Questions & Answers

(See front cover)

Flowers, newsmen and a hard job followed on the heels of a White House messenger who, just eight years ago, handed a certificate to a fresh-faced young California woman at the Department of Justice in Washington. The certificate showed that President Harding had appointed Mabel Walker Willebrandt to be Assistant U. S. Attorney-General in charge of prison conditions, tax cases, Prohibition prosecution. Prohibition was barely a year and a half old. With three assistants Mrs. Willebrandt's division was the Department's smallest. That year saw 10,000 Prohibition arrests. In the field were 608 U. S. Dry agents, operating on an appropriation of $7,100,000. Popular was the jestful question: "When does Prohibition begin?"

Two months ago, worn, tired, looking at least ten years older, Mrs. Willebrandt resigned her office. Her division, with 100 assistants, was the Department's largest. Close to 10,000 U. S. agents (Prohibition, Customs, Coast Guard) were in the field and at sea working to enforce Prohibition, on Congressional appropriations of approximately $20,000,000 per year. Arrests averaged 75,000 per year, with about 70,000 cases turned over to Mrs. Willebrandt for prosecution. Government was getting convictions in about 75% of the cases tried. Instead of dwindling on the horizon as a political and moral issue, Prohibition had waxed larger with each passing year. The Wet question had become serious: "When does Prohibition end?"

This month Mrs. Willebrandt, private citizen, has been telling what she knows about Prohibition. Her articles, syndicated by Publicist David Lawrence's alert Current News Features, Inc., have been appearing in the New York Times, Chicago Daily News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cleveland Plain Dealer & many another. Following is a synopsis of her revelations, remedies, sentiments:

General Thesis. Mrs. Willebrandt believes that: 1) Prohibition is not effectively enforced; 2) Prohibition can be effectively enforced; 3) Imperfect as it is, Prohibition has materially lessened liquor in the U. S.

Politics is "the greatest handicap in the enforcement of Prohibition . . . most responsible for its failures." Observed Mrs. Willebrandt: "Politics and liquor are as inseparable a combination as beer and pretzels." Though she did not name the late great Boies Penrose, she cited the fact that $250,000 in cash was found in a safe deposit box on his death and insinuated that this was "dirty money" for the political manipulation of Prohibition enforcement in Pennsylvania. She recalled appeals made by politicians for such prominent convicted 'leggers as George Remus (Cincinnati) and the La Montagne brothers (Manhattan). Declared Mrs. Willebrandt: "It takes backbone to stand up under the corrosive influence of politics [which] extends up to the Cabinet and the White House in Washington."

Agents. Politics caused the appointment as Dry Agents of unfit, untrained men "as devoid of integrity and honesty as the bootlegging fraternity." Most of them, said Mrs. Willebrandt, were of the "ward heeler type." "The Government is committing a crime against the public when it pins a badge of police authority on and hands a gun to a man of uncertain character, limited intelligence or without giving systematic training." Mrs. Willebrandt condemned "as atrocious, wholly unwarranted and entirely unnecessary some of the killing by prohibition agents." But she argued that 'leggers are often desperate characters; she cited the case of Murderer James Horace Alderman.

Officials. In Mrs. Willebrandt's mind more to be condemned than the agents have been Washington officials in charge of Prohibition enforcement. Said she: "It will take many a day for law enforcement to recover from the setback it suffered under General Lincoln Andrews. . . . He multiplied publicity, created a public psychology in his own favor . . . began to put in office men who were temperamentally and in every other way unfitted for the task. His notorious appointments . . . Roscoe Harper . . . Frank Hale. . .Major Walton Green . . . Ned M. Green. . . . I refuse to believe that out of our 100,000,000 population and perhaps 20,000,000 who believe in prohibition 4,000 [agents] cannot be found who cannot be bought!"

(General Andrews served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition from 1925 to 1927. Last fortnight he declined to comment on Mrs. Willebrandt's attack, explained he now never discusses Prohibition.)

