Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

Volume 142

The Vigor in Prohibition

T

HE Prohibition Law apparently is in no danger at the hands of Congress, and enforcement of the law, quite apparently, is more vigorous, more intelligent, and more effective than it has ever been before.

The indication that the Prohibition Law is not to be tampered with at this session of Congress, at least, is in the action taken by the House of Representatives on an amendment to the Appropriation Bill, introduced by Representative Tucker, of Virginia, to prevent resort to "fraud, deceit, or falsehood" in securing evidence against traffickers in illicit liquor. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 139 to 17. While the author of the amendment is a "dry," the "wets" generally would have been glad to see the amendment adopted. It was generally understood that, while the wording of the amendment directed it only against practices with ugly names, the effect of it would have been to prevent all under-cover investigation, and that, as Representative Lineberger expressed it, "Congress might as well repeal the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment as to approve the proposal."

The incident out of which the Tucker Amendment grew was the Hotel May flower case, in which prohibition agents spent about $1,000 on parties set as traps. Two hotel employees were caught, but later released. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Andrews has notified all of his subordinates that such reckless expenditures must cease or those responsible must take the consequence of immediate separation from the service. He made occasion to say, however, that under-cover investigation properly conducted affords the surest means of breaking up the illicit liquor industry.

Indications are numerous of the vigor and effectiveness of enforcement under General Andrews. Reports recently received from several districts show a tremendous cutting down of alcohol which is potential bootleg booze. In a single district enforcement activities "took out of the bootleg industry," in the words of General Andrews, "intoxicants that

January 6, 1926

might have been manufactured into 1,163,200 gallons of fake whisky."

Regulations have been adopted in various places which cannot be otherwise than effective in preventing illicit manufacture. In Chicago, for instance, no non-alcoholic beer permit is to be granted to a plant surrounded by a fence that obstructs the view, and permits already issued to such plants are to be revoked unless the fences are reconstructed of slats sufficiently far apart to offer no means of concealment.

Perhaps the most significant recent development is the opening of negotiations for a liquor treaty with Cuba, which would give enforcement officials a free hand in the area between the island and the Florida keys.

A Concession to the Farmers

Is it possible that we actually are be

holding the glorious spectacle of team-work in Governmental affairs at Washington-team-work not merely between House and Senate and between Democrats and Republicans in each, but between the legislative and the executive branches of the Government?

Undoubtedly, there is a prevalent spirit of accommodation. Some mention has been made in these columns of the non-partisan miracle of the Tax Bill and of the probable success of a non-partisan Muscle Shoals plan. Congress, and the parties and the factions of parties in Congress, have made concessions. There are indications now that the Executive branch is about to do the like.

The Administration has been vigorously opposed to anything approaching Government handling of farm products, and has not, therefore, looked with favor on the export corporation plan. President Coolidge made the Administration position clear in his Message and in his speech before the American Farm Bureau Federation in Chicago. Secretary of Agriculture Jardine has elaborated it in a number of statements. Finally, he expressed it in detail in the bill, which in general discussion bears his name, for governmental encouragement of co-operative marketing. It has become appar

Number I

ent, however, that many farm organizations as well as many members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, do not believe that the Administration plan, good as they concede it is, goes far enough to afford adequate relief, and that some method of disposing of surpluses must be devised.

The Administration is reconsidering its position. Secretary Jardine has announced that he is about to call a conference to ascertain what can be done with regard to legislation for the disposal of farm surpluses. It may be taken for granted that the Administration will never favor putting the Government in the business of exporting agricultural products, but it does appear probable that, as a result of the spirit of concession and accommodation, a plan may be worked out which will go further than the Administration originally intended to go without going to the dangerous lengths that Congress might have done if the Administration had "stood pat."

It is too much to hope that out of the disorganization so long prevalent perfect team-work can be obtained at once. But, thus early in the session, there are evidences of a mind toward team-work which has been almost wholly lacking in the past.

Busy Congress

THE bills for the relief of agriculture

-there will be four or five of them with similar objects-are likely to be under discussion within the first fifteen days after the Christmas recess. The House, however, will have its hands full of appropriation bills, and the Senate will be quite fully occupied with the Tax Bill and the World Court protocol during that period. The real show-down on the agricultural measure that is to succeed— if any one of them is-will probably not come until well on toward March, when the efforts, at accommodation will have had time to flower and bear fruit.

