President Hopkins on Prohibition

A request from Ernest H. Cherrington, secretary of the National Temperance Council, to President Hopkins asking him to meet with the officers of the Council is reprinted below. There also follows the letter which President Hopkins wrote in reply and which, upon being made public, was widely disseminated through the press and was made the basis of widespread editorial comment. A few of the editorials both favoring and opposing his views, as well as one denouncement of his stand as reported in the press, are reprinted together with the two letters.

November 22, 1930,

Dr. Ernest M. Hopkins, Pres. Dartmouth College Hanover, N. H.

Dear Doctor Hopkins:

The National Temperance Council, composed of the principal officers of all the national temperance organizations, will be held in Washington, D. C., Monday and Tuesday, December 8 and 9, 1930.

This Council meeting will face squarely the present critical situation in regard to prohibition. The officers of the Council are desirous that the discussions in this Council meeting shall deal frankly with every phase of the present problem and that these leaders and their deeply interested friends shall reach in this conference very definite conclusions as to the facts, and as to what should be done and how it should be done.

We are inviting into this group meeting for these two days a few leading educators, religious editors and denominational leaders. We would be pleased to have you join us in this conference, participate in the discussions and help to shape a program for immediate action. The general headquarters and conference room will be at the Dodge Hotel, very near the Union Station at Washington. Any necessary further announcements will be made at the opening session of the Council.

Hoping that you may be able to join in this conference, I am, Very sincerely,

(signed) Secretary of the National Temperance Council.

PRESIDENT HOPKINS' LETTER

Hanover, N. H. December I, I930.

Dear Doctor Cherrington: It is impossible for me to accept your courteous invitation to attend the conference of officers of national temperance organizations, to be held in Washington, December 8 and 9. In deference, however, to your statement that the officers are desirous of having frank discussion of the present situation, I am perfectly willing to state my own attitude in the matter.

I have few convictions as strong as my belief in the value and indispensability of a theory and practice of temperance among a people which wishes to realize its best possibilities. I would not knowingly argue against or oppose any movement which made for temperance. For many years, in the assumption that practice might eventually show prohibition to be conducive to temperance, I have kept silent in regard to my belief that the whole theory of the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment was pernicious. I felt very strongly that this Amendment gave too much justification to building up great new powers of the Federal Government as against holding local communities responsible for the conduct of their own intimate affairs. Nevertheless, I was not sure that the Amendment might not prove an exception to test the rule and might not develop benefits which I could not foresee.

Now, however, looking back over a period of time in which at least the tendencies developed by the Amendment can be shown, I cannot see, in the large, that advantage has accrued to anybody, except possibly to industrial efficiency, in the enactment of the Amendment and in the mass of legislation which has followed in its trail. I do not believe that it is a proper function of the constitution of a great federal government like the United States to devise sumptuary provisions for personal conduct. As little do I believe that detailed provisions for increasing the industrial efficiency of workmen belong in a national charter of any government except of one more frankly utilitarian than I am willing to see the United States become.

Personally, I believe that whether from the social, the educational, or the religious point of view, the greatest weakness in American society at the present day is the disposition of individuals to avoid responsibility and to delegate this to outside agencies, and particularly to the National Government. The effectiveness of attempted control shrinks rapidly to the vanishing point as responsibility for exercising this is removed to one center or another far distant from the locality wherein it is needed. A complementary weakness of almost as great importance is not only the willingness but the desire of a federalized and bureaucratic government to take over these responsibilities.

I feel so strongly in regard to the desirability of temperance in the use of alcoholic liquors, as in all other things, that, despite my objections to the whole theory of the Eighteenth Amendment, I would support it if I either had seen or was seeing at the present day any evidence to justify a belief that legislation enacted under the Amendment had worked or that it could be made to work. Instead of seeing this, my observation in traveling about the L nited States is that great areas which used to be wholly dry are now saturated, not only with alcoholic liquors but with a spirit of complete abandon in regard to the control or use of these. Likewise, the original attitude of resentment against the use of law for the support of this Amendment has given place to a complete indifference to the requirements of law, which to me is a more dangerous situation. Meanwhile, money which was originally collected in excise on liquor and paid to the National Government, plus the swollen profits of inflated prices on liquor and the further profits of cutting and cheapening liquor, has been made available to the extent of hundreds of millions of dollars for corruption. Thus the law has subsidized the building up of an underworld empire of enormous power backed by enormous financial resources.

