Co-Optimists

The U.S. Drys, Consolidated, who began organizing last winter under "a unified plan . . . in accordance with the wishes of the administration of President Hoover" (TIME, March 11), elected officers last week and chose a name. Henceforth they will be known as the Co-operative Committee for Prohibition Enforcement. Their chairman is a Kentucky varnish-maker.

Patrick Henry Callahan of Louisville. Famed for the so-called Callahan Correspondence, consisting of letters between Patrick Callahan and more important public personages, which he mimeographs and broadcasts for editorial quotation, Mr. Callahan was the outstanding Roman Catholic opponent of the Brown Derby last year on the single issue of liquor. He has long been the moving spirit in an Association of Catholics Favoring Prohibition. The U. S. Drys, Consolidated, began as a movement chiefly among Protestants. The Presbyterian Board of Christian Education joined its potent propagandizing arm (Department of Moral Welfare) with 30 other temperance organizations including the Anti-Saloon League of America. Among those present in Washington last week to organize the all-embracing Co operative Committee were Bishop Thomas Nicholson (president) and Francis Scott McBride (general superintendent) of the Anti-Saloon League; President Ella Alexander Boole of the W. C. T. U.; Chairman (Bishop) James Cannon Jr., of the Board of Temperance and Social Service of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and President (Bishop) William Fraser Mc Dowell of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Second-in-command under Chairman Callahan on the new committee will be Dr. Arthur James Barton, chief of the Southern Baptist Social Service Commission; third-in-command, Edwin Courtland Dinwiddie of the Anti-Saloon League; fourth, Mrs. Lenna Lowe Yost of the W. C. T. U.'s West Virginia chapter.

The Co-operative Committee co-optimistically announced a preliminary program, subject to amplification by Chairman Callahan:

1) A survey by some outstanding economist of the effect of Prohibition on Industry.

2) An inquiry into the effect on Health and Hygiene.

3) Data on Liquor and Crime.