National Affairs: Mr. Busch

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THE GERMAN BREWER IS A HUN, PUT HIM OUT OF BUSINESS BY VOTING FOR PROHIBITION.

So placarded the Anti-Saloon League during the War. A result, according to President August Adolph Busch of Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (St. Louis), was to close up $300,000,000 worth of British-owned brewing properties in the U. S. This and other grievances were recalled last week by Brewer Busch when he beheld a current announcement from Anti-Saloon headquarters that the brewers of the U. S. were going to hold a "secret meeting" in behalf of Nominee Smith next month. Brewer Busch, posted on the plans of his industry, called the announcement "an adroit attempt to confuse the voters in the coming Presidential election."

Polite, Brewer Busch seldom foams over in public against the law which outlawed his ancestral business. But last week he said: "After eight years of miserable Prohibition failure, with its paralyzing corruption, its demoralization of youth, its rum-running, moonshining, bootlegging and consequent terrifying crime and other deep-seated evils —for all of which the Anti-Saloon League is directly responsible— Mr. Cherrington ["Educational Director" of the League] seems to be in mortal fear lest what was once the brewing industry should exercise good citizenship by helping to clear up the nauseating mess into which the Anti-Saloon League had dragged the country.

". . . The Anti-Saloon League has collected more than $70,000,000 to make bootlegging and moonshining one of the big, safe, profitable institutions. . . . The fanatical fervor of the Anti-Saloon League for the bone-dry law that has popularized drinking and upset our nation-old standard of respect for law, is due to the financial rewards they pay themselves out of the money they get for falsely representing that Prohibition is an unqualified success."

Accompanying the Busch outburst was a Busch declaration of support for Nominee Smith. Democrats rejoiced. "As go the Germans," wrote Correspondent Charles Michelson to the New York World, "so goes St. Louis and as goes St. Louis, so goes the State." Example: When Harry Bartow Howes, Missouri's present junior U. S. Senator, was running for office in 1926, an opponent belittled his act, at the beginning of the War, of escorting the late Mrs. Lily Busch out of Germany. The German vote arose, swept Howes to office.