The Evening Star MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1928. WOMEN AND PROHIBITION

Evening Star, Issue 19943, 13 August 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1928. WOMEN AND PROHIBITION

The suggestion—from America —that women in the United States are turning against Prohibition has shocked New Zealand Prohibitionists in no small degree. Mrs Sabin, wife of a member ot the Republican National Committee, who has expressed the conviction in the New lork ‘ Outlook,' and proclaims herself one ot those who have lost faith in the “ dry law ” after witnessing its etfeets, in their eyes is obviously either a very simple or a very unscrupulous person. It is not strango that her statements should disturb them, ft is generally believed that, in New Zealand, more women uro Prohibitionists than men. Pretty certainly that is the case also in America. The earliest Prohibitionists believed so. Prances Willard, ono of tho greatest women of the movement, fought there for women’s suffrage as tho only way by which Prohibition cou'ld be achieved. She bad small hope, apparently, that a majority of men could ever bo obtained for National Prohibition, but she did not doubt that a majority of women would be, and when the vote was given to them it was won. If the women of America are going back now uu the dry law the worst danger that could menace it will have begun.

The revulsion, credited to experience of tho dry Jaw’s working, naturally is unthinkable to Prohibitionists in New Zealand. It would mean too cruel a blow to their hopes of converting this country to their creed, as well as to tho cause in America, for them to be able to credit it for a moment. And so statements that there is any appreciable opposition to Prohibition on the part of women in the United States must be at once attributed to either infirmity of intelligence or to “tainted sources.” As that will be tho instinct —and the tactics—of Prohibitionists in America, we can at least adrairo the courage of Mrs Sabin. She has not feared to publish her opinions and her conversion over her name, daring the storm that will inevitably descend on her. But tho reaction which she postulates has not been so unthinkable in the United States as it is to zealots in this country. Mrs Sabin does not stand alone. Her views were published in tho New York ‘ Outlook,’ which has taken up no extreme attitude against Prohibition. Another New York journal, ‘ Current History,’ has no views on the question. It is a forum fur the expression of all varieties of opinion on this and other subjects. Ju its latest number two women discuss, from opposite sides, the questions of ‘ Why Women Desire Repeal ’ [of the Prohibition Law] and “ Women’s Crusade Against Repeal or Modification.’ Tho two views were sought, as an editorial note explains, with a view “to clarify this great social and moral controversy.” Tho debate would hardly be staged, in a great American monthly, if the women’s attitude towards Prohibition in America were beyond all fears of Prohibitionists and beyond all controversy.

Plainly, there is something to clarity from the American viewpoint, amazing though that may be to more remote enthusiasts. We know who are for Prohibition. Most definitely there is the Women’s National Committee for Law Enforcement, representing ten great organisations, will a total membership of twelve million women. That is evidence enough for the predominance of feminine sentiment in favour of the dry Jaw in the eyes of Prohibitionist propagandists, _ hero and in America, but Miss M. Louis© Gross, chairman of the Women’s Committee for the Repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, is not awed by the figures. There are 120 million people in the United States, she points out. A predominance of women may be still hostile to Prohibition. Miss Gross believes that a majority of American women favoured Prohibition when it was first introduced, but after eight years’ experience of it the majority is on the other side. “The majority of the women of trio country,” she writes, “cannot reconcile tho facts that the Anti-saloon League proclaims in one breath that Prohibition is a great success, and iu the next breath asks for five million dollars to carry on its propaganda with, when tho Federal Government is spending millions of dollars yearly to try to enforce tho Jaw. ... If Pro-

lubition were a success and respected like the laws against stealing, murder, arson, and so forth, there would be no need for private individuals to raise money to help the Government to enforce something that never has been enforced.” It is not a pleasant picture of the “ success ” of Prohibition — “dry” members of Congress who live “wot,” paid reformers urging aridity and drinking themselves, the debauchery of youth, the “ speak-easies,” the drinking to excess in the homes, the bribery and corruption of officials, which Miss Gross paints, and which she says has been constraining many women to change their minds about the cause. They have reason to wonder whether the vices of Tom Jones have not been exchanged for the worse vices of Blifil. They do not want the saloons back—the saloons must have been very bad in America—bub they want temperance, if there is any way of obtaining it, instead of Prohibition. What the Women’s Committee for Repeal wants, first of all, is a national referendum which will show where the majority really lies. That seems a moderate enough request, arguing faith in the number of its supporters. To these assertions of a woman who is not a Prohibitionist Mrs Henry W. Peabody, arguing ou the other side, makes no real reply. The zealot will see nothing but good in the system so long fought for. The political parties evade the issue, nob because it has ceased to exist, but because it divides them both too sharply. They both stand for the enforcement of the law—the only attitude that can be publicly taken towards any law while it continues. But Mr Al. Smith made clear, as soon as he had been nominated as the Democratic candidate, that ho will do his best to change it if ho becomes President. Meanwhile it is a pretty sidelight on the actual state of enforcement which we published on Saturday from our American correspondent. The great convention of the Republican Party was being held in Kansas City. The authorities had pledged themselves that the city would be “ bone dry ” lor its holding. Yet a reporter’ of the Now York ‘ Jiveuina Post ’—.one of the most xe-

sponsible journals in America—found that he could get liquor anywhere, in any quantity. And Kansas has been a show State for American Prohibition. It came very early under a dry law of its own, and wo remember reading, not so long since, in the New York ‘Outlook,’ an article on tho experience ot Kansas, written by one of its public men for tho encouragement of Prohibitionists who were troubled by the difficulties of enforcement over the national area. In Kansas, he pointed out, tho law for many years had been no more than a farce, but that condition of things had . long since ended, and now- it* had virtually no opponents. The experience of Kansas would be that of. the nation as a whole. It would be, with perfect goodwill, as dry as Kansas after some twenty-live years. Tho Americans arc a wonderful people.