Prohibition: The 21st Amendment

WASHINGTON (Time; Feb. 27, 1933) -- It was 1:30 p.m. by the gold watch he pulled out of his vest pocket and laid on his paper-cluttered desk when Texas' Senator Morris Sheppard rose in the Senate chamber one day last week. A small, prim man with greying hair and narrow eyes, his greatest claim to fame is being co-author of the 18th Amendment. The happiest, proudest day of his 57 years (30 of them in Congress) came Aug. 1, 1917 when the Senate wrote national Prohibition into the Constitution. Every Jan. 16 since, all Senate business has had to halt while the "Father of the 18th Amendment" delivered an oration to commemorate the Amendment's effective date.

Now Senator Sheppard arose, not to praise Prohibition, but in a desperate last-ditch defense of it. Waiting at the Senate door was a Repeal resolution. To keep it off the floor the little Texan cleared his throat and said:

"Ten years ago lacking six days I addressed the Senate on the subject of the proceedings of the League of Nations. I one propose to take up where I left off ten years ago. . . ."

Thus began a pathetic one-man filibuster against Repeal. In slow measured words Senator Sheppard recited the decade's doings at Geneva. Monotonously he read form old documents. Slowly he meandered down long columns of figures. His dronings drove Senators from the chamber, left Vice President Curtis suffering silently and alone on the rostrum. Tourists in the gallery gaped down at the spectacle of one little Dry defying the U.S. electorate.

Author of the Repeal resolution was Wisconsin's Blaine (lame duck). Asked he: "How long does the Senator think he may continue his debate?"

Sheppard: That depends on how long the spirit moves me. I can't tell how long I may speak when I am under the inspiration of a sense of duty.

Blaine: It may be indefinitely?

Sheppard: It might be indefinitely.

Blaine: The Senator does not anticipate concluding before 6 o'clock?

Sheppard: I do to.

Blaine: Or before 10 o'clock?

Sheppard: I do not -- if I can hold out.

He held out until 10 p.m. when, no other Senate Dry having gone to his assistance, he suddenly and unexpectedly put his watch back in his pocket, dropped into his chair. Next day the Senate voted 58-to-23 to take up the Repeal resolution. During the two-day debate that followed Senator Sheppard uttered not another word.

Chief motive power behind Repeal in the Senate was no longtime Wet but a longtime Dry from Arkansas -- Joseph Taylor Robinson. In 1928 Senator Robinson ran for Vice President as a Dry beside Wet Al Smith. In 1931 he was still doggedly opposed to his party's Wet turn. At a Washington meeting he thundered Bryanesquely: "You cannot write on the banner of the Democratic party the skull & crossbones of an outlaw trade." But after last year's Chicago convention, Senator Robinson, loyal Democrat, swallowed his personal opinions.

When the Repeal resolution came from the committee it contained two provisions objectionable to most Wets: 1) ratification of the amendment by State Legislatures; 2) authority for Congress to "regulate or prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors to be drunk on the premises where sold." It was Senator Robinson who offered amendments to bring the resolution back into line with the Democratic platform which promised ratification by majority vote of State conventions in 36 States, and complete withdrawal of Federal control of liquor within the States.

Agreed on the essence of its act, the Senate plunged into hot altercation over legal technicalities. The State convention method of ratification has never before been specified by Congress. Fine-spun arguments were developed over the power of Congress to require this method. Montana's Senator Walsh complained of the expense. New York's Wagner pleaded for referendum by the people rather than their representatives. The Senate favored convention ratification, 45-to-15.

