There was a much more numerous group of less conscientious objectors who wanted more alcohol, "light wines and beer" or by any other name one might choose to call it, than the 18th amendment allowed under the definition of intoxicating liquors that the Volstead Act sup plied or that the Supreme Court would probably uphold in case Congress should have tried to increase the i of 1% standard of the Volstead Act. These were the "modificationists" who would repeal the Volstead Act and leave to the States the enactment of such prohibitory legislation within their several boundaries as their citizens might choose, making it as dry as the Volstead Act in the bone dry States and as wet in the wettest States as the 18th amendment would allow under the most favourable construction the U.S. Supreme Court would permit. The important feature of this proposal lay in the elimination in the wet States of national enforcement of the national law while leaving the bone dry States or the moderately dry States free to enforce a stricter or less strict State prohibition policy, and the very wet States free to wink at violations of even their own less strict prohibitory laws. Thus it was 'said some regard at least could be had for local and sectional preferences for varying degrees of dryness or wetness. This position in the main corresponded to that advocated by Ex Governor Smith of New York, Governor Ritchie of Maryland and numerous organizations like the Association Against the Prohibi tion Amendment, the Moderation League, etc.
The legal aspects and possibilities of this suggestion and of some alternative proposals for legal circumvention of the amendment or its enforcing statutes were ably and thoroughly canvassed by Prof. Howard Lee McBain in an interesting and authoritative vol ume, Prohibition: Legal and Illegal (New York, 1928) and fur nished cold comfort to those who did not want to conform to the spirit and dictates of national prohibition.
On the other side, in favour of national prohibition, there were also two groups: First, the extreme and uncompromising upholders of constitutional prohi bition over the largest possible area, as the only satisfactory way of dealing effectively with the organized liquor traffic and of bring ing it under any practical social control. This was the position rep resented in the main by the officials of the Anti-Saloon League and by such well known spokesmen as Senator Morris Sheppard and Ex-Congressman Andrew J. Volstead ; second, the much larger group of no less sincere but more moderate prohibitionists who realized better both the economic foundations of national prohibi tion and the great practical difficulties, both economic and polit ical, in adjusting the national life and government to so radical a change in the structure of government as was brought about by the i8th amendment. This group was represented by the public utterances of such prominent national spokesmen as Senator William E. Borah, Herbert Hoover and many of the great cap tains of industry such as Henry Ford and others. This group was no more satisfied with enforcement of national prohibition as it existed during the prohibition years than many of those who would abolish national prohibition or any attempt to enforce it. They long regarded the experiment as one with such tremendous social and economic possibilities for good that the 18th amend ment and its supporting legislation should be given a much better trial before we are prepared to say that its enforcement cannot be brought to the level of efficiency and cost of other administrative tasks of the criminal law.
i8th amendment to the Con stitution of the United States reads as follows: Section I. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof, into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have con current power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the Legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
On Jan. 29, 1919 the secretary of State issued a proclamation to the effect that on Jan. 16 of that year the ratification of the 36th State, making the necessary three-fourths of all the States, had been filed. Later it was ratified by ten additional states. In six States (South Dakota, Idaho, Washington, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming) the vote in favour of the amendment was unanimous in both houses. In only two States (Connecticut and Rhode Island) the amendment was not ratified.
Dr. Ernest H. Cherrington in "World Wide Progress Toward Prohibition Legislation" (Annals, Amer. Acad. of Pol. and Social Science, 109.223, Sept. 1923) says: "No amendment to the Fed eral Constitution ever received as strong official sanction by the States as the i8th amendment. The original Constitution was adopted in the 13 original States by a majority of about two to one. The aggregate vote in the State senates and State houses of representatives for the ratification of the i8th amendment shows a majority of more than four to one." Forty-seven States enacted laws to help carry into effect the provisions of the 18th amendment ; in one state (Nevada) such a law was held unconsti tutional on account of a defect in title. New York, Montana and Wisconsin had repealed their enforcement statutes by the end of 1929 but until then the great mass of state legislation tended to strengthen rather than weaken state efforts to enforce prohibition.
In the next five years (to end of 1934) all but nine states had voted to repeal their statutory or constitutional prohibition meas ures, or both, or they had enacted liquor control legislation of the state-public monopoly or license type, sometimes with certain local option provisions. Of the nine, three voted to reject such proposals, one to repeal constitutional but not statutory prohibi tion, and one, in a referendum vote, to legalize sale but no legis lation has as yet made it effective.
The repeal of the i8th amendment became effective Dec. 5th, 1933, and of the prohibition provisions of the Volstead Act in August 1935.
prohibition was the law in 33 states, more than two-thirds of all the States at the time the 18th amendment went into effect (Jan. 1920). It had been written into the constitution of 18 of them, and in most cases it had been adopted or ratified in a referendum election. It had been adopted in the territories, in 1917 in Alaska and Porto Rico (ratified by the voters), in the District of Columbia by congressional enact ment and in 1919 in Hawaii. 90% of the townships and rural precincts, 85% of the counties and over 75% of the villages of the United States were under prohibition by state legislation. Two thirds of the members of the United States Senate and more than two-thirds of the House of Representatives came from States or districts having State prohibition. Local option and State prohi bition had put 63.3%, of the population and
of the land area of the United States under prohibition and the amendment and subsequent legislation pursuant thereto really affected directly and radically only 31.7%, of the population and 4.6% of the area of the United States.