Latest / What Prohibition Has Done to America / 02 - What Prohibition Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin

Transcript

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

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter two of What Prohibition Has Done to America. This
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Leon Meyer, What Prohibition Has
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Done to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter two, creating a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: nation of law breakers. In his baccalaureate address as President
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: of Yale University in June nineteen twenty two, doctor Angel
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: felt called upon to say that in this country, quote,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the violation of law has never been so general, nor
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: so widely condoned as at present unquote, and to add
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: these impressive words of appeal to the young graduates quote,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: This is a fact which strikes at the very heart
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: of our system of government. And the young man entering
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: upon his active career must decide whether he too will condone,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and even a bet, such disregard of law, or whether
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: he will set his face firmly against such a course.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: It is safe to say that there has never been
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a time in the history of our country when the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: president of a great university could have found it necessary
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: to address the young Americans before him in any such language.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: There has never been a time when deliberate disregard of
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: law was habitual among the classes which represent culture, achievement,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and wealth, the classes among whom respect for law is
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: usually regarded as constant and instinctive. That such disregard now
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: prevails is an assertion for which President Angel did not
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: find it necessary to point to any evidence. It is
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: universally admitted friends of prohibition and enemies of prohibition, and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: odds on everything else, are in entire agreement upon this.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: It is high time that thinking people went beyond the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: mere recognition of this fact and entered into a serious
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: examination of the cause to which it is to be ascribed.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Perhaps I should say the causes, for of course more
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: causes than one enter into the matter. But I say
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the cause for the reason that there is one cause
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: which transcends all others, both in underlying importance and in
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the permanence of its nature. That cause does not reside
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: in any special extravagances that there may be in the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Volstad Act. The cardinal grievance against which the unprecedented contempt
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: for law among high minded, in law abiding people is
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: directed is not the Vulstad Act, but the Eighteenth Amendment,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: The enactment of that amendment was a monstrosity so gross
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that no thinking American thirty years ago would have regarded
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: it as a possibility. It is not only a crime
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: against the Constitution of the United States, and not only
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: a crime against the whole spirit of our federal system,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: but a crime against the first principles of rational government.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: The object of the Constitution of the United States is
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to embed in the organic law of the country certain
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: principles and certain arrangements for the distribution of power, which
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: shall be binding in a peculiar way upon generation after
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: generation of the American people. Once so embedded, it may
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: prove to be impossible, by anything short of a revolution,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: to get them out, even though a very great majority
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: of the people should desire to do so. If laws
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: regulating the ordinary personal conduct of individuals are to be
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: entrenched in this way, one of the first conditions of
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: respect for law necessarily falls to the ground that practical maxim,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: which is always appealed to and rightly appealed to, in
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: behalf of an unpopular law, the maxim that if the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: law is bad, the way to get it repealed is
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: to obey it and enforce it. Loses its validity. If
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: a majority cannot repeal the law, if it is perfectly
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: conceivable and even probable, that generation after generation may pass
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: without the will of the majority having a chance to
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: be put into a fact, then it is idle to
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: expect intelligent freemen to bow down in meek submission to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: its prescriptions. Apart from the question of distribution of governmental powers,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: it was until recently a matter of course to say
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: that the purpose of the Constitution was to protect the
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: rights of minorities, that it might ever be perverted to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: say exactly the opposite purpose, to the purpose of fastening
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: not only upon minorities, but even upon majorities for an
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: unlimited future. The will of the majority for the time
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: being certainly never crossed the mind of any of the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: great men who frame the Constitution of the United States.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yet this is precisely what the prohibition mania has done.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: The safeguards designed to protect freedom against thoughtless or wanton
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: invasion have been as a means of protecting a denial
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: of freedom against any practical possibility of repeal upon a
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: matter concerning the ordinary practices of daily life. We and
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: our children and our children's children are deprived of the
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: possibility of taking such action as we think fit, unless
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: we can obtain the assent of two thirds of both
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: branches of Congress and the legislatures of three fourths of
