Burton, Baker, Taft

It was a real oldtime political debate-- distinguished Representative Theodore Elijah Burton for the Republican side, opposed by distinguished Lawyer Newton Diehl Baker. Wilsonian War Secretary, last week in their home town of Cleveland. "Tammany . . . Tweed . . . traitorous," said Mr. Burton. "Fall, Sinclair, Denby, Daugherty, Forbes . . . Boss Vare . . . Will Hay's," retorted Mr. Baker.

But they could agree on religious tolerance and Prohibition. "I do wish they'd give us a rest in the discussions about Mrs. Willebrandt," said Mr. Burton. Said Mr. Baker: "When Mrs. Firebrand from Washington gets into a ministers' meeting and flails the energies of the pastors to go into the pulpits . . . I don't wonder that Congressman Burton and others pray to be delivered from her."

Mr. Baker also said: "I was not in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment, and I'd like to see it changed. My position was exactly the same as that of William Howard Taft, before he became Chief Justice. . ."

People tried to remember what and when William Howard Taft declared against the 18th Amendment. One declaration was in a letter which Mr. Taft wrote in June, 1918, to a gentleman of New Haven, Conn., who had asked his opinion of the then pending Amendment. He said:

"I am opposed to National Prohibition. ... I think it is a mixing of the National Government in a matter that should be one of local settlement. I think sumptuary laws are matters for parochial adjustment. I think it will vest in the National Government, and those who administer it, so great a power as to be dangerous in political matters.

"I would be in favor of State Prohibition if I thought Prohibition prohibited, but I think in the long run except in local communities where the majority of the citizens are in favor of the law, it will be violated.

"I am opposed to the presence of laws on the statute book that cannot be enforced and as such demoralize the enforcement of all laws. ... I am not in favor of a national amendment which should force twelve or fifteen great States into a sumptuary system which the public opinion and the real practices of the people of those States would not support. I think it is most unwise to fasten upon the United States a prohibitory system under the excitement of the War, which I do not hesitate to say every sensible supporter of Prohibition in the end will regret.

"Let the States which wish to do so prohibit. ... I don't drink myself at all, and I don't oppose Prohibition on the ground that it limits the liberties of the people. I think that in the interest of the community, and of the man who can not resist the temptation to drink in excess, if he has the opportunity to drink at all, other citizens in the community may be properly asked and compelled to give up drinking, although that drinking may do them no injury. My objections to Prohibition are as I have stated them above."

The editor of the New Haven Journal-Courier sought permission to publish Mr. Taft's letter. In September 1918, Mr. Taft consented and appended a prophetic elaboration of his reasons for opposing National Prohibition. Excerpts:

". . . The business of manufacturing alcohol, liquor and beer will go out of the hands of law-abiding members of the community, and will be transferred to the quasi-criminal class. In the communities where the majority will not sympathize with a Federal law's restrictions large numbers of Federal officers will be needed for its enforcement. The central Government now has very wide war powers. When peace comes these must end, if the republic is to be preserved.

"If, however, a partisan political head of the Internal Revenue Department, or of a separate department created for the purpose, shall always be able through Federal detectives and policemen to reach into every hamlet, and to every ward, and to every purlieu of a large city, and use the leverage of an intermittently lax and strict enforcement of the law against would-be dealers in liquor and their patrons, he will wield a sinister power, prospect of which should make anxious the friends of free constitutional government.

" 'A new broom sweeps clean.' A temporary National Prohibition Law as a war measure may be effective. It is urged to stimulate war production in the emergency, and to take temptation from our soldiers, though it is doubtful whether the serious loss to the national revenues, which it will entail, may not outweigh the actual benefits. The immediately useful operation of such a law . . . is not convincing evidence of its ultimate tendency and result. The community must summer and winter it for years.

". . . The reaching out of the great central power to brush the doorsteps of local communities, far removed geographically and politically from Washington, will be irritating in such States and communities, and will be a strain upon the bond of the National Union. It will produce variation in the enforcement of the law. There will be loose administration in spots all over the United States and a politically inclined National Administration will be strongly tempted to acquiesce in such a condition. Elections will continuously turn on the rigid or languid execution of the Liquor Law, as they do now in Prohibition States. The ever-present issue will confuse and prevent clear and clean-cut popular decisions on the most important national questions, and the politics of the Nation will be demoralized as the politics of States have been through this cause. The issue will never be settled.

"The theory that the National Government can enforce any law will yield to the stubborn circumstances, and a Federal law will become as much subject of contempt and ridicule in some parts of the Nation as laws of this kind have been in some States. We are acting now under the heroic impulse of a war, which stirs our feelings and makes us think we can have a millennium of virtue and self-sacrifice for the future. This is a fundamental error. I profoundly deprecate having our constitutional structure seriously amended by a feverish enthusiasm, which will abate to neglect and laxity in many States as the years go on. If through the abnormal psychology of war the thirty-six States are induced to approve a National Prohibition Amendment now, we can never change it, though a great majority of the people may come later to see its utter failure. Thirteen Prohibition States can always be counted on to prevent a retracting of the foolish step. We shall thus hang a permanent millstone around our necks.

". . . Many have voted and now vote for Prohibition merely to destroy the power of the saloon in politics without regard to any other consideration. The saloonkeepers taught the Anti-Saloon League how to fight and the latter has learned the lesson well and supplied it, and often without any more scruple as to the method or means that it teaches. . . .

". . . An intensively active minority in favor of adopting an unwise policy may win through the failure of the members of the majority, though opposed to the policy publicly to declare themselves and to take the trouble to give effect to their opinions by their votes. A minority like this, conceiving that it is moved by a moral issue, loses its sense of proportion and sacrifices other issues, no matter how vital to the Nation. Such a minority visits with its condign punishment all public servants who oppose it on this issue, however useful to the State they may be. I would not impeach the high-minded motives of the great body of those who support National Prohibition.

"It does awaken one's protest, however, to note the manner in which the ordinary type of politician becomes a Prohibitionist because he fears the balance of power that an active political minority may wield against his political fortunes."

Asked last week to comment further on Prohibition, Chief Justice Taft said: "I am now on the bench and cannot properly take any part in political discussions."