(3 of 4)
the
Prohibition Amendment. Hastily the press consulted the Association, but
the Association did not know that Mr. Lamont had left its ranks. Mr.
Lamont, asked by the press, said that he had resigned "sometime
within the last six months." Later he said that a friend had once
asked him to join the Association and through that friend he had
forwarded his resignation. "We all do some things for
friendship," he explained. Mr. Lamont's friends in Chicago were
amused. Said Dr. Clarence True Wilson, secretary of the Methodist Board
of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals: "We Methodists
believe in repentance." Said F. Scott McBride: "We always
welcome converts."
¶ In Philadelphia detectives arrested two
Negro youths for wearing corsets within which were fastened hot water
bottles containing whiskey. The charge was illegal transportation.
¶
One of Mr. Lament's former A. A. P. A. associates was Banker Charles H.
Sabin of Manhattan. Mrs. Charles H. Sabin,— Republican National
Committeewoman from New York, campaigned last fall for Mr. Hoover,
saying that she believed his election would be the most practical way
of securing Modification. What she thinks* of the President's
becoming the rallying point of the Drys is not known but last week she
resigned as Committeewoman, saying only that she had served ten years
and that was enough.
¶ Balancing the discovery of Secretary of
Commerce Lament's connection with the Association Against the
Prohibition Amendment, it was disclosed that Secretary of Agriculture
Arthur M. Hyde was an honorary member of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union.
¶ An appropriation of $50,000 made by the last
Congress for "prohibition educational" purposes is to be
spent on posters, leaflets and cartoons to persuade the public in
favor of law enforcement. Dry organizations were invited to help choose
the poster designs.
¶ The first few days of operation of the Jones Act
($10,000-fine-and-five-years-in-jail law) brought out the following
observations : That although it makes manufacture, transportation and
sale, however trivial, a felony, it imposes no new penalty for illegal possession of liquor, an omission which may be welcome to many.
That the new law is in the nature of "protection" for U. S.
citizen-bootleggers; for, since offense is a felony, aliens found
guilty can be at once deported, restricting the field largely to native
or naturalized businessmen. First reports on the operation of the Jones
Act detailed that: 1) In Philadelphia a judge sentenced Paul Groggo,
15, to five years' imprisonment and $10,000 fine; later the judge
suspended the sentence. 2) In Boston, orders were issued to double the
bail required in all liquor cases before Federal Commissioners. 3)
Trucking firms who have been transporting liquor to foreign embassies
in Washington were told to cease; only actual diplomats in actual
diplomatic automobiles may transport liquor. 4) Seven men arrested in
Manhattan on March 4 waited last week to find out the hour and minute
of Calvin Coolidge's signing the Jones Act—hoping it was signed at
least one minute after their arrests—but Attorney-General Mitchell
announced that anyone caught that day would be tried under the Jones
Act. 5) The bootleggers of Washington, D.C., frightened or greedy,
increased the price of alcohol from $11
