this consciousness, this moral sense, and if necessary to segregate such degenerate minds where they can do no future harm. 3 We have two immediate problems before us in government. To investigate our existing agencies of enforcement and to reorganize our system of enforcement in such manner as to eliminate its weaknesses. It is the purpose of the Federal administration systematically to strengthen its law-enforcement agencies week by week, month by month, year by year, not by dramatic displays and violent attacks in order to make headlines, not by violating the law itself through misuse of the law in its enforcement, but by steady pressure, steady weeding out of all incapable and negligent officials no matter what their status; by encouragment, promotion, and recognition for those who do their duty; and by the most rigid scrutiny of the records and attitudes of all persons suggested for appointment to official posts in our entire law-enforcement machinery. That is administration for which my colleagues and I are fully responsible so far as the human material which can be assembled for the task will permit. Furthermore, I wish to determine and, as far as possible, remove the scores of inherent defects in our present system that defeat the most devoted officials. Every student of our law-enforcement mechanism knows full well that it is in need of vigorous reorganization; that its procedure unduly favors the criminal; that our judiciary needs to be strengthened; that the method of assembling our juries needs revision; that justice must be more swift and sure. In our desire to be merciful the pendulum has swung in favor of the prisoner and far away from the protection of society. The sympathetic mind of the American people in its overconcern about those who are in difficulties has swung too far from the family of the murdered to the family of the murderer. With a view to enlisting public understanding, public support, accurate determination of the facts, and constructive conclusions, I have proposed to establish a national commission to study and report upon the whole of our problems involved in criminal-law enforcement. That proposal has met with gratifying support, and I am sure it will have the cooperation of the bar associations and crime commissions in our various States in the widespread effort now being made by them. I do not propose to be hasty in the selection of this commission. I want time and advice, in order that I may select high-minded men, impartial in their judgment, skilled in the science of the law and our judicial system, clear in their conception of our institutions. Such a commission can perform the greatest of service to our generation. There is another and vastly wider field than the nature of laws and the methods of their enforcement. This is the basic question of the understanding, the ideals, the relationship of the individual 4 citizen to the law itself. It is in this field that the press plays a dominant part. It is almost final in its potency to arouse the interest and consciousness of our people. It can destroy their finer sensibilities or it can invigorate them. I am well aware that the great majority of our important journals day by day give support to these high ideals. I wonder, sometimes, however, if perhaps a little more support to our laws could not be given in one direction. If, instead of the glamor of romance and heroism, which our American imaginative minds too frequently throw around those who break the law, we would invest with a little romance and heroism those thousands of our officers who are endeavoring to enforce the law it would itself decrease crime. Praise and respect for those who properly enforce the laws and daily condemnation of those who defy the laws would help. Perhaps a little better proportioned balance of news concerning those criminals who are convicted and punished would serve to instill the fear of the law. I need not repeat that absolute freedom of the press to discuss public questions is a foundation stone of American liberty. I put the question, however, to every individual conscience, whether flippance is a useful or even legitimate device in such discussions. I do not believe it is. Its effect is as misleading and as distorting of public conscience as deliberate misrepresentation. Not clarification, but confusion of issues arises from it. Our people for many years have been intensely absorbed in business, in the astonishing upbuilding of a great country, and we have attempted to specialize in our occupations, to strive to achieve in our own specialties and to respect competency of others in theirs. Unconsciously, we have carried this psychology into our state of mind toward government. We tend to regard the making of laws and their administration as a function of a group of specialists in government whom we hired for this purpose and whom we call public servants. After hiring them it is our purpose casually to review their actions, to accept those which we approve, and to reject the rest. This attitude of mind is destructive of self-government, for self-government is predicated upon the fact that every responsible citizen will take his part in the creation of law, the obedience to law, and the selection of officials and methods for its enforcement. Finally, I wish to again reiterate that the problem of law enforcement is not alone a function or business of government. If law can be upheld only by enforcement officers, then our scheme of government is at an end. Every citizen has a personal duty in it--the duty to order his own actions, to so weight the effect of his example, 5 that his conduct shall be a positive force in his community with respect to the law. I have no criticism to make of the American press. I greatly admire its independence and its courage. I sometimes feel that it could give me emphasis to one phase or another of our national problems, but I realize the difficulties under which it operates. I am wondering whether the time has not come, however, to realize that we are confronted with a national necessity of the first degree, that we are not suffering from an ephemeral crime wave but from a subsidence of our foundations. Possibly the time is at hand for the press to systematically demand and support the reorganization of our law-enforcement machinery-- Federal, State, and local--so that crime may be reduced, and on the other hand to demand that our citizens shall awake to the fundamental consciousness of democracy which is that the laws are theirs and that every responsible member of a democracy has the primary duty to obey the law. It is unnecessary for me to argue the fact that the very essence of freedom is obedience to law; that liberty itself has but one foundation, and that is in the law. And in conclusion let me recall an oft-repeated word from Abraham Lincoln, whose invisible presence lives hourly at the very desk and in the very halls which it is my honor to occupy: Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample\ on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in the schools, in seminaries, in colleges. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in the legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the Nation, and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions sacrifice unceasingly upon its altar. NATIONAL PROHIBITION BOARD OF STRATEGY OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 1135-1140 NATIONAL PRESS BUILDING TELEPHONE, NATIONAL 0707 WASHINGTON. D. C. February 20, 1932. Dear Friend and Co-Worker on the National Prohibition Board of Strategy: For weeks past I have been practically in daily conference with officials of the Government, including members of both branches of Congress, and with party leaders of both parties, either resident here or who have been in Washington temporarily from the States. There are many such who come to Washington and this affords opportunity to confer without travel expense. With many of these I have discussed the work of the Board of Strategy, and have urged in the strongest possible terms the disirability of a satisfactory plank in party platforms, and of course the nomination of candidates in harmony therewith. I have both desired and intended to write you before this, but have been so pressed that I have been unable to up to this time. The state primaries in some states begin next month, and it is necessary to do quickly that which could be done prior to the primaries, and the work has been intensive. Re-actions have been favorable from many, and yet there are many party leaders, especially those now in office or aspiring to office, who want to sidestep the issue if possible. You know these facts from the daily press, and some members of the Board have intimate contacts with politicians and are quite aware of what is going on in the inner circles. If any of you have direct information which would be of advantage to our work and which you think I may not know, I should be glad to receive it. As to candidates. It is unnecessary to say anything relative to the attitude of President Hoover, as his past is well known. I cannot put in a letter the ferocity of much of the pressure which is being brought to bear upon him to get him to either approve a modification plank or sidestep the issue. No other candidate or would-be candidate on the Republican side needs to be referred to. Governor Roosevelt's attitude is doubtless well known to every member of the Board, and he as recently reiterated his stand of two years ago in favor of the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, and substitution of State control. Former Governor Smith stands where he always has. Mr. Newton D. Baker, while he signed the Wickersham report, the findings of which you doubtless recall, yet he later submitted an individual report in which he expressed himself in favor of repeal. Governor Ritchie is chiefly known outside of Maryland as an advocate of repeal and vigorous opposition to the prohibition policy. He has steadfastly opposed Maryland's doing her part toward the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment. Governor Murray, of Oklahoma, has had heretofore a record of dryness; he was one of the foremost members of the Constitutional Convention and the first legislature of Oklahoma to favor prohibition in the new State, and it is believed that he will stand against its repeal, and would vigorously enforce the law. The latest Democratic candidacy to receive popular favor is that of Speaker John N. Garner. Mr. Garner formerly opposed prohibition legislation but in later years has supported some of the enforcement measures. In 1913 he voted for the Webb-Kenyon Interstate Liquor Shipment Bill and for its passage over the veto. In the same year he voted with the wets in favor of the Burleson amendment to the Jones-Works District of Columbia Code. In 1914 he voted against the Hobson National Prohibition Resolution. In 1917 he voted for the rule to consider Alaska prohibition; he also voted for the Anti-advertising and Bono Dry Mails Bill; in the same year he also voted against the District of Columbia Prohibition Bill and against the National Prohibition Resolution. In 1918 he voted against war prohibition in the Food Bill. In 1919 he voted for the Igoe wet substitute for the Volstead Act but upon its defeat he voted for the Enforcement Code and in 1921 he voted for the supplemental Anti-Beer Bill. He voted favorably on the legislation touching the Coast Guard in 1924 and in 1928 he voted against the wet proposal to limit prohibition enforcement concerning denaturants in alcohol. In 1929 he voted for the Jones Bill for increased penalties. You see his record is somewhat mixed but since the amendment went into effect has been generally in favor of the enforcement measures. This letter started the first of the week but many interruptions has occurred and I am getting it off now at my first opportunities. Cordially yours, Edwin C. Dinwiddie Executive Secretary. August 1, 1931 In the North, the idea plainly is to suffuse the whole atmos- phere with Governor Franklin K. Roosevelt for Democratic nominee for president in 1932. Saturate the pliable mind with Roosevelt. Whether this means that at the convention, he will actually go through, or that he will simply hold the lines for Al Smith to go through, is any man's guess. As for the Republicans there are too many here in the North who do not want Hoover as he is but Hoover as Raskob is. They talk of uniting the Hoover forces by having modification planks in their state platform and giving Hoover a wet running mate, like Morrow, for example. In short, they talk in a way to get themselves solidly beaten if some one with common sense doesn't rapidly put a stop to this talk. Mr. Blythe in the Saturday Evening Post, August 1, 1931, is administering a good dose of common sense to these Raskbian Republicans when he says, "I am firmly in the conviction that this country at present is, and will be next year, politically dry. Therefore, if we, the Republican Part in National Convention assembled, nominate a dry candidate on an absolutely dry platform, we shall win." The fact is the Eastern financiers never wanted President Hoover, he was too like President Cleveland. He wanted to do the right thing rather than the expedient thing. He was an outsider who would not eat Consolidated Gas and Electric Bond & Share out of their hands and no questions asked. Moreover he was an honest man, bent on giving us honest enforcement of the Prohibition Law, thus interfering with Bankers' loans and bootleggers' profits. To prevent this interference by honest enforcement with dishonest business we have had this fearful we onslaught in the press smirching Hoover and endeavoring to kill of Prohibition, "Get it out of politics" was the phrase used. But today it is being recognized that the wet onslaught has not succeeded, the very men who