May 12, 1881, I attended a meeting of the State Bar Association of Iowa, the proceedings of which are reported in the Des Moines Register of May 13, 1881. That meeting discussed the meaning and interpretation of the proposed prohibitory amendment to the constitution. Mr. Cummins, an attorney of this city, offered a resolution at that meeting as follows:
Resolved, That the proposed amendment prohibits the manufacture of intoxicating liquors within the state for sale as a beverage without the state.
The Register's report says that "Judge Nourse arose and stated that Iowa had no control over the liquor after it left the state."
From the above it will appear that my interpretation of the constitutional amendment and of the efforts that we were about to make at that time to control the manufacture of intoxicating liquors within this state, did not contemplate any interference with the manufacture of alcohol for the purpose of export. That this view was in entire harmony with the views and opinions of the great mass of the people then favoring legislation upon this subject, is conclusively shown by the following extracts taken from the Iowa State Register of the following dates:
The Amendment's Meaning
(Iowa State Register, February 3, 1882)
Nine-tenths of the mass of the supporters of the amendment that we know of hold the view that it is to deal with liquors only so far as forbidding their sale for use as a beverage in this state. So it is not a "Des Moines idea" at all, but the view of the great body of supporters of the amendment itself.
The truth is, then, as shown by the records of the supporters of the submission of the amendment in the legislature, and by the testimony of nine-tenths of the supporters of it among the people who have publicly expressed themselves, that the amendment was not intended to prohibit manufactures for export. The State Bar Association at its last meeting discussed the meaning of it, and failed to agree upon it, opinion being about equally divided as to whether it means absolute and total prohibition or only as to manufacture and sale as a beverage in this state. We do not doubt that the original friends of the amendment intended to have it go no further than to make it deal with liquor as a beverage in Iowa. Nor do we doubt that the great body of them hold to the view now that it is intended to go no further than that. They know that the state has no power to go beyond that, and they realize that to attempt to carry the amendment, with the interpretation of total prohibition or manufacture given to it, it would be defeated.
For the people of Iowa will never consent, in our judgment, to prohibit the manufacture of their greatest staple into alcohol for export. In that form Iowa corn can be sent into South America and to the ports of the Mediterranean Sea, while in its raw form it can only go there by taking from five to ten bushels to pay the freight on one. This alcohol trade must be supplied, and will be supplied, and Iowa corn will inevitably supply a good deal of it, whether it is made up into alcohol for this purpose in Iowa, to the profit of the Iowa farmer, or whether it be shipped to Chicago and St. Louis, or elsewhere, at the loss of the Iowa farmer, and made into form there.
We do not ask that the amendment itself shall be tinkered with. But we do ask that the same majority which shall vote to submit it to the people shall put on record the true interpretation of its meaning. From this position we do not intend to be driven either by the ridicule of whisky rings or whisky papers, nor by the sneers of temperance papers, which have not yet examined into the question themselves, and would have every body else as stupid about it as they are themselves.