most unanimous for Prohibition
when the people of the State had quite recently shown by their vote
that they were either distinctly against it or almost evenly divided.
Of this kind of proceeding, Maryland presented an example so flagrant
as to deserve special mention. Although popular votes in the State
had, within quite a short time, recorded strong anti-Prohibition
majorities, the Legislature rushed its ratification of the Eighteenth
Amendment through in the very first days of its session; and this in
face of the fact that Maryland has always held strongly by State
rights and cherished its State individuality, and that the leading
newspapers of the State and many of its foremost citizens came out
courageously and energetically against the Amendment. In these
circumstances, nothing but a mean subserviency to political
intimidation can possibly account for the indecent haste with which
the ratification was pushed through. It is interesting to note a
subsequent episode which casts a further interesting light on the
matter, and tends to show that there are limits beyond which the
whip-and-spur rule of the Anti-Saloon League cannot go. In the session
of the present year, the Anti-Saloon League tried to get a State
Prohibition enforcement bill passed. Although there was a great public
protest, the bill was put through the lower House of the Legislature;
but in the Senate it encountered resistance of an effective kind. The
Senate did not reject the bill; but, in spite of bitter opposition by
the Anti-Saloon League, it attached to the bill a referendum clause.
With that clause attached, the Anti-Saloon League ceased to desire the
passage of the bill, and allowed it to be killed on its return to the
lower House of the Legislature. Is this not a fine exhibition of the
nature of the League's hold on legislation? And is there not abundant
evidence that the whole of this Maryland story is typical of what has
been going on throughout the country? Charges are made that the
Anti-Saloon League has expended vast sums of money in its campaigns;
money largely supplied, it is often alleged, by one of the world's
richest men, running into the tens of millions or higher. r do not
believe that these charges are true. More weight is to be attached to
another factor in the case--the adoption of the Amendment by Congress
while we were in the midst of the excitement and exaltation of the
war, and two million of our young men were overseas. Unque