greatest cause of dissension and discontent among our people, if the pending prohibition constitutional amendment were passed by Congress and submitted for ratification. The Congress has passed and you have approved the law prohibiting the manufacture of spiritous liquors (whisky, etc.), during the period of the war. Existing law places within your power the modification, limitation, and, if necessary, the prohibition of the manufacture of beers and light wines. You have already exercised that power in part, and whenever or wherever it shall appear to you that either of these powers conferred upon you shall be necessary to be exercised, no one whom I know will find the slightest cause of dissent or disapproval. The advocates of the proposed prohibition amendment have disingenuously declared that the amendment is necessary as a war measure. How fraudulent is this pretense is best understood when it is known that the amendment can not become effective until after the legislatures of three-fourths of the States shall have ratified it, and as is known, it is hoped that the war will have been successfully fought and won and come to an end long before the proposed constitutional amendment could come into operation. But in the meantime, that is, between the time of the passage of the amendment by Congress (if it should pass) and until its ratification or defeat, covering a period of from six to seven years, and during the time when it is most essential that there shall be unity of spirit and action among the people of our country, the apple of discord will be thrown among them and the minds of the people of our country will be diverted from the essential subject of winning the war to a proposition which can only become operative after the war has been concluded. Beer is the general beverage of the masses of the people of our country. Light wines are used among large groups of our people. Many of them have acquired the habit by heritage of centuries and generations. The workers-the massesno more than others in their indulgence in beers or light wines have found them a healthful part of their daily diet, particularly with their meals. With the cosmopolitan character of a large mass of our people, their divers habits and customs, I submit that it is neither wise, practical, nor beneficial to divide them into opposite camps upon a nonessential to the winning of the war, when its effectiveness--even if it is advantageous-could only become operative after the war is closed. In the countries of our Allies liquors-spirits, beer, and light wines are under control and regulation. Not one of our Allies has attempted either during the war or proposed thereafter to prohibit their manufacture or sale. Indeed, the regulations provide as part of the rations to the fighting men some portion of beers or light wines, and in some instances a limited quantity of spirituous liquors. Upon the proposed constitutional amendment neither the Senate committee nor the committee of the House of Representatives having this proposed constitutional amendment under consideration has given one moment of time for the purpose of hearing those who are vitally interested in this question. Requests for hearings of those vitally and primarily interested have been disregarded, ignored, and denied. Hundreds of thousands-aye, perhaps more than 2,000,000 of wage earners would be affected and thrown out of employment were nation-wide prohibition forced upon our people. It is not difficult to understand how disaffected would they become during the war when the question would be forced upon their attention that at some particular time after the war, they would be thrown into a state of unemployment and be bereft of the opportunity of maintaining themselves and their dependents. Of course, you knew that the States which have elected to have prohibition within their borders are secured their full right and protection thereunder by State and Federal law, and the Supreme Court of the United States has recently guaranteed and strengthened that protection. The States, however, which elect and prefer not to avail themselves of that course should not, I submit, be coerced into becoming prohibition territory against their will. My life has been thrown among the masses of our people. Whatever other characteristic has been developed in me from that mingling with them, I am vain enough to believe that I understand men; and in addition to and quite apart from the direct injury which this proposed prohibition amendment would inflict upon the workers primarily involved, I am constrained to say that the turmoil and dissension which are sure to be generated in the minds of our people as the result of this prohibition proposition causes me great mental and conscious disturbance. Of course, I am conscious of the delicate position in which you are placed in this matter, but the projectors of this scheme of prohibition are neither wise, practical, nor patriotic. They are eaten up with egotism and fanaticism. Their project is not calaculated to unite our people. They interject a subject calculated to divide and to cause dissension by advocating a measure which could only become operative after the war. And it is because of the threatened danger which is involved in the entire scheme that I appeal to you as my leader, in common with the leadership of all our people in the great cause of justice, freedom, and democracy, to interpose whatever influence and power you can exert that this imminent danger shall be averted. Respectfully, Hon. WOODROW WILSON, President of the United States. SAMUEL GOMPERS. WASHINGTON, D. C., September 1, 1920. Capt. W. H. HAWKINS, The Bungalow, New Plymouth, New Zealand. DEAR SIR AND BROTHER: Your letter of July 17 received. You state: "Personally I