Meanwhile the House will concern itself, aside from appropriations, with a number of questions on which there is likely to be provocation to division and factionalism. Not less than fifteen bills

5

dealing with the coal situation are to be considered. The $165,000,000 Public Buildings Bill will be under consideration. Railroad consolidation, if the Inter-State and Foreign Commerce Committee does what is expected of it, will be discussed. Indications are that it will be hotly discussed from both sides.

In the Senate, too, there will be other provocatives to disunion than the World Court debate. The foreign debts settlements will be under discussion, and there is a threat of that terrible, if not very effective, inquisition known as a Senate investigation. Reed, of Missouri, thinks, or says in a resolution that he does, that European money has been used to influence the action of the United States in regard to these settlements, and he wants an investigation to determine how much and from whom. Probably he will not. get it, but he and those who stand with him very likely will get the opportunity to uproar the peace of the Senate which, after all, may be what they want.

There are indications, too, that Congress may attempt a type of legislation somewhat new or, at least, for a long time in disuse. Something is likely to be attempted in the way of curbing foreign manipulation of prices of essential products. Of the products likely to be considered, rubber is the most important, but coffee, potash, silk, and wood pulp. are on the list.

The Rubber Apple of Discord

WHIL

HILE the prices that American consumers pay for rubber is undoubtedly much too high, the wisdom of Congressional action designed to bring them down is open to serious question. In the first place, there does not appear to be much that Congress can do, and the little that it might do either cannot be made to cut at all or is likely to cut both ways. Congress might enact retaliatory measures, but they would be subject to the danger of breeding international ill will. Congress might enact a law prohibiting the lending of American money to monopolistic concerns or monopolistic countries, but there is serious question as to the constitutionality of any such law. Beyond those two things, Congress can hardly do anything more than to investigate and report.

There is, of course, one other thing that Congress might do, but that thing it does not appear to be considering in any constructive fashion. Congress might

do something toward giving stability to rubber production in the Philippines and elsewhere. True, such action would not augment the supply of crude rubber for six or seven years the period that must elapse before a rubber plantation can come into production-but there might be an immediate result from the effect that such action by this Government would have on the governments of the large rubber-producing countries. Some Congressional encouragement might Some Congressional encouragement might be given also to research in the development of rubber substitutes.

On the whole, however, the best promise for relief from the rubber monopolies lies along the line of trade agreements, and for the negotiation of these the Department of Commerce is a much better agency than Congress. Secretary Hoover is actively interested in finding relief for rubber users. He has inaugurated a campaign for the prevention of waste, particularly in automobile tires, which promises to conserve a great deal of old rubber. He has suggested, too, a unified program of American buying to meet the consolidated effort of foreign sellers. And Congress, if it acts wisely, may be able through permissive legislation to assist in the carrying out of this program.

Two Rivers—and Congress
TH

HE Rules Committee of the House is undertaking to duplicate the nonpartisan achievement of the Ways and Means Committee in drafting and pushing through to speedy passage the Tax Bill. Final disposition of Muscle Shoals is the object of the effort, and Representative Snell, of New York, Chairman of the Committee, is the prime mover. The division over Muscle Shoals, on the Tennessee River, has never been strictly along Republican-Democratic lines, and along Republican-Democratic lines, and Mr. Snell believes that the only way to dispose of the troublesome question is by agreement of the dominant Republican agreement of the dominant Republican and Democratic factions. He announces his personal willingness to concede practically anything that the Democrats want if they will agree to the creation of a commission with full power to dispose of Muscle Shoals without further Congressional action.

The Muscle Shoals issue has been dragged up and down the Capitol stairs and trailed across the doorstep of the White House until it is worn out. haps most persons concerned have labored under the misapprehension that

Muscle Shoals as a source of power is much more important than it actually is. The President said something to that effect in his Message. The Commission which he appointed to study the situation had ascertained the fact. It happened that this Commission went to Muscle Shoals during the height of the most devastating drought experienced in that section of the country since weather records have been kept. The result was the discovery that, instead of the millions of horse-power so long talked of, Muscle Shoals cannot be depended upon to produce at all times more than 100,000 constant horse-power. Of course it could produce more than that during the greater part of the time, but it is the minimum, rather than the maximum, production capacity that determines, in a sense, the measure of usefulness.

