The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1928-05-01

of business by the Eighteenth Amend
ment, the 1247 brewers and their en-
ployees. and the 507 distillers and their
employees were a majority of 10 millions
OF people in 1920, but Mr.. du Pont con-
tends,
so today great number OF our
people, perhaps majority or them,
forbidden against their express wish
TO manufacture, sell or transport bev-
erage liquor, are revolving against the
tyranny of their fellows"
WHENCE CAME THIS MAJORITY?
But perhaps this is new crop of indi-
viduals that has sprung up since the
Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, for
the Eighteenth Amendment must have
been adopted by constitutional majority
which required three-fourthS OF the states
to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment be-
fore it could be put into the Constitution;
but Americans never do things by halves,
and SO New Jersey, yes, Nel0 Jersey, be-
came the 10th ratifying state in 1922. The
total number of votes cast for the ratltlca-
ton of this amendment in these IS legis-
latures was four times as many as the
number of votes cast against 1t. More than
a score of the legislative bodies cast
unanimous vote for the amendment.
Whence came all of this overwhelming
sentiment in state legislatures for the
Eighteenth Amendment? Are Congress-
men and legislators likely to be so utterly
ignorant of the wishes of their con-
stitutents and so wholly unnindful of the
wishes of the voters at home? Something
ought to be done about it and something
probably would have been done about it
if Mr.. du Points contentious were true,
but each succeeding Congress has had
larger majorities on this identical question
than the Congress that submitted the
Eighteenth Amendment. The people OF
the United States have had five successive
biennial opportunities in which to change
the personnel of Congress if they were not
in favor of what had already been done.
Something's wrong somewhere. Will
rare exceptions most of the states have
very emphatically approved of more effec-
tive and stringent regulations by their
legislators each succeeding year
DU POINT VS.. DU POINT
Mr.. du Pont speaks about the express
wish" to manufacture, sell and transport
beverage liquors. Who has expressed
such a wish? When and where and how
did they express it? Will Mr.. du Pont
put his hand upon the facts and en-
tighten the general public? This majority,
whoever they are. "are revolving against
b11G byIdllIly Vi b1lGlI 4CllONo LID WOulNi
not be so impressive were it not for the
fact that later on in his article Mr.. du
Pont sagely remarks that one Of the
groups of supporters of prohibition is the
bootleggers. Now bootleggers are those
who sell beverage liquors, because nobody
but bootlegger sells beverage liquors to-
day. Either bootleggers who sell the bev-
erage liquor and runrunners who trans
port it and the moonshiners who manu-
facture it are revolving against the pro-
hibition law, or else they are supporting it.
They cannot be doing both of these things
at the same time. Yet, Mr.. du Pont says
that the bootleggers are 'in active CO.
operation with those who have made pro-
hibition a semi religious issue" just
another illustration of how loosely this
business man thinks when he thinks
about something other than business.
FRANKNESS OF MIR. DU POINT
CONSIDERED
The frankneSs of Mr.. du Pont must be
commended in his admission that during
the first wear under national prohibition