self-respect or honesty or any semblance of common justice, attempt to escape our own proper share of the financial burdens incident to the abolition of the business and the liquidation of that which many call the "shameful" partnership.

I have no criticism to make of the motives of those who, in the sincerity of conscientious convictions or from lack of information on the subject, disagree with me. I recognize the right of every man to his own opinion. But I say to you bluntly that if, with my knowledge of the whole history of the legalized liquor business-and the recognition of our own obligations and responsibilities which that knowledge compels-I should attempt to hold the liquor men themselves personally, morally, and financially responsible for all the harms wrought by the rum which we licensed and authorized them to sell-and for the sale of every ounce of which we have taken our prescribed share of the profits-I would be a shallow hyprocrite, and false to the Christian doctrines to which I always have subscribed, and for which I always and vigorously have fought.

And yet, gentlemen, that is exactly what this amendment proposes to do, for it provides a method of prohibition and abolition under which the public would retain all that it has taken from the business, while our active liquor partners not only would be legislated out of their present means of livelihood, but would suffer the destruction of stock then on hand, together with an absolute investment loss represented in the difference in the value of their properties for present purposes, and the cost of converting them to other purposes, or their value for other purposes, providing they were financially able to make those necessary conversions.

I submit to you, as a common and undeniable axiom of all moral law and Christian principle, that it matters not whether men are engaged in the wet-goods business or the dry-goods business, whether they are bankers or brokers or printers or peddlers-it matters not what the character or our present characterization of their businessif it is a business which we by law established, which we by law regulated and protected and thereby encouraged, and from which we by law have taken, and are now taking, tremendous partnership profits, then the liquidation of that business-wet goods or dry goods-can only honestly be accomplished by a process of law taking proper cognizance of the partnership equity, and not under a plan by which one partner, the public, would keep all of the billions of dollars it has made out of the enterprise, and the other partner lose all that he has invested in it under the requirements, and presumably under the protection, of the law we made.

Not only have we, as a Nation and as individual States, been in a deliverate profit-sharing alliance with the legalized liquor business, but it has been a partnership in which every condition has been dictated by the Nation and the State. Not alone have we stipulated the price that a man must pay to engage in the enterprise with us, but we have specified on what days he might sell and on what days he might not; at what hour he might open, and at what hour he must close; to whom he could sell, and to whom he could not. We have gone even further than that, and in consideration of the price which we fixed, have surrounded the business with all the protection and sanction of the law, and undertaken to guarantee the elimination of

illicit and therefore unfair competition. All the conditions have been of our making, and annually in advance we have taken that share of the profits which we legislated should be ours.

Some men have called this legalized liquor traffic, this profit-sharing partnership between the Government and individual citizens, a conspiracy. Accept it as such if you want to. But in Pennsylvania, my State, and every other commonwealth that I know of, if one man hatches a plot to murder and another carries that plot into effect, both parties to that conspiracy are equally guilty in the eyes of the law-the man who planned the crime, along with the man who carried it into effect--and, if the law is able to lay its hand upon them, both swing to their doom from a gallows, or go to their deaths in the electric chair. Not only does the law of conspiracy go that far, but as every lawyer in this room knows, it further provides that if, for instance, two men conspire to commit a theft, and one in trying to consummate the agreement commits a greater crime, both are equally responsible and guilty for all that results from the conspiracy.

Who, I ask you, were the conspirators who fastened the fangs of the liquor traffic into the very vitals of the social body of this Nation? Can we, dare we, with honesty to ourselves, answer that only one party to the conspiracy-the men who carried out the agreement which we drew up and shared with us all the profits resulting from it-are to be held responsible for all that resulted from it?