I can see how men whose whole lives have been devoted to the single end of eliminating alcoholic liquors from national life may have become so fixed in their opinions as to make it impossible for them to modify these even for the sake of securing a national attitude of temperance. I can see how hosts numbered in the membership of Protestant churches, who believe that religious aspiration and the guardianship of public morals are synonymous, can conscientiously refuse to consider any compromise with convictions to which they have come to give greater allegiance than to social welfare or to public morals or even to the stability of government. Most of all, I can see how the official corps established to make effective the work of great organizations which have consecrated themselves to the upholding of all legislative enactment in behalf of the Eighteenth Amendment can feel an unwillingness to forego any effort for the complete realization of the objectives to which they have committed themselves.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, I do not see how individuals or organizations whose solicitude is for building up a spirit of temperance can continue either to believe in or to support the theory or the practice of the Eighteenth Amendment as defined in current legislation. I am,

Yours sincerely, (signed)

Dr. Ernest H. Cherrington, Secretary National Temperance Council Westerville, Ohio

PRESIDENT HOPKINS ON PROHIBITION

President Hopkins of Dartmouth has issued today a statement on prohibition which eminently deserves, as no doubt it will command, the close attention of every thoughtful American. Only by a reading of the full text can the values of this statement be grasped in anything like their entirety. The sincerity of Dr. Hopkins's thought is so profound, the care and moderation of his judgment are so great, that not a line, not a word, of his concise utterance can be omitted without diminishing the reader's understanding of the true balance and breadth of his views. To these, no mere summary, however potent, can do adequate justice. The whole statement must be read, and read closely.

Nevertheless, the ultimate judgment expressed by Dr. Hopkins in no way lacks clarity. On the contrary, his controlling opinion is affirmed with complete force. Writing to the National Temperance Council Dr. Hopkins declares his conviction that the Eighteenth Amendment "has made conditions worse than they were before and has precluded the accomplishment of anything which partakes of the nature of a temperance movement." Elsewhere he declares:

I have few convictions as strong as my belief in the value and indispensability of a theory and practice of temperance among a people which wishes to realize its best possibilities. I would not knowingly argue against or oppose any movement which made for temperance. For many years, in the assumption that practice might eventually show prohibition to be conducive to temperance, I have kept silent . . . Now, however, instead of seeing this, my observation in travelling about the United States is that great areas which used to be wholly dry are now saturated, not only with alcoholic liquors but with a spirit of complete abandon in regard to the control or use of these.

This is the conclusion maturely and deliberately reached by a college president whose understanding of men and of the ways to lead and control men is everywhere recognized to be of a high order, superlative, perhaps, among all the college presidents of New England. Those who disagree with his judgment will continue well en- titled to their differing convictions, as Dr. Hopkins most earnestly recognizes in the full text of his statement. But any who merely disregard his declarations, and fail of any attempt to understand their significance, do so at the risk of encouraging great peril to the future welfare of the whole American nation.

December 22, 1930.

DR. CONRAD'S VIEWS

Attacking by inference the condemnation of the dry law by Pres. Edward Martin Hopkins, of Dartmouth College, Rev. Dr. A. Z. Conrad, pastor of Park Street Church, said last night that such an attack leads students to succumb to "one of the worst of all things, intoxicating drink."

For a college president to condemn prohibition leads" the students under his guidance to believe that there is nothing bad in drinking, a condition, Dr. Conrad said, that brings about an effect of habitual intoxication no matter what the president may say about temperance.

The remarks were made during the sermon prelude when Dr. Conrad answered the question, "What are we to think of a college president who cries down prohibition but offers no substitute?"

In addition to the bad effect upon the student body, Dr. Conrad said that it was a bad time for such a statement when "medical authorities had agreed that the use of alcoholic liquor was damaging and unnecessary even in the treatment of sickness. It was a poor time to make known his disbelief and he should have kept quiet or at least spoken out in support of what is a mighty purpose, the curbing of the infamous saloon."

Dr. Conrad said that no substitute for prohibition would hold water, although it "might hold liquor," and pointed out that Pres. Hopkins had offered no substitute.

"Prohibition is bound to succeed and America is going to stay dry, as far as legislation is concerned, with an increasing disposition on the part of the people to make it safe for the youth of today to go along without the pitfalls of the saloon," said Dr. Conrad.

