FACTORS THAT HELPED TO KILL PROHIBITION IN U.S.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 941, 11 December 1933, Page 6

FACTORS THAT HELPED TO KILL PROHIBITION IN U.S.

To-day’s Special Article.

Man Who Made Wine and Cider and Raised Town Versus Country Issue. (By AMOS W. \V. WOODCOCK.) The proceedings against former Congressman John Philip Hill, following his making of wine and cider, mark what I believe was the turning point of public opinion toward National Prohibition. His case gave wide publicity to the exception in the law in favour of the farmers. It raised the issue of the city people against the country people and it set people to thinking about what was intoxicating. In my opinion, if Mr Hill desires to claim it, he is entitled more than anyone else to the distinction of breaking down National Prohibition.

T )URING the World War Mr Hill was a resplendent staff officer, acting as Judge Advocate of the Twenty-Ninth Division, in which I served as a plain infantry soldier. One dark night in August, 1918, when the division was holding the trenches in Alsace, a sentry shot and killed a clerk of his own company who had thoughtlessly opened the door to a lighted hut. During the French occupanev of the trenches there had been an order to shoot at any lights to prevent signalling to the Germans. German Saves Him. The general, who had never been in those woods at night, was incensed and ordered the sentry court-martialled for murder. The colonel of the regiment appointed me to defend him. Colonel Hill was the prosecuting attorney. I stressed the fear of attack in the trenches, but the generals who were the judges had never been in the front line and could not understand until a German aviator saw the light in the schoolhouse court-room and determined to have a sporting try at it with his machine-gun. The plane roared close and bullets spattered. The court doused the candle and went to cover under the benches upon which children sat during the day. It was all over in an instant. The court scrambled up, but it now was a' changed group, sympathetic and chastened. I said but a few words more, and my client was found not guilty. In my next encounter in a court with the Congressman the odds were more strongly against me, and I had no rescue from the sky to prove the point I was unable to make by word of mouth. The Attack Begins. On April 26, 1922, “ Wet ” Congressman Hill, having been in office somewhat over a year on a “ beer and bonus ” platform, and facing in seven months a new appeal for votes, asked Major R. A. Haines, then Prohibition Commissioner, whether the alcohol in cider made in the home must be limited' to one-half of one per cent. On May 2, Major Haines replied in due and official course and style, “ not necessarily, but the cider must not be intoxicating in fact.” Congressman Hill then, in the interests of his constituents, pressed for an “ official definition of what is a non-intoxicating lruit juice.” After considerable hemming and hawing and hedging, J. J. Britt, legal adviser to the Prohibition forces, replied: “ The penalties against the manufacture of liquor without a permit do not apply to any person for manufacturing nonintoxicating cider and fruit juices exclusively for use in the home.” There is no definite statement that “ nonintoxicating ” means something more than one-half of one per cent and, if so, what it does mean. In August the Congressman wrote the unhappy Haines, giving notice of his intention to produce “ non-intoxicating fruit juices exclusively for use in my home ” on or about September 7, 1923. The “ fruit juice ” was made, with due acclaim, and after more badgering from Colonel Hill, the

Prohibition Commissioner sent two Government chemists to visit the Congressman’s home and analyse his product. The alcoholic content of the various liquids, they reported, ranged from 2.12 to 12.62 per cent. After a conference with Mrs Mabel \\ illebrandt, then Assistant Attorney-General, we got a temporary injunction restraining the Congressman from maintaining a nuisance in his home. Down On the Farm. Nothing further happened until the fall of 1924, when Mr Hill turned his attention to eider. Again he wrote to Commissioner Haines, stating that “ the land adjoining my home on Franklin Street is now being converted into a small farm. (It was actually a small paved back yard). By noon on Monday, September S, it will contain an orchard of Maryland apple trees bearing Maryland apples. (Actually some bushes with apples tied to them had been stuck in the bricks, and on the enclosing wall had been painted a cow or two, the laces of which could not be mistaken for those of Commissioner Haines and his assistant, Mr Jones). “At that time,” Mr Hill continued, “I propose to press the legal juice of the Maryland apple into a cask said to have come from the historic tea ship, the ‘ Peggy Stewart,’ burned for the sacred cause of liberty in Annapolis in 1794.” He concluded by asking the amount of alcohol cider might contain under Section 29. We were all a little indignant that the cider performance should be begun before there had been a hearing to make the injunction permanent, and during the same month I laid the evidence before the Federal Grand Jury. That body promptly returned an indictment charging Mr Hill with manufacturing wine and cider. But a jury freed him on the ancient dispute of “ what is intoxicating in fact.” Alter the verdict of the jury, I promptly petitioned the court to dismiss the injunction, which was done. Foundation of Wine Bricks. This miserable case, however, rose, as it were, from the dead to trouble me years later when I became Director of Prohibition. It was the doctrine announced in this case that one might make fruit juices and cider in the home which were more than one-half of one per cent, provided they were not intoxicating in fact—which was the legal rock upon which all makers of wine bricks and grape concentrates stood. This whole contention was knocked out by Judge Otis in the prosecution of a concern known as the Ukish Grape Juice Company, in the District Court at Kansas City. The court said that Section 29 had no application whatsoever to the grape brick or the grape concentrate business. Whether we could have convicted the Fruit Industries, I do not know. A case was being developed against them when the Ukish decision was won, which led the Fruit Industries to stop selling grape concentrate. The Hill case had an enormous political effect upon the discrimination in the law and the perhaps undue harshness of the definition of what was intoxicating. It is also my judgment that the wine brick ventures sealed the doom of National Prohibition, which the Hill case had begun to