PROHIBITION: Groundswell's Spray

Always there are legislators and businessmen who, sensitive to the slightest shift in public opinion, hurry far ahead of actual developments with projects to capitalize them. Last week three groups of such people showed that they take seriously the breaking of the Wet groundswell at the elections last November.

¶ Officials of a Canadian investment trust formed to hold nothing but the securities of foreign liquor manufacturers offered their stock to U. S. investors, urging them to take timely advantage of the "tremendous appeal of such securities if, as and when the United States . . . decides in favor of Repeal." The company, Cumulative Investment Foundation, Ltd., was chartered under the laws of Canada Nov. 14, 1930. On Nov. 18, 1,000,000 shares were either offered or optioned at $5 per share. Prime talking point: The U. S. might adopt the Anderson Liquor Plan (TIME, Feb. 2) and import goods from the companies in the investment trust.*

¶ From the Virgin Islands a delegation arrived to petition Congress for money, industrial and agricultural schools—and permission to make rum for export, which before Prohibition was one of the Islanders' most lucrative trades.

¶ In the New Mexico legislature, serious consideration was given to a bill providing for the expenditure of $50,000 on a brewery or distillery and to establish liquor dispensaries "wherever necessary for the convenience of the people." Theory: that the Prohibition statutes apply only to "persons, associations and corporations and cannot prohibit a sovereign State from manufacturing and selling liquor." By terms of the bill, liquor might be sold to adults "for non-beverage purposes only," by a state dispensary commission. Prescribed purchase-limit per person would be two quarts of whiskey, eight quarts of wine and 21 quarts of beer per month. To import liquor, until a brewery could be built with the commission's profits, $50,000 would be appropriated.