loo PROHIBITION AND THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN BISHOP JAMES CANNON, JR., D.D. (ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE VIRGINIA CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH DANVILLE, VIRGINIA) THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING COMPANY WESTERVILLE, OHIO, U.S.A Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Columbia University Libraries https://archive.org/details/prohibitiontheOOcann PROHIBITION AND THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN By BISHOP JAMES CANNON, Jr., D. D. Danville, Va., Nov. 12. — Bishop James Cannon, Jr., chairman of the Board of Tem- perance and social service of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with headquarters at Washington, made the following statement at today’s session of the Virginia Conference in Danville, Va., concerning the present con- dition relating to prohibition and the attitude of the Board of Temperance; “For nearly half a century this great Con- ference has been in the forefront of the battle against the liquor traffic. Forty-five years ago Drs. W. W. Bennett and W. W. Smith, backed by this body, led the temperance forces of Virginia to secure the passage of the local option law, and as a student of Ran- dolph-Macon College, it was my good fortune to be enlisted in the war and to give my service to help in the circulation of the South- ern Crusader, and from that day to this pres- ent hour I have fought the common enemy of mankind with such ability and strength as God has given me wherever opportunity or duty has called. There have been many times when this body has taken important ac- tion on this question: When first the Mann Law, the Byrd Law, the Prohibition Enabling Act, and the Mapp Law were being consid- ered by the people of Virginia no action was more influential than that of this great Con- ference in securing the adoption of these sal- utary measures, which drove out cross roads [ 3 ] and village barrooms, the city saloons, the brewers and distillers and wholesale liquor dealers, and branded future traffickers in in- toxicating liquors as criminals and outlaws, and also destroyed the strangle-hold of the liquor traffic upon town and city councils, State Legislature and other government of- ficials. It is difficult for our children, indeed it is difficult for the young members of this Conference, to realize the strength, the re- sourcefulness and the desperation of the op- position or the intensity of the struggle par- ticipated in by the older members of this body, which included the murder of Moffatt in this very city, the physical assault on Dr. Crawford, in Amherst county, the abuse and vilification of prohibition leaders, regardless of their standing or character. A reading of the reports of the conference committee on temperance and the resolutions adopted by the body itself will indicate the stage of prog- ress of temperance reform in Virginia from year to year. RECALLS LIQUOR THREATS “When the state-wide prohibition law, com- monly called the Mapp Law, was under con- sideration in the General Assembly in Vir- ginia in 1916, there were not only prophecies but positive threats by the outlawed dealers that they would not respect the expressed will of the people of Virginia, but would set- tle in Baltimore and Washington and from these points outside the state would carry on their destructive traffic in defiance of the Vir- ginia law, and Baltimore papers gloated over the great increase in the manufacture of in- toxicants by the criminal violators of the law of her sister state. “And then the day came when the people of the dry states determined that they would [4] not permit their laws to be flouted by ‘wet’ for- eign dominated centers like New York, Phil- adelphia, Chicago, Louisville, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, etc. They said to these ‘wet’ people, ‘If you will not respect the rights of the people of the state to prohibit the traf- fic in intoxicants within its own borders, we Avill pass a constitutional amendment which will so prohibit the legalized brewers, dis- tilleries and wholesale and retail liquor traffic within your own borders and thus prevent their operation to nullify the wishes of the ‘dry’ states.’ That was the genesis and the driving power of the movement for national prohibition. DISCUSSES “PRESENT CLAMOR” “The present clamor by Bruce, Butler, Ritchie, Reed and Smith and their followers and the ‘wet’ newspapers for the state control of the liquor traffic is a belated howl from those who had neither the desire nor the pro- phetic vision to use their voices and influence to advocate the doctrine of state sovereignty for the protection of those states which had outlawed the traffic in intoxicants. All the efforts of the ‘dry’ states to protect their chil- dren from outside traffickers by the passage of state enforcement laws and of Federal in- terstate shipment and postal laws were fought bitterly by the very element which is now clamoring for state sovereignty and control. Never was there any proposal by the liquor traffic or its defendants to effect the state prohibition laws. These people were lawless and defiant up to the day of the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, and since the amendment was ratified the great aim has been to discover how to evade the provisions of the law by fraud or