THE CABINET: Enforcer-in-Chief

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(See front cover)

Consequent to the first report of the National Commission on Law Enforcement. Prohibition last week came into sharper focus in Congress than at any time since its inauguration, ten years ago last week. The Commission's report had furnished substantial grist for the legislative mill. Of its recommendations the most important (the Commission gave it No. 1 place), the most likely to become law at this session of Congress, was that for the transfer of the Government's dry enforcement arm from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice. Such a transfer, as all the world knew, would make Attorney General William DeWitt Mitchell, instead of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew William Mellon, U. S. Dry Enforcer-in-Chief.

Williamson Bill. To accomplish this purpose a bill was last week offered in the House by Representative William Williamson, chairman of the Committee on Executive Expenditures. In the Senate Chairman Norris of the Judiciary Committee promised "early and careful" consideration of the question. The U. S. Drys, Consolidated, generally applauded the prospect of the transfer and most of their friends in Congress promised action.

Why the Treasury. Ten years ago Prohibition enforcement was given to the Treasury chiefly because Congress did not know where else to put it. For years that Department had collected the internal revenue tax on liquor, had supervised tax-free denatured alcohol for industry. To Congress it seemed but one step from the Treasury's ancient war on tax-evading moonshiners to full liquor suppression.

Daugherty, Stone, Sargent. Almost at once the Drys became dissatisfied with this arrangement. They quickly discerned a hiatus between the Treasury's arrests and the Department of Justice's prosecutions. Evidence collected by Treasury agents was inept, failed to stand up in court. Little or no cooperation between the departments developed. Complaints began to arise against Secretary Mellon whom the Drys suspected of being, at best, only lukewarm toward Prohibition. A change to the Department of Justice, the Government's enforcing arm for all other Federal criminal statutes (except those of the Post Office Department) was soon suggested.

But Harry Micajah Daugherty was then Attorney General. His friend Jesse Smith was openly trafficking in liquor permits and withdrawals. The late great Wayne Bidwell Wheeler warned the Drys that what little enforcement they had secured from the Treasury would disappear entirely if Attorney General Daugherty got his untrustworthy hands on Prohibition. When Harlan Fiske Stone became Attorney General, the Drys viewed him too, for all his legal merits, with suspicion. He was reckoned a New York liberal, and New York liberals were not known to favor Prohibition. Next in office as Attorney General was John Garibaldi Sargent. Over the radio he made enforcement speeches satisfactory to the Drys, but he seemed too slow, too lumbering as a practical law enforcer.