In answer to another question, Dr. Conrad said that the antago- nism to law and Government in this country is a result of an innate desire of everyone to do what he pleases. Socialism, Dr. Conrad said, is on the wane because of the "horrible example of Russia" and "the large number of people who share in the great economic and industrial enterprises of today who do not propose to see their hard-earned investments distributed freely."

(Reported in the news columns)

"December 28, 1930.

MAKING UP THEIR MINDS

The importance of the statement issued yesterday by Pres. Ernest M. Hopkins of Dartmouth, denouncing the 18th amendment flows not only from the power and cogency of a group of arguments presented with admirable temperance of phrase, but even more from the significant trend of moderate opinion which he symbolizes in his action.

The president of Dartmouth has refused, till this late hour, to oppose or approve of the prohibition experiment in public. While partisans on one side or the other have been making the welkin ring with denunciation and optimistic assertion, he has been silent, not wishing to prejudge an experiment with the purpose of which he found himself in hearty accord, though he maintained strong mental reservations regarding its methods.

"I have few convictions as strong as my belief in the value and indispensability of a theory and practice of temperance among a people which wishes to realize its best possibilities," he explains. "I would not knowingly argue against or oppose any movement which made for temperance. For many years, in the assumption that practice might eventually show prohibition to be conducive to temperance, I have kept silent in regard to my belief that the whole theory of the 18th amendment was pernicious."

These are words of no fanatic. They express an attitude adopted by many who compose the great middle stratum of public thought in the United States today, people who, while viewing with misgivings the tactics pursued in the dry law campaign, have nonetheless been willing to be convinced, if possible, by the successful tests of a pragmatic effort.

Far from being so convinced, President Hopkins now feels impelled to assess prohibition by the record, to count the costs, to weigh promise against performance and bring in a balance sheet. The result is before the public.

He feels that time and experience have confirmed his earliest fears that "the amendment gave too much justification to building up great new powers of the Federal Government as apart from holding local communities responsible for the conduct of their own intimate affairs." Instead of proving an exception, he considers that the dry amendment has but confirmed the rule. Aside from proving advantageous, in the large, to the Nation, he is convinced that, apart from possible increases of industrial efficiency, the disadvantages have piled up formidably everywhere. Sumptuary laws have been wrongly, he thinks, written into the Federal Constitution. The danger of individuals and communities shirking their own responsibilities off on someone else has grown alarmingly. Attempts at enforcement have broken down to the vanishing point. Corruption has increased, fattened upon the flow of funds made available through an enormous and illicit industry. Worst of all, those who at the outset were simply resentful at the amendment have tended more and more markedly toward an indifference for that respect for law which is fundamental to good government.

This epitomizes his argument. Beyond it lies the revelation of an increasingly large number of moderates aligning themselves with the foes of the amendment. Hitherto these people have been in the middle of the road, or on the fence, or in the grandstand watching the progress of the experiment. Now their opinions are crystalizing.

This is a trend of major importance, for in the final ev'ent it is the considered judgment of this middle group in the public which determines which way the balance is to swing in our national affairs. It is not the fanatical dogmatists on the one side or the other who determine the issue. It is rather the vast body of that moderate opinion which decides slowly, which shuns fanaticism, which achieves conviction only after a steady and impartially long scrutiny of the facts as time reveals them.

Those of this view have taken their time in the matter of prohibition, but of late there have been signs that they were reaching an objective. Many of them indicated this as early as last Spring. During the early Summer the Literary Digest poll showed that the sweep was growing. By the time the November elections arrived it was evident from returns in widely scattered parts of the Nation that the trend was far from local limitation.

President Hopkins in his statement shows plainly that it continues.

The Boston Globe,December 23, 1930.

PRESIDENT HOPKINS AND PROHIBITION

It has remained for President Ernest Hopkins of Dartmouth College to sound the last note in the prohibition discussion and give the wets their greatest reason for encouragement that the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act will soon be rescinded because those who are sincerely in favor of temperance are at the same time opposed to the amendment.

" President Hopkins makes a strong and logical argument in favor of repeal and no matter whether you agree with him or not his viewpoint is that of a man who honestly and sincerely believes in temperance but doubts the efficiency of the law to accomplish it.

He has kept his light under a shade for ten years but now comes out openly for repeal. He does this in the interest of temperance, he says, and naturally the wets all follow his lead as they believe that repeal means a wide open America again.

