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The Edison Message: "I still feel Prohibition is the greatest experiment to benefit man. My observation is that its enforcement is at least 60% and is gaining, notwithstanding the impression through false propaganda that it is a lower per cent. It is strange to me that some men of" great ability and standing do not help to remove the curse of liquor."
These two messages set the Drys, jammed into the House committee room, to wild applauding.
Refrigerators & Washing Machines. Samples of Mr. Crowther's statistical statements:
Prohibition has diverted 15 billion dollars from the liquor traffic in ten years.
Out of 129 labor employers queried, 87 responded, of whom "a large majority" felt that "the working man today is spending practically nothing for drink."
In 1919 there were 2,000 electric refrigerators in the U.S. In 1928, under Prohibition, there were 1,250,000.
In 1919 there were 1,000,000 electric washing machines in the U.S. In 1928, under Prohibition, there were 6,000,000.
Declared Witness Crowther: "The evidence is conclusive that working men are spending less for liquor."
515 to 4. The next witness was Dr. Daniel Alfred Poling, president of the International Christian Endeavor Society. His prime statistic: Representatives of 3,000,000 Christian Endeavor members had voted 515 to 4 in favor of Prohibition this year. He had, he said, polled 62 nameless college presidents, found 26 who thought student drinking was not general, three who thought it was, one who thought it was increasing. Declared Dr. Poling: "There is less drinking among young people than at any time in the past eight years. Let us stop slandering our sons and daughters! . . . Neither in Washington Square nor in 42nd Street nor in Hell's Kitchen are there as many places where liquor is sold as before Prohibition."
"Whiskey Capital." The benefits of Prohibition in Louisville, Ky.—once the "whiskey capital" of the U. S.—were depicted by its citizen Henry H. Johnson who vowed that the country club expression, "the 19th hole," was now unknown in his State. Resorting to statistics, he declared that Louisville's rate of population growth had increased eight times in the last ten years, that its factory output had doubled, that its property values had almost trebled. Declared he: "Ninety per cent of Louisville's prosperity is due to the fact that we got rid of the blasting, blighting liquor business."
Next day such potent prohibitors as Francis Scott McBride, chief lobbyist for the Anti-Saloon League, Clarence True Wilson, chief lobbyist for the Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals, and Mrs. Ella Alexander Boole, president of the W.C. T.U., packed into the committee room to hear approvingly other witnesses defend the Dry cause.