The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-04-17
NEA Service Writer

Washington.-Proh judging from the statements of dry leaders, may receive a more serious DloW I between now and 1883 than it ever
 has suffered before.
 The congressional redistr.cting necessary under the reapportionment law, which must be carried out in l time for the 1882 elections unless state desires to elect its delegation | to the house as congressmen-a large, will shift certain amount of congressional strength from rural dry territory into urban wet terri tory. | The drys may lose as many as 5O house seats to the vets, some of the more lugubrfous prohibition leaders have warned as they sought to stir up their followers to do something
 about it.
 I X If such predictions were approM- mately correct and if the 1882 con- gressional electoins also showed wet gains in equal proportion to the election of last November, it is easy
 to see that the wet-dry lineup in congress would be lot more in- teresting than it has been hereto fore with dry majorities averaging somewhere around three to one. Vets Might Get Majority The Association Against the Prohi- bition Amendment claims that 161 of 435 representatives favor submis- sion of prohibition to the people and | If that is true only 57 more votes would be needed for house ma jority. although the vets claim only 22 out of 96 in the senate.
 Hardly anyone really believes that the vets will gain 50 house seats. It's a matter of conjecture. but they l will do well if they get half as many. Nevertheless, any time the vets can take a score or more seats away from the dry all at once it's going
 to be something for them to cheer about.
 The drys, of course. think 1t would be a fine idea to amend the constitu- tion so as to stop including aliens when population is counted for congressional representation. That owuld hit the big wet centers where most of the aliens are concentrated
 and keep the dryc from losing those seats. The proposed amendment, sponsored by Senator Capper, will be l advocated more and more vigorous lily. but 1t can't possibly be put into I the constitution before the first elec- ! tion under the new setup in 1882. | Rural Sections Fight Out Issue | Word comes, meanwhile, as most
 state legislatures struggle with re-
 districting bills and gerrymander- ing seems rife. that rural sections
 and cities in several states, respec-
 lively representing the dry and wet
 causes, are fighting out the issue at
 home. To the extent that dry legis-
 iators can keep the cities from ob- taining the representation to which
 their population entities them under the 1880 census, the national effect created by increaser wet congression-
 al strength will be diminished.
 Michigan gained four representa-
 tives under reapportionment and al- though Detroit has about half the
 states population. the dryer sections
 have undertaken to see to 1t that she gets only six congressman of her
 total delegation of r. Cleveland,
 which is wet, has been claiming Ohios two new representatives as
 her own and legislators from the hest
 of the state have sought to keep them away from her.
 Politically, the states which have redistricted on the whole appear to
 have given the republicans a slight
 ly better break than the democrats. Missouri hais had an especially inter-
 esting partisan fight, with demo-
 crat legislature plugging for its
 party in the redistricting and a re-