All who remember the old license days in New Hampshire and Massachusetts do not look with favor upon a return to those conditions, even when granting that Dr. Hopkins may be right when he criticises the effect the amendment has had upon temperance in general over the whole country.

Just how far his investigations have extended he does not tell us in his letter. If his observations are confined to city conditions his conclusions are biased, we believe. Nobody who remembers local conditions in New Hampshire under the license law will be inclined to believe with him that conditions are worse today than formerly. They certainly are not. They are much better, even if far from what they should be.

Nobody can say with any degree of certainty what conditions would have been in America today if prohibition had not been adopted. After the war an entirely different viewpoint developed as to prohibition. Under license we might have been fighting an orgy of rum which would have been shocking.

It is true that the 18th Amendment did not bring about a dry America as was hoped for, but it did result in better conditions than had ever existed here before.

December 25, 1930.

ANOTHER EMINENT CRITIC

Among college executives in this country there is none abler or more courageous than President Ernest M. Hopkins of Dartmouth. These virtues shine out in the pronouncement on prohibition contained in his letter to the National Temperance Council. The prohibition controversy has given rise to such a plethora of opinions on the subject that only the most distinguished now merit attention. This one, in its searching logic, its obvious idealism and its lack of rancor, fully qualifies.

Dr. Hopkins believes that national prohibition has been a dismal failure. He explains that he was always opposed to the theory behind the Eighteenth Amendment, which is that of removing responsibility from local communities for the conduct of their intimate affairs and lodging it in a centralized authority. "The effectiveness of attempted control," he writes, "shrinks rapidly to the vanishing point as responsibility for exercising this is removed to one center or another far distant from the locality wherein it is needed."

Nevertheless, his desire to see temperance established is so strong that hitherto he has refrained from criticism of a measure which might, he thought, accomplish this end, notwithstanding its violation of basic governmental principles. "I would support it," he says, "if I either had seen or was seeing at the present day any evidence to justify a belief that legislation enacted under the amendment had worked or that it could be made to work." On the contrary, the Volstead Act, in his opinion, "has made conditions worse than they were before and has precluded the accomplishment of anything which partakes of the nature of a temperance movement."

Only the blind partisans of the "experiment" will fail to agree with him. He is right respecting the fundamental issue involved, which is governmental; he is equally right in his observation of the law's collapse. Prohibition, as he points out, has no excuse whatever in theory; it could only justify itself if it worked. And it hasn't worked. How simple—and convincing!

December 24, 1930.

MR. HOPKINS SPEAKS AGAIN

A few years ago, when the United States was seized by such a Red hysteria that anyone who attempted to describe or explain what was going on in Russia was suspected of being in the pay of Moscow, President Hopkins of Dartmouth issued a statement to the effect that it was an essential part of the process of American education to get some idea of what was going on in Russia, and that anyone who had any reliable information on the subject would be welcome at the New Hampshire college. The statement, which seemed to many at the time to be extremely daring, has since become rather generally accepted as an exposition of common sense.

Now President Hopkins, who indulges himself very sparingly in this field, has made another very striking public statement. It is a condemnation of the Eighteenth Amendment and the works under it, made after a decade of studiously preserved silence on the subject. In dealing with national prohibition, Dr. Hopkins speaks from a remarkably broad background of experience in fields affording opportunity to weigh its workings. Before becoming a college president he enjoyed a successful career as an organizer of industrial enterprises, served during the World War as an assistant to the Secretary of War in charge of industrial relations, and has since preserved close contacts both in the field of industry and government. As president of Dartmouth, he has traveled extensively in all parts of the country to talk with the far-flung alumni body of that institution, and he has had his grief with prohibition as a phenomenon of undergraduate life, as have all college executives.

When out of this experience he concludes that the Eighteenth Amendment and related enforcement legislation has been a failure, except for a possible improvement in industrial efficiency that is not worth the price, his words have real force. The force is enhanced by knowledge that it would be far more comfortable for President Hopkins or any other college president to keep quiet on this explosive subject and avoid endless explanations to fond parents. Perhaps by speaking boldly, however, Dr. Hopkins will again serve conspicuously to introduce a note of hard-headed sanity into a field where there is much hysteria, as he did a few years ago in speaking out about the desirability of having some understanding of the Russian undertaking. That would be a very happy fate for his courageous, forceful and wellreasoned observations on a decade of sad experience with prohibition.

December 23, 1930.