The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1933-03-27
THE INSIDIOUS BEER BILL IN NORTH
CAROLINA

Friends of the liquor traffic are as busy
rs bees in North Carolina, in and out Of
the Legislature. 'Wet" legislators and
wet citizens are on the jump in the eff
fort to pass a law Iegalizing the sale Of
beer. The ''wet" newspapers have taken
their cue and are filed with propaganda.
wet citizens are flooding the newspa-
pers with communications. A systematic
and concerted effort is being made to jam
a beer law through the present session Of
the Legislature.
The foundation of the beer campaign IS
based on the assertion that, under the ma
tional law legalizing the manufacture and
sale of beer, while beer cannot be legally
sold in, prohibition States, the shipping Of
beer through dry" territory from one
beer State to another beer State cannot be
prohibited by the prohibition State. And,
while the shipment from one beer State 20
another beer State is going on, the laws
will be violated, the beer will be allowed
to slop over in the prohibition States and
there will be inundation of illegal beer and
''no refenoo."
Friends of the liquor traffic are aSSidu-
ously applying this argument to North
Carolina at the present time and urging
that sale of beer be legalized in the State.
They urge that while North Carolina has a
prohibition law, making illegal the sale OF
beer, North Carolina will not be able to
prevent interstate commerce shipments of
beer through this territory; and while the
beer is ostensibly going through from one
beer State to another, it will be surrepti-
tiously and illegally disposed of in this
prohibition territory and the State will not
be able to collect the 'revenoo."
NOw-isn't that a startling, altogether
marvellous, and most interesting admis-
sion to come from the friends of the liquor
traffic.
For years we have heard the "wets''
vociferating on many street corners, il
every assemblage where they could get an
audience of one or more, in every piece OF
propaganda printed in the newspapers and
elsewhere, that the only fair and reasona-
bic way to handle the liquor traffic was to
let those benighted States that favored the
legalizing of the manufacture and sale
have what they wanted-and-thOse
States opposed to the legalized manufae,
ture and sale were to be protected in their
dryness by iron-elad laws, rules and regu-
lations and by the eternal determination
of the wet" friends and advocates o!
temperance who were bound to see that
the opponents of ,legalized manufacture
and sale were protected in, their rights and
in their personal liberty"
Now we. are told by these same ''wets'
and friends of the liquor traffic that pro
hibition territory cannot possibly be pro
tected under the beer law from an over
flow of illegal beer and that the only So
luton of the problem is in legalizing the
manufacture and sale of beer in all of the
forty-eight States. We are told that North
Carolina cannot protect its territory from
the illegal beer business and that the might
of'the United States government is power
less against those who wish to violate the
laws of North Carolina and other -prohibi
ton States.
North Carolina is to be flooded with
beer, the sale of which is illegal in North
Carolina, and regardless of the laws votes