The findings of the Commission on this point have had their effect on Congress. So, too, has the Colorado River development project, now coming to the front. It appears to be a fact that the proposed Boulder Dam would create a minimum constant capacity of 600,000 horse-power. Not only members of Congress, but the rival contenders for the use of the power of Muscle Shoals are, perhaps, beginning to realize that endless dog-in-the-manger tactics over Muscle Shoals are hardly worth while when even greater power may be available elsewhere.

The

Still, there is no denying-and no disposition to deny the real importance of Muscle Shoals as a power source. equipment there is already, for the most part, installed and in working order. It is located in a region of considerable industrial importance-a region that, according to Secretary of Commerce Hoover, is better "hooked-up" than any other in the country for a general interchange of current under the super-power system. Muscle Shoals is important, but it is not so supremely important as was once thought. The Rules Committee, therefore, may have the better chance of equaling the non-partisan achievement of the Ways and Means Committee.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][subsumed]

pages to dinner in the Senate diningroom. He, the Vice-President, paid for the dinner. And they, the pages, ate the dinner. And are not they, the pages aforesaid, persons in positions of honor and profit and influence, in constant and close touch with those august personages, the Senators, who may be by those polluted pages themselves so contaminated as to vote for the revision of their own sacred rules?

Does not the very resolution adopted by the pages themselves, while in that state of repletion which precludes swallowing but permits of a little chewingdoes not that very resolution prove that the pages were improperly influenced? They indorsed the revision of the rules proposed by Dawes, but in what language they did it! "Resolved," reads the resolution, "that if cloture means less talk and more eats"-Don't you see? Plainly, here is praise for Dawes, who provided the "eats," and, just as plainly, a back-hand slap at the Senators, who provide the talk. They did not commit themselves too far. They ratified the Dawes revision-but with reservations.

Really, they displayed exceptionally good sense, those pages. They "kidded" the situation-took it lightly, as it should have been meant to be taken. The pages, a pipe, and a poem! They gave him the pipe. They read him the poem. But to that program the Vice-President added history and prophecy. He told those pages how and why the Reparations Commission adopted the Dawes Plan. That of his past. Then he told them that the Senate has, by its rules, amended the Constitution of the United States, that the procedure is un-American, and that "I am going to go through with the matter." That of his future.

Does not the Vice-President owe it to his party and to his country to refrain from making opportunities such as that for the Jim Reeds and the Pat Harrisons?

[blocks in formation]

pinch, Washington can make a small sensation serve all the purposes of a catastrophe.

Army men have been aghast at what Mitchellism would do to the Army if it could. But there is more genuine consternation, if not in Army circles strictly, then certainly in Army-admiring circles, over Secretary Davis's new uniform regulations than there ever has been over the prospect of the worst that Mitchell could do.

Every Army officer must have lapels put on his service coat! No longer will the tight thing around the neck, its corners punching holes in the throat, be worn no longer, that is, than the tailors can turn out a sufficient supply of turn-downs. Secretary Davis has done what the World War could not do-he has put common sense into the American Army uniform.

Now there is innovation.

P. & A. Photos

Vice-President Charles G. Dawes

What

Mitchell proposed would have been, by comparison, mild-mannered modification.

But civil servants of the Government manage, most times, to get their sensations, hardly less pronounced than those of the military servants. The newest one comes from the fact that the Smithsonian Institution is at last, after decades of investigation and years of bickering, ready to issue long-range weather forecasts based on variations in solar radiation.

And those who are neither civil nor military servants of the Government, but real Washingtonians who own the buildings and pay the property taxes, are having their sensation also-two of them, to be exact, but of somewhat kindred nature. Colonel C. O. Sherrill, on the eve of giving up the position of Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds for the District of Columbia to accept the City Managership of Cincinnati, issued a statement in which he said that many of the buildings in which Government offices are housed are about to fall down and that the lives of employees are constantly endangered. The other part of the sensation for the residents has to do with the condition of the streets. Commissioner Cuno H. Rudolph recently declared that there is hardly a block of street paving in Washington but that should have been discarded and replaced years ago, and the American Automobile Association is demanding to be shown what was done with the revenues supposed to have been raised during those years for street improvement.

Who is to pay for replacements-the residents of the District of Columbia or the people of the United States? That is the heart of the sensation for the permanent residents. It recurs with each new session of Congress.