force. The cry from [ 5 ] the beginning has been that the law cannot be enforced, with the criminal undertone that the law shall not be enforced. Today the battle cry of the enemy, loud and clear, is state nullification of the National Prohibition Law. QUESTIONS OF PERSONAL RECORDS “This great Conference faces today a situ- ation which demands that it take action as clear and unmistakable as it has always taken at every stage of this great conflict, for be- fore its next meeting that will have occurred which will greatly affect for good or ill the future effectiveness of the National Prohibi- tion Law. To be specific, the future effective- ness of that law, whether we like it or not, will be tremendously affected by the results of the approaching presidential campaign. The strenuous efforts which are being made quite honestly in some cases by some ‘dry’ leaders to eliminate the prohibition question from the campaign have been and will be un- availing, because the ‘wets’ have determined to force the fighting for the nomination and the election of an openly declared opponent of prohibition, and these ‘wet’ men will be satisfied with nothing less. With the line of battle thus clearly drawn by the enemy itself, if a ‘wet’ man should be nominated by either party the issue will not be Republicanism or Democracy, but prohibition law enforcement vs. lawlessness and nullification. The issue will not be settled by party platforms. No party convention will dare to adopt a plat- form either of prohibition repeal or non-en- forcement lawlessness at this stage of the conflict. The issue will, and must be, under the existing circumstances, made by the per- sonal records and attitude of the candidates, toward prohibition and the prohibition law. [ 6 ] “To be still more specific, the outstanding opponents of the prohibition law in the field of national politics are Governors Alfred E. Smith, Albert C. Ritchie, Senator James A. Reed and Dr. Nicholas M. Butler. All of these men are personally and politically op- posed to prohibition, and have done what they could to break down public sentiment in support of the law and to weaken its effec- tiveness. “PUGNACIOUSLY VINDICTIVE” “Dr. Butler has been so pugnaciously vin- dictive and so disregardful of all personal and social amenities in his attacks upon the intel- ligence, motives and character of the support- ers of prohibition that it has been difficult at times to escape the conviction that there are personal reasons for the furious epithets which he has hurled at the prohibition law and its supporters. While it may be un- founded, there is suspicion that he is chasing the forlorn hope that his attitude may finally secure the support of ‘wet’ elements for the presidency, which has made him the out- standing ‘wet’ leader in the Republican party. While his outbursts have been received with restrained comments by his political associ- ates in this country he has been accepted as an oracle in many influential circles in Europe and his personal extravagancies have been accepted as more weighty than all the facts as to the social, economic and moral benefits of prohibition. It is hardly likely that the Republican party will commit presidential suicide by the nomination of a man holding such views and with such a record, but should it do so his election should be opposed by all supporters of the prohibition law, regardless of party ties. [ 7 ] REFERS TO SENATOR REED “Senator James A. Reed has shown him- self to be one of the most bitter and vindic- tive enemies of prohibition. He has fought prohibition legislation actively and shrewdly not to say ably. He exhibited his open hos- tility not only to the prohibition law, but his contempt for prohibition workers by his con- duct as chairman at the hearing before the Senate Committee in 1926 on the prohibition bills. Again in 1927, in the hearing on the investigation of the Pennsylvania primary, he manifested the same hostile attitude. He treated the group of women witnesses at the beginning of the hearing with gross rudeness, endeavored to embarrass all the ‘dry’ wit- nesses and to twist their statements out of their proper setting, acting really not as the impartial chairman of the committee, but as the cross-examiner for the liquor interests, being prompted continually in his question- ing by their official representative. In the Pennsylvania hearing, while the prohibition question had only the remotest bearing upon the committee, he emphasized it as though it were a major question solely for the purpose of investigating the Anti-Saloon League of America and especially for the cross-exami- nation of its National Attorney, Dr. Wheeler. Never have I witnessed a smaller, more con- temptible exhibition of vindictiveness than the treatment given Dr. Wheeler by Senator Reed, unless it were a similar exhibition by this same man toward that great national leader, President Wilson, in the days when he was struggling for the consummation of the great ideals of his administration. I had formed my opinion of Senator Reed in those days, and my contempt was intensified, as, sitting side by side with my friend. Dr. [8] Wheeler, I saw his inconsiderate, heartless, cruel treatment of a man upon whose face the seal of early death was already imprinted. An effort on the part of Mr. Wheeler and his friends to have a definite hour fixed for Dr. Wheeler’s appearance before the committee, because of the state of his health, was rudely, heartlessly repulsed with the off-hand state- ment that Dr. Wheeler was no better than anyone else, and so. Dr. Wheeler was com- pelled to leave his bed day after day and re- main in the committee room under intense physical strain when he should have been at home or in the hospital. It is gratifying to record that after all his efforts to wear out and to brow-beat. Senator Reed more than met his match in the examination, and that he won no victory in his encounter with the able, though even then mortally ill prohibi- tion leader. But the friends of Dr. Wheeler who were with him daily during the ordeal will never forget the heartlessness and vin- dictiveness of Senator James A. Reed, in his strenuous effort to score against prohibition. It is important that our people know the rec- ords of these men. “At this same time, Senator Reed, under cover of this same Pennsylvania primary in- vestigation, with only a mere technical justi- fication for such procedure, sent men to Wes- terville to investigate the books and records of the Anti-Saloon League of America, and brought the record of the executive commit- tee to Washington, copied by creatures of the Hearst yellow newspapers in the hopes that something might be discovered that might be discreditable to the Christian gentlemen com- posing that committee, but which, I am glad to say, fell as flat as his efforts to discredit Dr. Wheeler at the public hearing. If such [9] a man should secure the nomination for the presidency of the United States, he should be opposed, not only by all supporters of the prohibition law, but by all lovers of decency and fair play, regardless of party lines. DISCUSSES GOVERNOR SMITH “But the man who has done more to thwart the purpose behind the passage of a national prohibition law, to neutralize its possible good effects and to encourage the opponents and the violators of the prohibition law is Gov- ernor Alfred E. Smith, of New York. And practically everything which may be said concerning him is true of Governor Ritchie, of Maryland, who has equal hostile inten- tions. but less territorial ability, for Governor Ritchie has actively and successfully opposed the passage of any state law enforcement code by the Legislature of Maryland, has de- nounced the prohibition law and brought about such a reign of lawlessness in Mary- land that last week Federal Judge Soper con- demned in seething language the failure of the state of Maryland to cooperate in uphold- ing the Constitution, which, be it remem- bered, Governor Ritchie, as well as Governor Smith, has solemnly sworn to support, and has ignored his oath. Governor Smith has always been opposed to prohibition, .state and national. As a local Tammany politician, his record shows that he has been a staunch, ac- tive friend of the liquor traffic, and a regular consumer of intoxicants, even down to the present day, if the general reports are cor- rect, and the opponent of restrictions of any kind upon the operation of the traffic, openly, ardently yearning for the return of the good old days of the brass rail and the foaming glass (the present ardently ‘wet’ spotlight mayor of New York, Honorable Johnnie [ 10 ] Walker, openly boasted in a speech ‘that the people of New York would be able to have a drink at home’ if the man who was born five blocks away — Governor Smith — were made the first citizen of the land). The Tammany organization, of which since the death of Charles F. Murphy, Governor Smith is the most prominent leader, has always been an open friend of the saloon, and at the present time at every session of Congress Tammany lines up its Congressmen from New York to fight in every possible way any legislation designed to make Federal prohibition more effective. ALL, “WETS” STAND TOGETHER “When Governor Smith was defeated in 1920 and the New York Legislature ratified the Prohibition Amendment and passed a good prohibition enforcement act — the Mullan- Gage Law — the ex-Governor and his follow- ers did what they could to block such action but failed. But when by the united support of Tammany and the great foreign-born ‘wet’ (Republican as well as Democratic) vote of New York City, Smith was re-elected Gov- ernor in 1922, 1924 and 1926, he began his work to nullify the National Prohibition Law as speedily and as quickly as possible. He had taken the oath of office to ‘support’ the Con- stitution of the United States, but he evident- ly does not consider that this oath includes the Eighteenth Amendment, for he gave his support to the effort to repeal the Mullan- Gage Enforcement Law, and notwithstand- ing all appeals to veto the repeal bill, he signed it, and purposely left the great city and state of New York without any local pro- hibition enforcement law or officers, knowing full well that the Federal government had neither the staff nor the machinery for ef- [11 1 fective enforcement. He declared at that time and again has declared within the past year that all the police force of the state of New York are under oath to support and to enforce the Constitution of the United States, and that he would dismiss from office those failing to do their duty. But up to this pres- ent hour, although the secular press of New York proclaims almost daily, with apparent delight, that the law is not enforced, there is no public record that Governor Smith has