Our journals do not make pleasant reading for good Americans these days. They are filled with headlines, which concern the Prohibition law, morning after morning. Not long ago I picked up my newspaper and found no less than seventeen columns devoted to stories of what the police in New York City alone were doing, or trying to do, to make the Volstead Act anything but a huge joke.
Up the State, where farmers are paying good taxes, I found a delicious item in a newspaper, to prove the sincerity of the Federal authorities. It seems that in a small town near Utica, an Italian was suspected of having some whiskey on his premises; and three stalwart officers, in plain clothes, pounced down upon his shop (it was not a rum shop) to see what they could find. The man was out; but his wife was at home, and a careful search of the pitiful premises revealed a quart of Scotch, which may or may not have been on sale.
It took three husky men three hours to make this startling discovery. And how much of the taxpayers’ money, I wonder? It was all-important that an arrest should take place, but there was no evidence, and nothing further was ever heard of the matter.
And this which sounds as though it had occurred in benighted Russia, greeted my eyes at breakfast one morning, in the New York Times:
“ACCUSE JERSEY POLICE OF BRUTAL DRY RAID
“Formed Way into Women’s Rooms and Insulted Them, Resort Residents Charge.
“The conduct of eighteen of the New Jersey State Police who participated with Federal prohibition agents in liquor raids on hotels and other places in Lake Hopatcong, N. J., Tuesday night, was such that indignant residents threatened yesterday to complain to Governor Edwards.
“At the Great Cove Hotel at Nolan’s Point, the police are alleged to have gone to the room of a waiter and his wife and demanded that they show their marriage certificate. It is also charged that they went to the room of two girls, one of whom was praying, and insisted that they open the door. The police searched the belongings of the girls for whiskey.
“It is charged that at the Espanol Hotel, Nolan’s Point, the police went to the room of a mother and her three children, awakened her and charged there was a man in her room. She was compelled to open her door.
“Rented cottages, it is charged, also were visited and searched. It is charged by the complainants that the State police drank the beer and whiskey they seized.”
But of course this is all right—to a prohibitionist. The law must be enforced. It makes no difference how enforcement is accomplished.
If the police were honest, if they themselves approved of the Eighteenth Amendment, the country could be made bone dry tomorrow. But when the politicians who voted for Prohibition have no respect for the law they put upon our statutes, why should we expect integrity and honesty down the line?
How can there be any respect for a law which the minions of the law disobey, repeatedly? In a great city like New York, in the Autumn of 1922, innumerable policemen were found drunk while on duty—so much drunkenness had occurred that it was said on reliable authority that a murder a week occurred.
“POLICE MUST TELL HOW THEY GOT RUM”
was the heading in the New York Times on October 16th. “Drastic regulations for dealing with policemen who drink” have been framed, and have been circulated in the Police Department. This is the text of the orders. Think of their being necessary!