Judge — November 20, 1926 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Corking! ENATOR EpGE of New Jersey says of the election re- S turns that they indi more of a wet ratification than a Democratic victory.” Thank you, Sena- tor, thank you, though we're sure it can’t have been all our doing. i re! WéE hope the reader is as happy as we are to be re- minded that in five of the eight States conducting referendums on the subject of Prohibition the wets won, We first set down six, but in the interim California has apparently gone dry, thanks to the vote of her Southern and by no means better half. It serves her right in a way. If her Native Sons hadn't boasted so long and so loudly of the California climate they wouldn’t have as fellow citizens now such a raft of the kind of being who votes dry and worships Aimee Semple McPherson. But to turn to happier themes; in the New York refer-, endum, the most important of the lot, the wets won three to one, by a plurality considerably over a million. If that, Mr. Borah, be treason, make the most of it! ry O: R purpose at this late day, however, is not to do a snake dance in celebration of what Mr. Wayne B. Wheeler is pleased to call a dry triumph. It is to point out the painfully awkward position of the Republican party in New York State as a result of the referendum and of the elections, a position which sooner or later, we have predicted, is bound to be the fate of every political organization that hedges or divides on Prohibition. ry ey ry ae eA eH SD Yo get the whole picture in the defeat of Wadsworth. Senator Jimmy Wadsworth, whom the late Vice- President Marshall called the useful” member of the United States Senate, was defeated for re-election by a block of ultra-drys in his party who would rather see Jack the Ripper get the job than a wet. These gentry are open to no blandishments now or later. So far as they are concerned lips that touch liquor, or even smile upon it, shall never murmur the oath of office. But suppose Wadsworth had masqueraded as a dry to win these needed votes. Then he'd have lost more than a corresponding number of other Republican votes in wet territory. He was damned either way, and so apparently for an indefinite period in the future is any candidate of his party for major office in New York State. saw ee “most uaT is to be done about it? The results of the election show that no party can be both wet and Dramatic Editor, George Jean N uttleworth, dry in the Empire State and hope to clect senators and governors, and of the referendum that no party of drys there can be other than a minority. And meanwhile the Democrats, under the shrewd leadership of Al Smith, have entrenched themselves on the wet side of this dy- namic issue. The fact that it was comparatively simple and natural for them to do so, while the Republicans were flirting with the Anti-Saloon League, doesn’t lessen the Thanks to the Eighteenth Amendment they have what begins to look like a perpetual franchise to govern the most populous State in the Union. enormous advantage of their position. HICH brings us to a consideration of the utter de- struction of all dignity in American polities since the intrusion of Prohibition. Imag’ a State of ten million: supposedly civilized inhabitants, containing the largest city (we will say so for convenience) in the world and much the greatest concentration of wealth and power, electing or defeating a Senator for his views on an article of diet. Imagine, as Senator Edge has indicated, a whole series of campaigns comprising the political activity. of the entire country, resulting in a “wet ratifi that rticle of diet, ion, is to say, hinging on the question of an while issues of great moment, profoundly affecting na- tional and international policy, go begging for attention and bandits make merry with machine guns. Yet the phenomenon is inevitable. Mix a drink with a little orange juice and it makes a cocktail; mix it with a bit of “Thou shalt not!” and it makes dynamite, which is even now in the process of blowing up our historic political alignments and detonating out of earshot the questions that should be agitating us. Why, even Jupce is influenced by it! ROFEsSOR WiLuiAM B. Munror, who teaches munici- pal government at Harvard, had a piece in the Octo- ber Atlantic on the “fundamentalism” faith. “Most men and women,’ party affiliations. law. in our political “inherit their They are creatures of the Mendelian They are Republicans or Democrats because their fathers and grandfathers were, although they do not like to be told this truth... . yes, thousands of them—would support Beelzebub for governor, with the right tag pinned on him. It is not that these men and women think alike; many of them do not think at all.” Except on the subject of Prohibition, Professor. We MH. he wrote, Some of these voters- comicbooks.com