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More than once President Roosevelt has hinted that he would use domestic consumption of foreign liquor as a blue chip in the international trade game. To this end the importers' marketing agreement was a notable innovation. What portion a nation would be allowed of the minimum import quota would probably be the business of the new Executive Commercial Policy Committee. Scotch whiskey imports might depend on pork and butter exports to Great Britain. The ECPC prepared for a haggle with France over apples and wine. But to assure an immediate supply of foreign liquor sufficient to discourage bootlegging, dikes were lowered for two months to let in up to 5,000,000 gal. of drinkables. Importers, who had applied for the entry of more than 12,000,000 gal., began to receive their allotments, but such was the general confusion that the first Repeal ships docked in New York with holds half empty.
If distillers were disappointed at the arbitrary treatment given them by the Government, they could at least find solace in the type of man set to govern them. No autocrat, mild-mannered Joseph Choate was prepared by socialite St. Mark's for Harvard (1897), by Harvard and his late great father for the world. His first grand view of it came in 1899 when Joseph Hodges Choate Sr. was made Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. In London young Choate served for three years as third secretary of Embassy. When he returned home he finished his law studies and now belongs to the Manhattan firm of Evarts, Choate, Sherman & Leon.
A specialist in constitutional law, Mr. Choate was an early foe of Prohibition on the personal liberty platform. He joined the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers, was made a member of New York City's Beer Control Board last May. When he heard that the New York State Alcoholic Beverage Control Board was contemplating prohibiting sales for consumption on the premises except with meals, he did what any libertarian scion of an old New York family would do. He wrote a letter to the Times prophesying that if such restrictions were enforced "those who want what they want when they want it will universally, instead of merely generally, as at present, carry flasks."
Further comfort to the vigilantly restricted distillers was Director Choate's opening pledge: "My personal interpretation of the President's purposes is that we shall have as little external control as possible." To reporters he modestly admitted: "You are talking to an ignoramus, almost lost in the complications of a big job."