Dead Dry

"I'm willing to die politically for Prohibition!''

Such was the campaign cry of Senator Cameron Morrison, North Carolina Democrat, as he entered last week's run-off primary to hold his seat in Washington. When the votes were counted, it was found that "Cam" Morrison, oldtime party warhorse, typical rural political vegetable, was indeed a dead Dry and that North Carolina had gone Wet by almost two votes to one.

Victor in the nominating race (equivalent to election) was Robert Rice Reynolds (no tobacconist), 47-year-old Asheville lawyer who had won the first primary by 15,000 votes against a field of four. Advocating outright repeal, he declared: "This isn't a question of bringing liquor back because it has never left us."

The Reynolds campaign was greatly helped when on the eve of the North Carolina run-off the Democratic party in Chicago adopted a Repeal plank. Mr. Reynolds stood squarely on that plank. Senator Morrison stepped off, fell to political death into the arms of the Anti-Saloon League.

North Carolina, "valley of humility between two peaks of conceit," was not the only Southern State where Prohibition was making a strange new political brew. The South Carolina delegation last week startled the Democratic Convention by voting for Repeal. In August, South Carolina will hold a Democratic primary for the Senate nomination at which the electorate will have its first real chance to vote Wet or Dry. Senator Ellison Durant Smith, a personal Dry stumping for renomination, stands shyly by the Chicago convention's plank. Ashton H. Williams of Florence is aggressively championing Repeal. Leon Harris of Anderson keeps mum on liquor. Coleman Livingston Blease, a Wet-drinking Dry trying to get back into the Senate, declares: "My people voted for Prohibition and I'll stand for it until they vote again."

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