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: the states. To live under such a dispensation in such
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: a matter is to live without the first essentials of
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: a government of freemen. I admit that all this is
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: not clearly in the minds of most of the people
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: who break the law, or who condone or abet the
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: breaking of the law. Nevertheless, it is virtually in their minds,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: for whenever an attempt is made to bring about a
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: substantial change in the prohibition law, the objection is immediately
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: made that such a change would necessarily amount to a
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: nullification of the Eighteenth Amendment. Would people therefore feel in
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: their hearts that they are confronted practically with no other
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: choice but that of either supinely submitting to the full
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: rigor of prohibition, of trying to procure a law which
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: nullifies the Constitution, or of expressing their resentment against an
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: outrage on the first principles of the Constitution by contemptuous
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: disregard of the law. It is a choice of evils,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and it is not surprising that many good citizens regard
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the last of the three choices as the best. How
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: far this contempt, in this disregard has gone is but
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: very imperfectly indicated by the things which were doubtless in
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: President Angel's mind, and which are in the minds of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: most persons who publicly express their regret over the prevalence
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: of law breaking. What they are thinking about, what the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Anti Saloon League talks about, what the Prohibition Enforcement officers
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: expend their energy upon, is the sale of alcoholic drinks
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: in public places and by boot lakers. But where the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: bootlaker and the restaurant keeper counts as thousands, homebrew counts
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: its tens of thousands. To this subject, there is a
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: remarkable absence of attention on the part of the Anti
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Saloon League and of the Prohibition Enforcement Service. They know
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: that there are not hundreds of thousands, but millions of
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: people breaking the law by making their own liquors, but
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: they dare not speak of it. They dare not go
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: even so far as to make it universally known that
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the making of homebrew is a violation of the law.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: To this day, a very considerable number of people who
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: indulge in the practice are unaware that it is a
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: violation of the law, and the reason for this careful
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: and persistent silence is only too plain to make conspicuous
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: before the whole American people. The fact that the law
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: is being steadily and complacently violated in millions of decent
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: American homes would bring about a realization of the demoralizing
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: effect of prohibition, which its sponsors, fanatical as they are,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: very wisely shrink from facing. How long this demoralization may last,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I shall not venture to predict. But it will not
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: be overcome in a day, and it will not be
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: overcome at all by means of exhortations. It is possible
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that enforcement will gradually become more and more efficient, and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: that the spirit of resistance may thus gradually be worn out.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, it is also possible that means
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: of evading the law may become more and more perfected
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: by invention and otherwise, and that the melancholy and humiliating
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: spectacle which we are now witnessing may be of very
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: long duration. But in any case, it has already lasted
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: long enough to do incalculable and almost ineradicable harm. And
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: for all this it is utterly idle to place the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: blame on those qualities of human nature which have led
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to the violation of the law. Of those qualities, some
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: are reprehensible, and some are not only blameless but commendable.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: The great guilt is not that of the law breakers,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: but of the law makers. It is childish to imagine
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: that every law, no matter what its nature, can command respect.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Nothing would be easier than to imagine laws which a
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: very considerable number of perfectly well meaning people would be
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: glad to have enacted, but which, if enacted, it would
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: be not only the right, but the duty of sound
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: citizens to ignore. I do not say that the Eighteenth
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Amendment falls into this category, but it comes perilously near
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: to doing so, and thousands of the best American citizens
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: think that it actually does do so. It has degraded
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the constitution of the United States. It has created a
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: division among the people of the United States comparable only
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to that which was made by the awful issue of
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: slavery and secession. That issue was a result of deep
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: seated historical causes, in the face of which the wisdom
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and patriotism of three generations of Americans found itself powerless.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: This new cleavage has been caused by an act of
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: legislative folly unmatched in the history of free institutions. My hope,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: a distant and yet a sincere hope, is that the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: American people may, in spite of all difficulties, be awakened
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: to a realization of that folly, and restore the Constitution
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: to its traditional dignity by a repeal, sooner or later,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: of the monstrous amendment by which it has been defaced.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter two