Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-04-20
Ex-Governor Stokes Answered By Wayne b.
Wheeler, Ii. ID. Before The New Jersey
Methodist Episcopal Conference
On April 8, 1923

Prohibition has resolved itself in
to a question of law and order, not
withstanding the recent attacks upon
it by the senior Senator from New
Jersey and an ex-governor.
"The church started this fight
against the liquor traffic and must
help to end it. A great national pub
lie conscience must be aroused that
will hold the liquor law violator in
the same contempt as the burglar
and the counterfeiter. The church
must lead once more in the fight for
orderly government and write into the
hearts of the people that Christian
civilization is based upon law and it's
enforcement through constituted au-
thority. Along this line will be
waged the greatest political battles
for the next decade"
Ex-Governor Stokes Answered
DR.. Wheeler took special occasion
to fay the arguments of Ex-Governor
Stokes in his attack upon national
prohibition. "Mr. Stokes says: 4
would modify the Volstead Act to
harmonic it with the Eighteenth
Amendment 1t is a sufficient ans
wer to this unwarranted attack to call
attention to the fact that the Supreme
Court of the United States has sus-
tanned the National Prohibition Act
as appropriate legislation to enforce
the Eighteenth Amendment. The
highest judicial tribunal of the nation
is a better judge of what is necessary
and appropriate to enforce the Con-
%stitution than those enemies of the
Eighteenth Amendment who by voice
and action are giving encouragement
to bootleggers.
Ex-Governor Stokes, in referrine
TO those injured by wood alcohol or
poison liquors, says: No patriot. no
christian man or woman can sit
down in the face of this problem and
absolve himself or herself, bv wrap-
ping around themselves the mantle of
self righteousness.
No prohibitionist is defending
these poison vendors. The Anti-Sa-
loon League has secured the adoption
or laws in many states within the last
few months to make such sales pun
lshable by life Imprisonment. The
return OF liquor would not help this
situation. In 1917, the last full wet
year, 81 per 100, 900 people were
Killed by alcoholism. In 1921 it was
only is per cent. Help enforce the
law better and this will be reduced.
The statement of Ex-Governor
Stokes that My great drink. butter
milk, has from 8 to 5 percent alcohol
IN it does not qualify him as an ex-
pert on buttermilk. He mixed this
term with beer. Buttermilk produces
Tactic acid by fermentation, but not
alcohol, unless you inject into it a
foreign substance to produce alcohol.
They may have some alcoholic Jersey
COWS in southern Jersey that produce
3 percent alcoholic buttermilk, but
they are not known in other parts of
the country.
"Mr. Stokes says: If you want to
see the Eighteenth Amendment scrap
ped and made the scorn of America
stand by the Volstead Act If Mr..
Stokes thinks hat s~peakeasies and
bootleggers are a kind of criminal
vermin created by the National Pro-
hibition Act, he should refresh his
memory from the public records
which show that there were more
bootleggers and speakeasies in pro-
portion to the population under the
old license system than there are I'M
der prohibition. In Massachusetts,
in 1910, a year uncomplicated by war,
panic or prohibition, there was one
bootlegger holding a Federal license
but having no local license for each
1,479 of the population in license
towns and cities; and one for each
1857 of the population in no license
towns and cities, twice as many in the
license communities. One Of the eff
%fective arguments for prohibition was
the fact that the liquor dealers violat-
books and we had a better chance to
destroy this criminal class by prohibit
ton than by regulation.
Ex-Governor Stokes says: I would
simply write the Eighteenth Amend
ment into the Volstead Law This
means that he is not in favor of de-
fining the term in any way. This is
not only unprecedented, but indefen-
sible. Neither the b~artenders nor the
purchasers would know whether the
law was being violated without hav-
ing a scientific experiment made on
the man who is to drink it.
1.-THE Supreme Court pointed out
that a definite classification by def
milton has always been deemed essen
tial in prohibition enforcement laws.
The Court said in the cast of Rupert
v. Caffey: The legislatures and de-
cisions of the highest courts of nearly
all the states establish the fact that it
is deemed impossible to effectively
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