Alcohol. "The greatest single source of liquor supply today is the alcohol diverted illegally from concerns bearing the stamp of respectability in the form of a government permit. . . . To trace leaks has become well-nigh impossible. The Government's policy has been like pouring BB shot on the floor with one hand and trying to pick it up with the other." Commercial alcohol production in 1918: 50,000,000 gals.; in 1928: 90,000,000 gals. Smuggling: "The leak second in importance is border smuggling. Illicit importation seeks the low moral levels of our border service. . . . Detroit is an example of departmental jealousy triumphant. . . . The beating of drums and issuance of mimeographed threats of a great Prohibition offensive will not aid the government. . . . Rum runners are not scared when Uncle Sam hollers 'Boo.'. . . The different services are fighting each other and the leaks will continue until there is real coordination and cooperation. When there is more brain work in Washington there will be less booze in Detroit--and more bootleggers in Atlanta Penitentiary."

(Last week Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Lowman announced that eight new 75-ft. cutters, 16 smaller patrol boats, were being sent into the Great Lakes to combat rum-smuggling, raising U. S. vessels there to 100. At the same time it was stated that machine guns would be dismounted from smaller craft, in shoal water near the Canadian shore, promiscuous shooting bring international complications. Last week rum runners slipped through the Detroit blockade in broad daylight, landed their cargoes when a patrol boat left its post for gasoline.)

Remedies. For each Prohibition ailment, Mrs. Willebrandt was ready with a remedy: 1) "Grit, persistence and a united front" to overcome politics. 2) For Dry agents a higher civil service standard, systematic and extended training on how to gather evidence, when to arrest a man, when to shoot. 3) No politics in the choice of competent officials ("Courage, vigor and intelligence must begin at the top and spread down"). 4) A survey by the Department of Commerce of the country's real commercial alcohol needs and a limitation of permits to that amount, under "crisp, definite and restrictive" regulation, to old-line industrial firms. 5) Coordination of the border services into one "unified border patrol made up of the best trained men . . . with an esprit de corps equal to that of the famous mounted police of Canada."

Other Willebrandt observations:

Drinking. "I do not know a time . . . when it has not been possible to obtain intoxicating liquors at almost any hour of the day or night, either in rural districts, the smaller towns or the large cities. It is very doubtful if as much drinking is done as appears. . . . It is regarded as so smart and expensive in some circles that we might almost say a bell rings or a whistle blows every time drinks are passed. . . ."

Hypocrisy. "Many Congressmen and Senators who vote for [Dry] bills are persistent violators of the Volstead law. Senators and Representatives have appeared on the floor . . . in a drunken condition. . . . Nothing has done more to disgust honest men and women than the hypocrisy of the wet-drinking, dry-voting Congressmen. Bootleggers infest the halls and corridors of the Capitol and ply their trade there. . . . Until politicians are made to obey the laws we cannot expect respect for the law."

Split Control. Mrs. Willebrandt argued for a joint endeavor to make the U. S. dry: "The job of the Federal Government is to supplement the work of the State. . . . It simply cannot be the policeman for 48 States and Prohibition will not and never can be enforced that way." (At the University of Virginia's Institute of Public Affairs Commissioner of Prohibition James M. Doran last week made a similar plea for a division of enforcement effort between the U. S. and the States, thus echoing the views of Chairman Wickersham of the National Law Enforcement Commission. His speech concluded, Commissioner Doran departed for California to "look into the grape situation," to see for himself the amazing growth of grape production since the development of companies shipping grapejuice to city dwellers for home wine-making.)

Meat for Congress. Congress was not in session while the Willebrandt articles were appearing. That was well because it gave Congressmen a chance to read the series thoroughly, a series no Congressman could afford to miss. Loud debates on the subject may be expected this autumn between Wets and Drys fortified with authoritative Willebrandtiana.