Many of the able constructive suggestions of the Commission would not have fallen on stony ground eight or ten years earlier, especially if they had been presented in one outright majority report leaving dissent to one or two minority reports. But by 1931 it was too late for practical results. The storm of resentment against lawlessness and crime due in part, though not as many erroneously were coming to believe, exclusively to the restrictive measures inherent in prohibition, had almost reached hurricane strength. It was aggravated by the effect of the depression in increasing by thousands persons without jobs and with slender or empty pocketbooks for whom the economic benefits of prohi bition were not so real as they had once been. It was intensified by an indifferent public opinion influenced by a rising generation that did not know by either experience or education the evils of the saloon and a legalized liquor traffic. National constitutional prohibition was doomed and the last nail in its coffin was the illusory expectation that the cost of its enforcement together with the larger part of the illgotten gains of the bootleggers and smug glers might be turned into the public treasuries of governments everywhere desperately in need of revenue for relief and recovery expenditures.
The Adoption of the 21st and Repeal of the 18th Amend ment.—The 21st amendment as proposed by Joint Resolution of Congress, originating in the Senate, and adopted by two-thirds of each House (Senate, Feb. 16, 1933, 63 for, 23 against ; House, Feb. 20, 289 to 121), was deposited with the Department of State on Feb. 20, 1933 and formally submitted the next day by the Secretary of State to the Governors of the 48 States, reads as fol lows: "Section I. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Con stitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
"Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
"Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress." This was the first use made of the method of ratification by conventions as provided for in the amending clause of the Con stitution. The ratification of the 21st amendment was con summated Dec. 5, 1933 when the Certificate of State Depart ment was issued to the effect that conventions in 36 States had notified the Department of their ratification, and the same day the President, pursuant to Section 2I 7a of the National Industrial Recovery Act issued a Proclamation declaring the i8th amend ment repealed and calling on citizens "to co-operate with the government in its endeavour to restore greater respect for law and order, by confining such purchases of alcoholic beverages as they may make solely to those dealers or agencies which have been duly licensed by State or Federal license." The President's Proclamation also called attention to the fact that the new amendment prohibits transportation or importation of intoxicating liquors into any State in violation of the laws of such State ; he asked that "no State shall by law or otherwise authorize the return of the saloon either in its old form or in some modern guise ; stated that the policy of the government will be to see to it that the social and political evils that have existed in the pre-prohibition era shall not be revived nor be permitted again to exist, and said that the objective sought "through a national policy is the education of every citizen toward a greater temperance throughout the Nation."
It will be interesting to see whether the States can succeed any better in preventing the return of the saloon in some form no less destructive than the old form, or in restricting the social, economic and political evils incident to the liquor traffic than the Federal and State governments succeeded in enforcing prohibition. It will also be necessary for the people to elect a new and hitherto un familiar type of Congress before they can expect any considerable expenditure of time or money in Washington on a national policy of temperance education. But the President is wise in making a strong appeal for greater citizenship co-operation with the Govern ment to combat the evils inherent in the repeal of national prohi bition.