am of opinion that if our party gripped the question (liquor) with both hands and pronounced definitely for total national prohibition we could and would sweep the polls at the next general election. I am convinced that the abolition of alcoholic liquor would prove of immense benefit to our class in this Dominion." Labor since the beginning of time has sought freedom, to secure and maintain the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Every agitation that has for its purpose the taking away of a right from the people should be fought not supported by labor. Every article in the Constitution of the United States and every amendment except one has been to guarantee the people of our country a right. The one exception, the eighteenth amendment, takes away a right and in taking away that right it has made of our people a Nation of rebels. Although the eighteenth amendment is part of the Constitution of the United States it has not prevented the drinking of intoxicating liquor. It has not only encouraged the illicit sale of whisky to the people, but it has been the means of turning homes of former law-abiding citizens into illicit breweries and distilleries. "Blind pigs," where liquor is sold surreptitiously, and "bootlegging," where individuals carry around intoxicating liquor to sell to people they can trust, are common practices in the United States to-day. Not only do they do this almost openly in some quarters but they are upheld by public opinion. Even representatives of the department of the Government that enforces the act are continually charged with selling liquor they had confiscated under the law. Smuggling whisky from other countries is looked upon with as much favor as would the furnishing of food to starving people. The term "smuggler" does not now have the opprobrium resting on it that it had in previous days. The sale of beer and light wines is also placed under the ban in this country. No beverage can contain more than one-half of 1 per cent of alcohol. While whisky, beer, and light wines are not manufactured for sale, half the homes in the United States, it is believed, have their distilleries and beer and wine-making plants. Permit me to point out that no greater influence for temperance ever existed in the United States than the trade-union movement. Excessive hours of toil encouraged drunkenness. Men work weary would resort to liquor more frequently. As the hours of labor decreased from 16 to 14, to 12 to 10 and then to 8, drinking decreased in proportion. The 8-hour day brought better standards of living and work and the artificial stimulus of drink was no longer indulged in to the extent prevalent under the longer workday conditions. The eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was adopted by less than 5,000 people. It was not the will of the people. Congress, with 531 Members, passed a resolution declaring for prohibition and the legislatures of 36 States ratified it which made it a part of the Constitution. In the 36 State legislatures there are less than 4,500 members, making the total number who took away a right from the people somewhat less than 5,000. Immediately there was a revulsion of feeling among the citizens of the country. This has grown more intense as time has passed. As an evidence of this feeling permit me to mention an incident that occurred at the Democratic con vention held in San Francisco in June to nominate a candidate for the Presidency and also the Vice Presidency. A resolution was introduced by no less a person than William Jennings Bryan providing for an indorsement of prohibition by the convention. The resolution received less than 100 votes out of more than 1,092 votes possible. I agree with you entirely regarding the evils which have resulted from over indulgence in drinking. I know of no other factor which has contributed more toward temperance than the bona fide trade-union movement, and the influence it exerts was gradually eliminating the evils of intempreance and establishing temperance in drinking as well as in all other things beneficial to humanity. Inclosed you will find a letter sent by me to the President of the United States in which I charged that the greatest harm against liberty ever perpetrated was the prohibition amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The American Federation of Labor convention in 1919 adopted a resolution in favor of the sale of beer and light wines. An adjournment was taken to permit a delegation to visit Washington to present the proposition to a committee then having the question of war-time prohibition under consideration. I appeared before that committee and among other things stated the following: "I know of nothing that could be done by the Congress of the United States that would be one-hundredth part so prejudicial to the orderly development and progress and the peace and tranquillity of the masses of the people of the United States as this attempt to take from them the opportunity of drinking a glass of beer with the contents of 2 per cent alcohol. I am not an expert; I am not a chemist; I am not a scientist; I do not know much about the degrees of alcohol which might be contained with some degree of safety within a beverage; but this I do know, from those who have the experience, that the beer of 21 per cent of alcohol is nonintoxicating in the ordinary acceptance of that term. Of course, if one shall take some other beverages and distill them or boil them down, there may be in those beverages or other articles a quantity of alcohol that will destroy not only the brain but the heart and the body; but I am assured, from every point of information accessible to me, that the drinking of beer containing 2 per cent of alcohol is nonintoxicating and noninjurious. "Going along the streets of the cities or towns you find men digging trenches, and at the lunch hour they have with them their buckets containing their frugal midday meal, and you will find two or three of them contributing 2 or 3 cents each and having probably a quart or a pint of beer among three or four of them. It is part of their meal. It makes their meal palatable to them. You might say to them, 'Why not drink meal water? It is much more strengthening, much more nutritious.' But anyone who has tasted meal water and who has not performed a large half-day's work in the trenches can have no concept how utterly insipid and distasteful it is to workmen. "On buildings in course of construction you will find the same thing. In the factories which do not entirely close down the machinery for the whole dinner hour you will find men who, on the floors on which they work, sit around in groups, and one of the younger boys will go out with a broomstick-with the broom cut off and go to the nearest place where beer can be obtained, and there buy 8 or 10 cans of beer and carry it back on his broomstick, for which the men, in groups of three or four, have contributed a few pennies; and that beer is brought in and the men drink it with their pretty well dried out lunch. I know that that was the system when I worked in the factory; and, as I say, I am not speaking theoretically, but from first-hand information, and I am willing to give a confession to you of first-hand participation. I know what a glass of beer meant to me in the midday, in the factory full of dust, full of foul air. Those men in their homes are accustomed not only through their own lives but the lives of their parents and the parentage of the long ago, transmitted to them as a custom, as a habit, to have a glass of beer at their evening meal. Take the man who works in any industrial establishment for eight or nine hours or more a day; how welcome a glass of beer is to him can not be known except to those who have had the industrial experience. "Now, imagine, by law it is proposed on the 1st of July to cut out any opportunity of the greatest mass of workers to obtain that glass of beer during the noontime with their lunch or a glass of beer in the evening in their homes. If you ask me whether I should, if I could, persuade them not to do so of their own volition, I would say to you gentlemen that any influence I could exert upon them to eliminate it I should certainly exercise. There would be no opportunity that I would let pass to impress upon the masses of the people that they might well get away from that habit. But they regard it as a necessity, regardless of your opinion or of mine. They regard it as a part of their meal. "And now, as I say, it is proposed on the 1st of July to cut that entirely away, peremptorily, arbitrarily. The habit of thought, the habit of conduct, of these people has not changed; and yet they are to be cut off from it at once or cut off from having it at all. "I have written, I have spoken upon this subject as an advocate of temperance, and an opponent of prohibition by law or by constitutional amendment. I have always been an optimist in the present and the future of our people and of our Republic. Recently I wrote an article which was published in one of our great magazines upon this subject, and I did express myself somewhat as follows: "Having been a noptimist, having worked in that optimistic spirit in spite of some things which have affected us adversely, in consequence of the constitutional prohibition amendment, and in consequence of what has been thus far proclaimed, for the first time in the history of my life I am apprehensive of the future of my country. The Constitution of the United States is the charter of freedom; it is the charter of the guaranteed rights of the people of the United States, and for the first time in the history of our country the words "Thou shalt not" are written into the Constitution of the United States.' "' Inclosed please find a copy of an article published in McClure's in which I discuss the question of prohibition. You also say: Can you, therefore, help me with your guidance and counsel? Of course you are not conversant with our conditions here, but you do know that we have an island dominion far removed from anywhere, self-contained and self-reliant. Therefore it seems to me that total national prohibition can be tried here under ideal conditions." If you accept my guidance and counsel you will not encourage legislation similar to that in the United States on the question of prohibition. The labor movement is seeking at all times the economic advancement of humanity. It fights with all its power any attempt to minimize or take away a right of any kind. The Great War was fought to maintain the political freedom of the nations of the world; to destroy autocracy and its repressive laws. Men were killed and maimed, families were broken up, blood flowed like the waters in the streams to maintain democracy. The first act of the United States to bring home to us the fact that autocracy still lives was the adoption of the eighteenth amendment. Do not let the workers of New Zealand fool themselves into the belief that they will be benefited by such sumptuary legislation. If one right can be taken away two can be, and if two, any number can be stolen from the people. Fight with all your might for temperance in all things, but fight just as hard and just as intensively to maintain every right to which you are entitled. Whatever I have written in this letter has been publicly stated by me in this country. If it can be of any service to the workers of New Zealand they are at perfect liberty to use it as they see fit. Nearly every charge made by the American Federation of Labor as to the dangers