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11 - What Prohibition Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin · What Prohibition Has Done to America

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven of What Prohibition Has Done to America. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Jude Cater What Prohibition Has
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  Speaker 1: Done to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter eleven, Is there
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  Speaker 1: any Way out? In the second chapter of this book,
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  Speaker 1: I undertook to give an account of the state of
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  Speaker 1: mind which the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment has created,
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  Speaker 1: and which is at the bottom of that contempt for
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  Speaker 1: the law, whose widespread prevalence among the best elements of
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  Speaker 1: our population is acknowledged alike by prohibitionists and anti prohibitionists.
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  Speaker 1: People feel in their hearts I see said that they
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  Speaker 1: are confronted with no other choice but that of either
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  Speaker 1: submitting to the full rigor of prohibition, of trying to
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  Speaker 1: procure a law which nullifies the Constitution, or of expressing
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  Speaker 1: their resentment against an outrage on the first principles of
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  Speaker 1: the Constitution by contemptuous disregard of the law. It is
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  Speaker 1: a deplorable choice of evils, a state of things which
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  Speaker 1: it is hardly too much to call appalling in its
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  Speaker 1: potentialities of civic demoralization, and one who realizes the gravity
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  Speaker 1: of the injury that a long continuance of the situation
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  Speaker 1: will inevitably inflict upon our institutions and our national character,
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  Speaker 1: must ask whether there is any practical possibility of escape
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  Speaker 1: from it. The right means, and the only entirely satisfactory
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  Speaker 1: means of escape from it, is through the undoing of
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  Speaker 1: the error which brought it about, that is, through the
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  Speaker 1: repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Towards that end, many earnest
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  Speaker 1: and patriotic citizens are working, but of course they realize
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  Speaker 1: the stupendous difficulty of the task they have undertaken. As
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  Speaker 1: a rule, these men, while working for the distant goal
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  Speaker 1: of repeal of the Amendment, are seeking to substitute for
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  Speaker 1: the Volstead Act, a law which will permit the manufacture
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  Speaker 1: and sale of beer and light wines, a plan which,
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  Speaker 1: as I have elsewhere stated, while by no means free
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  Speaker 1: from grave objection, for it is clearly not in keeping
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  Speaker 1: with the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment, would in my judgment,
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  Speaker 1: be an improvement on the present state of things. But
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  Speaker 1: it is not pleasant to contemplate a situation in which
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  Speaker 1: to avoid something still worse, The national legislature is driven
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  Speaker 1: to deliberate enactment of a law that flies in the
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  Speaker 1: face of a mandate of the Constitution. A possible plan exists, however,
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  Speaker 1: which is not open to this objection, and yet the
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  Speaker 1: execution of which would not present such terrific difficulty as
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  Speaker 1: would the proposal of a simple repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.
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  Speaker 1: That amendment imbeds prohibition in the organic law of the country,
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  Speaker 1: and thus not only imposes it upon the individual states,
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  Speaker 1: regardless of what their desires may be, but takes away
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  Speaker 1: from the nation itself the right to legislate upon the
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  Speaker 1: subject by the ordinary processes of lawmaking. Now, an amendment
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  Speaker 1: repealing the Eighteenth Amendment, but at the same time conferring
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  Speaker 1: upon Congress the power to make laws concerning the manufacture, sale,
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  Speaker 1: and transportation of intoxicating liquors, would make it possible for
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  Speaker 1: Congress to pass a Volstead Act, or a Barren Wine Act,
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  Speaker 1: or no liquor Act at all, just as its own
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  Speaker 1: judgment or desire might dictate. It would give the federal
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  Speaker 1: government a power which I think it would be far
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  Speaker 1: more wholesome to reserve to the states. But it would
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  Speaker 1: get rid of the worst part of the Eighteenth Amendment,
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  Speaker 1: and it would have, I think, an incomparably more favorable
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  Speaker 1: reception from the start than would a proposal of simple repeal.
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  Speaker 1: For the public could readily be brought to see the
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  Speaker 1: reasonableness of giving the nation a chance, through its representatives
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  Speaker 1: at Washington, to express its will on the subject from
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  Speaker 1: time to time in the unreasonableness of binding generation after
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  Speaker 1: generation to helpless submission. The plea of a majority rule
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  Speaker 1: is always a taking one in this country, and it
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  Speaker 1: is rarely that that plea rests on stronger ground than
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  Speaker 1: it would in this instance. The one strong argument which
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  Speaker 1: might be urged against the proposal, namely that such a
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  Speaker 1: provision would make prohibition a constant issue in national elections.
