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Eighteenth Amendment Debaters Fire Preliminary Shots on Leaving For Forensic Battle Here TonightShould the prohibition amendment be repealed? the question oj the hour, will be argued out in all its ramifications and implications for the public at Music Hall tonight. Clarence Darrow, famed criminal lawyer, will champion the wet side of the prohibition question. Dr. Clarence True Wilson, the Anti-Saloon League’s entry, will attempt to hold up the dry side. The debate starts at 8:15 o’clock and is scheduled to last two hours. The doors at Music Hall will be openat 7 o’clock. lt;* -Abolition of Prohibition Would Plunge Country Into Evils of License System, Dr. Wilson Says.Special Dispatch to The Commercial Tribune.WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 3.—Apparently fearing no argument that might be advanced for the abolition of prohibition, Dr. Clarence True W'ilson, General Secretary of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, left i today for Cincinnati, where he is to meet Clarence S. Darrow, famed criminal lawyer, tomorrow night in a joint debate on the Eighteenth Amendment. tTaking an advance jab,' £r. Wilson expressed chagrin that ‘any one of Darrow’s importance should contribute to a lack of respect for an existing law. “But regardless of Darrow’s views,’’ he said, “prohibition will stay indefinitely. To abolish prohibition would be to return to the license system with all its corruption, its putting up the mortality and souls of men for sale for tainted revenue.“The American public does not want to re-establish the saloon, the treating system, the public solicitation to drinking, the tramping downIntolerant Minority Never Can Force People To Obey Laws They Hold Unjust, Darrow Asserts.« _Special Dispatch to The Commercial Tribune.CHICAGO, Feb. 23.—“While we are to debate the advisability of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment,” said Clarence S. Darrow, upon leaving for Cincinnati today, “the chances of repeal are extremely remote. The people are just beginning to realize the situation. Even to modify the Volstead act would require a political revolution. Eleven or twelve million voters, disrupted among the states that naturally support prohibition, will suffice to keep It on the books. This, however, does not mean that it will remain in force. It does qpt mean that millions of people who have no sense of wrong in making, selling or using intoxicating liquors will be subject for all time to drastic penalties and tyrannical judgments.“Against the rash doctrine of the unthinking, to the effect that so long as a law is on the books it must andof our Sunday laws, the violation j shall be enforced, stands the almost of our midnight closing ordinances, } universal experience of mankind, the selling of liquor to minors; the | History relates many instances where harboring of women, the wholesale j some active minority, moved by regambling evil. It would mean that j pgious zeal, political intolerance or the same men who establish these special interest, finds itself able to evils and fought for them would re- paSs a law that has not originatedturn to control.“We are rid of those who used to represent the saloon in politics; those Judges who stood in with the ‘gang’ when it came to elections; those Sheriffs and District Attorneys who made scraps of paper of their oaths of office; those politicians who used to co-me from the slum vote of the cities, overwhelming the better element and getting into our Councils, Legislatures and even into both Houses of Congress.“Everything else was tried before prohibition. We tried moderation, but found that alcoholic liquor as ain the customs and habits of the people.“Such laws often are extremely arrogant and oppressive: they violate the conscience, the practice and the beliefs of a large percentage of citizens. No better illustration can be related than the statutes which directed the inquisition, the regulations covering witchcraft, the Blue Laws, the Poor Laws of England, legislation designed to prevent discrimination between the whites and blacks, and the Anti-Trust act that is not enforced and can not be en-beverage was a narcotic, habit- forced. Many of the so-called Blue forming drug; that moderation fed Laws vvpre repealed, but others re-the ranks of the immoderate. main on the books. '[ hey are not“We tried using mild liquors, but repealing, tor they are dead,every drink of the mild created a j ^ hen the advocates of prohibi-craving for the strong. tion urge that all laws be enforced,“We tried total abstinence, but ! they really refer only to the prohi-found the evil was a social matter i hition laws. They do not refer to and that our safety depended almost j the numerous other laws in every as much on what the other man I state ln the 1 nion that have neveri did as jn what we did.“We tried restrictions. The liquor traffic violated every law for Its j regulation, its restriction or its local prohibition.We tried local option. It was | too local and too optional.“We tried it by states, but the federal government, by interstate commerce laws, broke down the state restrictions and permitted any outside state to import its liquor across the dry lines, so that Missouri and Nebraska broke the morale of Kansas.“Prohibition will stay with us because we 1 ikthe atmosphere, the type of men now conducting politics, the cleaner order absent in the old days.”been enforced. Even the drastic Volstead act has not prevented and can not prevent the use of alcoholicbeverages.“Prohibition has furnished many j additional reports of crime. It is in-j evitable, in a mixed people like ours, with diversity of habits and customs, that a drastic, tyrannical law' which makes criminal certain acts that carry with them no feeling of wrong, can have no other effect than to add to the list of crimes. Prohibition will continue to reap this harvest until it is settled w'hether the government shall recognize the habits of its citizens, or shall continue its policy of trying to compel the people, by brute force, to yield what they have long believed to be their rights.”
Newspaper Details
Cincinnati Commercial Tribune
Cincinnati, Ohio, US
Fri, Feb 24, 1928
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Cincinnati A.
OH, USA 16 Dec 2024
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