dismissed anyone from office for failure to support the Constitution of the United States by the non-enforcement of the National Pro- hibition Law. In short, Governor Smith has not only not endeavored to uphold the Eight- eenth Amendment of the Constitution as he has solemenly taken oath to do for three suc- cessive terms, but on the contrary he has done all that he could do to prevent any co- operation in its enforcement by the police force of New York City and state. More- over, he has ostentatiously signed bills calling upon Congress to take action on the prohibi- tion question which the United States Su- preme Court had already declared to be un- constitutional. “This positive aggressive action and rec- ord, and present attitude of Governor Smith and his ‘wet’ followers (Republicans as well as Democrats) in the city and state of New York, have greatly affected the enforcement situation throughout the country. The Fed- eral government was compelled to decide to send all its forces and to spend all the appro- priation to secure adequate enforcement in New York or to deliberately decide to send only such proportion of its force as was nec- essary to prevent smuggling into the United States through New York via Rum Row or [ 12 ] the Canadian border, to prevent the diversion of industrial and medicinal alcohol and to prevent the smuggling of illicit liquor out of New York into adjacent states, and having done this protective work for the other states to leave New York ‘to stew in its own juice’ of liquor lawlessness and crime. Personally, I wish that the President of the United States had accepted the challenge so ostentatiously thrown down by Governor Smith, and called upon Congress to furnish the men and the money to secure as effective enforcement of the prohibition law in New York state as in any other state in the Union. The millions would have been well spent in vindication of the majesty of the national government. But the government appears to have decided to protect the rest of the country from New York’s lawlessness, and to let New York suf- fer for its own sins. DAMAGE NOT LIMITED “But unfortunately the damage resulting from this policy cannot be confined within the boundary of New York. Despite all that can be said and known as to Governor Smith’s positive purpose to nullify the enforcement of the prohibition law in the state of New York, and the effectiveness of his action in this regard; despite the known fact of the absolute domination by Tammany and Gov- ernor Smith of the police force of New York City; despite the known fact that 75 per cent of the population of that city is foreign born, or immediately descended; despite all these things the prohibition lawlessness of New York is heralded not only all over the United States, but over the whole world as positive proof that prohibition is a failure, that the law cannot be enforced, and that there must be undisturbed nullification or a modification [ 13] of the Federal prohibition law, which would leave the enforcement of that law to the sev- eral states. “This poisonous virus has been spread by the ‘wet’ newspapers of New York, and of other cities, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, etc., which have determined by insidious lawless propaganda to force the will of these ‘wet’ largely foreign populated cities upon the en- tire nation. These papers utter no word in favor of law enforcement. They appear, in- deed, to exult in the lawlessness of their citi- zens. Instead of denouncing the smugglers, hijackers, bootleggers and sellers of poison- ous liquors they denounce the law, then they denounce the Federal enforcement officials as incompetent or as grafters, the dry mem- bers of Congress as hypocrites, or as servile sycophants, the Anti-Saloon League officials as tricksters, fanatics, or wild, harebrained enthusiasts, and the great church bodies, which endorse prohibition and demand pro- hibition enforcement, as impractical misguid- ed idealists. Had these newspapers accepted the law in good faith as the will of the coun- try, expressed by the regular constitutional methods, and had they given as much ability and space in upholding the law and in de- nunciation of lawlessness, as they have given to fighting the law, their own communities would be far more law-abiding today and would be enjoying the benefits which have always followed the observance of the law. How absurd it is for a great New York daily to write editorial after editorial against na- tional prohibition, based upon the violation of the prohibition law in New York, when they know that this lawlessness has resulted because Governor Smith and his followers de- liberately repealed the state law enforcement [ 14 ] code to prevent the enforcement of the law. How worse than absurd, how hypocritical it is for those same dailies to declare that if Governor Smith should be elected President of the United States and took the oath to up- hold and support the Constitution, and to en- force the laws, he would keep his oath of of- fice and would enforce the Eighteenth Amend- ment of the National Prohibition Law, as all other laws, when his record is plain and con- tinuous that, although he has three times since the passage of the National Prohibition law', taken the oath to support the Constitu- tion of the United States, yet he has done more than any other one man in the United States to prevent