STATEMENT OF FRANK E. GANNETT, PRESIDENT, GANNETT NEWSPAPERS, ROCHESTER, N. Y., READ BY D. LEIGH COLVIN, INTERNATIONAL REFORM FEDERATION, EVANSTON, ILL.

Mr. COLVIN. I am going to present a statement from Mr. Frank E. Gannett, president of the Gannett Newspapers, which are composed of 21 daily newspapers over the country. He asked Mr. Howard, long-time citizen of Rochester, to read it, but on account of his voice, he is unable to, and he asked me as president of the International Reform Federation to read it for Mr. Gannett.

The purpose of all advertising is to increase sales of the product advertised. If advertising did not fulfill this purpose effectively and profitably, there would be no advertising.

Figures for last year show that the consumption of alcoholic beverages hit an all-time high of well over $8,000,000,000. I have no doubt that this great increase in the consumption of intoxicating liquor is largely the result or attractive and effective advertising.

It is hardly necessary for me to say that intoxicating liquors have a destructive influence on our people. Statistics prove that a large percentage of all crime is due to the liquor traffic. In the past few years the great increase in the number of persons who have become hopeless addicts and almost incurable drunkards has led to the conclusion that alcoholism is a disease which takes a frightful toll of its victims.

I doubt if any parent wants to see his children developing the drinking habit, for no one can tell whether or not the boy or girl who takes the first drink will become a hopeless physical, mental, or moral wreck.

Before prohibition was adopted, I decided that the newspaper in which I was then a part owner, the Elmira Star-Gazette, should not carry advertising for any alcoholic beverage. Personally I did not want to be a party to the business of promoting the sale of alcoholic drinks. I did not want to have any part in the responsibility of increasing the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

None of our 21 newspapers or any of the radio stations which I control accepts a line of liquor advertising, and so long as I have anything to say about it, they never will. It is difficult to estimate accurately how much our advertising revenue would be increased if we should decide to accept liquor advertising, but it probably would be around a million dollars a year. No matter how large the sum might be, our policy would not be changed. I understand that the liquor interests are spending $100,000,000 a year in newspaper advertising. If all of that money were offered to our newspapers, it would not alter our position or change our policy.

A basic principle with our newspapers is that they be fit for the home. I do not believe that if our newspapers contained liquor advertising they would be welcomed in the homes of our readers as they are today. We are constantly receiving hundreds of letters from our readers and from our advertisers, approving our policy of not carrying liquor advertising.

One of our large local advertisers once said to me that he would not want a saloon next to his store, nor did he want his ad in a newspaper next to a liquor advertisement. This opinion is quite

general with advertisers. Many of them prefer publications that do not carry liquor advertising.

I am sure that our papers have really profited to a considerable extent in another way by excluding liquor advertising. The financial success of our group of papers proves it is not necessary for a successful newspaper to carry this offensive business. Every one of our papers is on a sound financial basis and they will continue to be without revenue from the distillers or the brewers.

The Post Office Department excludes from the mails any publication that carries lottery information. This form of gambling is generally regarded as harmful to society. Surely intoxicating liquors are far more injurious to society than lotteries and if the Post Office Department can exclude papers carrying lottery information, it surely would be justified in excluding publications that carry liquor advertising.

This proposal would not be censorship in any degree. The Capper bill proposes to deny postal or other transportation privileges to publications that carry liquor advertising. If this bill should be enacted into law, any publisher who cared to do so could still carry liquor advertising but any paper carrying such advertising would not go through the mails or cross a State line. I am enthusiastically in favor of such legislation and I can see no sound basis for opposition to it.

There are many things that every newspaper excludes as a matter of decency and good taste. Why should a business that causes so much misery, suffering, crime, and piles such enormous costs upon the taxpayers who have to take care of the victims of alcoholism, be promoted by the Government?

I should like to urge with all earnestness that the committee report favorably the Capper bill and I hope the Congress will pass the measure by a large majority.

Senator REED. Thank you.

Bishop HAMMAKER. Mr. Chairman, the Northern Baptist Convention is represented here this afternoon by Dr. Donald B. Cloward, the executive head of the temperance board of that church.

STATEMENT OF REV. DR. DONALD B. CLOWARD, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE COUNCIL ON CHRISTIAN SOCIAL PROGRESS OF THE NORTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION, NEW YORK, N. Y.