Senator Robinson's other argument to leave liquor control exclusively to the States started a swirling debate around the ghost of the saloon. His deep chest heaving, Senator Robinson summed up after Senators Borah, Glass, Steiwer and Capper had been heard:

"Everybody condemns the saloon. I'm no champion of it and never have been. I have submerged my personal views, believing it my duty to take this course. . . . If liquor is to be sold at all, it must be sold either in saloons or State agencies and I don't think Congress ought to be committed to the policy that we're choosing permanently between those agencies. . . . The States have just as much ability to handle this question as Congress. . . . There is no ideal way of dealing with the liquor problem. We've been looking for such a way for almost a century and it has not been found. . . .I have grave doubt in whatever form this amendment is submitted whether 36 States will ever ratify it."

Federal control over the saloon went out, 46-to-38.

A tense hush fell over the Senate as Vice President Curtis intoned: "The question is, Shall the joint resolution, as amended, be ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and read the third time? . . . The question now is, Shall the joint resolution pass?"

Kentucky's Barkley demanded a roll call. Not until the clerk reached "Borah" was the first "no" recorded. Packed in the galleries, professional Prohibitors gazed down at the scene like stone images. At last Vice President Curtis intoned:

"On this question the years are 63, the nays are 23. More than two-thirds having voted in the affirmative, the joint resolution is passed."

Mrs. Boole, in the gallery, sat down hard. Tears welled in her old hazel eyes. Below her on the floor a five-minute Wet demonstration erupted.

Last December, on the first day of the session, Speaker Garner gave the House a chance to vote Repeal. The House defeated it by six votes. Following the Senate's action, the Speaker called a Democratic caucus at which members were bound to support Repeal as a party principle.

Two days later the Senate resolution emerged on the House floor. Forty minutes of machine-gun debate followed The vote sent Repeal to the States for ratification, 289-to 121.

First State to call its convention: Wyoming.

December 11, 1933 LIQUOR Milestone

Having existed for 13 years, 10 months, 19 days, national Prohibition came to an end Dec. 5 at 5:32 p.m. E.S.T. at Salt Lake City when Utah became the 36th State to ratify the 21st Amendment.

FACA

A thin-faced man with puffs of sandy hair over each temple perched on the edge of a table in the lobby of Washington's Mayflower Hotel one afternoon last week. Two other men leaned respectively against a piece of statuary and the wall. Thus was formed the first quorum of the newest of President Roosevelt's 15 major special governmental agencies -- the Federal Alcohol Control Administration.

The man on the table was FACA's director, Joseph Hodges Choate Jr., 57, of Manhattan. His companions: Edward G. Lowry, special assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, and Harris Willingham of the Department of Agriculture. Not present were: William Allen Tarver, chief counsel of the Department of Justice's defunct Prohibition unit, and Willard L. Thorp, director of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Foreign & Domestic Commerce. These five were the officers of FACA's control committee.

Harris Willingham was the man who had drafted the distillers' code which President Roosevelt had just signed at Warm Springs. Under that code the liquor traffic was re-born to find that, as for 200 years past in the U.S., it was still not considered quite respectable, was still to exist only by sufferance.

The liquor trade was permitted to name a committee of ten, subject to Federal approval, to fix prices. But FACA could revise these prices, hold tight rein over all phases of the industry. Increase of plant capacity over Dec. 5 output was forbidden, except under special circumstances. FACA had power to control production and distribution through a quota system. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, under whose direction the liquor industry fell, had inserted a stipulation that the industry pay "parity" prices for its raw materials. In short, it was the code which most distillers had feared and hated and which they had no part in drafting.

If the liquor industry needed anything further to make it feel like an orphan, it came in a remark dropped by Secretary of Agriculture Wallace: "Liquor was legalized primarily s a revenue feature."

Hot on the heels of the distillers' code came the importers' marketing agreement, Article III of this agreement provided for minimum import quotas based on the peak years 1910-14, in which the U.S. bought overseas some 4,000,000 gal. of spirits, some 7,000,000 gal. of wine yearly. No restrictions were placed on the number of U.S. importing firms, but the total business was to be distributed by FACA according to "legitimate trade needs" of individual houses.

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, Shernon & Leon.

A specialist in constitution 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."

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