The whiskey, gin, and beer business may be, as some men describe it, a plague. But it is a plague from which we have not been too good, or too moral, or too righteous, or too conscientious, or too Christian-like to take a large share of the profits for our national subsistence. And if it is a plague now, it was equally a plague when we established it and made it legal, and the danger of it was known then as well as it is known now. It is the same traffic, attended by the same evils, and the business is the same now as when we brought it into being and gave it lawful sanction for our own financial profit. And, I say to you, that if we, the people, who did establish, legalize, and become profit-sharing partners in the liquor traffic, now are to abolish it and declare unlawful that which we ourselves made lawful, then, under every interpretation of law and equity, and every principle and precept of justice, we are bound to compensate men for the resulting destruction or depreciation of property in which, under every justification and sanction of the law, they invested for the active conduct of that business which we established, legalized, and, to the extent of billions of dollars, have profited from.

Some of the advocates of prohibition, who would deny any compensation for the lawful property investments that would thereby be depreciated in value or destroyed, cite as substance for their attitude the Supreme Court's decision in the Mugler Case, of Kansas. But I would like merely to remind you that the United States Supreme Court decided that question entirely upon its interpretation of existing statutes, and it did not go into the right or the wrong, the justice or the injustice of those statutes. And I contend that the existing laws applying to the legalized liquor business are morally and from other viewpoint unjust, in that they made the liquor traffic lawful, gave it all the protection of the law, provided under those laws for public participation in the profits accruing from the business, compelled

vast private investments in order that men so invited by law might engage in that legal enterprise, and then left the way open for sudden illegalization of that business with the public retaining all that it has taken in profits from the enterprise, and all the losses through destruction of legitimate investments falling upon the men who did nothing more than conform to the requirements of the law.

Are we to enter against ourselves now the indictment that those men had no right to accept our intentions as honest intentions, and that they should have known all along that we were planning to swindle them later-that we deliberately inveigled fellow citizens into making large property investments so that we might collect from their business many billions of dollars, intending all the while eventually to oust them from that business without a penny of reimbursement for the property losses caused thereby? That is the exact position that passage of this amendment would put the whole people of this Nation in.

Sometimes, gentlemen, men fear being tricked and swindled when they engage in a partnership agreement with other individuals. But surely citizens have a right to expect honest treatment and a square deal when they enter into a business arrangement with the United . States of America!

United States Senator John Sharp Williams, in addressing the Senate on the District of Columbia prohibition bill, said:

I think now and then that men in their desire to do good by law are dishonest. Some time ago one of the States of this Union-overnight, you might saypassed a prohibition law forbidding the sale and manufacture of malt or vinous or distilled liquors within its boundary. Men in that State had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in breweries and distilleries. Men in that State had just finished paying the State for their annual license, which was permission to sell for the next succeeding 12 months. And that State did not compensate the men for putting their distilleries and breweries on the junk pile; and it did not even return to the men from whom had been collected the year's license the day before the law was passed the money which those men had paid..

The highest form of morality can not afford to steal, and it ought not to steal; it ought not to take money under false pretenses. If it does not take it under false pretenses-if it takes it under a legitimate pretense-and if by its own action it does away with the consideration for which the money was given, then it ought to restore it.

And I believe every member of this committee must subscribe to that statement.

No other nation on the face of the earth that established and financially participated in the legalized liquor traffic has attempted to abolish it without just and equitable compensation for the property destroyed by that action.

England, in its so-called consolidation act of 1910, which abolished a certain number of saloons, and again in its so-called munition districts act, following the outbreak of the present war, provided under the first for full remuneration, not only for the property and fixtures but as well for the value of the license, and under the second gave adequate remuneration for a part-time closing of saloons within certain radii of munition factories.

Switzerland, in abolishing the making and selling of absinthe in 1910, provided compensation not only for the properties thus made useless or depreciated in value but also compensated the owners and the employees of the farms on which the product was grown, as well as the workers in the absinthe distilleries.

On April 25 of this year the Swedish excise board of control, to which the subject of national prohibition in Sweden had been referred, said in its report to the First Chamber of the Swedish Parliament:

The State recognizes both the moral and legal right of distillers, brewers, dealers, hotel keepers, and proprietors of similar enterprises to compensation if their properties are destroyed.

