"America Is Dry"

"We cheerfully accept the will of the majority. . . ."--John Raskob.

Michigan's chief prohibiter, the Rev. R. N. Holsaple, wrote Mr. Raskob a letter. Did Mr. Raskob mean that he & friends would now comply with the spirit-of-the-law and abstain from liquor?

It sounded like a catch question, but it was doubtless put most earnestly. Prohibiters everywhere viewed the election as a final sealing if not a sanctification of the country's war-bride, Volsteadism.

From his publicity-pulpit the Rev. John Roach Straton, of Manhattan, cried: "Victory was won by the preachers and by the God-honoring women of America. I pay tribute to one of the Joans of Arc of this campaign--Mabel Walker Willebrandt. I declare the feeling in my own heart when I say there has not been a finer piece of public service performed by anyone in modern days than that put across by Mrs. Willebrandt."

President Miss Anna A. Gordon of the World W. C. T. U. rejoiced: "The election of Herbert Hoover has sent around the world the news that America overwhelmingly supports Prohibition."

Another W. C. T. U. proclamation said: "No issue other than Prohibition could have sent women to the polls by the millions."

Clarence True Wilson, General Secretary of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals echoed the Anti-Saloon League's prompt exultation (TIME, Nov. 12) and said:

"The overwhelming defeat . . . should remove the issue of prohibition permanently from the field of partisan politics, where it never had a legitimate place.

"It is to be hoped that since prohibition is evidently not to be repealed, there will now be a subsidence of agitation against it, which can only be obstructive and prejudicial to the economic and moral welfare of the nation.

"It cannot be too strongly stressed that this election was a referendum upon the issue of prohibition. . . .

"We pledge to President-elect Herbert Hoover the untiring support and earnest prayers of Methodists throughout the land to the end that the will of the people directed against the age-old evil of drink shall prevail."

Making certainty doubly certain that Dryness was, at least outwardly, more ascendant than ever, were the Congressional returns. As every one knows, few Congressmen vote as they drink. Outspokenly wet Senators are especially rare. Next year they will be rarer. The two wettest--Maryland's Bruce and New Jersey's Edwards--lost their seats. So did Rhode Island's Gerry, Delaware's Bayard. Missouri's vindictive Reed retires and Missouri's Roscoe C. Patterson will be dry.

In the House, Representative John Charles Linthicum of Maryland, leader of the "wet bloc," was re-elected and so were most of his most vigorous bloc-mates--New York's Sirovich, La Guardia, Black; Illinois' Sabath, Britten; Missouri's Dyer. But Representative S. Harrison White, wet Coloradoan, is out and Maryland's John Philip Hill, Leader Linthicum's predecessor, failed to get back into Congress. All this in the face of the best efforts of the Association against the Prohibition Amendment.

Prohibition's foes were, however, philosophical. They reminded prohibiters that 15 millions of voters had voted for the wet. The A.A.P.A. feeling was that not even high Hooverism will be able to carry the "experiment" to a satisfactory conclusion. And if, after all the hullabaloo, high Hooverism fails, who then can oppose modification?

Alfred E. Smith carried Massachusetts because, among other reasons, the state is overwhelmingly opposed to prohibition. In response to a question on the ballots, 33 out of 40 senatorial districts instructed their senators to vote for a resolution requesting Congress to take action for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. A wet vote of 619,000 glaringly opposed a dry vote of 347,910. Only three districts, rural and suburban, showed dry majorities. In the other four districts the question did not appear on the ballot.