Thou Shalt Not Drink; M. B. Peterson

208 The Prohibition movement be gan in earnest around the turn of the century. Hatchet-wielding Carry Nation, with public prayers ~nd condemnations of Demon Rum, set out with her pre-Women's Lib disciples on a whiskey-bottle beer keg smashing crusade through the nation's saloons. Other Drys, led by two powerful lobbies - the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union - steadily built up political power in Congress and state legis latures. The movement was ready for a show of strength when President Wilson in 1919 vetoed the Volstead National Prohibition bill, origi nally a World War I food conser vation measure. Congress prompt ly overrode the veto, rejecting the President's forebodings of na tional scandals and Federal en1971 "THOU SHALT NOT DRINK" 209 forcement fiascos. Later the requi ~~{e g~ ~tat~~ ratHt~d the new law, which read simply enough: "The manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the juris diction thereof for beverage pur poses is hereby prohibited."

Prohibition was hailed by the triumphant Drys as the dawn of a new era, a time of a new moral code of decency and sobriety. "The reign of tears is over," declared the nation's No.1 evangelist, Dr. Billy Sunday, and added: "The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into fac tories and our jails into store houses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent." The Age of the Gangster But somehow experience did not follow this happy prognosis nor the jubilant prediction of the Anti Saloon League of New York that America was about to enter an age of "clear thinking and clean liv ing." Instead it became an age of the gangster and the rum-runner, the bootlegger and the hij acker, the bathtub gin artist and the crooked judge. Millions drank who never drank before. Alcholism, always a prob lem, became practically a national disease - and a national killer. Of 480,000 gallons of booze confis cated in New York in one "dry"

year and subjected to chemical analysis, 98 per cent was found to contain poison. A vast illicit industry on land and sea arose as supply attempted to meet demand. The Coast Guard became known as "Carry Nation's Navy" as it pursued the sleek and swift, armed and armoured craft of Rum Row inside the 12-mile limit. Corruption and scandal dogged politician and policeman alike. During the first four dry years, some 140 Prohibition agents were jailed. In April 1925, a Fed eral jury in Cincinnati convicted 58 agents and policemen (two Pull man cars were needed to haul the miscreants to the Atlanta Peniten tiary), and in the same month the Prohibition director for Ohio was found guilty of conspiracy with the underworld. Underworld figures became na tional celebrities. Just about every one knew about Waxey Gordon, Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano, and Al Capone. Capone, not always en joying his fame, complained: "I call myself a businessman. I make money by supplying a popular de mand. If I break the law, my cus tomers are as guilty as I am. When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When 210 THE FREEMAN April my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's hospi tality."

Eventual Repeal As lawlessness came to charac terize the Roaring Twenties, the army of Wets and Prohibition's disaffected grew. Ardent Prohibi tionists joined the Association Against the Prohibition Amend ment and the Women's Organiza tion for National Prohibition Re form (known among the Drys as the Bacchantian Maidens). And, if war paved the way into Prohibition, depression paved its exit. The Wets, displaying not ex actly sound economic thinking, blamed the Great Depression on the Noble Experiment, arguing, among other things, that Prohibition was foreclosing thousands of jobs and costing the taxpayer mil lions of dollars in fruitless en forcement and lost liquor taxes. In 1932 both Presidential can didates Roosevelt and Hoover called for repeal. In April 1933, beer of not more than 3.2 per cent alcohol was authorized by Con gress and later that year the Twenty-first Repeal Amendment became law. Prohibition was dead.

If any lessons can be drawn from Prohibition, it may be that the easy call to "pass a law" to bring about a millennium does not always work, that the supposed cure can be worse than the disease, and that the economic law of sup ply and demand can be a lot more pervasive than the countervailing legislated law of the land. , IDEAS ON LIBERTY Dependence or Liberty THE TWO NOTIONS - one to regulate things by a committee of con trol, and the other to let things regulate themselves by the conflict of interests between free men - are diametrically opposed; and the former is corrupting to free institutions, because men who are taught to expect Government inspectors to come and take care of them lose all true education in liberty. If we have been all wrong for the last three hundred years in aiming at a fuller reali zation of individual liberty, as a condition of general and widely diffused happiness, then we must turn back to paternalism, disci pline, and authority; but to have a combination of liberty and dependence is impossible.

WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other TRAP FOR THE UNWARY ROBERT PATTON MANY ADVOCATES of liberty have recently responded with enthusi asm to the proposal of a voucher plan for primary and secondary education. Under this proposal, parents of school-age children would be given vouchers which could be redeemed at local public schools or be used as part or full payment of tuition at a private or parochial school. When used to pay for private education, the vouchers would have a specific cash value. Proponents of the plan argue that it would offer several ad vantages over the existing system of tax-supported education in the United States. Parents would be free to enroll their children in a private school without the burden of paying tuition over and above the taxes they pay to support pubMr. Patton is a graduate student and part time lecturer in physics at Hunter College in New York City.