Liquor Control in the United States

Report Outline
The Temperance - Prohibition Movement
The High License System
The Dispensary System in the South
The Drift Toward Bone-Dry Prohibition

Since Governor Smith's declaration, immediately after his nomination for the presidency, that he favored fundamental changes in the present provisions for national prohibition, it has been generally agreed that prohibition would play a leading part - and probably a dominant part - in the 1928 presidential campaign. Governor Smith indicated that he would make his position on the prohibition question clear in his formal speech accepting the Democratic nomination and would have constructive suggestions to make at that time.

… I feel it to be the duty of the chosen leader of the people, he said, to point the way which in his opinion leads to a sane, sensible solution of a condition which I am convinced is entirely unsatisfactory to the great mass of our people…I am satisfied that without returning to the old evils that grew from the saloon, which years ago I held, and still hold, was and ought always to be a defunct institution in this country, by application of the democratic principles of local self-government and states' rights, we can secure real temperance, respect for law and eradication of the existing evils.

John J. Raskob, recently appointed chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has also indicated that Governor Smith may present a program for coping with the liquor problem which will be positive in character, and will not call merely for repeal of national prohibition and a return to the legal licensing of saloons. In the course of a speech, July 11, accepting his new post, Raskob said: