Volstead Act

“ If there is one kind of human animal I have a supreme contempt for it is the so-called man who believes in Prohibition for you and me—but not for himself. I have heard bankers and Wall Street potentates hold forth with fervor on the salutary effects of the Volstead Act, since it has forced the poor laboring man to give up his ale and beer. ”

“ Eminent counsel were retained and a determined effort was made to defeat or nullify the amendment in the courts. To this end suits were begun in various jurisdictions to test its validity and enjoin the enforcement of the Volstead Act, which sought to carry it into effect. Two sovereign states (Rhode Island and New Jersey) joined in the attack and through their respective Attorneys General brought original suits in the United States Supreme Court to have the amendment declared invalid. Seven test cases were argued together in the Supreme Court, five days in all being devoted to the argument. ”

“ Something like that seems to be in the minds of the women whose communication we have received, who include item six in their program, but if so, their attitude is wrong. A constitutional amendment is not sacred, much less a Volstead Act. It is the Volstead law that the jokes on Prohibition are aimed at more than the amendment. If we cannot joke about an act of Congress, then indeed things have come to a restricted pass. If a law is bad, one of the ways to beat it is to laugh it out of court. ”

“ If we grasp this extent of the American war power, we realize why our sole American government, without the grant of a new national power to it, could validly enact what we know as the War Time Prohibition Statute, although without such a new grant, it was powerless to enact what we know as the Volstead Act or National Prohibition for time of peace. ”

“ I think the Volstead Act was properly interpreted by the court below (267 Fed. 706) ; but to enforce it as thus construed would result in virtual confiscation of lawfully acquired liquors by preventing or unduly interfering with their consumption by the owner. The Eighteenth Amendment gave no such power to Congress. Manufacture, sale and transportation are the things prohibited ”

“ One finds it hard to believe that a law is just and right and proper which so many splendid minds consider otherwise. There have been numerous societies formed to combat the Volstead Act, and in their long lists of members one may read the names of honorable citizens who feel impelled to express their views. Hundreds of influential newspapers stand solidly against the Eighteenth Amendment. The fight has not been taken up in one section of the country only. ”

“ The Brooks Law as thus construed does not purport to authorize or sanction anything which the Eighteenth Amendment or the Volstead Act prohibits. And there is nothing in it which conflicts with any provision of either. It is merely an additional instrument which the state supplies in the effort to make prohibition effective. ”

“ We recognize that the American saloon is opposed to all social, moral, and economic order, and we pledge ourselves to its absolute elimination by the passage of such laws as will finally and effectually exterminate it. But we favour the repeal of the Volstead Act and the substitution for it of a law permitting the manufacture and sale of light wines and beer. ”

“ Can we say that, in the matter of morals, the Volstead Act has worked advantageously? It has undermined the whole country; and under fanaticism, we have shown ourselves to be a total failure. The New York World says:
“The Quebec law is a good law because it has city and country solidly behind it and it can be enforced. It provides for local option, it restricts the purchase of spirits, it allows the sale of wine and beer in cafés and it creates no155 enforcement problem. ”

“ The Volstead Act, for instance, destroys the constitutional right to a jury trial, and in its administration the constitutional prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures and the rule against double jeopardy are habitually violated. But no protest comes save from specialists in liberty, most of whom are so busy keeping out of jail themselves that their caveats are feeble and ineffective. ”

“ But in the case of the Prohibition Amendment, and of the Volstead act for its enforcement, there enters another element which must inevitably and most powerfully affect the feelings of men toward the law. Everybody knows that the law is violated, in spirit if not in letter, by a large proportion of the very men who imposed it upon the country. Members of Congress and of the State Legislatures--those that voted for Prohibition, as well as those that voted against it--have their private stocks of liquor like other people ”

“ There is a nervous tension in the air; and so long as the Volstead Act remains, there will be disturbances comparable to the rumblings of earthquakes.
Those of us who love America yearn for a return to truth and sanity. The present conditions are intolerable. Each political party is striving to evade this big issue. Each claims that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans gave the people Prohibition ”

“ Anything is possible when a great country allows itself to be governed by an organization of fanatics who have intimidated Congress and seem bent upon ruining our shipping industry.
But it would appear almost impossible to get honest men to act in the capacity of spies. There is an everlasting “shake-up” of federal officials who are supposed to see that the Volstead Act is enforced.137 Here again the human element enters—that element which the fanatics never recognize. The temptations are too great for the average man. He knows that bootleggers are getting rich. ”

“ He was complaisant, it may be assumed, because he did not wish to furnish another argument to those who would repeal or modify the Volstead act. He has made no fuss over home brew and has allowed ruralists to make cider of high alcoholic voltage. He saw it would be difficult, if not impossible, to stop home manufacture and did not wish to swell the number of anti-Volsteaders. ”

“ Our journals do not make pleasant reading for good Americans these days. They are filled with headlines, which concern the Prohibition law, morning after morning. Not long ago I picked up my newspaper and found no less than seventeen columns devoted to stories of what the police in New York City alone were doing, or trying to do, to make the Volstead Act anything but a huge joke. ”

“ In February, 1924, he attended a conference of state and federal enforcement agencies at Albany, where he reiterated the need for co-operation. That arrests for violation of the Volstead Act in northern New York were commonly made by state troopers, during 1924, see testimony of federal prohibition agents in Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, 69th Cong. 2d Sess. on H. Res. ”

“ In ordinary life men cannot engage in such lunatic oppressions of their fellow-men without paying a penalty for it; even a policeman must be measurably more plausible and discreet. If a judge is bound by his oath to engage in them, then so much the worse for the judge. He can no more hope to be respected than a hangman can hope to be respected.
[Pg 94]
The truth is, of course, that the judges are by no means under the compulsion that is alleged. The injunction clause of the Volstead Act actually has no constitutional mandate behind it ”

“ I pass over those connected with surgery, obstetrics, plumbing, military science, journalism and the sacred office, and point to one which, like that of the hangman, has to do with the execution of the laws: to wit, the post of Federal judge under Prohibition. Consider [23] what a judge executing the Volstead Act must do nearly every day. He must assume that men whom he esteems and loves, men of his own profession, even his fellow judges—in brief, the great body of wet and enlightened Christian men—are all criminals. ”

“ A letter writer to a newspaper says, ‘If it is true that a community gets the kind of government it146 deserves, it is equally true that a law gets the kind of obedience it deserves.’ His assertion may be disputed, but still, if the Volstead law is not being respected, is it certain that it deserves respect? It is a law in the process of being tried out. If it is good we want it enforced. If it is bad we want it amended, but we do not want to be choked off from discussing it or testing it. There is no power in Congress to say what is right or wrong. ”

“ But in the main, an oppressed people learn how to outsmile or outsnarl the oppressor. The Eighteenth Amendment may yet live to wish it was dead. Mr. Volstead seems to have believed that the nonsenseorship game was new and exciting, and could be trusted to carry itself by storm. Not while the ancient wisdom of long-borne bans and communicadoes looked out of the female eye. ”

“ It is very difficult to get evidence against these diligent business men, and I have encountered only a few people who have conscientious scruples about dealing with them. It is hard to be consistent concerning Volsteadism. If the Act itself plays merry pranks on sea and shore, why should not human beings likewise forget their dignity once in a while? ”

“ It was held in this last case that Congress might confer jurisdiction, and at the same time might ratify and legitimate an action already commenced in a court which, until the act in question, had no jurisdiction of the matter. The doctrine of vested rights never restrains a legislature from advancing justice or remedying wrongs. It is intended to prevent oppression and injustice, not to afford them an impunity. ”

“ It is suggested that the act is in aid of interstate commerce. The state law was not contrived in aid of the policy of Congress, but to enforce a state policy differently conceived; and the fine of $50 is enough to constitute a burden. Southern R. Co. v. Reid, 222 U.S. 424, 443, 56 L. ed. 257, 262, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep. 140. But that is immaterial. When Congress has taken the particular subject-matter in hand, coincidence is as ineffective as opposition, and a state law is not to be declared a help because it attempts to go farther than Congress has seen fit to go. ”

“ An unconstitutional act is not a law; it binds no one, and protects no one. Here the conflict between the constitution and the statute was obvious, and the board had the advice of the highest legal officer of the state; and his conclusion was sustained by the judgment of the supreme court of the state. The unconstitutional part of the statute was separable from the remainder. The statute declared that, in making its statement of the value of its property, the railroad company should omit certain items ”

“ The action toward which the provisions of the statute under consideration is directed is governmental action. Such was the holding of Corrigan v. Buckley, supra.
In considering whether judicial enforcement of restrictive covenants is the kind of governmental action which the first section of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was intended to prohibit, reference must be made to the scope and purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment; for that statute and the Amendment were closely related both in inception and in the objectives which Congress sought to achieve. ”

“ Webster’s ability and learning, it must be emphatically stated that his position is too monstrous for serious discussion. That Congress can ignore the Bill of Rights, and deprive citizens in a territory of the right to trial by jury, security from unlawful search and seizure, freedom of religious opinion, and the other rights guaranteed by the Constitution, cannot be defended successfully even by Webster.
The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly determined that the Federal Constitution, with all its provisions, applied to all territory under the jurisdiction of our Government. ”

“ Since Congress' power in the area of commerce among the States is plenary, its judgment must be respected whatever policy objections there may be to creation of a no-man's-land.
Congress is free to change the situation at will. In 1954 the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare recognized the existence of a no-man's-land and proposed an amendment which would have empowered state courts and agencies to act upon the National Board's declination of jurisdiction. ”

“ A statute does not become controlling until it actually becomes operative; and that therefore, even if it should be decided that there was a conflict between the Federal and the state legislation after the former became effective, as the act of Congress did not take effect until March 4, 1908, in the meantime the state law was in operation. ”

“ Holt, so far as it applies to this case, is sound and should not be overruled. The Fourteenth Amendment does not make an act of state legislation void merely because it has some retrospective operation. What it does forbid is taking of life, liberty or property without due process of law. ”

“ The basis of the assumed Federal right rests upon the plainly erroneous assumption that the act of 1899 was intended to or did operate to paralyze all state power concerning structures of every character in navigable waters within their borders, and to destroy automatically all vested rights of property in such works, even although acquired prior to the act of 1899, under the sanction of state authority. ”