THE "WET" DRIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 85, 10 April 1926, Page 7

THE "WET" DRIVE

AGAINST PROHIBITION

AMERICAN "DRYS" UP IN ARMS

EVIDENCE AT SENATE INQUIRY,

(United Press' Association.—Copyright.) (Australian-New Zealand Cable Assn.) WASHINGTON, Bth April.

Anton Cermak, president of .the Chicago Board of Commissioners, testified before the Senate Prohibition inquiry. He declared that alcoholic patients had enormously increased in the hospital wards since Prohibition became effective, * and likewise insane alcoholic cases. He stated there was now building a new and larger gaol, while the appropriations for poverty and pauperism had been greatly augmented. He said there had been a steady increase in the Chicago Police Department, but still the increase in crime continued.

George Brennan, Democratic political leader, testified that the law had increased drunkenness, immorality, disrespect, corruption, murder, insanity, blindness, and crime in. general. He said the sensible and honest thing to do was to modify or repeal this unenforceable statute, and restore to the States their rights in this field of purely domestic legislation. The drys throughout the United States are preparing to repel the wet drive for a modification o£ the Prohibition lawi Hundreds of protests from virtually every State, signed by women's welfare organisations, church workers, and business houses, have been presented to the Senate Prohibition Committee, pleading that the law be permitted to stand. Forty women's Christian temperance unions sent an identical message. . They said: "We protest against any modification of the Volstead code. 5' Many petitions have been telegraphed. Numerous-Methodist Churches have : sent mimeographed copies of a protest in which the only variation is the name of the church and the number of the congregation. Canadian Cabinet officers have lodged informal, bitter complaints against .the smuggling of American, liquor into Canada, to be later resmuggled to the United, States as Canadian.