PROHIBITION: Refrain

• Share

"More men. More money. Cooperation from State enforcement agencies." That was long the refrain of Assistant-Secretary-of-the-Treasury-in-charge-of-Prohibition Seymour Lowman, and his Prohibition Bureau director, James Maurice Doran. This year enforcement was taken out of their hands, transferred to the Department of Justice (TIME, July 7). Last week Assistant-Attorney-General-in-charge-of-Prohibition Gustaf Aaron Youngquist made a radio-network speech and his Prohibition Bureau director, Amos Walter Wright Woodcock made a statement. Speech and statement amounted to: "More men. More money. Co-operation from State enforcement agencies."

Said Mr. Youngquist: "The law-enforcing agencies of Government . . . are not much more than the framework in an organization of the kind required . . . one agent to every 70,000 [inhabitants]. The utter impossibility of making enforcement effective by that means alone is at once apparent. . . . And the States have machinery ready to work. . . . The number [of State officers] is probably near 175,000 now, as compared with a force of 1,750 agents in the Bureau of Prohibition."

Mr. Woodcock said he saw no possibility of complying with the President's request for departmental economies; he would spend his entire $15,000,000 appropriation this year and ask for more next year; he must have his prospective staff increase of 500 men (TIME, Aug. 11) in order to pursue his program. He pointed out that the division of enforcement work between the Treasury Department (which handles industrial alcohol permits, Coast Guard and Customs enforcement) and the Department of Justice (which handles intramural cases), increased the cost by increasing overhead.