The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part XXXXVII: “Nevertheless, We’re for It”

    The Prohibition question, among others, served to aminate conversations that took place within both of the nation’s two mainstream political parties as they each felt out their respective electoral possibilities going into 1932. Incumbent Herbert Hoover had previously avowed his strong support for Prohibition during his first campaign for the presidency in 1928. The resulting regulatory regime was not perfect, he freely admitted at the time, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the basic concept wasn’t valid. In an effort to address the relevant flaws, a victorious Hoover accordingly authorized the formation of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement in May of 1929, to be led by former Attorney General George Woodward Wickersham (1858-1936). Under Wickersham’s leadership, the commission concentrated mainly on surveying Prohibition enforcement tactics, collecting statistics on the illegal sale and manufacture of alcohol, investigating police behavior as concerned suspected bootleggers and smugglers, and generally taking the pulse of the American public on subject the 18^th Amendment. But while Hoover’s stated intention was to use the data gathered by the commissioners to formulate a series of reforms by which Prohibition might be strengthened and its flaws systematically addressed, the findings which resulted left a great deal to be desired. Published in January of 1931 as the Wickersham Report, the committee’s conclusion, after two years, was that Prohibition wasn’t working. Police, by and large, were either corrupt, inept, or unnecessarily brutal in their approach while local politicians were being bought and sold with alarming frequency, communities were being torn apart, and respect for federal authority was actively on the decline. Committee member and Louisiana trial attorney Monte Lemann (1884-1959) concluded accordingly that the whole scheme was unworkable and that there seemed to be, “No alternative but repeal of the Amendment.”

    Lemann, unfortunately, was the only one among his contemporaries to arrive at this conclusion. As far as the full committee was concerned, law enforcement was principally at fault, having failed to pursue criminals as aggressively as they should have. Having already sided with the “Drys” in his party, Hoover naturally endorsed this recommendation and thereafter refused to consider any potential modifications to the Volstead Act, let alone the full repeal of the 18^th Amendment. As he maintained this stance heading into 1932, however, the Wickersham Report quickly became something of a national joke. While ostensibly commissioned for the purpose of gathering statistical information and formulating policy recommendations based on the same, Wickersham and his subordinates had instead produced an exceptionally contradictory document which did little more than expose the ideological predilections of its members. Having seemingly decided in advance that Prohibition was a public good worth pursuing, the committee members appeared to ignore all evidence to the contrary, instead coming to the patently nonsensical conclusion that something which a decade of practical experience had made clear was impossible was actually perfectly achievable if the actors involved just tried harder. Syndicated columnists and political commentators were quick to pick up in the inherent absurdity of this position, with Algonquin Round Table member Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960) famously penning a satirical poem for the New York World in which he summarized the committee’s conclusions in a series of contradictory statements set to rhyme. “Prohibition is an awful flop/We like it,” the short piece opened,

It can't stop what it's meant to stop.

We like it.

It's left a trail of graft and slime

It don't prohibit worth a dime

It's filled our land with vice and crime,

Nevertheless, we're for it.

Plainly, regardless of what the Hoover Administration or any commission it happened authorized had to say to the contrary, the American people were not in the mood to be told that Prohibition could and should be salvaged.

    Being deeply and necessarily concerned with the changing tides of public opinion, Congress was also moved to respond to the publication of the Wickersham Report during its mandated annual session beginning in December of 1931. Whereas previously, during the 71^st Congress, uniform Dry support among Republicans had combined with a handful of Prohibition-supporting Democrats to keep any discussion of repealing or modifying the 18^th Amendment safely off either chamber’s docket, the slim majority assembled by the Democrats in the House in the aftermath of the 1930 mid-terms created an opportunity for the lower house’s previously stymied “Wet” faction to begun moving legislation out of committee and onto the floor. What followed was a complex series of moves and countermoves, negotiations and parliamentary ploys as various individuals and small groupings attempted to propose and promote the passage of over a dozen different bills that aimed to modify the Volstead Act, modify the 18^th Amendment, or eliminate Prohibition entirely. The most notable among these was proposed by Connecticut Republican Senator Hiram Bingham (1875-1956), who called for the full repeal of the 18^th Amendment by way of a series of state conventions. Prohibition, it seemed, was still popular with state lawmakers, leading congressional Wets to instead favor this more populist form of ratification. But while Bingham’s proposal was ultimately defeated by a margin of 55-15, the fact that the vote was held at all nevertheless marked a victory for Prohibition’s enemies. For the first time since Congress had passed the Volstead Act in 1919, a proposal touching upon the 18^th Amendment had actually made it to the Senate floor.