engineered it now tell me they can't get rid of Prohibition nor smirch Hoover out of existence. However, in some states the newspaper bombardment was more successful than in others. In a state like Massachusetts, for example, it has left the Republicans with a great embarrassment on their hands, they own wet success. Embarrassment, for Hoover to win must run dry and undoubtedly would not wish to run any other way. But should he run wet rumor everywhere says that Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania will run dry against him. All this could do would be to split the Republican vote and put Tammany in the White House. For make no mistake, the Democratic nominee is going to be a wet Tammany man. Those are the forces that are going to be in the Democratic saddle in 1932, the Big City Wets. Now the thing the Southern women want to remember is this, that the Big City Wets can't win unless the South, the West and th agxxxian states give in, but if the Southern women give in to the Southern politicians greedy of patronage the result may wee be the Big City Sidewalk Wet in the White House. Do not forget that a North that does not want Hoover as he is but Hoover as Raskob is, is piling up in the Northern states a Democratic rather than a Republican vote. The bolting Southern women hold the key. Stand by, don't allow yourself to be swallowed by the Tammany Tiger no matter what sort of a dress suit he may don. The line up is Hoover vs. Tammany, this is the truth. 1. Living in the North, I should like to herein set down what my woman's intuition tells me is at the bottom of this four years' drive against Prohibition; for this drive is only about four years old. It began late in 1927. About that time "the lady from Philadelphia", who prides herself on being politically wise and inside the ring, called me up to say that Prohibition was practically over. It could not live against the forces there in Pennsylvania that had resolved to get rid of it. It was the greatest political nuisance ever known, and the Pennsylvania political "higher ups" were going to get it out of politics, even if it meant a civil war. It did not seem to be the merits of the question that enraged "the lady from Philadelphia". It was the tendency of Prohibition to break up the power of political Moguls to send their men to Congress. This, of course, is a disturbing thing to financiers who wish to bend Congress to their vast financial ends. A little later, January 1928, I had a telegram from a well-known National politician, who told me that Prohibition had become of "such political moment" that certain wet things must be done in order to remove Prohibition from politics. One of the things was to make sure that men were appointed on the Wickersham Commisiion sure to give out a "wet" report. It was evident that Prohibition was getting in the way of Eastern Republican domination, and that certain Republican politicians had a well-planned campaign to kill it, the method being to launch a newspaper bombardment against it in such newspapers as would lend ear to their commands. "Understand, the Republican Party is wet", said a Republican leader, part owner of a very well-known "wet" paper. His paper since then has certainly done its best to create a hysteria in the minds of the people that Prohibition cannot be enforced, and therefore must go. What is the trouble? Well, you hear such sentences as this. "The East is slipping under Prohibition" - or again- "To save the Republican Party Prohibition must be got out of politics" -you are to get it out of politics by repealing it, and giving it back to the States. In short, it is Federal politics that is upset, to the extent of making the financiers of the East dive down into their pockets and bring up millions to break Prohibition, that is, to give it back to the States. When this is done, Lodges and Penroses will once more go to Congress from the East, and not only go, but stay there long enough to get the Chairmanships that now go too often to unsympathetic West and South. My woman's instinct may tell me wrong, but it tells me that this frantic was on Prohibition by the rich and great of the East and their press, is not a Prohibition fight but a fight of Power and Utilities to control Congress. Prohibition, by breaking up Party alignments in the East, interferes with the making of a friendly Congress and, also, with getting the chairmanships that come by seniority. And so the people - the over-busy, pre-occupied voters - are to be surfeited on the evils of bootlegging and kept ignorant of the great benefits of Prohibition until a hysteria, they stampede to the polls and repeal this political pest of the East. "No such raging wild animal as the man who sees his purse in danger". It is this raging wild animal that has worked unceasingly, in my opinion, to 2. overthrow Prohibition, because this overthrow will restore the power of the rich man in Congress. All this tendency to send Democrats to Congress in the East will vanish. Republicans like Lodge and Penrose will stay forever. Governor Pinchots' will disappear and Public Utility magnates once more "be serene" before their mighty profits. This, I take it, is the hope of things to come on election day after Prohibition is repealed. But - will it come? I doubt it. The East was headed Democratic long before Prohibition upset Party lines. I believe these magnates are following a false hope. The repeal of Prohibition will not restore to the extent they hope, the waning political power of the East. But it will make High Finance politically stronger, perhaps. Now since this is so, let us cast our eye Southward and Westward. What the South and West want to sense is that Prohibition is a political assetto them. Their political alignments were not upset by it and thus their Senators have stayed in Congress and hold the coveted chairmanships. So when the South prepares to vote for wet Roosevelt, openly out for change, it is preparing to throw away a great political asset and the same is true of the West. It is playing straight into the hands of the Eastern magnate, helping him to get rid of his political pest, Prohibition. The fact is, Prohibition has been a political asset to South, West and the Democrats of the East - but a political liability to Power trust and Public Utility world. If the South and West vote for a Big City Wet like Roosevelt or Baker, they are voting for the very Wall St. they really desire to vote against. It is all paradoxical but true. If Hoover runs dry - and everything shows he will not be willing to run otherwise - and runs on a dry platform, the South and West would really be voting for themselves to vote for him. He is their best asset, Roosevelt, Baker, Smith their road to loss of the power to control Congress that they now possess. This nation faces one of the greatest moral reactions in history, that of sending the liquor question back to the States; back to the Saloon-Age, for if the States are to decide no one can say some will not decide for the saloon or its equivalent. Liquor will not be got out of politics but each border will become a hornet's nest of bootlegging (forty-eight differing State laws contending). In the end the people will put Prohibition back. But why, why, why, be fooled into xxxx going all over this fight again, merely to give back to some Eastern multi-millionaires their old power to control Congress to suit their pocket-books? Can no one think that no good substitute is offered. Can no one picture what our highways will become with the Saloon-Age back? Can no one remember the misery of women and little children in the old days, the agony of degradation that begot this grant reform? Rise, people of America - If the life of the Power Trusts depends on a return to the Saloon-Age, then fight the Power Trusts. Whence comes this drive, and why? Of course, we must fight always the old liquor interests, as well as the wine interests in France and other foreign countries, but I think we could almost take care of those groups. This particular campaign that is on now would seem to have begun about 1928. I remember, the "Lady from Philadelphia" who prides herself on moving near high politics in Pennsylvania, how she called me to tell me that it wasn't any use for me to spend energy longer on Prohibition. Nothing on earth could save it, for the Great Moguls of Pennsylvania had put their political heads together and vowed to get rid of it, even if it meant a civil war. The merits of Prohibition, whether it did good to humanity, apparently did not figure in these calculations. It was enough that it was not doing good to [High Finance] Certain millionaires. It was upsetting their power to control Legislatures and Congress, and it could not possibly live against the impact of such purses as were to be put behind its overthrow in Pennsylvania. A few weeks later, I had a telegram from a millionaire member of the Republican National Committee, saying that Prohibition had become of such political moment that it must be got out of politics. The first steps towards this end was for Massachussetts to send a "Wet" Memorial to Congress, thereby bringing to President Hoover the necessity of appointing "Wets" to the Wickersham Commission. A "Wet" Wickersham Report was to be the first step in getting Prohibition out of politics, said this gentleman. After receiving this telegram, I made inquiries and was told that the certain politicians felt Republican party in the East has mismanaged Prohibition in the beginning, and had now concluded that the best thing to do was to get rid of it. Of course, this did not apply to all Republicans, but it did include a group of financial "Wet" Republicans in the North, very powerful in the Party. A little later I had a letter from one of the most vociferous of the co-called "young Republicans" of this state, who had become very vocal in this political-financial drive against us. He said frankly, that he did not care two buttons about Prohibition itself, but he did care about saving the Republican Party. To save the Republican Party, it was necessary to eliminate prohibition, get it out of politics,-- give it back to local communities. WHY? Slowly, my various friends explained it all to me. States [after state] that used to send to the United States Senate strong Republican Senators, devoted to Big Business, could no longer get much men through. Weak, or unsympathetic Democrats were going in [?????] places of the Lodges and Penroses of yesteryear. In Massachusetts, for example, when Republicans ran of the kind of Financiers needed to have there, the "Wets" sent money into the state, and bought up [in] the big cities, [erstwhile Republicans]. if both parties were "Wet", this wouldn't happen. Now it was vital for Big Business to have its men down there in the United States Senate, to carry out great financial schemes. They were not going as they ought to. "The fact is," said a banker to me, "Prohibition send the wrong fellows to Congress", and we are tired of it for that reason." And so I would hear, "The East is slipping under Prohibition", or "It throws power to the West". Indeed, no one can go to the United States Senate, and not see how the power has gone West. I remember in the days when we were working for suffrage, how it was Eastern Senators, like Penrose of Pennsylvania and Lodge of Massachusetts, that were ever conspicuously walking round the floor of the senate. Plainly, the East was in control. But I was in the Senate the other day when Bingham "Wet" Resolution was voted on, The East seemed like a whisper. Senator Bingham, despite his length of form and venerable white hair, seemed talking to thin air. You felt as though he were talking into a vacuum, but the South and West spoke up strong and bold, like men who feared nothing and produced 55 dry votes agai 15 wet votes-- mostly Eastern. It is this situatin that the repeal of Prohibition is supposed to cure. Repeal it, and money will cease to come into those Northern states to buy erstwhile Republicans of the city sidewalks. The power will come back with the election of Republican members of 2. the United States Senate. In short, this is not really a Prohibition fight, underneath. It is a fight for power, power through Repeal; power between Eastern "Wet" financiers and the Frontier, for control of Congress through financial ends. American history has been full of these fights between the Eastern [financiers] millionaire Wets and the Frontiersman. Up to now the Frontier has always won. Whether the congestion in Big Cities can change this trend of American History, I know not, but, as you meet the South and the West there in the United States Senate, I must say you feel as if the old traditions still hold true, you feel the Frontier will win. F. Financiers Deceived. But the point I want to make is this, [even] suppose [the Frontier did not win, and] substitute of the financial "Wets", Home Rule, did take the place of Prohibition, I believe these millionaire [financiers] Wets are wrong in thinking that it would restore their old power to control the United States Senate to their financial ends. Westward the course of Empire takes its way. The West was coming, the East was going, Prohibition or no Prohibition. The West was filling always, and it was only a question of time when it dominated the Senate, anyway. Again, Prohibition or no Prohibition, certain Eastern States were bound to become Democratic States. The trend from the country districts to the Big Cities, made this inevitable. The two states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island have the smallest native population of any States in the Union. This tends to make them Democratic. To say that the removal of Prohibition and the return of the Saloon, under Home Rule, will make them Republican, seems to me idle talk. I think the clever "Wets" have inoculated the poor financiers with a