SKINNING A CAT

The House of Representatives is evidently convinced that there is more than one way to skin a eat. The failure, early in the session, to initiate legislation for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment was a disappointment to many. But last week the House got at Prohibition in a different way. It cut $800,000 from the funds available for its enforcement, and at the same time provided that Prohibition agents should refrain from the practices of wire-tapping, buying evidence, and spying.

In spite of the fact, that these measures were presented by those estensibly "friends of Prohibition," it is clear that they will impair the effectiveness of enforcement of the Amendment. As one high official remarked, "It certainly looks as if Congress didn't want the Amendment enforced." In confirmation of this, a survey of present methods of enforcement reveals that in all Federal Courts, and in two-thirds of the State Courts a person cannot be convicted of violation of the Volstead Act unless there is presented actual evidence of purchase; and not mere observation of sale. To secure such evidence, Federal Agents have resorted to almost the only expedient--buying the liquor themselves. By prohibiting this, the House has made convictions difficult, if not impossible. The restrictions against wire-tapping and spying, measures which have proved necessary in the program of enforcement, will similarly cut down the possibilities of convictions.

By this recent action, the House has made even more obvious the anomalous position of Prohibition in the federal law. The country as a whole has expressed itself against the amendment; the House has refused to sanction the proper enforcement of it; yet with all this, the law remains on the statute books. The immediate result is that whatever other money is spent in the half-hearted enforcement is only wasted. Finally, the House is inevitably breeding contempt of all law by giving carte blanche to all to violate a provision of the national constitution.