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Writer Liggett's references to Kansas and Michigan caused reverberations out side Washington. Governor Fred Warren Green of Michigan who first said he did not "know much about the matter" came to Washington after the committee had risen. With it he filed a statement in which he said he had been Mayor of Ionia, "a typical American city," for 14 terms, was National Commander of the United Spanish War Veterans and had no desire "to dignify gossipy allegations admittedly based on the statements of a political enemy." To his statement was attached another from the four Michigan judges—Homer Ferguson, Maurice McMahon, Lester Moll and Allan Campbell—for whom the November party was given in which they denied that liquor was served, that the entertainment was indecent.
Kansas's Governor Clyde Reed was greatly exercised about Mr. Liggett's charges of wholesale drinking in his state. He prepared to send his attorney general, William Amos Smith to Washington to cross-examine Mr. Liggett at the committee's next meeting. Mr. Smith announced ahead of time that the charges were "false, libelous and untrue."
Witness No. 2 in importance for the Wets was Maryland's onetime Senator William Cabell Bruce. Said he: "I am one of the most temperate men. All the spirits I have drunk in the past 25 years could be got into a quart measure. I do like a glass of wine. But there is one wine I dearly love, the fresh sparkling wine of human freedom."
Fervently flaying "fanatical Christians" who advocate Prohibition as a profession, he declared: "I have said my prayers every morning and every evening of my life. But if I were dying I would rather have a raven perched on my bedpost or a fiend staring his grimaces at, me than to turn for religious consolation to these hybrid preacher-politicians."
Women came before the committee to advocate Prohibition changes : Representative Mary Teresa Norton of New Jersey, who argued for a nation-wide referendum on the 18th Amendment, with its repeal automatically following a majority vote against it; New York's Mrs. Charles Hamilton Sabin, head of the Women's Organization for Prohibition Reform, whose emerald rings glinted in the air as she emphasized her condemnation of "drinking Drys" in Congress; Miss M. Louise Gross, head of the National Women's Moderation League, who declared that unless the Prohibition law was changed before her two small nieces grew up, where she was can going to send them "abroad where they can learn to drink like ladies.''
The Wets made the best rough-and-tumble argument they could. Against Prohibition they showed a well-trained unity. But as for something better to take its place, they were either barren of all ideas or hopelessly divided. No remedial suggestions worthy of notice came out of the hearings. Even liberal Drys in Congress have made it plain they will not jump away from Prohibition, as is, until and unless the Wets provide them with some substantial substitute to jump to.