false hope. I think the financiers [?????] things have been done by the fanatical Wets. Our part is to straighten out the distorted thinking of the p[?????] finance. There is only one way for the Republican Party to come back in the East. It is by the way that all civilization has advanced, not by levelling down to the past, but by lifting the part up to the vision. Had the Republican Party, instead of starting to level, gone to work, through its influential press, and spent the same amount of printers ink on teaching the benefits of Prohibition that it has spent on playing bootlegging and ignoring the benefits, it could have lifted the foreign-language group up to the vision of its out-of-town rural and small-town constituency. It is the middle-class of the side streets out in the State that makes the back-bone of the Republican constituency. To enlarge this constituency by educating the new groups, was the way and the only way. It could have been done, for the leaders of the new groups cast into the machine back-ground here, have come to see the necessity of Prohibition precisely as we do. It would only have been a question of time, when their followers also saw the necessity, and thus added enough numbers to the Republican groups here in the East, to have still given the Republican Party a chance, but Republican leaders, met unfortunately, took the other tack. They ignored the backbone of their constituency, and went for making the "Wets", The Dry Republicans, said they, haven't anywhere else to go. But we can add the Wets, if we only can make the Republican Party a "Wet" Party. Thus we will regain our lost ascendancy in Congress. Here is a term at is at work everywhere in the East but is [?] me. But what they forgot was, that the Republican Party can never outbid the Democratic Party in wetness. It must either make enough Drys to predominate, make them by education in its press, or it must become a minority Party in these Eastern States. Its thinking is all wrong, and the more it feels how wrong, how impotent its thinking is, the more it becomes fanatical and frenzied; even dangerous. Note Its Dangerous Ways. Note the methods of these dangerous, fanatical, financier "Wets". The order has gone forth from here for their rich men not to give one thin dime, that is the expression, to the Republican Party, till it agrees to put a Repeal Plank in the coming Party Platform. To withhold fund, and to withhold endorsement of the nomination of Herbert Hoover, till he or the Party comes out "Wet". Here is our President. He must be superman to meet the difficulties thrust upon him, Asiatic difficulties, European entanglements, not to mention at home, unemployment, Farm Relief, Railroad Relief, etc., etc. And these fanatical "Wets" capitalize this condition to make the Party "Wet". It is apparently now or never with them, but it ought not to be now. We need every ounce of energy and brain for other things today, than liquor, a purely local problem. But such is not the idea of the fanatical "Wets". In the late fall, when I was in Washington, it was common talk that the President wanted to give his whole mind to the serious European situation and the unemployment situation here. But was he allowed to do so? Not at all. It was common talk that wherever he turned, there was a financier from New York shouting "Beer, beer, beer" in his ear, and telling him that the way to relieve the depression was simply to bring back Beer. And all this to a man overburdened with a great financial crisis. The Beer Boom, however, collapsed at the American Legion Convention, but the financial harriers have no collapsed. You have heard, of course, of the fake newspaper that came out the other day, under the title "Herald of Good Times". In a big, full-page headline, this paper declared, "Hoover Demands Prohibition Repeal" and in another headline it says "Fess Resigns on Eve of Hoover Message". In smaller type, less noticeable, it says, "All imaginary, more's the pity". This paper was distributed in the Grand Central Station, the idea being, I suppose, that people going all over the Country would leave it about the trains, and the big headlines would show. It was sent to all members of Congress, accompanied by a letter under the heading "Republican Citizen's Committee Against National Prohibition". The letter, according to Senator Brookhart, advocated Revolt and Rebellion, in the following language: "When on the night of July 14, 1789, the Duo de Liancourt reported to King Louis that the Bastile had fallen to the assaults of the people, the King cried, "Why, this is a revolt. " 'No, sire,' was the reply, 'it is a revolution.' People have been revolting against our prohibition laws' the elections show the revolt is changing to revolution before which this legislative tyranny must fall." What manner of men are these fanatical "Wets", resulting to the creating of lawlessness as a means of winning their end and scattering fake headlines about our President across the land? They must have something tremendous at stake to pour out their money thug, and so wildly. No such raging wild animal as the man who sees his purse in danger. These are those raging wild animals. What they have lost is that feeder of their purse, power to control the United States Senate, to send their henchmen there, and no others. They think, not of women and children. They think not of the cost to humanity that it will mean to go back to Home Rule and put Prohibition through the fire again. These fanatical, financier "Wets" are dangerous and deceived men. They must be put down at all costs. The home-loving women of America, whether Democrats or Republicans, must mass their votes behind the only Dry in sight, Herbert Hoover, openly against Repeal, against Mollification, and see that he runs, not retiree see, in short, that he has a plank behind him of Maintenance and Enforcement. They must make themselves into an army of frenzied, Financier "Wets". They must put them back because they are internal foes of law and order and or women and children. They must tell them in no uncertain terms that if the women of America will join in creating the NEW PARTY, for which the South and West so ardently long, The Great American Party, carrying in its heart the idealism of self-discipline and self-sacrifice, of the pioneers, that build this nation. The Party that knows that the benefits of Prohibition are genuine, and the benefits of Home Rule, nil. "Reforms are hills that must be climbed. But the climb is never steady. It is like convalescence, two steps forward and one step back, till the height is finally gained. Democracy was like that in its ascent. So must it be with Prohibition. Just now all causes are on the toboggan slide of a depression, Prohibition included. The "Wets" understand that we are in a retrograde cycle, feel it is now or never to repeal, and are at it hammer and tongs. Our part is to hold through the depression. Then another step forward. Now to Dry Planks and Dry candidates. Do you realize how slowly we climbed the hill and reached the peak of a frankly Dry President? Hoover, was the first outspoken Dry President that the United States has had openly against Repeal, against Modification, and actually working hard for enforcement. He ran against a militant "Wet". The Drys won a new height in Hoover. The game of the "Wets" today is to take that height from us. These "Wets" have captured the Democratic Party. No Southern Dry that I see has the slightest hope of a Dry candidate for President there. He must be "Wet", when they tell me, to get behind him the Northern money. The money to run, the vast expense of a Presidential is, unfortunately, in the North. We are a non-partisan body. But the Southern Dry Democrats themselves tell me that there is so little hope for us in the Democratic Party that they are going to bolt to Hoover if the Republican Platform gives Hoover a Dry Plank, the old Plank, "Maintenance and Enforcement". If not, back they go to the Democratic Party, or to the Party for which they so long, a NEW PARTY composed of South and West. This Party, they tell you, will be invincible, and they expect, when formed, that Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont will join it. But now, they are preparing to vote for Hoover the man, the Dry President, thus giving him the Border States. But, to get their vote, the Plank must be Dry. Here, then, is the point. If we are to hold the Height, a Dry President, thus giving him the Border States. But, to get their vote, the Plank must be Dry. Here, then, is the point. If we are to hold the Height, a Dry President, give him the necessary Border States, both South and West, we have got to run him on a Dry Plank. Give him a "Wet" Repeal Plank, camouflaged as Resubmission or a Referendum, and a "Wet" Democrat goes in. Thus, for the moment, the Dry cause is forced down the hill, with the height to take all over again. Let us face the facts, that a tremendous newspaper campaign is to be launched by the Eastern "Wet" press for a "Wet" Plank. When I was in Washington recently, the Drys were being approached and begged, by "Wet" Eastern interests, to be reasonable and stand for a Referendum. It would take the question out of politics, we were told. But the Drys knew a Wooden Horse when they saw it. The proposal was back to the "Wets", and all groups of Drys have rejected this Wooden Horse. But, note weil, the newspaper connections of this campaign for a Repeal Plank are very formidable, so look out for the publicity about to drench our papers, trying to convince you in one breath that President Hoover wants this "Wet" Plank, and then taking it back in the next breath. Watch out and discount this publicity, It is "Wet" propaganda, and to connect President Hoover with it, is to give him no credit for brains or moral convictions, qualities in which he is supreme. A "Wet" Repeal Plank would, I, lose the vote of the home-loving women who elected him, 2, lose the Border States, 3, strain the Dry West to the breaking point, 4, not help in the East because the Republican Party here can never outbid the Democratic Party for wetness, 5, not give back to the East, as financiers want to think, the old power to send Republicans instead of Democrats to the United States Senate. All this Repeal Plank could do, would be to split the Republican Party and elect a "Wet" Democrat. Out of this, would come, probably, in the end, the NEW PARTY for which the South and West long, the Great American Party, a coalition of Southern and Western groups, a Party that would really make short work of the "Wet" financial interests of the East. So plain is it that the "Wet" Repeal Plank would elect a Democrat, that is, would beat President Hoover, that in Washington rumor said that possibly the intent of this "Wet" Plank camaign was the last gasp of the Morrow-Coolidge booms for President; that is, that Hoover, unwilling to run on a "Wet" Flank, might retire, and thus make room for the candidate of the financier- "Wets" of the East. People would say, "Is this "Wet" Plank an ouster movement to put in Dawes or Coolidge?" The fact that Hoover on a "Wet" Plank means sure defeat would seem to lend color to the rumor, that this is an "ouster" campaign. But whether it is an "Ouster" or a plain "Repeal Plank" campaign, it means certain defeat for the only Dry candidate in sight, Herbert Hoover, and therefore, the Drys of the Nation, whether Democrats or Republicans, have but one thing to do about this "Wet" Plank in the Republican Party, namely, to fight it. The W.C.T.U. members of the Nation represent the home-loving women of this country who elected Herbert Hoover. They must see clearly that his "Wet" Plank carries in its sinister bosom the plan of the rich "Wets" of the East, Home Rule for liquor. It means the Saloon Age back. We might as well call it the Saloon Plank, and line up against it on that ground. Our duty is to line up against this Repeal Plank, to get our delegates to the Party Convention, to understand that it not only means the Saloon back if successful in its final goal, but it means defeat of the Republican Party [ * and probably election of a meh Democrat for as present there allows little like whose or a day Dear selt the nomination * ]. Every bit of newspaper space available to us should be filled with this truth. Now a word as to what underlies this great drive, to make both Parties "Wet" and thus leave the Drys, "all dressed up, with nowhere to go". Speaking on Dry Planks and Dry Candidates, before the All New England Conference of Women's Christian Temperance Unions, held at the Hotel Statler, Tuesday afternoon, February 16th, Mrs. William Tilton, Chairman of the Woman's Group, but when one party fails us, we go elsewhere. The Dry Southern women believe that the Democratic Party is going to fail us, that there is no Dry candidate likely to win the nomination for President. They expect a "Wet" candidate and a moderate Plank. Therefore, they will bolt to Hoover, if the Republican Party remains Dry. Otherwise, they will go back to the Democratic Party, or help in the formation of the NEW PARTY that the West and South long so ardently for, a coalition, a party invincible, the Great American Party, upholding the ideas of the pioneer. Here are our allies, the home-loving women of the South and West, who are prepared to bolt for Hoover. Where are our enemies? They are found in the fanatical, financier "Wets" of the East, who are now launching this very able campaign in the press for a Repeal Plank. These fanatical, financial "Wets" feel that Prohibition send the wrong fellows to Congress. I mean, it is a common saying among the bankers. They see how the Republican Senators have grown out to break Hoover and the Republican Party if need be, to get what they consider the ideal condition for themselves, two "Wet" parties. They do not realize that the Republican Party