of the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States is being substantiated almost daily. Therefore my advice to you is not to encourage prohibition. With best wishes, I remain yours fraternally, SAMUEL GOMPERS, President American Federation of Labor. AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, SIR: It is the great fear in my heart for the future of our beloved country that leads me to write you upon a subject I regard as one of the most crucial that ever disturbed the stability of our Republic, and I therefore earnestly ask that you may have the opportunity and the patience to read what follows: There is no man who grants to others the right to forge their lives as to them may seem best more than I do and have done in the more than half century of public discussion. No man has believed more earnestly in the future of this great country of ours than I, and no man would give his life more willingly that no harm should come to our Government. But the great unrest permeating every part of our land, unrest that is turning conservative, honest, loyal citizens into Bolsheviks, I. W. W.'s, and rebels against our Government, forces me to raise my voice in protest against one of the greatest 102389-24†- -SER 39, PT 1-3 crimes against liberty ever perpetrated the prohibition amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It was adopted while those who love liberty were either offering their lives on a foreign field against a merciless foe or helping to win the war by toiling in the mills and forges on this side of the ocean. The people were caught unawares. They had no voice or vote in bringing this great calamity upon them. It was surreptitiously and brazenly forced upon them against their will, and the result has been the creating of bitterness against the Government. It has encouraged revolutionary vengeance with the result that there has been a wavering of stable citizenship toward rebellion by those who have been always loyal supporters of government. Has it caused undustrial unrest? Let contemporaneous events attest. As you can understand, I am in receipt of scores of communications. Out of the many I quote from one which came to me a few days ago, signed by a number of rollers in some of the steel mills of Pittsburgh, as follows: "These foreign-born men can not understand why their drink has been taken from them. All the hot summer men worked under those fires and suffered men who have been used to their beer for 20 years worked and cursed. I have seen tired mothers with no milk in their breasts for their babies-women who work hard deprived of their one luxury. "You can not blame all this labor trouble on the I. W. W's or reds. The workingman of America is more incensed through having his personal liberty taken away from him than he is for wages and hours. That is the true reason back of all this trouble." Permit me to add my evidence to that of the steel mill rollers. Reports come to me daily that the cause of the excessive unrest can be laid, to a great extent, at the door of prohibition; that it is fomenting strife wherever men work; that it has engendered a hatred for government that is making sane men rebel against all government. Class hatred is another progeny of prohibition. It is generally believed the cellars of the idle rich are overflowing with casks of wines and barrels of whisky. These supplies may last during the lifetime of many of these people. At the same time the workers who have no cellars and have not the opportunity of gratifying a normal even though temporary rational desire, learn to hate their more fortunate citizens more bitterly and uncompromisingly, There are no arguments that can be made, Mr. President, that you have not heard or read. But the most serious to me is the fact that men who always have been loyal citizens, who have given of their blood to save us from political slavery, are growing to despise our Government and freely and avengingly declare against it. This is a situation that should be regarded as dangerous in considering the signing of the bill for the enforcement of prohibition. In the name of the organized workers in the United States, I appeal to you to consider well the danger to our great democracy. The people should be given the opportunity to determine whether we should have prohibition or a modified law permitting light wines and beer. Our Great War for freedom will have been of no avail if we build up in the United States a powerful army of citizens who hate all government. Anarchists are not easily made, but those who have looked into the hearts of the great masses of the people have seen the dangerous germ of revolutionary discontent that would like nothing better than to have our Government destroyed. It is also a fact that the average American has been a law-abiding citizen. He has lived a normal life and loved his Government. But he also loved liberty of action within democratic law. Therefore, the prohibition law, which was forced upon him without his consent, will make him a criminal if he violates it. Instead of a Nation of law-abiding citizens we would become a Nation of criminals and there could be no greater danger to government. During the war labor bowed to every law that made for victory. Now that the Great War has ended I appeal to you in the name of the American Federation of Labor and the great mass for whom our movement speaks-I appeal to you to interpose with your great prerogative that the measure now before you may not become a law and that some rule of reason, limitation, and regulation may govern the course of the people of our country. Respectfully yours, Hon. WOODROW WILSON, President of the United States, SAMUEL GOMPERS, President American Federation of Labor. White House, Washington, D. C. |