Australia, Denmark, and other nations have followed in the same pathway; and even Russia-brutal, barbarous, autocratic, inhuman, unjust, intolerant Russia, as we then knew her to be-50 years ago made Government purchase of all the vodka distilleries in the Empire, and at the beginning of the present war was able to close out the entire business under an edict of national sobriety without the loss of a single dollar to any individual or corporation.

And even within the present year China-dark, uneducated, densely populated, slow-thinking, tardy-moving, unenlightened, ageold, idol-worshiping, slant-eyed China-in ridding herself of the opium trade and the opium habit is challenging the United States of America in tactics of efficiency and methods of honesty and square dealing, for the Government of China entered into an agreement with the Shanghai opium combine to purchase the latter's entire stock through an issue of treasury bonds, and hereafter the production and sale of the drug is to be prohibited.

We stand alone in the galaxy of nations-we, the free and libertyloving people of the United States as the only country under the sun which, having established, participated in, and profited from the liquor business, and having invited men to engage in it entirely under terms of our own making, then has attempted to illegalize that business, with all the losses of abolition saddled upon those who thought, and had every reason to believe, that they were law protected when they engaged, in a law-abiding way, in a law-sanctioned enterprise.

And, gentlemen of this committee, we attempt to maintain and justify that attitude, in spite of the fact that right now, upon whisky that could be made for from 25 to 50 cents a gallon and, untaxed, could be sold at a reasonable profit at from 50 to 75 cents a gallon, the Government of the United States-and that means every citizen in the Nation-is demanding and receiving as its profit $3.20 on every gallon. Yet some people try to maintain that the whole people of this country are not engaged in the legalized liquor business. Some people, I say, try to maintain that we have not been profitsharing partners in the legalized liquor traffic, in spite of the fact—I want to give this statement all the emphasis within my commandin spite of the fact that in a single year now we are taking in, as our share of the liquor profits, more than the amount that would be required to buy outright every brewery and distillery between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Mexican border and the Canadian line! And I am not advocating that we buy out the breweries and distilleries. I am merely asserting that the most elemental principles of honesty and justice and equity and morality require that out of our vast hoard of whisky wealth we part with enough to salvage the losses incident to converting those plants, warehouses, etc., to other commercial purposes, and to cover, at cost plus reasonable contemplated profit, stocks now on hand.

We, the people, the general public, the profiteers in booze, have been the real rum sellers of this country, and unpleasant as the fact may be, no man can successfully deny it. Not only are we morally and legally entirely responsible for the existence of the legalized liquor traffic and all that may have resulted from it, and therefore financially obligated to a return of an infinitesimal part of our liquor profits as compensation for properties destroyed through abolition of the business, but, as Senator Sheppard so eloquently put it, "We are as much the authors of woe and misery and ruin as any follower of Alaric, who immersed his sword in the blood of mothers and babes."

Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of this committee, I am opposed to this amendment for the reason that the sort of prohibition which it proposes, without any arrangement whatever for reimbursement for the property losses caused thereby, it outright confiscation to the exact extent that it would diminish the income from, depreciate the value of, or destroy the investments in, properties lawfully acquired for, and now used in, the legalized liquor business; and it matters not that existing statutes may permit it, such confiscation is contrary to the spirit of law, the principles of morality, the precepts of honesty, and the requirements of justice.

I repeat that in its present form the amendment fails to meet the requirements of plain justice. It suggests a dangerous doctrine which, once established as a process of law, easily and logically might be applied to any other legal business. It proposes a grave and an unjustified wrong in the name of high moral purpose and the cause of economic conservation. It is selfish subterfuge and an attempt to evade a clear obligation. It is in utter violation of all the natural laws of equity and honesty. In addition to all its other faults and weaknesses it is inherently wrong in that it seeks to compel national prohibition through the necessity that exists for an emergency appropiration to one of the governmental departments. The proposition is indefensible. Upon those grounds I hope and I believe that the committee will reject it.

I thank you for the time you have given me, and I shall be glad to answer any questions that any of the members of the committee may care to ask.