LIQUOR: Second Birthday

"That," said Henry Morgenthau Jr., sniffing at a big red carnation in his buttonhole as he stepped into his office at the Treasury one morning last week, "is in honor of two years of Repeal. I think we have every reason to be moderately satisfied with the results."One result was that, on Repeal's second birthday, a citizen could buy himself a drink of hard liquor across a bar in 28 States and the District of Columbia. Only one State is wholly dry—Alabama. The Federal Government had during the past fiscal year taken in $411,000,000 in liquor taxes. The States had collected many millions more. Consumption was only 70% of the 1917 level, and while 324 cities reported 23,683 arrests for drunken driving last year, the total was below the 1928-31 average. That the nation definitely had its back turned on Prohibition sentiment was evident at the 28th annual meeting of the Anti-Saloon League of America in St. Louis, at which nothing was new but the songs. William E. ("Pussyfoot") Johnson deplored the sale of 3.2% beer. Bishop James Cannon Jr. was named to head the League's revived National Legislative Committee. Francis Scott McBride was once more elected General Superintendent. There were no new faces, no new ideas. The League, predicting the return of national Prohibition, reaffirmed its "historic program." In this atmosphere of standpattism, Homer Rodeheaver. the late Billy Sunday's song leader, was the life of the party. He had a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South clapping his hands and shouting approval when he intoned: Repeal has failed. It was all in vain. The old saloon is back again, Tho' it's called another name, It's a hellhole just the same, For it damns men in their shame. . . . Another convention favorite, "Buy Dry": will not eat my waffles brown Alongside one who gulps beer down; I'll take my patronage away And hunt me up a new cafe. The grocery where I used to buy Sells beer on tap while I stand by; I'll not go back though I go far, I'll buy no groceries o'er a bar. , . .

In the past six months Alaska's 60,000 inhabitants have tucked away 700,000 gal. of alcoholic beverages. Last week, on Repeal's birthday, a group of the more responsible Eskimos at Nome besought the Territorial Board of Liquor Control to make it a crime even to give one of their tribesmen liquor.