"A small but outstanding group of some of America's rich men are now seeking, by the expenditure of vast sums of money, to secure the repeal of the 18th Amendment. This would evidently shift the burden of taxation from their own shoulders to the backs of the poor. . . ."
The 35 other Methodist bishops present, who had helped to write the episcopal address which Boston's Bishop William Franklin Anderson was delivering, beamed in their chairs upon the platform. The 800-odd delegates and some 1,500 of their friends who crowded Atlantic City's Municipal Auditorium for the 31st quadrennial general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church rose to their feet and cheered. It sounded like the old days when temperance cartoons depicted "the brewer's big horses" trampling down poor children, and the Saloon as a burly ogre digging graves for mankind, pointing with pride to poorhouses and asylums, barring the path of Progress to honest Government and Universal Prosperity (see cut). Methodism was again aligned on the side of the poor man against the privileged rich who would despoil him.
"Industry has as a rule given labor a grudging, insufficient wage," continued Bishop Anderson, "keeping it down by child exploitation, by suppression of legitimate organizations, and by other expedients, while at the same time huge fortunes have been amassed for the favored owners of the resources of production.
"Today the burden is without conscience shifted to the worker, who after giving his labor for miserable financial results, is turned off to starve or beg. Thus, the machine, which might have been used to lift the load of poverty from the backs of all people, has been used selfishly for the benefit of the few. . . .
"Through the better part of eight years, Prohibition enforcement was largely in the hands of its enemies. Considering this fact we must conclude that there is a vast power of public opinion behind it or it would not have survived. The present administration has given the 18th Amendment the best enforcement it has had, but the Government must deal with it in more vigorous fashion. . . .
"The metropolitan Press, with rare exceptions, has written one of the most shameless chapters in the history of the Republic. . . . What we commonly hear is: 'Leave it to the communities that want the traffic back again to solve the problem for all of us.' Leave it to the sidewalks of New York and the slums of Chicago!''
Again the auditorium rang with cheers. Bishop Anderson had to repeat the section of his address dealing with the Press. The Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals began preparing copies of the section on Prohibition to send to President Hoover, Governor Roosevelt, Alfred Emanuel Smith and New York's Mayor Walker.
Not for years & years had Methodism spoken so sharply to Business. In the years leading up to Prohibition's enactment, support of the Dry movement was considered a policy of industrial enlightenment.* Passages from episcopal addresses of other years reflect the cycle of Industry's attitude toward drink and Methodism's feeling about that attitude: