The Unit

Motivated by the Anglo-Saxon urge of law-enforcement, two bodies made contrary recommendations on the same day. Both aimed to allay the almost universally acknowledged super-Nation in the enforcement of its prohibition law. One, the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges, of which Chief Justice Taft is Chairman, petitioned Attorney General Stone to recommend, in his report to Congress, that the Prohibition Unit be transferred from the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice. The other, the Anti-Saloon League, urged the President to expedite the passage of the Cramton Bill, which would set up the Unit as an independent branch of the Treasury Department.

The Unit. The place of the Unit is more or less of an anachronism. In earlier days, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was legal, but subject to a tax. The Bureau of Internal Revenue, under the Treasury Department, collected the tax. From time almost immemorial, the mountaineers of the East and South attempted to evade this levy. Revenue agents from the Bureau were accordingly sent to apprehend the evaders.

Then, during the War, 2.75% alcoholic content was set as the limit on legal beverages. The revenue agents still collected the tax and undertook to punish those who disregarded the limit. A little later, the legal limit was reduced to .5%. The Bureau of Internal Revenue still undertook the business of enforcement. There was no longer any revenue to be derived from a tax on alcoholic beverages, but the Bureau handled the taxes and regulations on alcohol for industrial uses. A special unit was then set up by the Bureau to undertake the increased labor of enforcing the .5% restriction.

This Unit is the present prohibition enforcement agency. It is within the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which is, in turn, within the Treasury Department. The Prohibition Commissioner is subordinate to the Collector of Internal Revenue, who is, in turn, subordinate to the Secretary of the Treasury.

The Judiciary Proposal. The Conference of Senior Circuit Judges asked that the Prohibition Unit, which is now, strictly speaking, a law-enforcing rather than a revenue-collecting agency, be lifted out of the Treasury Department and placed in the Department of Justice.

Wayne B. Wheeler, Attorney and publicist of the Anti-Saloon League, at once responded on behalf of the League:

"I think the Circuit Judges would have reached the same conclusion if they had considered the question at a hearing where both sides were presented.

"The permissive features of the law controlling industrial and non-beverage liquor cannot be appropriately transferred to the Justice Department. The suggested plan would leave the supply of bootleg liquor with the revenue collectors, who seem more interested in collecting revenue than in preventing the diversion of liquor to beverage use. We would have a system resulting in a 'buck-passing' contest. It would be confusion worse confounded."

The Anti-Saloon League Proposal. The Executive Committee of the Anti-Saloon League, headed by Bishop Thomas Nicholson of Chicago and including Bishop James Cannon of Washington, D. C., and Wayne B. Wheeler, paid a business call on President Coolidge. They wanted the Cramton Bill made law. The Cramton Bill would set up the Prohibition Unit as a branch of the Treasury Department independent of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. This is in accordance with the announced belief of the League that Commissioner of Internal Revenue Blair has hampered the work of Prohibition Commissioner Haynes. Moreover, the bill would remove the control of industrial alcohol from the Bureau of Internal Revenue to the Prohibition Unit. The League claims that "6,000,000 gallons of industrial alcohol was used last year to supply the illicit trade. Reduced to 40% whiskey, this provided 240,000,000 half pints of bootleg." The bill would also place the Prohibition Unit under the merit svstem. Secretary Mellon approved this bill. Its last feature, the application of civil-service rules to the Unit, is generally approved.

The drug trade and the users of industrial alcohol are most earnestly opposed to the measure. They assert that the present restrictions on the use of alcohol are very severe, but that, under the Prohibition Unit, conditions would be worse; that they would be placed at the mercy of a group of agents not gifted with an understanding of their legitimate business needs--sleuths, in fact, whose sole training has been to regard every user of alcohol as a criminal.