The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-08-04
BIRMINGHAM AGE-HERALD,
WET PROPAGANDA IS MOST DANGEROUS FOE WITH WHICH
 DRY LAWS COME IN CONTACT
Haynes Describes Great And Powerful Drebund Which Are Doing Most To Dscredit Laws And Describes Some Of Great Temptations Put Before Enforcers Of Law

committed, some involving moral turpitude and sCme not, I must speak
 Let me first, however, sketch the character of the temptation con stantly placed in the way, not of | few members of the enforcement force. but of practically every man connected with it It can be best done by citing some specific incl dents.
 An oTer of s1.0OO,OOo.
 A man, said to be a New York broker, approached a prohibition of- hcial with view to having him use his influence to secure greater lib- erality in the treasury regulations under which whisky may be with drawn from warehouses. In the course of a few months, the broker said, the service would be worth s1 900, 900 to the people who would benefit by it. One-tenth of this sum, round S100,000, the people would be willing to pay cash in hand, and the other s900,000 would come along from time to time. The supposed broker did not say that he was eIn- powered to pay over the initial $100,- 900, but, with the suave suggestive ness of the expert corruptionist, gave the official to understand that this was the case. He actually said noth- ing except that the service would be
 
 That temptation can be tagged. It must have come from certain un- scrupulous, though legitimate, own CTS of liquor who sought to divert their stocks to illegitimate uses. It is, perhaps, an extreme case. Of that, however, we cannot be certain. We know the measure of the temptation only as it is offered to those who resist 1t.
 With the offer of money there nearly always goes a promise of i'm munity in the event of detection. Claims are made by rich and appar- ently influential cliques that they control the action of the "higher-ups" in the various government depart ments. These claims, of course, are groundless. They are put forward however, with enough appearance of the genuine to lead many an agent to wonder if he is not going con trary to the secret desires of his par ticular chief by enforcing the law, and to suspect that he would be in better favor with the powers if he listened to the blandishm ents of the corruptionists and closed his eyes. Cases of Dishonest Agents.
 The agent whose integrity is bribe- proof and whose judgment cannot be warped by representations that his superiors have been bribed may fall victim to an appetite or other venal fault. The illicit liquor crowd loses no opportunity of placing in his way the particular kind of temptation to which he is most susceptible.
 As the result of temptation of scores of forms and increasingly of fered fortythree employees of the prohibition unit have been adjudged guilty by courts since te beginnin. l.
 
 force was 99 per cent honest At the maximum there have 4een prac- tically 4,00O employees. Those who have yielded constitute 1 per cent of those to whom the corruptionist has stood ready to offer anything for do- ing his bidding. Let our enemies make the most of the fall of these 4: unfortunates. l am thinking of the other 3,957 who kept the faith.
 Of those who fell, three were in the Washington office. One of them ac- cepted a bribe and was sent to the penitentiary for two years. One got drunk and was fined $20. The third the discharge of duty, obstructed l traffic and was fined s25. These three cases will illustrate, to an ex- tent. the wide range of offenses of which prohibition officials have been found guilty, and the trivial nature
  the enemies of prohibition seek to confound us.
 Of the 43, 2s were found guilty of offenses involving corruption-ac- cepting bribes, extorting money from bootleggers, failure to carry out court orders for destruction of liquor, having liquor in their pos session. and the like. Their punish ment was usually severe, involving large fines and penitentiary sent ences, some of them as long as seven years. Eight were guilty of drunk enness and minor offenses to which drunkenness led. One in the per formance of duty. committed mur- der. One swore to false expense account One tried to influence a grand jury, one committed theft. The eight others were small police court cases. Of real corruption, therefore, the percentage stands at about one-half of l per cent.
 These men who were upon the pay rolls, however, constitute but small fraction of those corrupted by the Triple Entente of Defiance. mainly, we may believe. by the organization of the Illicit liquor trade. Efforts at corruption may begin in Washing | ton, but they no doubt have extended to the governments of all the 4S states, to the officials of perhaps all the 5000 counties, to the innumer- | able city and town and village gov ernments.
 tTo Re Continued TomOrrOw.)