Dr. CLOWARD. There is no matter upon which the Northern Baptist Convention is more united than in its unqualified support of constructive legislation to arrest the alarming increase in the consumption of alcoholic beverages in our country. Seldom have Northern Baptists met in State, area, or national gatherings without passing a resolution deploring present trends and calling upon responsible public officials both to enact needed legislation and to give vigorous enforcement to existing laws.

Moreover, thousands of our Baptist leaders are coming to see that there is a close relationship between the annual drink bill and the extravagantly excessive claims of commercial advertising. The conviction is growing among us that we will never effectively control

drinking, make our highways safe for travel, reduce crime and delinquency, or secure normal, happy, home life so long as the right of the beverage alcohol industry to advertise goes unchallenged by the citizens.

This conviction caused the Northern Baptist Convention in its last annual session at Grand Rapids, Mich., May 25, 1946, to launch a vigorous crusade aimed at all forms of commercial advertising of alcoholic beverages. This crusade has been conducted by the Council of Christian Social Progress and has enlisted the support of thousands of our pastors and lay leaders in every area of the convention. To date nearly 2,000,000 stickers protesting liquor ads in newspapers and magazines have been distributed and 180,000 specially printed and illustrated post cards have been sent to radio stations urging the discontinuance of liquor commercials over the air. The movie industry has felt the force of 150,000 similar protest cards decrying drinking scenes in the movies.

This campaign has had two purposes. First, it has been an effective medium of education of our people in the relation existing between advertising and the alarming upward trend in drinking. Second, it has served notice on the three great vehicles of mass education that there is a growing concern and resentment against their flagrant misuse of their high responsibility as molders of the public mind.

But we recognize that our program, while basic in the matter of education, will be ineffectual in terms of action unless implemented by constructive legislation. The Capper bill, S. 265, goes a long mile in this direction and will have the support of literally thousands of Northern Baptists as well as a host of other citizens.

The liquor industry, while a business within the law, never has enjoyed the same status as other businesses. It is a business tolerated by government, rather than encouraged. Even back in 1890 the Supreme Court in the case of Crowley versus Christensen, declared:

By the general concurrence of opinion of every civilized and Christian community, there are few sources of crime and misery to society equal to the dram shop, where intoxicating liquors in small quantities, to be drunk at the time, are sold indiscriminately to all parties applying. The statistics of every State show a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at the retail saloons than to any other source. The sale of such liquors in this way has therefore been, at all times, by the courts of every state considered as the proper subject of legislative regulation.

Not only may a license be exacted from the keeper of the saloon before a glass of his liquors can be disposed of, but restrictions may be imposed as to the class of persons to whom they may be sold, and the hours of the days of the week on which the saloons may be opened. Their sale in that form may be absolutely probibited. There is no inherent right in a citizen to thus sell intoxicating liquors at retail; it is not a privilege of a citizen of the State or of a citizen of the United States.

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The Capper bill, S. 265, is constructive legislation. It is timely legislation. It is just legislation. Therefore, on behalf of a convention of 1,500,000 Northern Baptists, I respect fully urge this committee to give serious consideration to it. Our prayers and hopes are that your action will also be favorable.

In closing may I say that the resolution authorizing the crusade is attached, together with a leaflet describing the program [reading]:

RESOLUTION, NORTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION, GRAND RAPIDS, MICH., MAY 25, 1946 Whereas alcohol is a narcotic the consumption of which, in common with other narcotics, leads to physical, mental, moral, and spiritual degradation; and Whereas alcoholism each year reaches alarming proprotions and causes extreme family anguish, shattering the homes, the blighting of countless lives, and political corruption; and

Whereas many drinkers use beverage alcohol as a substitute for the resolving of their emotional problems; and

Whereas the grain wasted in alcoholic beverages is desperately needed to feed starving millions across the seas; and

Whereas charges have been made that relief funds sent to other countries are sometimes used for the manufacture of intoxicants: Therefore be it

Resolved, That we petition the President to reduce further and drastically the quantity of grain permitted for such purposes; furthermore, be it

Resolved, That if the charges are proved that relief foods sent to other countries are there used for the manufacture of intoxicants, we petition the President of the United States that aid shipments to that country shall immediately cease; furthermore, be it

Resolved, That Northern Baptists be urged to examine their own consciences and habits in the matter of the use of intoxicants; furthermore, be it

Resolved, That Northern Baptists support and strengthen temperance agencies which are effectively contributing to temperance education; furthermore, be it Resolved, That the Northern Baptists be asked to give wholehearted support to the Council on Christian Social Progress as it launches a convention-wide program during 1946-47 for temperance education, total abstinence, and toward the elimination of beverage alcohol advertising; furthermore, be it

Resolved, That the Northern Baptist Convention direct the Council on Christian Social Progress to launch its convention-wide program on beverage alcohol education on World Temperance Sunday, October 17, 1946.