    Seeking to capitalize on their newfound strength, the Wets in Congress spent the next several months attempting to force a second vote on Prohibition before the annual session wrapped in July and preparations for the looming presidential election completely took over the political calendar. The result was another series of back-and-forth maneuvers as the Wet faction and the Dry faction in each of the two chambers proposed legislation, pursued discharge petitions, and jockeyed for position on various committees. The Wets received a tremendous boost in February when one of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for President, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, came out publicly in favor of repealing the 18^th Amendment. With Roosevelt thus joining his fellow frontrunner, former Democratic nominee Al Smith (1873-1944), as favoring an end to Prohibition – and with Republican prospects at the polls looking utterly dismal – it now seemed only to be a matter of time. In the interim, however, matters still proceeded somewhat haltingly. Repeated attempts to force bills proposing to re-legalize the sale of beer onto the floor by way of discharge petitions failed time and again despite increasing Wet support in the House, while in the Senate, unfavorable reporting by the Manufactures Committee resulted in a failed vote on a four percent beer bill on April 19^th. Twenty-four votes, it turned out, was not enough to eke out a victory. All the same, compared to their previous margin of fifteen votes on Senator Bingham’s proposal, the Wets were nevertheless making steady progress against their opponents. And though the next House bill to make it out of committee was likewise defeated in May – leaving Prohibition the supreme law of the land until Congress next convened in November – the political tide had nevertheless turned decisively in favor of repeal.

    The general character of the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, both held in the summer of 1932, gave ample evidence to this shift in attitude among the nation’s political powerbrokers. For the first time since the 18^th Amendment had been ratified, the majority of the delegates attending the Republican National Convention in Chicago in June were in favor of repeal. President Hoover was not, of course, and his path to the nomination remained clear of potential obstacles. The result was something of a half-hearted compromise. Eager to ensure that the meeting which was supposed to lead to his renomination did not descend into ideological soul-searching as the assembled Republicans took to questioning the strict financial orthodoxy with which the President had comported himself while in office, Hoover and his floor managers endeavored to gloss over or ignore any possible expressions of concern in exchange for a promise to revisit the practical application of the 18^th Amendment. The resulting party plank, however, was frustratingly vague, offering only to investigate ways to alter the terms of Prohibition so as to allow more freedom to the states in terms of enforcement. The federal government, it was stated plainly, would still maintain a degree of oversight, and any concrete reform that was ultimately put forward would go to the state legislatures rather than to special state conventions. But while the assembled Republicans, in the moment, were willing to accept this rather hazy pledge, public release of the party platform immediately after the convention adjourned led to widespread accusations of political cowardice. The nation’s sincerest Drys were willing enough to offer their support, seeing in Hoover’s commitment to Prohibition their only chance to save their signature achievement from being consigned to the dustbin of history. But most Americans saw the compromise for exactly what it was. Namely, that Hoover was hedging his bets and dragging the Republican Party along with him.

    At the outset, at least, the Democratic National Convention played out much like the corresponding meeting of that selfsame party’s chief rival. Having also assembled in Chicago in June, the gathered delegates were likewise overwhelmingly in favor of repealing the 18^th Amendment and had already more or less agreed on who their nominee was going to be. No single candidate exercised as much control over the proceedings as Hoover while convening with his fellow Republicans, of course. Former Democratic nominee Al Smith of New York and Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas (1868-1967) both presented strong challenges to the clear frontrunner. But in the end, after four ballots, the aforementioned Governor Roosevelt emerged victorious. And unlike his Republican counterpart, he made clear his support for the complete repeal of the 18^th Amendment. Indeed, he not only made seeking this outcome a plank of the party’s platform for 1932, but also promised that the mechanism for seeking repeal would be specially-convened state conventions – as noted in the Bigham proposal – and that states wishing to remain officially dry would be permitted to do so at their discretion. In the campaign that followed, Roosevelt accordingly folded the dismantling of Prohibition into his “New Deal” program of financial, legal, and political reform by which he pledged to ameliorate the worst effects of the Great Depression and generally ease the suffering of the American people as a whole.

    Wets on both sides of the aisle in Congress were understandably elated by this development and sought to capitalize on the resulting groundswell of public support for repeal by pledging to advance another slate of reform proposals before the 72^nd Congress adjourned for the last time the following March. This effort was very much aided by the fact that Roosevelt’s declaration in favor of repeal had already begun influencing public attitudes and shifting the tenor of many down-ticket races. In the case of North Carolina Democrat Cameron Morrison (1869-1953), a noted and obdurate Dry, the increasing fervor around the prospect of actually bringing Prohibition to an end resulted in his defeat in the North Carolina Senate primary in favor of pro-repeal candidate Robert Reynolds (1884-1963). Doubtless also feeling pressure from his constituents – and eager to avoid the fate just suffered by Senator Morrison – Virginia Senator Carter Glass (1858-1946) shifted his public stance from Dry to Wet and began advocating in favor of repeal at around the same time. By October of 1932, less than a month before Election Day, surveys indicated that some eighty percent of the candidates running for seats in the House and Senate were avowedly in favor of eliminating Prohibition. Granted, the way was still not entirely clear for the forces of reform. The likely election of a mass of pro-repeal legislators did not necessarily change the minds of every Dry lawmaker still sitting in Congress at the end of 1932. The Senate still struggled to move forward with a renewed push in favor of the Bingham proposal while House Wets still had to resort to using discharge petitions to get their reform bills onto the floor. But with the arrival of Election Day, more than one hundred Dry legislators lost their seats in Congress. The result, come March 4^th, 1933, would be a supermajority in the House in favor of the repeal of the 18^th Amendment and a supermajority less three in favor of the same outcome in the Senate. Now, it truly was only a matter of time until Prohibition ended. A matter of time, yes, and a question of on whose terms it finally occurred.