its effective enforcement. How absurd, how suicidal it would be for the prohibition voters of the country to agree to the election of such a man with such a record to be President of the United States, a man who personally favors the use of intoxicants, whose chief friends and supporters favor the use of intoxicants, and are bitterly opposed to the prohibition law, to which is to be added the decisive fact that this man with this rec- ord would have the appointment of prohibi- tion enforcement officials, including the jus- tices of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Circuit and Federal judges, the district attorneys and electors of customs, etc. Will a man that has done all in his power to prevent the enforcement of the prohibition law in his own state, although having taken oath three successive times to support it, sud- denly take an opposite view of the same oath, should he be elected President of the United States? “Especially should this be asked in view of the fact that this man, if he should be elected, would be elected because of his ‘wet’ record [ 15 ] alone, would be counted upon to secure him the votes of certain wet sections of the coun- try. To these wet sections of the country the appeal for votes would be based upon Gov- ernor Smith’s ‘wet’ nonenforcement records in New York, his advocacy of state determina- tion of the alcoholic content of intoxicants, and of state law enforcement. His only hope of election is based upon the success of this plan, especially with ‘wet’ Republican votes. “But that alone would not secure the elec- tion of Governor Smith. Joined to these ‘wet’ votes there must be support of the moral and religious forces of the southern states, or Governor Smith cannot be elected, and this support is being demanded on the ground that Governor Smith is the only member of the Democratic party who can possibly be elected, even while it is necessarily admitted that he can be elected only because of his ‘wet’ nonenfoTcement records, will win enough votes in northern and eastern states, which, plus the dry votes of the South, will give a majority. A PERILOUS SITUATION “This is a perilous situation, w'hich faces us today as a body of Christian men and women. It is proposed that conscientious ‘dry’ voters will consent to support a man for the Presi- dent of the United States, who, from boy- hood, has been trained by Tammany, has been all his public life a representative and is now the leading representative of that usu- ally corrupt, always un-American organiza- tion, which fought Tilden, Cleveland, Bryan and Wilson; a man who himself uses intoxi- cating liquor, who has always defended the liquor traffic and fought all forms of restric- tive and prohibition legislation, who has done everything possible to render the prohibition [ 16 ] law ineffective in the great state of New York, and who, if at the head of the Federal government, would not, and could not, be ex- pected to have any more sympathy with pro- hibition or its enforcement than he has today. “The Episcopal address of 1926 declares: ‘The industrial, social, educational, moral and religious forces of the nation, which over- threw the legalized liquor traffic and secured national prohibition, must unite in the fight with equal vigor and persistence against the outlawed criminal traffic and the would-be nullifiers of the law.’ “If we agree with that sentiment, we must declare that we are here today not as Demo- crats or Republicans. We are here as repre- sentatives of a part of the moral and relig- ious forces of this ancient, historic common- wealth. We have labored earnestly and fought persistently for these long years to secure the enactment of the greatest piece of social leg- islation ever adopted by any age in any coun- try. The time has come to give solemn, posi- tive warning to the leaders of both political parties that we will not support any man. Democrat or Republican, for the presidency of the United States, who has the record or who holds the views of men like Senator Reed, President Nicholas M. Butler, Gover- nor Smith or Governor Ritchie; aye, more: that we pledge ourselves to fight vigorously and unitedly to prevent the election of any such men. This is not a matter of partisan politics. This is a great moral issue, which far transcends any question of tariff, finances, foreign policy, etc. This is a question that touches the everyday life of all our people, our homes, our schools, our business, our churches; therefore, we absolutely refuse to surrender our convictions on this great moral [17] question to aid in securing a purely political party triumph in the selection of a President, Democrat or Republican, whose election would be a menace to the final success of the beneficent, salutary prohibition law. “Therefore, we most earnestly demand not only that the delegates from Virginia to both nominating conventions, use their influence to defeat the nomination of men of the type of Butler, Reed, Smith or Ritchie, but that they also use their active influence to secure the nomination of men whose record will in- sure their active support of the enforcement of the prohibition laws. We positively de- clare that we will hold our political leaders of both parties responsible for the proper repre- sentation in the nominating conventions of the views of the moral, religious forces of our state.” PRINTED IN U. S. A. [ 18 ]