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  Speaker 1: While the actual incorporation of prohibition in the Constitution settles
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  Speaker 1: the matter once for all, has been deprived of all
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  Speaker 1: its force by our actual experience. So far from settling
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  Speaker 1: the matter once for all, the Eighteenth Amendment has been
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  Speaker 1: a frightful breeder of unsettlement and contention, which bids fair
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  Speaker 1: to continue indefinitely. I have offered this suggestion for what
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  Speaker 1: it may be worth as a practical proposal. It seems
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  Speaker 1: certainly deserving of discussion, and I could not refrain from
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  Speaker 1: putting it forward as a possible means of relief from
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  Speaker 1: an intolerable situation. But I do not wish to wind
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  Speaker 1: up on that note. The right solution, a solution incomparably
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  Speaker 1: better than this, which I have suggested on account of
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  Speaker 1: its apparently better chance of acceptance, is the outright repeal
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  Speaker 1: of the eighteenth Amendment. And moreover, the primary need of
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  Speaker 1: this moment is not so much any practical proposal likely
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  Speaker 1: to be quickly realized, as the awakening of the public
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  Speaker 1: mind to the funundamental issues of the case, the essential
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  Speaker 1: principles of law, of government and of individual life, which
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  Speaker 1: are so flagrantly sinned against by the prohibition Amendment. To
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  Speaker 1: the exposition of those fundamental issues, this little book has
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  Speaker 1: been almost exclusively confined. It has left untouched a score
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  Speaker 1: of aspects of the question of drink and of the
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  Speaker 1: prohibition of drink, which it would have been interesting to discuss,
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  Speaker 1: and the discussion of which would I feel sure, have
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  Speaker 1: added to the strength of the argument I have endeavored
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  Speaker 1: to present. But there is an advantage too, in keeping
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  Speaker 1: to the high points. It is not to a multiplicity
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  Speaker 1: of details that one must trust in a case like this.
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  Speaker 1: What is needed, above all is a clear and wholehearted
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  Speaker 1: recognition of fundamentals. And I do not believe that the
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  Speaker 1: American people have got so far away from their fundamentals
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  Speaker 1: that such were recognition will be denied when the case
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  Speaker 1: is clearly put before them. There is one and only
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  Speaker 1: one thing that could justify such a violation of liberty
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  Speaker 1: and of the cardinal principles of rational government, as is
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  Speaker 1: embodied in the Eighteenth Amendment. In the face of desperate necessity,
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  Speaker 1: there may be justification for the most desperate remedy, But
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  Speaker 1: so far from this being a case of desperate necessity.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing is more unanimously acknowledged by all except those who
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  Speaker 1: labor under an obsession than that the evil of drink
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  Speaker 1: has been steadily diminishing, not only during the period of
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  Speaker 1: prohibition agitation, but for many decades before that. Drunkenness had
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  Speaker 1: been rapidly declining, in both temperate drinking and total abstinence,
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  Speaker 1: correspondingly increasing. It is unnecessary to appeal to statistics. The
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  Speaker 1: familiar experience of every man whose memory runs back twenty
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  Speaker 1: or forty or sixty years is sufficient to put the
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  Speaker 1: case beyond question, and every species of literary and historical
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  Speaker 1: record confirms the conclusion. This violent assault upon liberty, this
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  Speaker 1: crude defiance of the most settled principles of lawmaking and
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  Speaker 1: of government, this division of the country, as it has
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  Speaker 1: been well expressed into the hunters and the hunted, This
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  Speaker 1: sowing of dragon's teeth in the shape of lawlessness and
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  Speaker 1: contempt for law, has not been the dictate of imperious necessity,
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  Speaker 1: but the indulgence of the crude desire of a highly
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  Speaker 1: organized but one ideaed minority to impose its standards of
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  Speaker 1: conduct upon all of the American people. To shake off
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  Speaker 1: this tyranny is one of the worthiest objects to which
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  Speaker 1: good Americans can devote themselves. To shake it off would
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  Speaker 1: mean not only to regain what has been lost by
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  Speaker 1: this particular enactment, but to forfend the infliction of similar
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  Speaker 1: outrages in the future. If it is allowed to stand,
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  Speaker 1: there is no telling in what quarter the next invasion
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  Speaker 1: of liberty will be made by fanatics possessed with the
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  Speaker 1: itch for perfection. I am not thinking of tobacco or
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  Speaker 1: anything of the kind. Twenty years from now or fifty
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  Speaker 1: years from now. It may be religion, or some other
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  Speaker 1: domain of life which at present moments seems free from
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  Speaker 1: the danger of attack. The time to call a halt
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  Speaker 1: is now, and the way to call a halt is
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  Speaker 1: to win back the ground that has already been lost.
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  Speaker 1: To do that will be a splendid victory for all
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  Speaker 1: that we used to think of as American. For liberty,
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  Speaker 1: for individuality, for the freedom of each man to conduct
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  Speaker 1: his own life in his own way, so long as
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  Speaker 1: he does not violate the rights of others, For the
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  Speaker 1: responsibility of each man for the evils he brings upon
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  Speaker 1: himself by the abuse of that freedom. May the day
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  Speaker 1: not be far distant when we shall once more be
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  Speaker 1: a nation of sturdy freemen, not kept from mischief to
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  Speaker 1: ourselves by a paternal law copper fastened in the Constitution,
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  Speaker 1: not watched like children by a host of guardians and
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  Speaker 1: spies and informers, but upstanding Americans, loyally obedient to the Constitution,
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  Speaker 1: because living under a constitution which a people of manly
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  Speaker 1: freemen can wholeheartedly respect and cherish. The end end of
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  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, end of What Prohibition has Done to America
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  Speaker 1: by Fabian Franklin