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

a comparatively small number and enormously increased the number of arrests for infractions of the Prohibition Law. If his campaign to end the notorious wetness of Philadelphia largely failed, it is because of the antagonistic attitude of the magistrates in general. In his attempt to enforce a law objectionable to a noisy minority he had real and emphatic popular support.

Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick, himself a product of Philadelphia's political machine, stood between the General and the bosses.

There is no doubt that Mr. Kendrick wished to make a good record. When the General, however, produced evidence seeming to involve two or three of Philadelphia's largest hotels, the Mayor, as the General put it, found himself in a "jam." He needed, of course, on the one hand, the support of the great mass of Philadelphia's voting population who live in two-story houses, and whose hero was General Butler; but, on the other hand, with the proposal to padlock big hotels he was confronted with some very powerful financial interests. The Mayor was between two millstones. Curiously enough, it was the General himself who provided him with a way to slip

out.

(C) Underwood

General Smedley D. Butler

tendent Mills, another appointee of General Butler's.

Two conclusions can be drawn from the record of General Butler in Philadelphia. One is that a determined and incorruptible Chief of Police can enforce, not only ordinary law and order, but the Prohibition Law, if he has the decent backing of the courts. The other is that if a politician does not want a job to be done thoroughly, honestly, and to the limit, he had better not ask a Marine to do it.

It was a poor enough way, to be sure, one that is lined with political perils. Believing that the Mayor wished him to remain in Philadelphia two years longer, in spite of their several open disagreements, the General, whose two-year leave of absence from the Marines was nearing its end, wrote a resignation from the Ma-F Woodrow Wilson had lived, he would

rine Corps and sent it to Washington. The Mayor, seizing this as a Heaven-sent opportunity, promptly dismissed the General, declaring that he did not want a "resigned officer" in charge of the police. What this amazing statement means no one has explained.

Wilson's Birthday

[ocr errors]

have been sixty-nine years old on Monday of last week. In more than five hundred towns and cities of this country and in several foreign lands there were gatherings on that day to do honor to his memory and to expound and uphold his ideals. Probably the most note

about one thousand men and women who sat down to dinner together at the Hotel Astor in New York.

The General, who has a disconcerting worthy of these assemblies was that of way of saying what he thinks, immediately put down a regular barrage. If he publishes his diary of the last two years, as he proposes, there may well follow the downfall of several notable politicians.

In fairness to the Mayor, it should be recorded that he has appointed as General Butler's successor George W. Elliott, whom General Butler had chosen and trained as Assistant Director of Public Safety, and that he has retained in the direct command of the police Superin

After speeches by Norman H. Davis, former Under-Secretary of State in the Wilson Administration, who presided, Dr. Harry A. Garfield, President of Williams College, and Dr. Robert Norwood, the new rector of St. Bartholomew's Church, the diners at New York saw a spotlight directed to one side of the ballroom and in its glare the entering figure of Ignace Jan Paderewski. Introduced

as the greatest of living pianists and a genius as a statesman, the former Prime Minister of Poland delivered an eloquent and genuine tribute to the late President of the United States, with whom he had been associated during the Paris Peace Conference. He explicitly disclaimed any purpose of discussing American political issues, but he declared that Woodrow Wilson belonged not only to America but to the world. Especially, said Mr. Paderewski, Poland could never forget the man who had lifted her into independence.

To Woodrow Wilson he ascribed virtually all that was hopeful in the present situation in Europe. He took as an example the pact of Locarno. This, he said, he had heard described as the greatest event since the Armistice. From this view of Locarno he expressed strong dissent. The achievement at Locarno, he believed, consisted in the admission of Germany into the League of Nations. Suppose, argued Mr. Paderewski, that a great medical scientist had discovered a cure for tuberculosis, and that a great majority of other medical scientists had accepted the cure as authentic, but that a few eminent medical men had withheld their approval. Suppose then that one of the most important of these dissenters, perhaps because he himself was a victim of this disease and sought the cure for himself, accepted the judgment of the majority. Would we say that the conversion of this one medical man was more important than the discovery itself?

Mr. Paderewski's argument was based on the assumption that the significant fact at Locarno was the admission of Germany into the League of Nations, which would settle, according to its Covenant, any possible dispute between Germany and other Powers. Acceptance of Mr. Paderewski's conclusion rests upon the acceptance of his assumption. To others there seem to have been greater achievements at Locarno than that which Mr. Paderewski mentioned.

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]
« PredošláPokračovať »