Crime in Purchase?

There is nothing in the 18th Amendment or the Volstead Act to prevent any thirsty U. S. citizen from buying a drink. 'Leggers and speakeasy proprietors are lawbreakers only because they sell liquor and transport it. Their customers may be scofflaws but they are not criminals.

The distinction between buyer and seller may appear illogical, but the exemption of the liquor purchaser was not made carelessly, inadvertently. In 1918. when Prohibition enactment was being debated, Senator Hardwick of Georgia frightened Drys by proposing that pending liquor legislation should prohibit the purchase and use of intoxicants as well as their sale and transportation. Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, father of the 18th Amendment, urgently explained that the Amendment, by prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, possession and sale of liquor, contained enough provisions to stamp out the liquor traffic. If no liquor were available, there would be none to use or buy it. The Senator did not add that it would probably have been impossible to pass the Amendment or the Act with purchase and use prohibited.

Last week, however, Senator Sheppard changed part of his mind. He still had no thought of trying to legislate against the use of liquor. But he did want to amend the Volstead Act to make the buyer of liquor equally guilty with the seller.

Growth in favorable sentiment toward Prohibition, said Senator Sheppard, had made possible this extension of the Volstead Act. Furthermore, the Senator was annoyed by last fortnight's decision in the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Philadelphia, clearly exculpating a purchaser of liquor from any guilt in the transportation of what he had bought (TIME, Oct. 14). Senator Sheppard therefore offered to the Senate an amendment adding purchase to manufacture, transportation, possession, sale and other activities forbidden under the Volstead Act.

The Sheppard Amendment reached no vote, became no law. It was referred to the Judiciary Committee, appeared unlikely to reappear during the present Congressional session. But it precipitated a storm of dispute among Drys as well as Wets. The Wets, of course, flayed the idea as a further encroachment on Liberty, a further botching of a bad law. They said it would make millions of additional criminals, fill jails beyond the bursting point. Drys were divided in their opinion. Bishop James Cannon Jr. and Senator Watson of Indiana were favorable. Such potent Drys as Idaho's Borah and Nebraska's Norris were opposed. The Anti-Saloon League weaseled, said it would consult its attorney. The press agent of the Methodists announced: "The amendment is particularly needful because of the blatant boastings of certain wealthy men who have told of their transactions with bootleggers."