would die as a "Wet" Party and a new Party of the South and West take is place, which would make short work of the financiers of the East. Far from giving them back their lost power to send Republican Senators to the United States Senate, it would reduce the political power of the East to a whisper, overcome by the party of the vast country-side. But the home-loving women of America who elected Herbert Hoover, have really got to fight like tigers for him, for his enemies have vast funds at their command. In Washington, it was common talk that powerful men within his own party were out for forcing him to run on a "Wet" Plank. Indeed, gossip said that some of these fanatical "Wets" went even further. They hoped that, by forcing a "Wet" Plank into the Republican Party, they could force Hoover out, as he would not be willing to run on a "Wet" Plank and thus they could get in another candidate more to their "Wet" liking. Very important people saw in this move for a "Wet" Plank in the Republican Party and "ouster" move to get rid of President Hoover. The home-loving women of American, who elected Herbert Hoover, whether Southern Democrats or Northern Republicans, should hurl defiance at these fanatical "Wets" who would oust Herbert Hoover as a candidate for President, by forcing a "Wet" Plank in the coming Republican Party. They should say to them, with all the fervor and consecration that lives in the souls of women, "They shall not pass", for this plan of a "Wet" Plank carries in its sinister bosom, repeal of the 18th Amendment and return to Home Rule. This means, return of the Saloon Age. The way is plain for South, for West, for Drys of the East, to mass their forces in behalf of President Hoover, Dry, running on a Dry plank. There is no other way for the Drys to go at present, whether Democrats or Republicans. I was asked to talk on the political situation, I say to you, the Democrats are offering you nothing at present. The fanatical "Wets" of the East are trying to offer you nothing, but thick as the sands of the sea are the women honor Herbert Hoover and the men and women who do not want to see the Saloon return. Let them mass their votes behind Herbert Hoover running on a plank calling for Maintenance and Enforcement. Attack the fanatical "Wets" who are harassing an Administration that needs all its energy for great international and national problems. These fanatical "Wets" are internal fees. Hurl your defiance at these foes, and you will beat them, for they lead one of the greatest moral reactions in history. The Time Spirit is on your side, and the Time Spirit is a great ally. Feb. 6, 1932. Dear Dr. McBride: I am to speak before the ALL New England Conference on February 16th. I mean to say the enclosed. Probably I shall shorten it. I should like it very much if Mr. Dunford would read it, to make sure that there is nothing libelous in it, and I think if you all would rub out things that you think are weak or illogical and send it back. If you are not there, perhaps Mr. Dunford and Mr. Christgau would go over it. Nothing can save us not but to take the offensive against the fanatical "Wets", and shame them out of existence. Your publicity came through well here, but they didn't mention the part about the fanatical "Wets", but caught up the part of the bludgeoning by Vare. Mr. Spauling was here all yesterday afternoon, and we went over names. I hope he will meet with some success. I do hope you will get rested. I do not see how you bear up at all. I am convinced we must have some kind of a Maintenance and Enforcement demonstration. Sincerely, These Fanatical "Wets" The time is ripe to make plain to ourselves and others whence comes this heavy drive against Prohibition, the immediate object of which is to try to force Herbert Hoover or his party to comes out for a Repeal Plank in the coming Platform. The Democratic Party having been captured by Northern "Wet" financiers, the next "Wet" objective is to capture the Republican Party, also. Let us gather up the source of this drive to make both parties "Wet", to leave the Drys "all dressed up with no place to go". Prohibition was coming till about 1928. Then began this terrific newspaper bombardment. My first knowledge of this drive was about January, 1928, when the "lady from Philadelphia", who prides herself on moving near to high politics in Pennsylvania, told me she felt it her duty to tell me that it wasn't any use for me to spend my energy longer on Prohibition. Nothing on earth could save it, for the Great Moguls of Pennsylvania had put their political heads together and vowed to get rid of it, even if it meant a civil war. The merits of Prohibition, whether it did good to humanity, apparently did not figure in these calculations. It was enough that it was doing good to High Finance; did not help these politico-financiers to control Legislature and Congress to their financial ends. In short, it was upsetting party control and , therefore, it was to go. It couldn't live against the impact of such purses as were to be put behind its overthrown in Pennsylvania. The fact was, Prohibition threw power to the West. This was the sin unpardonable of Prohibition. A few weeks later, I received a telegram from a millionaire member of the Republican National Committee, saying that Prohibition had become of such "political moment" that it must be got out of politics. The first step towards this end was for Massachusetts to send a "Wet" memorial to Congress, thereby bringing to President Hoover the necessity of appointing "Wets" to the Wickersham Committee. A "Wet" Wickersham Report was to be the first step in getting Prohibition out of politics. I made inquiries after receiving this telegram and was told that the Republican Party in the East had mismanaged Prohibition in the beginning and had now concluded that the best thing to do was to get rid of it. Of course, this did not apply to all Republicans, but it applied to a certain groupd of financial "Wet" Republicans in the North, so this tremendous drive of the fanatical "Wets" of the East began. It has gone on in the press for four years, playing up the bootlegger and the gangster and never mentioning the benefits of Prohibition. Indeed, it is honest enough to say that it's object is to "get Prohibition out of politics". Apparently, it is Federal politics from which it must be eliminated, for these financial-fanatical "Wets", whether Democrats or Republicans, XXX agree that the thing to do is to give the liquor problem back to the states, - "Home Rule", even to the extent of allowing each city and town to have its own liquor management. These financiers, it would seem, do not think their power to control Legislature and Congress will be sapped by "Home Rule". It is Federal Rule they fear. It is Congress that they want to control and the unpardonable sin of Prohibition is that it gets int the way of the control of Congress by important interest in the East. over the fight