Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America by Edward Behr Page B

in middle age bore a striking resemblance to France’s elder statesman, the late Antoine Pinay — had met most of the influential figures in the business world. John D. Rockefeller, after hearing him preach, presented him with a paper vest against the cold — and $5,000 for the ASL, the first of many contributions. He was becoming an acknowledged behind-the-scenes political power in Ohio, but now he had further ambitions. Ohio was at the forefront of the war on liquor, and, in many respects, a microcosm of still overwhelmingly rural America. Wheeler was sufficiently sensitive to the public mood to know that nationwide Prohibition was becoming a distinct possibility. As a first step, he persuaded the ASL to announce that statewide Prohibition was “imminent and inevitable,” introducing for the first time the notion of “a national constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes” in the ASL’s organ The American Patriot .
    In 1913, the ASL’s National Board of Trustees met in Columbus to celebrate their Jubilee Convention. Wheeler, in the wings as usual, let J. Frank Hanly, a former Governor of Indiana, make the actual call for national Prohibition, to be brought about by constitutional . amendment“For a moment there was silence, deep and tense,” Wheeler recalled. “Then the convention cut loose. With a roar as wild as the raging storm outside it jumped to its feet and yelled approval. The first shot in the Eighteenth Amendment had been fired.” The proposal was unanimously carried, and on December 10, 1913, a 1,000-mem-ber ASL delegation met in Washington on the steps of the Capitol, demonstrating its power and nationwide impact.
    About this time, the drys were also provided with further “scientific” evidence — this time from Europe — of the ill effects of alcohol, even taken in small quantities. August Forel, a noted Swiss brain specialist, had investigated its effect on mental processes, and professed they were terrifying. So too did Emil Kraeplin, a German psychiatrist. This boosted the campaign for sobriety that was a growing feature in factories. As Norman Clark wrote, “probably even more than religion, science had prepared the public mind for complete prohibition.” Ever since he began making automobiles, Henry Ford had insisted that his workers be teetotalers, and used a private police force to spy on them; anyone caught buying hard liquor in a store a second time was fired.
    Throughout his subsequent dry campaign, Wheeler had systematically favored the rural dry vote. “God made the country, but man made the town” was his leitmotif , and, as his personal secretary noted, he viewed the cities as “un-American, lawless and wet,” reserving special scorn for the “Irish, the continentals with their beer and wine, and the guzzling wet Democrats in the North and East.” 7
    Even in Ohio, a model for other states, the dry vote, though effective (for the towns were underrepresented), was always a minority. He himself noted that there were only 400,000 dry voters out of a total Ohio voting population of 1,250,000. The success of ASL tactics depended to a large extent on overrepresentation in the rural areas and underrepresentation in the towns.
    This led the Ohio ASL to gravely miscalculate its chances. In 1914, constitutional amendments to declare the whole of Ohio dry were defeated, and many previously dry counties returned to their wet state.
    The 1914 congressional elections did, however, provide the ASL with a heaven-sent opportunity to bring the Prohibition issue to the public. In the New york Times, 8 Wheeler reminisced that it “mobilized 50,000 trained speakers, volunteers and regulars directing their fireupon the wets in every village, town, city, county and state.” Its literature, he wrote, “found its way to every spot in the United States. . . . While we were fighting back in the districts, we were also bombarding the