Senator REED. Thank you very much.

Bishop HAMMAKER. I think you would like to hear from a Southern Baptist convention now.

Dr. J. M. Dawson, of the Southern Baptist convention.

STATEMENT OF DR. J. M. DAWSON, SOUTHERN BAPTIST
CONVENTION, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Dr. DAWSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I beg to say that I represent here in Washington the Joint Conference Committee of All-American Baptists, not simply the Southern Baptists, but the Northern Baptists, as well as the Southern Baptists, and the two great National Negro Baptist conventions.

According to the American Yearbook, the Interdenominational Yearbook, 14 million members comprise this group.

I have a very brief statement which does include a reference to the action of the Southern Baptist convention, representing 6,100,000 members, which met in St. Louis last week with an attendance of more than 8,854 delegates present in the convention, which adopted a resolution which I shall be glad to file with you.

While the Baptists are greatly distressed over the stupendous waste of grains and other resources of economic wealth in liquor production in a time when so much of the world is hungry, there are other aspects of the interstate exploitation of liquor which even more disturb the Baptists.

The enormous expenditure by liquor interests in advertisements appearing in national journals is more corrupting and detrimental to the people. The alluring advertising spread, aimed at convincing the

people that generous alcoholic consumption is socially smart, essentially healthful, and absolutely contributory to success, is tragical miseducation. It is powerful, fraudulent sales talk for a commodity which, according to scientific surveys, creates widespread poverty and moral degradation; which according to medical advices, by any overindulgence, is a menace to public health; and which by the rigid requirements of the business and professional world results in careful excluding of its consumers from responsible positions everywhere.

It is our solemn judgment that the vast, generally recognized disproportionate quantities of liquor now debauching the American public has been induced by the overemphasized, deceptive, and highly organized profiteering purveyors of what informed people know is harmful, and what all the people at least admit to be dubious.

We, therefore, appeal to you to stop this shameful, reprehensible prostitution of legitimate advertising, and to do so in the interest of the public welfare.

I thank you.

Senator REED. Thank you.

Bishop HAMMAKER. Dr. Robert S. Carroll, one of the distinguished psychiatrists of the country, is here. Dr. Carroll is from Asheville, N. C.

Dr. Carroll.

STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT S. CARROLL, DUKE UNIVERSITY, ASHEVILLE, N. C.

Dr. CARROLL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, my name is Dr. Robert S. Carroll, Asheville, N. C., lecturer at Duke University on phychiatry and the founder of Highland Hospital, which was given to Duke University a few years ago by myself, a hospital which for 40 years treated only mental and nervous individuals.

As a psychiatrist with over 50 years' daily contact with scores of insane and semi-insane, my concern is deep for the mental welfare of our people. Health of their most vital organ, the brain, has for nearly two generations been great quest of my professional life. In literally thousands of patients I have met brain damage directly or indirectly resulting from use and abuse of alcohol, alcohol, which for many years I have reasonably considered the brain's most seductive enemy.

I have been impressed by the rapid spread of alcohol use since prohibition days. Powerful influences are so popularizing the harmlessness, the smartness, the éclat, of social drinking that the usual answer today to the question regularly asked the alcoholic woman patient, "Why do you drink?" is too commonly answered, "Why, Doctor, you know everybody that is anybody drinks today!" Fifty years ago no woman would have so presumed. Her answer would have been, "I guess I am no good, and who cares?"

Never in human history has the social drink been so alluringly portrayed, and never before has the ghastly mockery of alcohol's ubiquitous disintegration of young and middle-aged, male and female, been so adroitly hush-hushed by the majority of newsprints.

As a young boy in Cleveland years ago, I was made almost a temperance advocate by almost daily records of the damage that had come from some alcoholic spree. The opposite is usually found. Alcohol is rarely mentioned as the cause of an accident, as the cause of crime.