again. This diverts energy that had much better be put elsewhere. Now let us come down to the present. After a four years' bombardment through the press, the fanatical "Wets" of the East have a secure mortgage on the Democratic Party. They are now out to secure a similar mortgage on the Republican Party. The immediate objective is a "Wet" Repe al-Resubmission Plank in the coming Party Platform. The method employed to get this plank presents a spectacle of selfishness that seems to me to make the word "dangerous" applicable indeed to these "Wets". Here is our President. He must be super-man to meet the difficulties thrust upon him; Asiatic difficulties, European entanglement; not to mention at home unemployment relief, farm reliefs, business relief, etc., And yet these fanatical "Wets" have this sort of a campaign on, to break him and the Republican Party. Let me given an example of these fanatical "Wets" in operation. In the late fall, when I was in Washington, it was common talk that the President wanted to give his full mind to the serious European situation abroad and the unemployment situation at home, But was he allowed so to do? Not at all, It was common talk that wherever he turned, there was a financier from New York shouting "Beer, beer, beer" in his ear, and telling him that the way to relieve the depression was simply to bring back Beer. This Beer Boom, however, collapsed at the American Legion Convention, but the financial barriers did not collapse. They simply transferred their harrying to a Repeal Plank in the coming Party Platform. The press openly stated that these fanatical "Wets" had conceived the idea of outting off contributions from the rich East to the Republican National Committee until the Party came out "Wet". "Not one thin dime", was the slogan, until the Repeal Plank was assured. And no one in Washington denies that the Republican Party has been badly crippled financially by this "Not one thin dime" campaign. Was over such blind fanaticism? The President, staggering under superhuman difficulties, and these fanatical "Wets" capitalize his situation to get back liquor. Apparently, they are willing to break the Republican Party, to let World difficulties go by the board, until they achieve their object. "No such raging wild animal", they say, "as the man who sees his purse in danger". Certainly, one gets the picture of Hoover like to the pictures of our childhood, when in the dark Russian forest the strong man is pursued by ravening wolves. And what are the methods of these ravening wolves? They ask Repeal, but they must well know that there are not the thirty-six states necessary for repeal. Therefore, all this Repeal Amendment can do, thrown out into the states, is to make for more lawlessness and nullification. But that has been their method, to create lawlessness. This proves how dangerous are these fanatics, for if you systematically create lawlessness in one direction, surely you sowo dragon's teeth of lawlessness everywhere. But, apparently, these fanatical "Wets" have become too one-idea'd to see that they may be bringing down their own heads the house they have so carefully reared. How lost to all reason they are may be seen by the fact that they would ask President Hoover to step off his pedestal and run as a fallen idol. First, it is inconceivable that President Hoover would do such a thing. Second, suppose merely for argument's sake he did do it. He would then be running as a fallen idol, and would be the worst defeated President in a Century. Thick as the sands of the sea are the women who honor President Hoover for his stalwart stand against Repeal, against Modification. On these he must depend for his election. Where would they be should the President oblige the fanatical "Wets" by becoming a fallen idol? Can't you see how the Southern women, who now mean to vote for President Hoover, would all fly back into the Democratic ranks, how the West would be lost; how the East wouldn't give much of a vote, for, mark well, the Republican Party in the East can never outbid the Democratic Party for wetness. These fanatical "Wets" of the East are inviting President Hoover to be the worst defeated man in history. And what is it all about? This, these fanatical "Wets" think that Prohibition has interfered with their power to control Congress, and they would bring down the whole house, put us back into the dark liquor ages of "Home Rule", in order to get back the control of the Senate which they really cannot get back. The control has gone Westward. These fanatical "Wets" made the most fearful mistake in 1928, when they saw their power slipping. It was then that they should have gone to the foreign-language groups and taught them that in this Machine Age nothing can avail but Abstinence and Prohibition enforced. They could have enlarged sufficiently their own middle-class constituency to a point where it again had numbers. At least, this was their only hope. But instead of this, they tried to out-bid the Democrats in wetness, and no Party can out-bid the Democratic Party in wetness. It is never too late to mend. Civilization advances, not by giving in to the past, not by surrendering the vision, but by lifting the past up to the new day. Parties also adance by this same method. My guess is something like this. If the fanatical "Wets" of the East should succeed in getting a Repeal Plank in the Party Platform, a Democrat will surely be the next President of the United States, and there is no Democrat in sight who ought to be the next President. Furthermore, this Repeal Plank would end in breaking the Republican Party, and out of the break, so the insurgents themselves say, would come the thing for which the insurgents of the West long, a new alignment composed of the South and the West. This alignment would be the party invincible, the party American, and its creation lives in the minds of many a Southerner and many a Westerner today. But may I remind the fanatical-financier "Wets" of the East that this Party, which they in their blindness are helping to create, would make very short work of them on their Public utility schemes. My friends, this Prohibition fight is not a genuine fight over Prohibition. It is a fight for power to control the United States Senate, a fight between the frontier and the Eastern Financiers. American history is full of these fights. Up to now, the frontier has always won. I hold no brief for insurgency. I am not going into the question of Public Utilities here. I honestly don't know enough to take sides, but I do know that Civilization and Parties advance, not by giving in to the brigand, but by lifting the brigand to the vision. I believe at this moment the Republican Party is fuller of the vision than the Democratic. I hope it will adhere to the vision and finally lift the fanatical-financier "Wets" of the East into the vision. All else is retreat and disaster. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.