Evening star., 1934-01-09
ANT|-SAL0ON GROUP
WILL ENLIST YOUTH
Movement Seeking Total Ab-
Stinence Planned at League
Convention Here.

A special effort will be made during
the coming year to enlist the youth of
the Nation in total abstinence move
ment. State superintendent and work.
ers of the Anti-Saloon League decided
at meeting this morning in the Dodge
Hotel The league has been in conven-
t1on here since Sunday.
About year ago youth movement
against alcohol was sponsored by the
league. The organization was called
the Olympians.
The league workers said they would
concentrate on developing this organi-
Zation and spreading its propaganda
through the high schools and colleges
of the country. The objects of the
Olympians are to pledge its members
to total abstinence and to work for ex-
termination of the liquor traffic.
I'VE are on the offensive now" said
Dr. F. Scott Mcbride, general super
intendent of the league. land will win
because prohibition is right and always
will be right
! We hope to instill the desire to out
law liquor in the hearts of young men
and women who in few years will be-
| gin to vote"
| DR.. Mcbride said he would recon-
mend that o. G. Christgau. league
| official. be made executive secretary of
the Olympians
DR.. A. j. Barton. Wilmington. N. c..
| last night was reelected chairman of
| the Executive Committee
Women Voters Blamed.
Failure OF women voters to support
the eighteenth amendment was blamed
| for its repeal last night by DR.. Ernest
| H. Cherrington, the leagues director
of education.
| 1T is a significant fact he said.
that the nineteenth amendment did
not save the eighteenth. If one-half
| of the women voters in the States
| which voted on repeal had gone to the
polls and voted dry repeal would not
have had chance, even if not man
had cast dry vote.
If one-fourth of the women voters
had voted dry, the repeal amendment
would surely have failed"
At the time Dr. Cherrington made
these assertions, fully third of his
audience was composed of women, most
of them members of the w. c. T. U.
Besides the women and the 25,000,-
900 new voters who attained voting age
since the beginning of prohibition. DR..
Cherrington said, there were four
groups which contributed to repeal.
These, he said, presented an almost
solid wet front.
Four Wet Groups.
These wet contingents were given as
certain Protestant church groups with
2.75O0 900 votes; 100000 to 11,000.-
900 Catholic voters; Jews, mastering
100000 votes, and Negroes with g.
500 900 votes. These four groups, DR..
Cherrington asserted, represent ap-
proximately one-third the population
of the United States. He told his au-
dience that if national prohibition ever
is to return the dry forces must reach
the hearts and minds of these people.
DR.. Cherrington saw hope for pro-
hibition in the social mindedness'
which he said is sweeping the country
and the world.
There is a serious, vital, social mo-
tive in our national life for the first
time in American history" he declared.
The trend is more definitely than ever
before for the protection of society"
AS proof of this trend. he cited the
various governmental projects of So
cial nature.
This social ,mindedness, he said is
directly opposed to the evils of alcohol
Defending the operation of the
eighteenth amendment, he denied it
made law violators, gangsters and
racketeers, asserting it merely brought
into the open conditions which had
prevailed for decades.
Society Leaders Hit.
Those in places of social and finan-
cial power were condemned with the
statement that prohibition brought
out that the spirit and motives of high
society leaders was anything but social
and proved that the same is true of
the leaders of big business"
ANY leader of the exclusive social
set" said DR.. Cherrington, ANY king
of finance any official or educator. who
fouted prohibition, placed himself in
the same class with the bootleggers
and gangsters and whatever differ
ence there was between the two groups
was to the credit of the gangsterS."
Although the enforcement of prohi-
bition was for the most part in the
hands of its enemies, DR.. Cherrington
said, the eighteenth amendment set
records for social improvements which
will stand as challenge to any con-
! troll system past or future.
There is now permanent deposit
of enlightened public sentiment against
alcohol" he said, which did not exist
even at the time when prohibition went
into effect
He said prohibition had lifted the
standard of idealism among the vets
so that they declared against the sa-
loon and the most fragrant evils of
liquor before seeking repeal.
Rev. Ira Landrith, Winona Lake,
Ind, exhQrted ministers to dig up
your old sermons of 20 years ago and
preach 'em again"
I'VE must get the truth to the
people," he continued, even if we
have to thumb our way across the
continent and tell 1t from the side
walks"
He urged the union of temperance
forces ito the limit of principle"