The Waterbury Democrat., 1932-06-16

poohed that distinction as having no value whatever and what was even more remarkable there was no really sustained demonstration In behalf of anybody or anything. The platform draft had been formally completed just before 6 o'clock last night when James Francis Burke, general counsel to the republican national committee, appeared at the door of the room in which the platform committee had been debating the prohibition stand of the party.
 Burke held two mimeographed sheets containing about soc words, the compromise prohibition pro- posal. It was the continuation of the efforts of the party's best minds since 1928 when Herbert Clarke Hoover. the party's nominee for president, declared prohibition, was "a noble experiment"
 The fight on prohibition has been bitter since that campaign. For that same year, down in Houston, Texas, the democratic party had declared for flaw enforcement" and had nominated Alfred F.. Smith who promptly shelved the party's prohibition platform and demanded repeal of the eighteenth amendment.
 Smith boiled the largest total vote ever recorded for a democratic candidate for president, something over 15,000.000 Hoover, however, won in & landslide in a campaign in which other issues took their toll rR A-- &tz t.. k-l states, and in the solid south. President Hoover later appointed a commission, the now famous spent a half million Investigating crime, and issued voluminous re- port on prohibition's part in the nations crime record. The sum total of the commissioners report was that they opposed changing the eighteenth amendment as group, but personally favored number of substitutes for the | amendment.
 The report was filed,
 The depression resulted in a federal deficit. Vets clamored for repeal, for beer and wine taxes, for anything and everything that might revise the amendment and increase the federal revenue. They claimed beer taxes alone would raise a half billion. | Influential "drys'' changed their minds. John D. Rockefeller Jr an- nounced, after years of moral and | financial support to the prohibition cause, that prohibition was fail- ure. Others followed his lead and the announcements of conversion of "drys" to the "wet" cause con- tinued right up to convention time. Included among the converts were John II. Mott, international Y. M. C. A. and church worker; William Gibbs McAdoo, one-time candidate for president as a dry: and Harvey Firestone, member of the Thomas A. Edison-Henry Ford-Harvey Firestone dry trio."f
 President Hoover. all this time maintained his position as a dry. He stood on his last public state- tment of January 20. 1931, in sub hitting the Wickersham report to congress. He said:
 "The commission. by a large ma jority. does not favor the repeal of the eighteenth amendment as a method of cure for the inherent dDuBeb OI tile lluuOE lThIuSs nhi in accord with this view"
 Then a few days before the na- tionaI republican convention, Sena- tor William F. Borah, long an ardent dry, announced that Presi- dent Hoover would campaign on a resubmission plank if adopted by the convention. And MT Borah let 1t be known then that he would not attend the convention.
 The fight among the "repealers, the "resubmissionerS" and the bone drys followed, with administration forces led by James II. Garfield chairman of the resolutions com mittee, and ogden Mills. secretary of the treasury. Mills incidentally was q member of the New York delegation which demanded repeal He did mot feel bound by the dele gation caucus.
 Senator Bingham led the "re- pealers,' and offered this substitute for the plank finally adopted: T we recommend that the con- gress of the United states imme- diately propose an amendment tc the federal Constitution repeating the 18th amendment thereto to be submitted in conventions of the people of the several states called for that sole purpose in accord. ance with the provisions of Article Five of the Constitution of the United States.
 Should the 18th amendment bt repealed We pledge our best efforts toward the enactment of such measures in the several states a, will actually promote temperance effectively abolish the saloon whether open or concealed, and bring the liquor traffic itself un. der complete public supervision and control with revenues proper. iy drawn from legalized source1 foi the relief of the burdened tax. payer"
 The text of the party's plank or prohibition as adopted read:
 The eighteenth amendment: :,
 The republican party has alwayi stood and stands today for obedi. ence to and enforcement Of the law as the very foundation of orderly government and civilization. There can be no national security other wise. TIe duty of the president of the United States and of the offices of the law is clear. The law must be enforced as they find z. .ft enacted blythe people. To theg<