Prohibition in the 1932 Conventions

Report Outline
Growth or Demand for Change in Prohibition Policy
The Wet and Dry Question in Congress, 1932
Changing Attitude of the States on Prohibition in 1932
Changing Attitude of Political Leaders in 1932
Special Focus

Growth or Demand for Change in Prohibition Policy

Developments in the prohibition situation during the last few months clearly forecast a more vigorous struggle over the wet and dry question at the June meetings of the Republican and Democratic parties than has occurred in any previous national convention. The prediction has been made that both political parties will adopt platform planks favoring some plan of resubmission of the Eighteenth Amendment to the people.

While President Hoover has not made known his attitude toward such a course, it has been asserted that he will accept whatever prohibition plank the Republican party sees fit to adopt. In this connection it is considered significant that Secretary of Agriculture Hyde, one of the leading dry members of the Cabinet, approved passage by the Missouri state Republican convention, which he attended, of a resolution urging the calling of a constitutional convention to deal with the whole prohibition question. In explanation of his stand, he said, April 16, 1932: “It is a fundamental right of the voters to pass on any question affecting their interests, and if anything is ever to be clone with this problem, it will have to be done in some such way as is proposed in the Missouri plank.”

Alfred E. Smith declared April 19,1932, that he intended to urge adoption by the Democratic convention of a plank endorsing the Raskob plan of state liquor control, unless something better were proposed. Governor Roosevelt reaffirmed, February 5,1932, his demand for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and restoration of state control. Although the Democratic party will have to take into consideration the views of its dry southern members, it will be strongly influenced by the wet sentiment of its northern leaders. If there is any substantial difference in the positions on prohibition taken by the two parties, the prospects are that the Democratic platform will lean more heavily to the wet side than the Republican.